news20090819bil

[Biography of the Day] from [Britannica]
August 19
Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton—who, as the 42nd president of the United States (1993–2001), oversaw the country's longest peacetime economic expansion but became, in 1998, only the second president to be impeached—was born this day in 1946.

[On This Day] from [Britannica]
August 19
1991: Attempted coup against Gorbachev
On this day in 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev, the general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1985–91) and president of the Soviet Union (1990–91), was briefly ousted in a coup by communist hard-liners.

1960: Francis Gary Powers was sentenced to 10 years' confinement by the Soviet Union for espionage following the U-2 Affair, but he was later released (1962) in exchange for the Soviet spy Rudolf Abel.

1945: A commando force formed by Vo Nguyen Giap, under Vietnamese nationalist leader Ho Chi Minh, entered the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi.

1847: U.S. forces under Major General Winfield Scott began the Battle of Contreras, opening the final campaign of the Mexican War.

1812: The USS Constitution, commanded by Captain Isaac Hull, won a brilliant victory over the British frigate Guerrière in the War of 1812.

1458: Enea Silvio Piccolomini was elected pope as Pius II, following the death of Calixtus III.

1274: Edward I was crowned king of England at Westminster.


[Today's Word] from [Dr. Kazuo Iwata
[英語・一日一言] [岩田 一男 元一橋大学教授]
August 19
Man is but a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed.
If the nose of Cleopatra had been shorter, the whole face of the earth would have been changed.
    Blaise Pascal: Pansées (died this day in 1662)

人間は葦である。
Ningen-wa ashi-de-aru.
自然の中で最も弱い。
Sizen-no naka-de mottomo yowai.
しかし人間は考える葦である。
Shikashi ningen-wa kangaeru ashi-de-aru.

もしクレオパトラの鼻がもっと低かったら、
Moshi Kureopatora-no hana-ga motto hikukkata-ra,
地球の顔はすっかり変わっていたであろう。
Chikyu-no kao-wa sukkari kawatte-ita-de-arou.


[日英混文稿]


[TODAY'S TOP STORIES] from [The Japan Times]

[EDUCATION AND BILINGUAL]
Wednesday, Aug. 19, 2009
KANJI CLINIC
Driving you 'crazy for kanji' — in a good way
By MARY SISK NOGUCHI
Special to The Japan Times

Here's an addiction that doesn't require a 12-step recovery program. For the past six years, Berkeley, Calif.-based freelance writer Eve Kushner has been a self-proclaimed, unapologetic "kanji-holic." Kushner details her passion for Sino-Japanese characters in a new textbook, "Crazy for Kanji: A Student's Guide to the Wonderful World of Japanese Characters" (Stone Bridge Press).

Kushner, who penned "Crazy" in the first-person, is particularly intrigued with the way a kanji's components fit together logically to form an individual character and with the "elegant construction" of kanji compound words.

"Teasing out the tangles in kanji, breaking the code, provides me with endless hours of entertainment, as well as thrilling epiphanies," she writes in the introduction to her book.

Kushner asks the questions most foreign adults learning kanji have scratched their heads over — and details the answers in language they can understand. Topics tackled include the evolution of kanji, its pronunciation system and "architecture," two-four character compound words and phrases, how kanji are used in everyday life in Japan, Japanese attitudes toward kanji, Chinese hanzi and Korean hanja, and tips for studying kanji.

Each chapter begins with a topic overview followed by games, photos of characters in use in real life, and a wealth of topic-related examples. Readers may read the book from cover to cover or alternatively jump around among chapters. The difficulty level provided for each game heads off potential user frustration.

Kushner's refreshing insights into kanji, including the following examples, pepper the book:

"Kanji are pictures plus sounds. It's as if kanji can stream audio and video, compared with the mere audio function of kana (hiragana and katakana) or roman letters.

"Kanji continually opens my eyes to the meaning of English words. Only when I encountered the kanji for 'iceberg' (氷山, ice + mountain, hyōzan) and 'glacier' (氷河, ice + river, hyōga) did I even ponder the difference between the two concepts. 'Iceberg' refers to a floating, icy mass. Meanwhile, a glacier, as I have learned, is a body of ice moving down a slope or valley, spreading outward in a riverlike way. So the characters nail it perfectly!"

Kushner creatively dubs phonetic components (e.g., 反 — the Chinese-derived pronunciation [on-yomi] "HAN"- found in 飯 [rice, HAN], 板 [board, HAN], and 版 [printing block, HAN]) "on-echoes," "because the on-yomi reverberates like an echo through kanji containing these common elements." She compares figuring out the correct use of okurigana after transitive/intransitive kanji verb-stems (e.g., 止める, tomeru /止まる, tomaru) to finding the lowest common denominator in fractions.

In her "Wonderful Words" chapter, Kushner dishes up kanji compounds for concepts that don't exist in English, including the following: 置き傘, okigasa: spare umbrella left at work = to leave behind + umbrella; 花恥ずかしい, hanahazukashii: so beautiful as to put a flower to shame = flower + shame; and 畳水練, tatamisuiren: like swimming practice on tatami (i.e., useless book-learning as opposed to life experience) = tatami mat + water + practice.

Whether you have just embarked on your kanji-learning adventure, have attained "kanji guru" status, or find yourself somewhere in the middle, "Crazy for Kanji" will provide you with new information about Sino-Japanese characters, not to mention a generous dose of inspiration. If you have ever labored through humdrum kanji-learning aids, you may be pleased to discover that page-turners in the genre do in fact exist.

Quiz: Eve Kushner's “What's the Meaning of This!?” Excerpted from “Crazy for Kanji,” with permission from Stone Bridge Press).

1. 非常口 (not + normal + mouth)
a. malocclusion
b. emergency exit
c. Mick Jagger's mouth

2. お見舞い (honorific o + to see + to dance)
a. to attend a ballet
b. to commit a crime
c. to visit a sick person

3. 改札口 (to reform + paper money + opening)
a. turnstile
b.change in interest rates
c. stock market

4. 牛歩 (cow + walk)
a.herding cattle
b. snail's pace
c. pasture

5. 化生 (to change + life)
a. metamorphosis
b. midlife crisis
c. menopause

6. 出所 (to leave + place)
a. departure in a vehicle
b. nostalgia
c. release from prison

Answers:
1. b. (hijōguchi)
2. c. (omimai)
3. a. (kaisatsuguchi)
4. b. (gyūho)
5. a. (kasei)
6. c. (shussho)

Explore kanji-learning materials utilizing component analysis at www.kanjiclinic.com

news20090819jt1

[TODAY'S TOP STORIES] from [The Japan Times]

[NATIONAL NEWS]
Wednesday, Aug. 19, 2009
LDP on ropes as campaign gets started
DPJ looking for historic victory
Compiled from Kyodo, AP

Campaigning began Tuesday for one of the most hotly contested elections Japan has seen in more than a decade, with attention focusing on whether the Liberal Democratic Party, which has enjoyed nearly unbroken rule for the past 5 1/2 decades, will find itself out of power.

The Lower House election, to be held Aug. 30, is one of the biggest tests the LDP has ever faced. If media forecasts are correct, it could cost the party control of the government and usher in Yukio Hatoyama, president of the Democratic Party of Japan, as the next prime minister.

The LDP has governed alone or in coalitions for the past 55 years, except for a 10-month interlude in the early 1990s.

The LDP's "ability to take responsibility and the ability to implement (polices) is the point I would like to stress," Prime Minister Taro Aso told a crowd in front of JR Hachioji Station in Tokyo.

Aso said the LDP would continue to put priority revitalizing the sluggish economy, adding that recent economic indicators have shown bright signs, and that the stimulus packages he has pushed through have contributed to a recovery.

The DPJ's Hatoyama delivered his first speech in Osaka.

"The day to make history has finally come," Hatoyama said in central Osaka. "Please give the DPJ the power to change the government. We will start a new politics without depending on bureaucrats.

"Who has taken dreams away from children, who has taken hopes away from the young, and who has taken a sense of security away from the aged?" he asked, obliquely criticizing the LDP.

Aso and Hatoyama have already been on the campaign trail since Aso dissolved the Lower House on July 21.

A total of 1,374 people filed to run for the 480-seat Lower House, exceeding the 1,131 in the previous general election in 2005. Of the candidates, 1,134 are running in 300 single-seat districts.

By party, the LDP is fielding 326 candidates — 289 for single-seat districts and 37 for the proportional-representation segment of the ballot, while the DPJ is putting up a combined 330 — 271 single-seat hopefuls and 59 for the proportional representation list.

This is the first time the DPJ is fielding more candidates than the LDP.

The general election is the first since September 2005, when the LDP won about 300 seats thanks to the popularity of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.

After he stepped down the following year, three from the LDP tried to fill his shoes — Shinzo Abe, Yasuo Fukuda and Aso — but the party's popularity continued to fall.

The DPJ, which had 112 seats at the time of the Diet dissolution, will need to take an additional 129 to give it a majority of 241 in the lower chamber.

Akihiro Ota of New Komeito, the LDP's coalition partner, said in Yokohama he expects voters to focus on whether a party hammers out coherent and consistent policies and whether it is able to follow through on them.


[NATIONAL NEWS]
Wednesday, Aug. 19, 2009
Kobe man second to die from swine flu

KOBE (Kyodo) A 77-year-old man who had been suffering from several chronic diseases died Tuesday after being infected with swine flu, Kobe officials said.

The man, who lived in Tarumi Ward, Kobe, is the second person in Japan to die in connection with the H1N1 virus. A 57-year-old man in Okinawa died Saturday.

The Kobe man, whose name was not released, had been ill with pulmonary emphysema, diabetes, high blood pressure and renal failure for which he had been undergoing kidney dialysis three times a week. He died because the flu caused acute bronchitis, leading to deterioration of his pulmonary emphysema that eventually killed him, the officials said.

He had a fever of 39 degrees Sunday and went to see a doctor Monday. Suspecting pneumonia, the doctor tested him for swine flu, but it turned out negative.

The doctor sent him to a different hospital, where he underwent another test for swine flu and tested positive for type-A flu.

Because he was having difficulty breathing, he was given Tamiflu.

The man died at 6:20 a.m. Tuesday after his condition quickly worsened, officials said. Further tests revealed that he had swine flu.

