More politics than policy in Arctic oil drilling debate

The political debates around Shell's Arctic drilling plans and the Keystone XL pipeline are becoming less about energy and more about partisanship, Graeber writes.

By Daniel J. Graeber,?Guest blogger / March 18, 2013

The conical drilling unit Kulluk sits grounded 40 miles southwest of Kodiak City, Alaska. Shell last month said it was suspending plans offshore Alaska to prepare its equipment and personnel for resumption of activity "at a later stage," Graeber writes.

Petty Officer 2nd Class Zachary Painter/US Coast Guard/AP/File

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Rep. Ed Markey, ranking member of the House Energy Committee, said an investigation into Shell's offshore Alaska campaign suggested the company wasn't ready to work in extreme environments. An Interior Department report found problems with the way Shell managed its Alaska campaign last year. Last week, Markey added that he wanted to restrict oil and gas exports to ensure U.S. energy security.? Amid the firestorm over Republican pressure to pass the Keystone XL pipeline, some party leaders on the other side of the aisle are embracing a protective model as a way to keep the domestic economy going. The political debate around energy, however, is becoming less about energy and more about partisanship.

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Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management Tommy Beaudreau led the Interior Department's review of Shell's?work?offshore Alaska. The New Years Eve grounding of drillship Kulluk gave environmental campaigners the fodder they needed to reiterate their position that arctic oil and gas exploration wasn't safe. Beaudreau?found?that "Alaska's harsh environment was unforgiving" to Shell's lack of oversight in Alaska.

Markey, D-Mass., said the report showed Shell wasn't prepared to drill in the harsh arctic environment of the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas.?(Related article:?Using Oil Revenues to Research Alternative Fuels)

"Until Shell demonstrates beyond a shadow of a doubt that they have the capability to drill in the arctic safely, their drilling plans should remain on ice," he?said.?

FDNY chief's son quits EMT job after 'offensive' tweets

Mary Altaffer / AP

New York City Fire Department Commissioner Salvatore J. Cassano, seen here in 2010, had no comment Tuesday on offensive tweets by his son, Joseph, an emergency medical technician.

By Tracy Connor, Staff Writer, NBC News

The son of New York City's fire commissioner quit his job as a city emergency medical technician Monday after a report that he made offensive posts about blacks, Jews and women on Twitter.

Joseph Cassano resigned only a few hours after issuing an apology for the tweets. His father, Commissioner Salvatore Cassano, said he was ?extremely disappointed? by his son?s online comments and that they did not reflect his values.

The New York Post reported that the younger Cassano?s now-disabled Twitter account included posts such as "I like jews about as much as hitler" and "Getting sick of picking up all these obama lovers and taking them to the hospital because their medicare pays for an ambulance and not a cab."

In other tweets, he used a derogatory slang term for black people, threatened to leave the U.S. if President Obama was re-elected and made a snide crack about Martin Luther King Jr., the newspaper said. He also reportedly wrote that every girl should be forced to get a "boob job" when she turns 18.

Cassano, 23, also complained about his job as a city EMT, and alluded to a plan to follow in his father's footsteps and become a firefighter, the Post reported.?

In a statement issued through the FDNY, the son did not acknowledge specific tweets but said he took "full responsibility my comments."

"From the bottom of my heart, I?m truly sorry and I apologize for my offensive remarks.? My intention was never to hurt anyone, or any group, and these tasteless comments do not reflect the person my parents raised me to be," he wrote.

The elder Cassano said the situation was ?very painful? to him as a parent but backed his son?s decision to step down from a job he has held since December and which could have given him an edge in becoming a firefighter.

?I love him very much and, with the support and love of our entire family, we will get through this together,? the commissioner said.

Cassano, who took over the top Fire Department job in January of 2010, also said he has worked hard for years ?to make the FDNY more diverse and inclusive? and would not tolerate statements that damage the department?s reputation.

The Fire Department has been embroiled in a federal lawsuit brought by the Justice Department in 2007 over its racial makeup, which was 89 percent white.

In 2010, a judge halted hiring and ordered the city to create a new entrance exam; the following year, he appointed a monitor to oversee recruitment and hiring. The city has appealed, but a record number of minorities took the latest test last spring, and 40 percent of those in line to get the coveted jobs are black or Hispanic.

Before the resignation, a lawyer for the Vulcan Society ? a fraternal organization of black firefighters, which joined the feds' discrimination suit against the department ? called the younger Cassano's tweets disgraceful.

"I suppose one shouldn't visit the sins of the son upon the parent, but as John lives at home with his father the FDNY commissioner you can't help wondering about the influence of that home on his disgracefully racist views," the lawyer, Richard Levy, said in an email to NBC News.