From Aug. 10 to 14, when he is suspected to have been infected with the flu, he was at his home except for a trip to the hospital for his other ailments. In the Okinawa case, the patient, a resident of Ginowan, had an ailing heart and kidneys, prefectural officials said.

The National Institute of Infectious Diseases said Tuesday that the number of influenza patients reported per medical institution in Japan has almost reached a level indicating the start of an epidemic.

Most of the patients are believed to be infected with the new H1N1 strain of influenza A, officials said.

The number of patients reported by about 5,000 designated medical institutions across Japan during the week of Aug. 3 to 9 stood at 4,630, or 0.99 per facility on average, almost matching the 1.00 figure that is deemed the beginning of an epidemic.


[NATIONAL NEWS]
Wednesday, Aug. 19, 2009
Nishimatsu official gets suspended prison term
Kyodo News

A former Nishimatsu Construction Co. official was given a suspended sentence Tuesday for involvement in illicit business practices that led to the indictments of the company's former head and an aide of Democratic Party of Japan heavyweight Ichiro Ozawa.

The Tokyo District Court sentenced Kazuhiko Takahara, 64, to 18 months in prison, suspended for four years, for helping generate and control illicit overseas funds in violation of the foreign-exchange and foreign trade law as well as for embezzling company money.

The former deputy head of the company's overseas business department brought \70 million into Japan between February 2006 and August 2007 in conspiracy with former Nishimatsu President Mikio Kunisawa and others without reporting it to customs authorities, the court said.

Takahara also pocketed \45 million in slush funds between November 2005 and August 2007 to buy a condominium, it said.

Prosecutors had sought an 18-month prison term for Takahara, while he asked for a suspended term.

Some of the illicit funds at Nishimatsu are believed to have been used for political donations.


[NATIONAL NEWS]
Wednesday, Aug. 19, 2009
Voters gauge party pledges
Platforms may offer a great feast but skepticism is running high
Kyodo News

Many voters appear to be closely examining the policy platforms of each party as the official campaign for the Aug. 30 election started Tuesday.

A local government official in Utsunomiya, Tochigi Prefecture, said that although the platforms enable him to compare each party's stance, "I believe they have no meaning if they lack possibility."

Referring to the Democratic Party of Japan's platform, he said, "It would be great if the DPJ policies are achieved, but will it really happen?"

Recent opinion polls indicate the DPJ will bring down the Liberal Democratic Party.

Both parties are playing up their economic stimulus measures, with the LDP pushing its pledge to increase disposable income by an average of \1 million while the DPJ promises to scrap expressway tolls.

A restaurant owner, 52, in Tsu, Mie Prefecture, said he believes neither party will be able to achieve its goals.

"A party that does not have an effective program for civil service reform will not be able to come out with sufficient stimulus," he said.

The Social Insurance Agency's mishandling of pension records has stirred concern about the pension scheme.

Yasuharu Tanaka, 67, who runs a driving school in Higashi-Hiroshima, Hiroshima Prefecture, said he will focus on the pension issue when he decides which candidate and party to vote for.

"I have concerns over the future of the nation's pension system as young people are gradually moving away from it," he said. "It is quite important (for lawmakers) to establish the foundation for our future life."

Kozue Ito, 26, an office worker in Sapporo, said she has concerns about her employment and her declining salary. She said the policy platforms of each party on expanding employment "are short on specifics. I don't think job opportunities will expand without stimulating business activity."

The child care polices of each party have drawn public attention, with the DPJ pledging to offer a monthly child-rearing allowance of \26,000 for each child of junior high school age and younger.

But Fumiko Katagiri, 32, a part-time worker in Tokyo whose 4-year-old daughter attends kindergarten, said she wonders how the DPJ will finance it.

"Judging from their manifestos, both the LDP and DPJ seem to give a big feast, but they do not clearly show how to clear off the massive government debt," said Yoshiaki Kobayashi, a political science professor at Keio University in Tokyo.

news20090819jt2

[TODAY'S TOP STORIES] from [The Japan Times]

[BUSINESS NEWS]
Wednesday, Aug. 19, 2009
LDP hopes for mileage from stimulus silver lining
By MAI IIDA
Kyodo News

News that the economy grew in the April-June quarter for the first time in more than a year provided an opportunity for the Liberal Democratic Party to direct voters' attention to its measures to fight the recession.

While economists acknowledged that the stimulus package did have a positive impact, they also warned that the outlook remains shaky and people are probably not feeling the rebound as strongly as the GDP data showed, with the unemployment rate standing at a six-year high and wages declining, including a sharp cut in summer bonuses.

"The LDP probably wants to emphasize its contribution to the 3.7 percent growth, but since the beneficiaries of the current recovery are limited, its claims may not resonate with many households or voters," said Kyohei Morita, chief economist at Barclays Capital Japan Ltd.

He said the manufacturing sector is the main beneficiary of the economic rebound as overseas markets recover. But with manufacturers still reluctant to make investments and spend on personnel costs, the positive effects have not spread much to households or the nonmanufacturing sector.

"A far-reaching recovery that includes households and nonmanufacturing businesses is unlikely to be realized unless appropriate measures that stimulate household income are devised," Morita said.

The Cabinet Office said Monday that Japan's gross domestic product rose an annualized real 3.7 percent in the April-June quarter, allowing Prime Minister Taro Aso and economic and fiscal policy minister Yoshimasa Hayashi to say that a huge stimulus package prepared by the LDP-led government had helped the economy to expand for the first time in five quarters.

"We believe this is a fruit of the measures implemented so far," Aso said at a news conference.

"We have concentrated on economic measures" to fight the global recession and reviving the economy will remain a top priority, he said.

His party is on the ropes, with polls showing that the Democratic Party of Japan is in good position to win the Aug. 30 election, so Aso is sure to emphasize any bright spots he can find.

The government introduced a huge largest stimulus packages to fight the global economic slump, including tax breaks, subsidies for fuel-efficient cars and an Eco-point system to reward purchases of energy-efficient consumer appliances, which helped buoy consumer spending.

Hayashi said the positive effects of the stimulus package are likely to increase from this point on, while also expressing hope the economy will shift to a self-sustained recovery phase after receiving a boost from the government measures.

Takuji Aida, senior economist at UBS Securities Japan Ltd., said the LDP has managed the economic slump well so far and implemented stimulus measures in the right order, focusing first on boosting consumption in a bid to help companies secure profits. Otherwise it would have ended up with no choice but to implement larger employment measures than it now needs, he said.

Yoshiki Shinke, chief economist at Dai-ichi Life Research Institute., expects the DPJ's economic initiatives to help buoy the economy a little more than the LDP's, including the DPJ's plans to offer child-raising allowances and to phase out highway tolls to support consumption. But if the DPJ fails to raise funds to finance the measures by cutting wasteful public spending, it may resort to issuing debt-covering bonds, resulting in a rise in interest rates, he cautioned.

No matter how the election goes, "there's no changing the fact that the Japanese government needs to grapple with difficult tasks," such as supporting the recent economic rebound while facing the need to tackle Japan's ballooning deficit and surging unemployment rate, Shinke said.

The July unemployment rate is due out Aug. 28, just before the election, with economists saying it is just a matter of time before the rate hits a fresh record high.


[BUSINESS NEWS]
Wednesday, Aug. 19, 2009
Toyota to resume weekend production of popular Prius

NAGOYA (Kyodo) Toyota Motor Corp. plans to resume a weekend production schedule in September, following one it implemented in July, to meet strong demand for the remodeled Prius hybrid sparked by recent government tax breaks and subsidies for fuel-efficient cars, company officials said Tuesday.

Toyota also said it has received about 10,000 domestic orders for its first hybrid-only version of the luxury Lexus HS250h sedan one month after its debut in mid-July, far eclipsing its monthly target of 500 cars.

The automaker will have employees work on two Saturdays in September, Sept. 12 and 19, at its plant in Toyota, Aichi Prefecture, the officials said.

After coordinating with its labor union, Japan's top automaker will make a formal decision by the end of this month, they said.

Toyota resumed weekend production in July for the first time since November to meet growing demand for the popular gasoline-electric-powered Prius. Weekend production had been suspended to adjust output amid the global economic downturn.

In August, as customary, there was no weekend work.

Toyota rolled out a fully remodeled version of the Prius in mid-May with retail prices starting at ¥2.05 million, nearly \300,000 less than the previous lowest-end model, and with better fuel-efficiency at 38 km per liter.

Industry groups said the Prius was Japan's best-selling model in July with sales of 27,712 cars, taking the No. 1 spot for the second straight month. Like the Prius, the HS250h has won fans with a starting price of ¥3.95 million, the lowest for a Lexus model. It is also eligible for tax breaks and subsidies.

But the soaring orders have raised concerns about whether battery production can keep up with demand, especially when the automaker is making customers wait at least eight months for delivery of the Prius.

Deliveries of the HS250h are expected to take at least six months if customers order now, a Toyota official said.

The waiting period for the Lexus hybrid is less of a problem than that for the Prius because buyers will be able to receive government subsidies through the end of next March.


[BUSINESS NEWS]
Wednesday, Aug. 19, 2009
Key economic gauge revised up
Kyodo News

The key gauge of the current state of the economy in June was revised up slightly, reflecting improvements in production-related indicators such as manufacturers' capacity operating ratio and their extra working hours, the government said Tuesday.

The composite index, or CI, of coincident economic indicators stood at 88.0 against 100 for the base year of 2005, compared with a preliminary reading of 87.8 released Aug. 6, the Cabinet Office said.

The revised June reading represents a 0.9 point increase from the previous month and the third straight month of growth.

The government kept its assessment intact from the preliminary report, saying the economy "stopped worsening."

The CI consists of various indicators such as industrial production, retail sales and the ratio of job offers to seekers.

The index of leading indicators, which predicts developments over the next several months, was also revised up to 79.9 from a preliminary 79.8. The latest reading marks a record increase of 3.0 points from the previous month.

The index of lagging indicators, meanwhile, was raised from a preliminary 83.3 to 83.4, unchanged from the previous month. It measures economic


[BUSINESS NEWS]
Wednesday, Aug. 19, 2009
Department stores had terrible July
Kyodo News

Department store sales in July fell 11.7 percent from a year earlier on a same-store basis, logging the 17th straight month of decline, an industry body said.

The rate of decline was the largest for a July since 1965, the oldest comparable data available, according to the Japan Department Stores Association.

Sales totaled around \618.58 billion, the association said. The summer shopping season was sluggish owing to stalled personal consumption amid the recession.

The association said customer traffic dropped due to unseasonably cool and rainy weather, which also affected sales of swimsuits and other summer items.

Some department stores held their bargain sales campaigns for summer items in June, a month earlier than usual, which contributed to the slump because they ate into demand in July, according to the association.


[BUSINESS NEWS]
Wednesday, Aug. 19, 2009
Department stores had terrible July
Kyodo News

Department store sales in July fell 11.7 percent from a year earlier on a same-store basis, logging the 17th straight month of decline, an industry body said.

The rate of decline was the largest for a July since 1965, the oldest comparable data available, according to the Japan Department Stores Association.

Sales totaled around \618.58 billion, the association said. The summer shopping season was sluggish owing to stalled personal consumption amid the recession.

The association said customer traffic dropped due to unseasonably cool and rainy weather, which also affected sales of swimsuits and other summer items.

Some department stores held their bargain sales campaigns for summer items in June, a month earlier than usual, which contributed to the slump because they ate into demand in July, according to the association.

news20090819jt3

[TODAY'S TOP STORIES] from [The Japan Times]

[COMPUTER TECHNOLOGY NEWS]
Wednesday, Aug. 19, 2009
TECHNOLOGY
Offhand but on record
More and more people are using computers to chat with each other, but there's no such thing as a passing conversation on the Web
By BRUCE SCHNEIER
Special to The Japan Times

Facebook recently made changes to its service agreement in order to make members' data more accessible to other computer users. Amuse, Inc. announced last week that hackers stole credit-card information from about 150,000 clients. Hackers broke into the social network Twitter's system and stole documents.

Your online data is not private. It may seem private, but it's not. Take e-mail, for example. You might be the only person who knows your e-mail password, but you're not the only person who can read your e-mail. Your e-mail provider can read it too — along with anyone he gives access to. That can include any backbone provider who happened to route that mail from the sender to you. In addition, if you read your e-mail from work, various people at your company have access to it, too. And, if they have taps at the correct points, so can the police, the U.S. National Security Agency, and any other well-funded national intelligence organization — along with any hackers or criminals sufficiently skilled to break into one of these sites.

Think about your Mixi or Facebook site. You're the only one with your password, but lots of other people can read your updates and look at your pictures. Your friends can see a lot of information about you — that's the whole point of these sites — and you don't really know who they share their information with. A lot of your stuff is public by default, and you probably keep it that way. You might respond to quizzes, and who knows where that data goes or who can see it. Workers at Mixi and Facebook can see everything, of course. They also grant access to portions of your data to third parties who want to sell their products to you.

You could set every privacy setting on your Mixi or Facebook site to maximum, but few of us do that — most of us don't even know how. You could encrypt your e-mail, but almost no one does that — and, anyway, that doesn't work with Webmail very easily. Maintaining your privacy is hard, even if you're an expert.

Cloud computing exacerbates this problem. If your company uses software- as-a-service providers such as Salesforce.com, contact management or MessageLabs e-mail filtering, those companies have access to your data. If you use Google Docs, Google has access to your data. But even if you leave your data in your computer at home, you have to worry about your family or roommates, burglars, police with warrants and Internet hackers and other criminals as well.

It's not just your online data that is at risk. It's your cell phone data — both the phone numbers you call and who call you, and the SMS messages you send and receive. It's your buying history, sitting in some credit card company's database. It's your medical records. It's the itemized list of everything you buy when you use a card that identifies you.

These risks are new. Twenty years ago, if someone wanted to look through your correspondence, they had to break into your house. Now, they can just break into your ISP. Ten years ago, your voicemail was on an answering machine in your office; now it's on a computer owned by a telephone company. Your financial accounts are on remote Web sites protected only by passwords; your credit history is collected, stored and sold by companies whose names you probably don't even know. Your digital data is no longer under your control.

And more data is being generated. Lists of everything you buy, and everything you look at but choose not to buy, are stored by online merchants both in Japan and abroad. A record of everything you browse can be stored by your ISP if they choose to. What were cash transactions are now credit card transactions. What used to be a face-to- face chat is now an e-mail, instant message, or SMS conversation — or maybe a conversation within Mixi or Facebook.

Think of the number of people and companies that can know your location. Your cell phone knows where you are. Your air-travel history is stored in various airline databases, and unless you buy your tickets anonymously, your rail travel history is stored in JR's and other databases. Even your credit card company can reconstruct your whereabouts from your purchases.

All these systems are ostensibly private and secure, but many people have legitimate access and even more — such as hackers and criminals — can get illegitimate access. Japan's Personal Information Protection Act provides only some protections and may not apply if the computers that store your information are located in some other country.

Anonymity doesn't help much. Mixi might not know your real name and address, but there are many ways to link your identity to your account. Maybe your e-mail address identifies you or your ISP knows who you are. Your cell phone identifies you and your computer might, too. Use a credit card from your account and that identifies you. True anonymity is very difficult; we regularly identify ourselves online even if we think we do not.

The lesson in all of this is that little we do is ephemeral anymore. We leave electronic audit trails everywhere we go, with everything we do. This won't change: We can't turn back technology. But as technology makes our conversations less ephemeral, we need laws to step in and safeguard our privacy. We need comprehensive data privacy laws, protecting our data and communications regardless of where it is stored or how it is processed. We need laws forcing companies to keep it private and delete it as soon as it is no longer needed, and laws giving us the right to delete our data from third-party sites. And we need international cooperation to ensure that companies cannot flaunt data privacy laws simply by moving themselves offshore.

Laws can only go so far, though. Law or no law, when something is made public, it's too late. And many of us like having complete records of all our e-mail at our fingertips; it's like our offline memory.

In the end, this is a cultural issue.

The Internet is creating the greatest generation gap since rock 'n' roll. We're now witnessing one aspect of that generation gap: The younger generation chats digitally, and the older generation treats those chats as written correspondence. Until our CEOs blog, our Diet members all Twitter, and our world leaders send each other LOLcats — until we have a national election where all the candidates have a complete history on social networking sites from before they were teenagers — we aren't fully an information age society.

When everyone leaves a public digital trail of their personal thoughts since birth, no one will think twice about it being there. Some of us might be on the younger side of the generation gap, but the rules we're operating under were written by the older side. It will take another generation before our privacy laws catch up with the death of the ephemeral conversation. Until then, we're just going to have to live with this loss of privacy.

Bruce Schneier is a leading computer security specialist and the author of "Secrets and Lies: Digital Security in a Networked World." Read about him at schneier.com

news20090819jt4

[TODAY'S TOP STORIES] from [The Japan Times]

[COMPUTER TECHNOLOGY NEWS]
Wednesday, Aug. 19, 2009
IGADGET
Sharp rides the Blu-ray; iPhone catches up
By PETER CROOKES

More bang from the Blu-ray: Sharp aims to beat a storage restriction problem with its second-generation Aquos DX series of LCD televisions. Notable for combining a built-in Blu-ray recorder with an LCD TV, the key improvement for the new range is a 7× extended HD recording mode. Sharp claims that this mode has the same quality as the original TV broadcast. In its normal recording mode, the DX Series sets record two hours and 10 minutes of TV per 25-gigabyte Blu-ray disc. The 7× setting can cram in 15 hours and 10 minutes of HDTV broadcasting. The idea of extended recording has been around since the VCR, but there was always a loss of quality. The trick is to limit the degradation in picture quality to the point that it is not too noticeable. The caveat is that it uses the MPEG4 AVC/H.264 codec that is beloved of small-screen devices like the iPhone, not the real screens of a TV. If the 7× is too much, the new DX sets also offer less ambitious 2×, 3× and 5× modes that also boost recording time, but likely with less image challenges.

Apart from pushing the boundaries of recording times, the DX sets also provide picture innovation in the form of Sharp's Image Select system. This has the TV set automatically tailoring the image and sound to match the room brightness and type of television and video program or scene. Sharp has also covered the whole gambit with the second-generation series from 26-inch to 52-inch models, all of them featuring the Blu-ray recorder, integrated high-definition tuner and distinctive cylindrical speaker mounted along the bottom of the TVs. The sets are not uniform in their resolutions, however, with most of them sporting full HD resolution of 1,920×1,080. But the 26-inch and 32-inch models cut that to a less interesting 1,366×768. In truth the reduced resolution is hardly going to be noticeable at those screen sizes, but considering the 26-inch set, the LC-26DX2, costs ¥168,000 and the 32-inch LC-32DX2 sets you back ¥188,000, Sharp could have afforded to be a tad generous. The rest of the models climb steadily in price to a monumental \478,000 for the top-drawer LC-52DX2. www.sharp.co.jp

Apple TV goes mobile: Apple's cutting- edge iPhone is a little blunt in Japan. Style is not enough for local consumers, they need more substance than the iconic American firm is used to offering. In particular most Japanese cell phones do extra duty as portable televisions. The iPhone has no such ability. An early solution, an add-on portable TV tuner that was exclusive to the iPhone, came and went last year. I-O Data is now filling the void with its GV-SC310 SEG CLIP. The USB stick, which supports 1Seg, Japan's portable TV standard, is plugged into your computer with TV programs then streamed to your iPhone via Wi-Fi. Of greater interest is the fact that programs can be saved to the iPhone for watching on the go. This is thanks in part to a free application called TVPlayer that can be downloaded from the Japanese App Store. Looking like a USB stick with a tiny antenna, the SEG CLIP weighs a meager 14 grams and measures 18 mm × 70.3 mm × 8.4 mm. The unit works with both the 3G and 3GS flavors of iPhone and the iPod touch and costs ¥6,300.