Ron Meier, New York regional director for the Anti-Defamation League, said he was "encouraged" by the younger Cassano's apology.

"The sentiment Mr. Cassano communicated in those posts threatens to damage and undermine public trust in FDNY. We urge Mr. Cassano to take meaningful steps that reflect the regret he has expressed," Meier said in a statement.

The head of the union that represents emergency medical technicians said he was hoping the report was "not true."

"The union does not condone this type of behavior," said Israel Miranda, president of Local 2507 of District Council 37.

?

Source: http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/03/18/17357731-fdny-commissioners-medic-son-apologizes-quits-emt-job-after-offensive-tweets?lite

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Common Ancestor of Mammals Plucked From Obscurity

[unable to retrieve full-text content]A lowly occupant of the fossil record, Protungulatum donnae, had anatomical characteristics for live births that anticipated all placental mammals, a Science report says.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/08/science/common-ancestor-of-mammals-plucked-from-obscurity.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Gas promises bumper black hole 'weigh-in'

Friday, February 1, 2013

A new way of measuring the mass of supermassive black holes could revolutionise our understanding of how they form and help to shape galaxies.

The technique, developed by a team including Oxford University scientists, can spot the telltale tracer of carbon monoxide within the cloud of gas (mostly hydrogen) circling a supermassive black hole at the centre of a distant galaxy. By detecting the velocity of the spinning gas they are able to 'weigh' (determine the mass) of the black hole.

Detailed information on supermassive black holes, thought to be at the heart of most galaxies, is scarce: it has taken 15 years to measure the mass of just 60. The problem is that most other supermassive black holes are too far away to examine properly even with the Hubble Space Telescope.

The new method, when combined with new telescopes such as ALMA (Attacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array), promises to extend this black hole 'weigh-in' to thousands of distant galaxies. It will also enable the study of black holes in spiral galaxies (similar to our own Milky Way), which are hard to target using currently available techniques.

A report of the research is published in this week's Nature.

The team demonstrated the new technique on the supermassive black hole at the centre of a galaxy, NGC 4526, in the constellation of Virgo. NGC 4526 was chosen as a test because it has been widely studied but the team believe the technique will work on a wide range of different galaxies.

Tim Davis of the European Southern Observatory, lead author of the paper, said: 'We observed carbon monoxide molecules in the galaxy we were monitoring using the Combined Array for Research in Millimetre-wave Astronomy (CARMA) telescope. With its super-sharp images we were able to zoom right into the centre of the galaxy and observe the gas whizzing around the black hole. This gas moves at a speed which is determined by the black-hole's mass, and the distance from it. By measuring the velocity of the gas at each position, we can measure the mass of the black hole.'

Dr Michele Cappellari of Oxford University's Department of Physics, an author of the paper, said: 'Because of the limitations of existing telescopes and techniques we had run out of galaxies with supermassive black holes to observe. Now with this new technique and telescopes like ALMA we will be able to examine the relationship between thousands of more distant galaxies and their black holes giving us an insight into how galaxies and black holes co-evolve. Importantly our 'weigh-in' technique will work for all kinds of galaxies, including spiral galaxies which are particularly difficult to observe with previous techniques.'

Dr Martin Bureau of Oxford University's Department of Physics, an author of the paper, said: 'The ALMA telescope is now in the final stages of construction and our team is currently bidding for time to use it for our black hole survey. If all goes according to plan we could begin our survey by the end of this year.'

###

University of Oxford: http://www.ox.ac.uk/

Thanks to University of Oxford for this article.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/126567/Gas_promises_bumper_black_hole__weigh_in_

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Strategies Colin Kaepernick Jersey For Effective Self-help / Youth ...

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Russia marks 70th anniversary of Stalingrad battle

In this photo made Friday, Feb. 1, 2013, Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, left, meet with World War II veterans at a reception marking the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Stalingrad, in the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia. The Battle of Stalingrad was turning point in World War II that led to the defeat of the Nazi Germany. Veteran at centre not identified.(AP Photo/RIA-Novosti, Alexei Nikolsky, Presidential Press Service)

In this photo made Friday, Feb. 1, 2013, Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, left, meet with World War II veterans at a reception marking the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Stalingrad, in the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia. The Battle of Stalingrad was turning point in World War II that led to the defeat of the Nazi Germany. Veteran at centre not identified.(AP Photo/RIA-Novosti, Alexei Nikolsky, Presidential Press Service)