The SEG CLIP fills a void, but deeming it TiVo for the iPhone — as some have touted it — as is a reach since you can't afford to wander too far from your computer to watch live TV. The ability to store programs is useful, however. www.iodata.jp/news/

Rainbow time: Dell has carved out a reputation for goods that are cheap yet effective. With the U2410 monitor, Dell has slipped off the budget shackles. The 24-inch monitor is based on an IPS panel that maximizes color reproduction. In-Plane Switching panels are considered the pinnacle for image quality, color accuracy and viewing angles. The U2410 can cover 96 percent of the Adobe RGB color space and 100 percent of the sRGB color space. The monitor can produce almost any shade of color, resulting in sharper and better-defined images. Complementing the color reach, the monitor boasts a 1,920 × 1,200 resolution. The good looks don't extend beyond the picture. The monitor has a solid but unspectacular design. Even Dell can't pull off the act of producing such a top-shelf device at a bargain-drawer price, so the U2410 costs ¥72,450. If you don't need it for graphics work then the Dell is an indulgence, but what a beautiful one. www1.jp.dell.com

news20090819lat

[Today's Newspaper] from [Los Angeles Times]

[Business News]
Southern California home sales and prices rise in July
Demand for entry- and mid-level houses has led to bidding wars. But many foreclosures are still off the market.
By Peter Y. Hong
August 19, 2009

Southern Californians are shopping for homes again, optimistic that values have been beaten down about as low as they will go and triggering the highest sales levels in more than two years.

A report released Tuesday shows a sharp rise in home purchases and an increase in median prices for a third straight month -- suggesting that the two-year decline in home values may finally be over.

In Los Angeles County, the median home price hit $321,000 last month, after lingering at $300,000 for most of the year. Orange County median home values rose to $420,000, up from a low of $370,000 in January.

Lower-priced homes are getting most of the action, with bidding wars for homes listed at $500,000 or less. The median Southland home sales price stood at $268,000, far below the 2007 peak of $505,000.

But the low prices are driving sales, which were up 19% last month over July 2008, according to figures released by MDA DataQuick.

Demand is heaviest for entry-level and mid-market homes because buyers such as David Soldinger, 27, think those prices won't go any lower.

Soldinger, an assistant to a film director, said he bid on 12 houses from Silver Lake to Sherman Oaks over the last eight months, losing every time -- often to people making all-cash offers. He said eight of the 12 houses had been foreclosed upon, and all were listed below $500,000.

The first house Soldinger went after, in Hollywood, got 26 offers in four days, he said.

"There was such a small inventory," said Soldinger, who rents a loft in downtown Los Angeles. "Any time something decent would come on [the market], you'd go to see it and there would be 12 people there in five minutes."

Soldinger said his offer -- under $450,000 -- was finally accepted this month for a three-bedroom house in Van Nuys.

Gerd-Ulf Krueger, principal economist for HousingEcon .com, a real estate consulting firm, said such fast and furious action is common for homes that won't require a "jumbo" loan of $417,000 or more.

"The big action is now in the low to mid-scale," Krueger said.

Listings of homes for sale "at least at the low and mid-level are pretty much empty. There's not a lot of supply," Krueger said. "The question is, to what degree the low supply has an artificial character."

Krueger was referring to a backlog in the foreclosure process that has reduced the inventory of homes for sale. Thousands of homes are in default but haven't been repossessed because of foreclosure moratoriums. Even homes that have been repossessed by lenders have been slow to be put on the market.

According to DataQuick, foreclosure sales are on the decline -- falling in July to 43% of home sales, down from a peak of 57% in February. But DataQuick analysts said that trend could reverse itself if the foreclosure logjam was broken and if unemployment worsened.

Because of that, DataQuick President John Walsh cautioned that declaring a housing market bottom "remains an especially risky call to make, given the uncertainty over the magnitude of future job losses and foreclosures."

"Even if we are at or near the bottom," Walsh said, "history suggests we could bounce along that bottom for quite a while."

Despite its recent rise, the median price remains at 2002 levels and is 47% below its peak set during several months in 2007. The median is the point at which half the homes sold for more and half for less.

Analysts say the recent increase in the median price also reflects the fact that more expensive homes are selling again after a long drought. In many affluent neighborhoods, real estate agents say, owners are finally accepting the diminished value of their properties and pricing their homes to sell.
That is beginning to attract more buyers. Malibu, Beverly Hills, Brentwood and Del Mar all posted July sales increases over the prior year.

The number of homes in the foreclosure process remains high. In July, nearly 125,000 homes in California were scheduled for foreclosure auctions, nearly double the number during the same month the previous year, according to ForeclosureRadar, an online seller of default data. The company said the increase in pending foreclosures was the result of lenders postponing repossessions.

That "shadow inventory" of homes is likely to be sold this year and next, which could again give mid-range buyers the upper hand in home purchases.

In Burbank, for instance, about 130 single-family homes are listed for sale below $1 million, but more than 350 such properties are in some stage of foreclosure, according to ForeclosureRadar. That may be why the number of Burbank single-family homes sold in July this year -- 58 -- was identical to last July, even though the median sales price fell 4%, to $519,000, according to DataQuick.

Prices could fall further when more foreclosed properties are put on the market, especially if lenders dump a large number of homes at once, Krueger said. More likely, he said, they will release homes for sale at a measured pace.

Despite strong demand in the mid- to low end of the market, another housing boom is unlikely, said Richard Green, director of USC's Lusk Center for Real Estate.

He said homes priced close to $500,000 aren't likely to move much higher in price because the buyers interested in those properties would not be able to obtain or afford larger mortgages. Those home shoppers would also be more likely to rent rather than buy if prices got too high because rents remain relatively low, Green said.

"I'm not expecting any big increase in house prices" in the mid-market, Green said. "We'll just get to where they'll stop falling, and maybe go up a little bit."

The DataQuick numbers include single-family houses and condominiums in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, Ventura and San Diego counties. The number of homes sold in the region last month increased 3.6% from June.

The median price paid in Southern California for July, $268,000, was still down 23% from July 2008, DataQuick reported. But prices have been rising for the last three months, gaining 6% in June to $265,000 and 1% in July.

Condos and houses priced below $500,000 constituted 80% of sales in July, down from 85% in March, DataQuick reported.

Overall, the nation's housing market remains wobbly. Economists cheered last month when the Census Bureau reported that groundbreaking on new homes went up from May to June.

But Tuesday, the Census Bureau said housing starts declined 1% in July from June's level.

news20090819nyt

[Today's Newspaper] from [The New York Times]

[Money & Policy]
Democrats Seem Set to Go It Alone on a Health Bill
By CARL HULSE and JEFF ZELENY
Published: August 18, 2009

WASHINGTON — Given hardening Republican opposition to Congressional health care proposals, Democrats now say they see little chance of the minority’s cooperation in approving any overhaul, and are increasingly focused on drawing support for a final plan from within their own ranks.

Top Democrats said Tuesday that their go-it-alone view was being shaped by what they saw as Republicans’ purposely strident tone against health care legislation during this month’s Congressional recess, as well as remarks by leading Republicans that current proposals were flawed beyond repair.

Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, said the heated opposition was evidence that Republicans had made a political calculation to draw a line against any health care changes, the latest in a string of major administration proposals that Republicans have opposed.

“The Republican leadership,” Mr. Emanuel said, “has made a strategic decision that defeating President Obama’s health care proposal is more important for their political goals than solving the health insurance problems that Americans face every day.”

The Democratic shift may not make producing a final bill much easier. The party must still reconcile the views of moderate and conservative Democrats worried about the cost and scope of the legislation with those of more liberal lawmakers determined to win a government-run insurance option to compete with private insurers.

On the other hand, such a change could alter the dynamic of talks surrounding health care legislation, and even change the substance of a final bill. With no need to negotiate with Republicans, Democrats might be better able to move more quickly, relying on their large majorities in both houses.

Democratic senators might feel more empowered, for example, to define the authority of the nonprofit insurance cooperatives that are emerging as an alternative to a public insurance plan.

Republicans have used the Congressional break to dig in hard against the overhaul outline drawn by Democrats. The Senate’s No. 2 Republican, Jon Kyl of Arizona, is the latest to weigh in strongly, saying Tuesday that the public response lawmakers were seeing over the summer break should persuade Democrats to scrap their approach and start over.

“I think it is safe to say there are a huge number of big issues that people have,” Mr. Kyl told reporters in a conference call from Arizona. “There is no way that Republicans are going to support a trillion-dollar-plus bill.”

The White House has also interpreted critical comments by Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the top Republican negotiator in a crucial Finance Committee effort to reach a bipartisan compromise, as a sign that there is little hope of reaching a deal politically acceptable to both parties.

Mr. Grassley, who is facing the possibility of a Republican primary challenge next year, has gotten an earful in traveling around his home state. At one gathering last week, in a city park in the central Iowa town of Adel, a man rose from the crowd and urged him to “stand up and fight” the Democratic plans. If he does not, the man yelled, “we will vote you out!”

The White House, carefully following Mr. Grassley’s activities, presumed he was no longer interested in negotiating with Democrats after he initially made no effort to debunk misinformation that the legislation could lead to “death panels” empowered to judge who would receive care.

Citing a packed schedule, Mr. Grassley has also put off plans for the bipartisan group of Finance Committee negotiators to meet in either Iowa or Maine, the home of another Republican member of the group, Senator Olympia J. Snowe, before Congress resumes.

Further, Mr. Grassley said this week that he would vote against a bill unless it had wide support from Republicans, even if it included all the provisions he wanted. “I am negotiating for Republicans,” he told MSNBC.

In an interview on Tuesday, Mr. Grassley said he had simply been repeating earlier comments that he would not support a measure that did not have significant Republican support. He said that raucous town-hall-style meetings might have made the job of reaching a compromise harder, but that he had not given up.

“It may be more difficult than it was before,” he said. “I am intent on talking. I am intent on seeing what we can do.”

Administration officials, who maintain that Republicans are badly mischaracterizing the legislation that has emerged from three House committees and the Senate health committee, said they had hoped to achieve some level of bipartisan support. But they are becoming increasingly convinced that they will instead have to navigate the complicated politics among varying Democratic factions.

The officials said the White House hoped to make the case to the American people that it was Republicans who had abandoned the effort at bipartisanship. Republicans countered by saying that they simply opposed the legislation and that the public outcry had validated their view and solidified their opposition.

This week’s careful administration maneuvering on whether a public insurance option was an essential element of any final bill was seemingly part of the new White House effort to find consensus among Democrats, since the public plan has been resisted by moderate and conservative Democrats who could be crucial to winning the votes for passage if no Republicans are on board.

For the second time in two days, Mr. Obama did not mention health care on Tuesday, a marked departure from the aggressive public relations campaign he mounted in July and early August. The White House is striving to stay out of the fray, aides said, until the president can get away on vacation this weekend.

Even as the administration showed some flexibility, angering liberal Democrats who consider a public plan essential, Republicans turned their attacks from the public option to the health care cooperative idea being promoted by some Senate Democrats.

In what Democrats regarded as further evidence that Republicans were not serious about negotiating, Mr. Kyl and Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the second-ranking House Republican, described a co-op as a public option carrying another name.

The continuing opposition was noted Tuesday by Robert Gibbs, the White House spokesman, who said of Republicans that at best “only a handful seem interested in the type of comprehensive reform that so many people believe is necessary to ensure the principles and the goals that the president has laid out.”

news20090819wp

[Today's Newspaper] fom [The Washington Post]

[Health-Care Reform 2009]
Debate's Path Caught Obama by Surprise
Public Option Wasn't Intended as Major Focus
By Michael D. Shear and Ceci Connolly
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, August 19, 2009

President Obama's advisers acknowledged Tuesday that they were unprepared for the intraparty rift that occurred over the fate of a proposed public health insurance program, a firestorm that has left the White House searching for a way to reclaim the initiative on the president's top legislative priority.

Administration officials insisted that they have not shied away from their support for a public option to compete with private insurance companies, an idea they said Obama still prefers to see in a final bill.

But at a time when the president had hoped to be selling middle-class voters on how insurance reforms would benefit them, the White House instead finds itself mired in a Democratic Party feud over an issue it never intended to spotlight.

"I don't understand why the left of the left has decided that this is their Waterloo," said a senior White House adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "We've gotten to this point where health care on the left is determined by the breadth of the public option. I don't understand how that has become the measure of whether what we achieve is health-care reform."

"It's a mystifying thing," he added. "We're forgetting why we are in this."

Another top aide expressed chagrin that a single element in the president's sprawling health-care initiative has become a litmus test for whether the administration is serious about the issue.

"It took on a life of its own," he said.

In search of new momentum, Obama plans to discuss the matter Thursday with thousands of his most loyal supporters in a nationwide "strategy call" hosted by Organizing for America, a grass-roots arm of the Democratic National Committee.

He is likely to repeat what he and his top surrogates have said for months: that he will not "draw a line in the sand" about the inclusion of a public plan and that no one provision is a "deal breaker" as long as the final legislation embraces his broad principles for reform.

"That's what we said in June; that's what we've said in July; that's what we've said," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters Tuesday.

Anger about an optional government-sponsored insurance program has been simmering for months, but the flare-up has created legislative and communications challenges for the White House at a critical point in Obama's push for reform.

Polls suggest that support is dwindling for widespread changes to the health-care system, and Democratic lawmakers have begun second-guessing the bipartisan strategy advocated by Obama and being pursued in the Senate Finance Committee.

Since lawmakers left Capitol Hill for their August recess, the national conversation about health care has bounced from talk of "death panels" to insuring illegal immigrants to an outright government takeover of the system, GOP pollster Bill McInturff said.

"Those are bad questions to spend weeks litigating in the public," he said. "They have spent weeks talking about negative premises about the plan."

The president has maneuvered gingerly around the issue of a public plan, largely maintaining that he prefers to include the public option in a new insurance marketplace. He often argues that competition from a government plan -- without high executive salaries and the need to post profits -- could keep big insurance companies "honest."

But Obama and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel have also signaled a willingness to consider other avenues. Addressing a joint session of Congress in February, the president made no mention of a public insurance plan.

At a White House summit in March, he said: "If there is a way of getting this done where we're driving down costs and people are getting health insurance at an affordable rate and have choice of doctor, have flexibility in terms of their plans, and we could do that entirely through the market, I'd be happy to do it that way."

When the Obama campaign first crafted its health-care proposal, the creation of a government-sponsored insurance option "was not the most important thing," said David Cutler, a Harvard University economics professor and campaign adviser on health-care issues.

Obama, like Cutler, embraced the concept because it would afford consumers more options, Cutler said.

But while the idea has given conservatives an opening to attack Obama for allegedly supporting government-run health care, "to the left it's become this unholy grail" without which any reforms would be inadequate, Cutler said.

Richard Kirsch of Health Care for America Now said the idea was destined to become a flash point for the Obama administration as it began the health-care debate.

"They couldn't have avoided it," said Kirsch, an early proponent of the public option idea. "It was impossible. It was always going to be something that progressives really cared for."

Kirsch said early criticism of the concept by conservatives and insurance industry groups helped solidify liberal support for it.

"The right went on the attack," he said. "As a result, the issue got tremendously elevated. Because the right attacked it aggressively, it became a centerpiece of the battle."

Republicans signaled Tuesday that dropping the public option would not garner additional GOP backing. Jon Kyl (Ariz.), the second-ranking Senate Republican leader, criticized an alternative idea of creating a private insurance cooperative, calling it a "Trojan horse" that was effectively the same as the public option.

"It doesn't matter what you call it, they want it to accomplish something Republicans are opposed to," he said.

Kyl's comments came as other conservative Republicans joined in to bash the co-ops idea. Rep. Tom Price (Ga.) said, "A co-op that is simply another name for a public option, or government-run plan, will be rejected by the American people."

One Democratic strategist involved in coordinating the pro-reform message among many like-minded groups said the Republican response was predictable.

"We were always concerned about leading with our glass jaw," he said. "We felt we probably shouldn't make health-care reform be about this because it falls so easily into the socialized medicine, big-government theme."

Groups pushing for a public plan urged the White House on Tuesday to stick to its guns.

"They made a decision in June to be more public in their support for the public option," Kirsch said. "I think that was the right decision. They should stick with that, because it keeps their base with them."

One Democratic Obama ally lamented that the push for a public plan has become synonymous with victory on health-care reform.

"In the last 90 days, it has taken on an aura much more pronounced than it did the first four months of the year," said the activist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss White House strategy. He said Obama's advisers have stoked the controversy this week by creating the perception they were abandoning the public plan.

"If they made a mistake, it does go back to what I consider some inartfully framed phrases from the president and some other administration officials," the activist said. "To get where they had to go, they didn't have to depart too much from the language of June and July."

Jim Kessler, a vice president at the nonpartisan Third Way think tank, said that to the public, the health-care debate appears to be a "muddle." But the fierce sparring over the opposition may signal progress on the legislative front. He said: "We always knew this was going to be decided near the end."

news20090819usat

[Today's Paper] from [USA TODAY]

[News > Nation]
Climate plan calls for forest expansion
By Traci Watson, USA TODAY

[Top News]
WASHINGTON — New forests would spread across the American landscape, replacing both pasture and farm fields, under a congressional plan to confront climate change, an Environmental Protection Agency analysis shows.
About 18 million acres of new trees — roughly the size of West Virginia — would be planted by 2020, according to an EPA analysis of a climate bill passed by the House of Representatives in June.

That's because the House bill gives financial incentives to farmers and ranchers to plant trees, which suck in large amounts of the key global-warming gas: carbon dioxide.

The forestation effort would be even larger than one carried out by the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Great Depression, says the U.S. Forest Service's Ralph Alig. The CCC, which lasted from 1933 to 1942, planted 3 billion trees, says the Civilian Conservation Corps Legacy, an alumni group for workers and family members.

The environmental benefits are clear. More trees would not only lower carbon dioxide levels, but they would improve water quality, because they need lower levels of pesticides and fertilizers, says agricultural economist Bruce McCarl of Texas A&M University, who contributed to the EPA analysis.

The plan would, however, be hard on ranchers and farmers and potentially food prices, says American Farm Bureau chief economist Bob Young.

In the Senate, which is likely to consider a similar bill this fall, there are some who worry the loss of farmland would lead to increases in food prices worse than those seen in mid-2007, when costs spiked 7% to 8% above 2006 levels.

If those food prices seemed high, "wait till you start moving agricultural acres into climate-change areas," warns Sen. Mike Johanns, R-Neb., Agriculture secretary for President George W. Bush.

McCarl says food costs would stay roughly the same.

The latest EPA analysis does not say where the farmland would be lost. However, an EPA study done in 2005 that analyzed climate-change policies similar to the House bill found that trees would overgrow farms primarily in three areas:

• Great Lake states: Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin.

• The Southeast: Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida.

• The Corn Belt: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri and Ohio.

Forests once grew there, says study author Brian Murray of Duke University, so trees would sprout quickly in those areas if farmers got financial incentives. The House climate bill would allow landowners who reduce carbon dioxide to sell carbon permits to polluters, such as power plants.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack last week hailed the possibility that climate-change action could help forests. "We have our own deforestation problem right here in the U.S. of A," he said. "Just keeping forest as forest is a significant challenge."

Roughly 1 million acres of forests every year were flattened to make way for homes and other development in the 1990s, Alig says. Without a climate bill, a net total 26 million acres of forest will be lost to development by 2050, he says.

news20090819slt

[Today's Paper: A summary of what's in the major U.S. newspapers] from [Slate Magazine]

Majority Rule
By Ben Whitford
Posted Wednesday, Aug. 19, 2009, at 5:36 AM ET

The New York Times (NYT) leads with news that in the face of stiffening Republican opposition to healthcare reform, Democrats look increasingly likely to quit wooing minority lawmakers and focus instead on building support among their own ranks. In theory, that should allow Democratic leaders to cut through the noise and push through more speedy and substantive reforms; still, going it alone is no guarantee of success. The Washington Post (WP) leads with a report on Democratic in-fighting over the White House's apparent shift away from the public option, a move that riled progressives and threatened to derail the broader debate. "I don't understand why the left of the left has decided that this is their Waterloo," sighed one senior White House adviser. "It's a mystifying thing."

The Wall Street Journal tops its online newsbox, and gives space on its front page, to reports that US consumer spending remains weak and could undermine the country's tentative economic recovery; retailers say they don't expect their sales figures to improve until next year. The Los Angeles Times (LAT) has better news: house sales are on the rise, at least in California, with demand for entry-level homes in some cases sparking bidding wars. USA Today (USAT) leads on predictions that farmers would plant 18 million acres of new trees by 2020, covering an area the size of West Virginia, if reforestation incentives included in pending climate legislation are passed into law.