In this photo made Friday, Feb. 1, 2013, Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, speaks with World War II veteran Ilya Filatov at a reception marking the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Stalingrad, in the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia. The Battle of Stalingrad was turning point in World War II that led to the defeat of the Nazi Germany. (AP Photo/RIA-Novosti, Alexei Nikolsky, Presidential Press Service)

In this photo made Friday, Feb. 1, 2013, Russian President Vladimir Putin, center, meets with World War II veterans at a reception marking the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Stalingrad, in the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia. The Battle of Stalingrad was turning point in World War II that led to the defeat of the Nazi Germany. (AP Photo/RIA-Novosti, Alexei Nikolsky, Presidential Press Service)

VOLGOGRAD, Russia (AP) ? An aged T-34 tank clattered into the center of the southern Russian city once known as Stalingrad and soldiers dressed in World War II-era uniforms marched solemnly as Russia marked the 70th anniversary of the end of one of modern warfare's bloodiest battles.

President Vladimir Putin came to the city later Saturday to take part in the commemorations, including a visit to the famous hilltop memorial complex surmounted by a towering 87-meter (280-foot) statue of a sword-wielding woman representing the motherland.

The city 900 kilometers (560 miles) south of Moscow suffered six months of intensive fighting, beginning with massive air strikes, as Nazi forces tried to push deep into the Soviet Union and reach its Caucasus oil fields.

At least 1.2 million people are estimated to have died before the fighting ended on Feb. 2, 1943. The Red Army's defeat of the Nazis after house-to-house battling was a decisive turn in World War II.

One of the houses became a particularly resonant symbol of the battle. The four-story apartment building became known as the Pavlov House after the sergeant whose platoon inflicted heavy damage on Nazi troops and tanks while under heavy attack for two months, even as civilians continued to occupy it.

A woman born in the house a couple of months before the siege, Zinaida Andreeva, told the Interfax news agency Saturday that "for me, Feb. 2 is like a birthday. It's a special day, in which tears and happiness are side by side."

The city was renamed Volgograd in 1961, as part of the Khrushchev era's drive to erase the personality cult of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. But the name Stalingrad is indelibly connected with the battle that is one of Russia's most-lauded military achievements.

The connection is so strong that the city council this week passed a resolution under which it would use the name Stalingrad in official communiques on the day commemorating the battle's end, as well as five other days marking World War II events.

The legacy of Stalin remains a delicate issue nearly 60 years after his death. Although widely reviled for his decades of brutality and repression, many laud him as leading the people to victory against Nazi Germany amid immense suffering.

In a controversial move, Stalin's image adorns five buses that are to run in Volograd until Russia observes Victory Day on May 9, and similar buses were to run Saturday in St. Petersburg and Chita.

The leader of the liberal Yabloko party's faction in the St. Petersburg city council, Georgy Poltavchenko, denounced the Stalin buses.

"The victory in the Great Patriotic War" as Russians call WWII " including the victory in the battle on the Volga, was not achieved thanks to the 'military genius' of Stalin ... but thanks to the heroic resistance of our people," he was quoted by Interfax as saying.

____

Jim Heintz in Moscow contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2013-02-02-EU-Russia-Stalingrad/id-bbdbf62750c9481194f2aa33fd2a88f9

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Soldier admits shooting friend while trying to cure hiccups

By Jeff Black and Andrew Mach, Staff Writers, NBC News

Killeen Police Department

A Fort Hood soldier pleaded guilty Thursday to involuntary manslaughter -- admitting he accidentally shot his friend while trying to scare away the hiccups.?

Spc. Patrick Edward Myers, of Spartanburg, S.C., was sentenced to 3 1/2 years in military prison for fatally shooting 22-year-old Pfc. Isaac Lawrence Young, of Ash Grove, Mo., in the face in September while they were watching a football game at an apartment in Killeen, Texas.?

Myers was also busted to private and will receive a bad-conduct discharge, the Associated Press reported.

Police said three men were inside the apartment on Sunday, Sept. 23, watching a football game and drinking alcohol when one of the men produced a handgun, handled it in an "unsafe manner," and shot the victim in the face.?

An arrest affidavit obtained by the Associated Press in September said Myers apparently pointed a gun at the victim's head to scare him and stop the hiccups.

Myers said he thought the gun had dummy rounds when it was discharged.?

The case was tried in military court on the Central Texas Army post because the both victim and suspect were soldiers. Myers has been in the Bell County Jail on a $1 million bond.?

?

Source: http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/02/01/16806863-fort-hood-soldier-admits-shooting-friend-while-trying-to-cure-hiccups?lite

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