Democratic leaders yesterday accused Republicans of reflexively opposing healthcare reforms in an attempt to score political points against the Obama administration, reports the NYT. "The Republican leadership," said White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, "has made a strategic decision that defeating President Obama's health care proposal is more important for their political goals than solving the health insurance problems that Americans face every day." Party leaders now intend to pour their energy into mustering Democratic votes for the proposals; the WSJ notes that much will depend on Senate majority leader Harry Reid, who some Democrats worry may not be forceful enough to push through the reforms.

The broader issue, though, is whether going it alone will help Democrats sell healthcare reform to an increasingly skeptical public. The Post notes that following the public-option brouhaha, Democrats are increasingly concerned that Obama's bipartisan approach effectively ceded control of the national conversation to the reforms' opponents. Now, the WSJ says, Obama will likely try a new tack, addressing broad emotional themes rather than allowing himself to get bogged down in detail. Still, the public-option debate continues to rumble: the LAT and the Post both run op-eds arguing that the public-option spat is a sideshow distracting from more important matters, while in an editorial the NYT argues that if Democrats do decide to snub Republicans, they should go all-in and push for a robust public plan.

Meanwhile, the LAT off-leads with a look ahead to another potential healthcare-reform pitfall: the fate of Medicare Advantage, a program that pays insurance companies to enroll senior citizens. The White House says the program is wasteful and expensive, and hopes to trim its subsidy to bring per-patient costs in line with regular Medicare, saving $177 billion over ten years; still, officials worry the move would spark accusations that the President wants to slash Medicare benefits.

Afghans will vote tomorrow to decide their next president, and in a splashy above-the-fold report the Post says that current leader Hamid Karzai is the clear favorite; voters shaken by decades of violence say they're minded to overlook the incumbent's lackluster performance for the sake of stability. "We don't have any alternative," says one. "We're afraid of what the other candidates might do." The WSJ fronts a report noting that the election – the second since the fall of the Taliban – doesn't guarantee stability; a recent wave of violence could keep people from the polls, handing a boost to the country's insurgents.

In a bid maintain order, the NYT reports, Karzai's government will censor news organizations on election day, barring them from reporting on violence that might deter voters. The WSJ's editorial writers preemptively trumpets the election's success and calls for Afghanistan's voters to stick their "ink-stained thumb in the eye" of the Taliban. In a more measured piece, Slate's Anne Applebaum counters that recent violence underscores the need not for "some kind of Jeffersonian idyll in the rugged heart of Central Asia," but simply for a government recognized as legitimate by the majority of Afghans.

Government-backed researchers say that a new vaccine designed to protect against HPV and cervical cancer has a safety record in line with other vaccines, reports the NYT; still, it's unclear whether any level of risk is acceptable, since cervical cancer can be prevented by screening. More troublingly, notes USAT, the researchers also reveal that three medical associations received hundreds of thousands of dollars from Merck, the vaccine's developer, in order to promote its use – and subsequently promoted the vaccine to affluent women rather than targeting poor women who were at greater risk of developing cervical cancer. "This clearly shows how Merck was able to influence opinion leaders in the medical field to promote the vaccine without presenting any of the downsides," a doctor who helped test the vaccine told the Post.

President Obama met with Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak at the White House yesterday, and afterwards said that he remained upbeat about the prospects for progress in the Middle East. The Post and the NYT stress the meeting's cordiality; the WSJ emphasizes Mubarak's demands that Obama press Israel to accept a freeze on West Bank settlements. As the Post notes, that may not be easy: polls from Israel indicate that Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu is making political gains by defying US pressure to halt the settlements' spread, despite Israeli voters' longstanding tradition of punishing politicians who distance themselves from Washington.

The FBI's use of "threat squads" - dedicated teams of counterterrorism agents assigned to investigate tips and rumors - come under scrutiny in the NYT; the squads are a drain on the bureau's resources, and their investigations seldom result in prosecutions. "A lot of the time we are chasing shadows," admits one agent.

And finally, all the papers note the passing of Robert Novak, the 78-year-old conservative pundit and self-branded Prince of Darkness, who died early yesterday morning from brain cancer. The Post, which ran Novak's column for 45 years, reports his death below the fold and gushingly editorializes about his merits as an old-school reporter turned political insider; unsurprisingly, the WSJ's opinion-page editors are equally effusive in their praise. Of course, Novak's immediate legacy is less his columns (which Slate's Jack Schafer reminds us won't be anthologized anytime soon) than the lingering fallout from his 2003 outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame – a move that earned Novak enduring opprobrium from liberals. Still, perhaps the grizzled old ideologue wouldn't have minded leaving a slightly sour aftertaste. "Novak loved his vampire-like public persona," recalls one Republican strategist. "His one last dream was to play an assassin in a movie."

news20090819gc1

[Environment] from [guardian.co.uk]

[News > Politics > Police]
Met police turns on charm ahead of climate protest
• Climate Camp will be first big test of policing since G20
• Metropolitan police to disseminate information via Twitter
Paul Lewis
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 18 August 2009 22.13 BST Article history

Scotland Yard is overhauling its tactics for policing protests by reaching out to activists in advance of its first big test since the controversy surrounding the handling of the G20 demonstrations.

Senior officers have told representatives from Climate Camp, who are planning to construct a huge campsite next week at an undisclosed location in London, that they will be met with a "community-style" policing operation that will limit the use of surveillance units and stop-and-searches wherever possible.

In a further effort to disseminate real-time information, the Metropolitan police has activated an account on Twitter, named CO11MetPolice after its public order unit codename, which will be used to send operational information to protesters taking part in the camp.

Separately, a delegation from this year's Climate Camp will be taken to the Met's public order training centre on Thursday in Gravesend, Kent, where they have been asked to brief officers being drafted in from across the country to help police the event.

Activists have also been assured that there will be no "ring of steel" around their camp and that sleep deprivation tactics, used when officers blasted loud music at campers at last year's Climate Camp at Kingsnorth power station in Kent, will not be repeated.

The moves come after a succession of critical reports about the way police used controversial kettling tactics to confine protesters for hours. Outrage over the policing operation at the G20 – at which a newspaper vendor, Ian Tomlinson, died after being struck by an officer – prompted two parliamentary inquiries and a national review of public order tactics by the police inspectorate, all of which recommended police should try harder to facilitate peaceful protest.

Climate Camp organisers planning the swoop on an undisclosed location in the capital next Wednesday say they are aiming to create a summer festival atmosphere, with wind turbines, vegetarian canteens, organic toilets and a TV studio powered by solar panels. They are divided over whether the Met's approaches constitute a genuine change in policy or a charm offensive designed to repair its battered reputation.

The Met has hosted four meetings in an attempt to prepare for next week's protest. "The level of engagement from police has been there," said Francis Wright, a Climate Camp legal adviser who will brief police officers on Thursday. "We're pleased they have been forthcoming and have been making some of the right noises, but we have to see how they deliver on the day."

She said one positive factor was the change in personnel. Commander Bob Broadhurst, who led the Met's G20 operation, will not be involved in policing the camp and will instead oversee the Notting Hill carnival, which takes place at the same time.

His replacement as "gold" commander, Chief Superintendant Ian Thomas, told camp organisers he had handpicked his team, including his "silver" commander, Superintendent Julia Pendry, who led the cautious policing operation at the Tamil protests in Parliament Square.

Pendry, who controls tactics for the camp, said she in turn chose her deputy, Chief Inspector Jane Connors, because she was "reasonable, sensible and able to communicate", sources at the meeting said.

The fact that both are female has been perceived by some protesters as an attempt by the force to portray a less macho image.

The Met has not ruled out the use of kettling, and it also remains concerned that, owing to the nature of the Climate Camp network, there is no identifiable hierarchy to negotiate with and says it is seriously hampered by not knowing the site of the gathering until the last minute.

Protesters will gather at 10 locations around the capital at noon and be told the location by text message alerts.

However, unlike previous camps at Kingsnorth, Heathrow airport and Drax power station, activists attending next week's camp are not planning a single co-ordinated mass action.

Instead the campsite will be used to train volunteers for direct action in October, the target of which is being decided in an online poll.

The camp is also likely to function as a base for autonomous green groups, such as Plane Stupid and Climate Rush, to launch protests against carbon-polluting targets across the city to which police will also be called.

In a statement, the Met confirmed that it had hosted a meetings with Climate Camp representatives "to build a better dialogue between us" and had incorporated recommendations made in response to the G20. "We hope that through this dialogue we will be able to deliver a proportionate policing response to the camp. Some specific work has been undertaken to outline our policing strategy and tactics for the intended camp so their representatives can brief participants."

Whether the Met's embrace of Twitter will prove a useful tool to police a demonstration has to be seen.

Today just seven people had signed up to be followers of the Met's tweets on the social networking site, which have consisted of one message: "This is the official Metropolitan Police Twitter channel for #CO11."

Kevin Smith, who is helping plan the camp, said: "Given the enormous loss of public confidence that the police suffered as a result of the draconian tactics they used at Kingsnorth last year and during the G20, it's no surprise that they would want to be seen mounting a charm offensive at the Climate Camp.

"But we need to see if the authorities are going to take a more reasonable approach to the policing of protest in years to come when there might not be the massive public spotlight that there will be at the Climate Camp."


[Environment > Electric, Hybrid and Low-Emission Cars]
Electric car industry boost as leading developer plans production of tens of thousands of vehicles a year
Carmaker developing three models with Renault for sale in Denmark and Israel, with plans to expand scheme further
Gwladys Fouché in Copenhagen
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 18 August 2009 13.50 BST Article history

The electric car industry received a boost yesterday after a leading developer of low-emission vehicles said it would produce of tens of thousands vehicles a year from 2011. Better Place, which will run the scheme with Renault, plans to market them initially in Denmark and Israel.

The French carmaker is developing three models: a saloon, a compact city car and a van. In Denmark, a car will cost up to 200,000 kroner (£23,080).

"We expect the production of electric vehicles to be in the tens of thousands per year for the Danish market from 2011," said Jens Moberg, chief executive of Better Place Denmark, the Danish subsidiary of the transport company developing the lithium batteries fitted in the vehicles.

Electric car drivers will need to sign up for a monthly subscription with Better Place to get access to the batteries. "It will be like signing up for a mobile phone contract," said Moberg.

He declined to say how much a subscription would cost but said the battery would cost €8,000 (£6,900) to manufacture in 2011-12. "I expect the cost to come down afterwards as production expands," he said.

Drivers can recharge the batteries at home, which would take several hours, or switch batteries at a "swap station", taking three to five minutes – less time than it takes to fill a petrol tank.

In Denmark, close to 100 battery swap stations will be available around the country, with plans to expand further.

Drivers will also be able to top up their batteries at charge spots installed at car parks and on the streets. Copenhagen is working to install up to 60 by the time of the UN climate change summit in December, when world leaders will attempt to broker a worldwide deal to reduce carbon emissions.

A number of electric Renault cars will also be available to drive during the conference. Those trying out the cars will not have to worry about parking, as it is already free to park an electric car anywhere in Copenhagen.

Moberg said Better Place was in discussion with a number of European countries, including France, about expanding the scheme further from Israel and Denmark.

• This article was amended on Tuesday 18 August 2009. We originally said incorrectly that Better Place expects to produce 160,000 cars and that the vehicles would use 250 watt batteries. This has been corrected.

news20090819gc2

[Environment] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Environment > Renewable Energy]
Australian politicians commit to 20% renewabale target by 2020
Law would double production of electricity from sun and wind
Associated Press, Canberra
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 19 August 2009 11.06 BST Article history

Australia's main political parties struck an agreement today on a new law requiring that 20% of the country's electricity comes from renewable sources such as the sun and wind by 2020, more than twice the current level.

The law would quadruple the renewable energy target set by the previous government in 2001 and provide enough clean electricity to power the households of all 21 million Australians.

The target matches one set in 2007 by the European Union, which leads the world in green power technology. Many US states also have set renewable energy targets although there is no national goal.

But critics argue the Australian target will make electricity more expensive in coal-rich Australia without curbing the amount of climate-warming carbon gases that the nation emits, as overall electricity consumption rises.

Currently, 8% of Australia's electricity comes from renewable sources, including hydroelectric generators built late last century, according to the private Clean Energy Council.

The main opposition Liberal partytoday promised its support for an amended version of the government-proposed legislation in the Senate, where the ruling Labor party needs the votes of at least seven opposition senators to pass laws.

The Liberals' deputy leader in the Senate, Eric Abetz, said his party had achieved "about 80% of what we wanted" in changes to the government's plan.

The amendments increase government assistance to industries that are heavy users of electricity and create safeguards for existing investment in the coal mining industry.

Junior climate change minister Greg Combet said the Liberals' decision to support the bill in a vote either Wednesday or Thursday is "a welcome development which is respected by the government."

But climate change Minister Penny Wong told the Senate that even with one-fifth of Australia's electricity coming from renewable sources by 2020, the nation's carbon gas emissions are projected to be 20% higher than 2000 levels.

"The only way we're going to be able to turn around the growth in our carbon pollution … is to put a firm legislated limit on the amount of carbon that we produce and make those who create the pollution pay for it," Wong said.

Last week the Senate rejected a government-proposed bill that would have taxed industries' carbon emissions starting in 2011 and slashed the country's emissions by up to 25% below 2000 levels by 2020.


[News > UK News]
Seaside town to fine bird-feeders as seagulls 'grow in confidence'
Aldeburgh in Suffolk warns public that feeding gulls could end in £2,500 fine after scenes 'similar to The Birds'
Adam Gabbatt
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 18 August 2009 12.24 BST Article history

In Mary Poppins, Julie Andrews sings: "Feed the birds, tuppence a bag", but she'd have to pay considerably more to feed her feathered friends in one coastal town in East Anglia.

Aldeburgh, in Suffolk, is a popular holiday destination, where visitors can enjoy attractions such as a yachting marina, the ancient Moot Hall, and fish and chips beside the seaside. But chip consumers should think twice before throwing leftovers to the local wildlife.

Signs have been put up in the town telling people not to feed seagulls or risk a £2,500 fine. The notices warn that "feeding gulls encourages them to pester for food".

The signs come after scenes which were reported by the Daily Telegraph as "reminiscent of Alfred Hitchock's classic horror film, The Birds"– where birds of all species combine to mercilessly attack humans.

Such attacks are yet to be repeated in Aldeburgh, but Jimmy Robinson, chair of the council's town appearance committee, warned the East Anglian Daily Times that seagulls were growing in confidence. "They are certainly getting more sure of themselves, they sweep down and take food out of people's hands," he said.

The same feeding warning notices also carry a grave message for anyone contemplating taking a dog on the beach during the summer months: such an offence carries a maximum penalty of £500.

A spokeswoman for Suffolk coastal district council said the seagulls had been proving a nuisance. "Signs have been put up in Aldeburgh as an initiative prompted by calls from Aldeburgh town council who were concerned about the problems with gulls along the coast." She added that fines would only be imposed if people "would not co-operate".

The town clerk, Lindsay Lee, declined an interview, saying she was "quite fed up with it all".


[News > World News > Russia]
Russian power plant disaster death toll could reach 70
Rescue workers hold out little hope for 64 workers missing after accident at Sayano-Shushenskaya hydroelectric plant in Siberia
Tom Parfitt in Moscow and agencies
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 18 August 2009 14.20 BST Article history

The death toll from an accident at Russia's largest hydroelectric plant was expected to jump to more than 70 today, as fears mounted over the fate of 64 people missing after water obliterated an engine room at the Siberian site.

Officials said there was scant hope of finding the missing workers, who were probably crushed by debris or drowned when an explosion caused water pipes to burst at the massive plant in southern Siberia. Footage from the site showed a succession of flashes followed by a surge of water bursting from the site.

"With every hour there is less and less chance left that we will find somebody alive," Yevgeny Druzyaka, a spokesman for the plant's owner, RusHydro, told the Associated Press.

Twelve people have already been confirmed dead, and 14 were injured. Yelena Vishnyakova, another RusHydro spokeswoman said the cause of the disaster was probably a defective lid on one of the turbines.

The accident, which shut down the power plant yesterday and left several towns without electricity, prompted fears that the dam across the Yenisei river might not hold, but officials insisted the structure was safe.

The plant, which provides about 10% of Siberia's energy needs, was expected to take several years and billions of roubles to fix.

The accident caused some of Russia's biggest steel and aluminium producers to switch to emergency power. The world's largest aluminium producer, Rusal, said today its production could be decimated by the sudden drop in power generation.

The Sayano-Shushenskaya plant stands astride the Yenisei river, which flows from Mongolia to the Arctic. It was opened in 1978 and is one of the biggest hydroelectric plants in the world.

The plant was in need of modernisation, but Russia's deepening economic woes have seriously depleted plans to overhaul ageing infrastructure in the country.

The firm that built the destroyed turbine told Reuters that it was too old to work safely. "The machine is 30 years old. All guarantees of its functioning had passed," said Maria Aliyeva, a spokeswoman for engineering firm Power Machines.

news20090819gc3

[Environment] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Environment > Wilelife]
Scientists in South Africa discover 18 new spider, snail and worm species
David Smith in Johannesburg
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 18 August 2009 19.58 BST Article history

Scientists surveying a nature reserve in South Africa have discovered 18 previously unrecorded species of invertebrates, including spiders, snails, millipedes, earthworms and centipedes.

The trove of creatures was uncovered in eight days by researchers and volunteers working for the environmental charity Earthwatch at the Mkhambathi nature reserve on the spectacular Wild Coast in the Eastern Cape.

However, scientists warned that planned developments in the area could threaten the ecosystem and deny them the chance to identify further species.

Jan Venter, an ecologist working for Eastern Cape Parks, which manages the reserve, said that the 29 square mile area had previously attracted only ad hoc surveys and butterfly collectors.

"To get so many species in one survey shows the importance of the reserve. It's a very special area, conservation-wise. If we do another survey, we'll find just as many." The team suspects that another 18 species might be discovered.

The number of identified species on the planet – 2m so far – could represent only 2% of all those that exist. South Africa, one of the most biodiverse countries in the world, and its neighbours are prime locations for adding to the species catalogue.

Michelle Hamer, a scientist at the South African National Biodiversity Institute, said: "These discoveries are important because they highlight just how little we know about our biodiversity, even in a relatively well-studied country like South Africa … many of the species we collected seem to be unique to a small area in or around Mkhambathi."

The area has been earmarked for a toll road and titanium mining by an Australian company, though the development is said to be on hold due to the recession.

Hamer warned: "There is also a lot of pressure to develop tourism infrastructure inside the reserve. This means that many of these species could have disappeared before even being discovered. If we understand the importance of the area in terms of its invertebrate fauna, then we can try to protect it.

"Will it make a difference … if these species go extinct? We don't know for sure, but we do know that every species that is removed … results in some weakening of the ecosystem."

A report highlighting the data on the invertebrates at Mkhambathi was this year presented to Eastern Cape Parks scientists for use in conservation management. The freshly discovered species are now being named and described in South African research institutes.


[News > World News > Libya]
UK investment in energy heats up after thaw in relationship with Libya
Ian Griffiths
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 18 August 2009 22.22 BST Article history

British business has been making steady inroads into Libya ever since Tony Blair began a diplomatic thaw five years ago, but investment in the energy industry is now poised to escalate sharply if promising oil and gas projects begin to pay off.

BP has started a major oil exploration venture and is carrying out seismic tests to assess whether it can begin to move to more aggressive development of its fields. The company has already put out to tender the contracts for well construction and could begin drilling within the next year.

"Our initial investment in the joint venture is $900m (£545m) but if we find oil investment could rise to $20bn over the next two decades," a spokesman said.

The friendly business relations are a far cry from when BP and Royal Dutch Shell were thrown out of the country when Libya nationalised overseas oil assets in 1974.

But both companies signed new deals with Libyan partners in 2007 and 2004 to coincide with visits to the country by former prime minister Blair. BG Group, the gas producer, has also been active in Libya since 2005.

Libya is estimated to be the most oil rich country in Africa with around 44bn barrels of oil reserves. And crucially, for British companies, oil analysts believe that most of the country's energy assets are under-explored.

They believe that the country could ultimately become even more important as a gas supplier to Britain. Libya's Greenstream underwater natural gas pipeline came online in October 2004 and transports natural gas from Melitah, on the Libyan coast, to Sicily where the natural gas flows to the Italian mainland, and then onwards to the rest of Europe. The pipeline is run in partnership with Eni, the Italian energy company which has close ties with Libya. Libyan gas could help fill the UK's long term gas shortfall and simultaneously make Britain less reliant on Russian gas supplies.

Energy is also crucial to the Libyan economy. According to the International Monetary Fund the hydro carbon industry accounted for over 95% of Libyan export earnings. Last year it was responsible for an estimated 85-90% of tax revenues and over 70% of the country's gross domestic product.

The country is relying on the expertise and technology of overseas energy companies to help it meet those targets. According to BP the old drilling techniques used in Libya could result in 75% of the oil in a well being left in the ground.

"Using our technologies we can increase recovery rates threefold," the BP spokesman said. "Most of the oil does not sit in a pool at the bottom of a well where it can be sucked out but becomes embodied in the sand and has to be prised out."

As part of its joint venture agreement, BP is committed to spending $50m on training and education. The Libyans are keen that their own nationals can share in the expertise and develop their own skills. BP runs English language courses focussing on oil industry terminology.

news20090819sa1

[Environment] from [scientificamerican.com]

[Environment]
August 19, 2009
The Origin of Oxygen in Earth's Atmosphere
The breathable air we enjoy today originated from tiny organisms, although the details remain lost in geologic time
By David Biello

It's hard to keep oxygen molecules around, despite the fact that it's the third-most abundant element in the universe, forged in the superhot, superdense core of stars. That's because oxygen wants to react; it can form compounds with nearly every other element on the periodic table. So how did Earth end up with an atmosphere made up of roughly 21 percent of the stuff?

The answer is tiny organisms known as cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae. These microbes conduct photosynthesis: using sunshine, water and carbon dioxide to produce carbohydrates and, yes, oxygen. In fact, all the plants on Earth incorporate symbiotic cyanobacteria (known as chloroplasts) to do their photosynthesis for them down to this day.

For some untold eons prior to the evolution of these cyanobacteria, during the Archean eon, more primitive microbes lived the real old-fashioned way: anaerobically. These ancient organisms—and their "extremophile" descendants today—thrived in the absence of oxygen, relying on sulfate for their energy needs.

But roughly 2.45 billion years ago, the isotopic ratio of sulfur transformed, indicating that for the first time oxygen was becoming a significant component of Earth's atmosphere, according to a 2000 paper in Science. At roughly the same time (and for eons thereafter), oxidized iron began to appear in ancient soils and bands of iron were deposited on the seafloor, a product of reactions with oxygen in the seawater.

"What it looks like is that oxygen was first produced somewhere around 2.7 billion to 2.8 billon years ago. It took up residence in atmosphere around 2.45 billion years ago," says geochemist Dick Holland, a visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania. "It looks as if there's a significant time interval between the appearance of oxygen-producing organisms and the actual oxygenation of the atmosphere."

So a date and a culprit can be fixed for what scientists refer to as the Great Oxidation Event, but mysteries remain. What occurred 2.45 billion years ago that enabled cyanobacteria to take over? What were oxygen levels at that time? Why did it take another one billion years—dubbed the "boring billion" by scientists—for oxygen levels to rise high enough to enable the evolution of animals?

Most important, how did the amount of atmospheric oxygen reach its present level? "It's not that easy why it should balance at 21 percent rather than 10 or 40 percent," notes geoscientist James Kasting of Pennsylvania State University. "We don't understand the modern oxygen control system that well."

Climate, volcanism, plate tectonics all played a key role in regulating the oxygen level during various time periods. Yet no one has come up with a rock-solid test to determine the precise oxygen content of the atmosphere at any given time from the geologic record. But one thing is clear—the origins of oxygen in Earth's atmosphere derive from one thing: life.


[Environment]
August 18, 2009
Need to Sniff Out Water Pollution? Call in the Dogs
Dog proves better than lab tests at detecting illegal sewage
By Taryn Luntz

To the long list of jobs that dogs do for humans, add another: the detection of water pollution.

Meet Sable, a German shepherd mix with a nose for sewage.

Sable's trainer, Scott Reynolds, who works for an environmental consulting firm, Tetra Tech in Lansing, Mich., said the three-and-a-half-year-old mutt is the only canine known to reliably detect raw sewage or detergents flowing into sewers from illegal or bungled pipe connections.

The dog has sniffed out illegal connections in three Michigan counties. And field tests in 2007 and 2008 showed Sable was 87 percent accurate compared with traditional laboratory water tests, Reynolds said. When the dog errs, Reynolds said, it is probably due to the presence of animal, not human, waste in the sewers.

Word of Sable's exploits are spreading. Communities in Maine and New Hampshire struggling to protect their swimming beaches and shellfish beds from bacterial pollution are considering bringing the dog to New England.

Forrest Bell of consulting firm FB Environmental, which is coordinating the Maine and New Hampshire cleanups, said Sable can save money by reducing the number of dye tests -- where dye is dropped into toilets so investigators can see where it goes -- and follow-up lab work.

The price for trainer and dog to travel and work for a week would range between $5,000 and $10,000, but using other specialized tests -- say, genetic fingerprinting to help investigators distinguish between animal and human fecal bacteria -- would cost more than $100,000, Bell said. "We think that Sable is going to be a good, cost-effective and accurate way to try to do some of these detections," he said.

Sue Kubic, senior engineer with Michigan's Genesee County Drain Commission, which has employed Sable, said the dog provides quick results. "Instead of sending a sample to a lab and finding out two weeks or two months later and having to go back and take three or four or five more samples, you can narrow it down and eliminate some of the tests you have to take," she said.

Sniffing sewage, Sable tracks the scent to where it originates upstream, obviating the need for additional rounds of lab testing downstream. "We can take it from 200 houses to maybe we only need to do dyed-water testing for 10," Reynolds said.

Said Kubic: "Sending that crew out day after day, going and spending an hour or two at each house, doing dye testing to find out if the sanitary is hooked up to the storm system -- if you start adding up the people time and travel time, that's where the real money is."

And there is a lot of money being spent as cities whose storm sewers date to the early 20th century have struggled to clean up discharges into waterways from underground networks of pipes that have often never been mapped.

When Tetra Tech hatched the idea of training a canine to sniff out sewage, it turned to Reynolds, a former narcotics-dog trainer, to do the job.

Reynolds, 38, found Sable at a shelter and was impressed by the focus the dog showed in chasing tennis balls.

So Reynolds took Sable home and started him on a scent-tracking program in the spring of 2007, rewarding the dog for pursuing scents related to raw sewage and detergents. He then moved Sable to off-leash searching in difficult terrain and with false targets planted to help him differentiate between scents he would likely encounter in drainage areas.

By July 2007, Sable was working on field trials at a known illicit sewer connection; by August, he was a full-fledged member of the company's field crew.

Reynolds is now training two more sewage sniffers and has started his own company, Environmental Canine Services LLC. He offers detection services, as well as training for agencies that want their own scent-trained dogs.

The point, Reynolds said, is to make the service affordable for small communities and nonprofit organizations.

But does Sable, who lives with Reynolds and his family, think his job stinks?

Not at all.

"He loves it!" Reynolds exclaimed. "Every day, when I get ready for work, he runs and jumps on the counter, looking at his harness and hoping that he gets to work that day."

news20090819sa2

[Environment] from [scientificamerican.com]

[Environment]
August 18, 2009
Oil Spills, the Media and the Oil Industry
Do oil disasters happen less or does the media not prioritize them?

Dear EarthTalk: I haven’t heard much of late about big oil spills like the infamous Exxon Valdez. Has the industry cleaned up its act, or do the media just not report them?
-- Olivia G., via e-mail

In the wake of 1989’s massive Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska’s Prince William Sound, when 11 million gallons of oil befouled some 1,300 miles of formerly pristine and wildlife-rich coastline, much has been done to prevent future spills of such magnitude.

For starters, Congress quickly passed the 1990 Oil Pollution Act which overhauled shipping regulations, imposed new liability on the industry, required detailed response plans and added extra safeguards for shipping in Prince William Sound itself. Under the terms of the law, companies cannot ship oil in any U.S. waters unless they prove they have response and clean-up plans in place and have the manpower and equipment on hand to respond quickly and effectively in the case of another disaster.

Also, the law mandates that, by 2015, all tankers in U.S. waters must be equipped with double hulls. The Exxon Valdez had only one hull when it ran aground on Bligh Reef and poured its oil into Prince William Sound, the southern end of the oil pipeline that originates 800 miles to the north at Prudhoe Bay. By comparison, a 900-foot double-hulled tanker carrying nearly 40 million gallons of crude oil did not leak when it crashed into submerged debris near Galveston, Texas in March 2009.

According to the U.S. Coast Guard, average annual oil spill totals have dropped dramatically since new regulations took effect in 1990. Between 1973 and 1990, an average of 11.8 million gallons of oil spilled each year in American waters. Since then, the average has dropped to just 1.5 million gallons, with the biggest spill (not including those resulting from Hurricane Katrina in 2005) less than 600,000 gallons

Despite these improvements, critics say the industry still has more work to do. While protections have been beefed up in Prince William Sound, other major American ports still lack extra precautions such as escort tugboats and double engines and rudders on big ships to help steer them to safety when in trouble.

Another area that the 1990 law doesn’t cover is container ships that don’t transport oil as their cargo but which carry a large amount, anyway, for their own fuel for the considerable distances they travel. Such ships could also cause a major spill (anything more than 100,000 gallons, by Coast Guard standards). Yet another concern is the great number of smaller oil spills that occur every day at industrial locations (including but not limited to oil refining and storage facilities) and even in our own driveways. These will continue to add up to a heavy toll on our environment, even if another oil tanker never spills at sea again.

And while the total number and volume of oil spills is down dramatically from bygone days, the trend of late warrants concern. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA’s) Office of Response and Restoration reports that oil spills in U.S. waters have risen again over the past decade, with 134 incidents in 2008 alone. Green leaders worry that if Bush administration plans to expand offshore oil drilling are not overturned by President Obama, oil spills in U.S. waters could remain a sad fact of life.