7.4 earthquake strikes Bonin Islands in Japan
According to the United States Geological Survey (USGS) a magnitude 7.4 earthquake has struck the Bonin Islands in Japan. Japanese officials have issued a tsunami warning for areas around the islands, including the southern half of the country.
Featured Item: APR Calculation Tool
Download our Excel tool that will help you calculate and understand interest rates, APRs, and the correlation of operating costs and loan size.
via Microfinance Interest Rate Data: Promoting Transparent Pricing : MicroFinance Transparency.
The Rendezvous Problem
From D.E.A. Deployed Mumbai Plotter Despite Warning, by Ginger Thompson, Eric Schmitt and Souad Mekhennet of The New York Times (dated 7 November 2010):
American authorities sent David C. Headley, a small-time drug dealer and sometime informant, to work for them in Pakistan months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, despite a warning that he sympathized with radical Islamic groups, according to court records and interviews. Not long after Mr. Headley arrived there, he began training with terrorists, eventually playing a key role in the 2008 attacks that left 164 people dead in Mumbai.
The October 2001 warning was dismissed, the authorities said, as the ire of a jilted girlfriend and for lack of proof. Less than a month later, those concerns did not come up when a federal court in New York granted Mr. Headley an early release from probation so that he could be sent to work for the United States Drug Enforcement Administration in Pakistan. It is unclear what Mr. Headley was supposed to do in Pakistan for the Americans.
“All I knew was the D.E.A. wanted him in Pakistan as fast as possible because they said they were close to making some big cases,” said Luis Caso, Mr. Headley’s former probation officer.
On Sunday, while President Obama was visiting India, he briefed Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the status of his administration’s investigation of Mr. Headley, including the failure to act on repeated warnings that he might be a terrorist. A senior United States official said the inquiry has concluded that while the government received warnings, it did not have strong enough evidence at the time to act on them. “Had the United States government sufficiently established he was engaged in plotting a terrorist attack in India, the information would have most assuredly been transferred promptly to the Indian government,” the official said in a statement to The New York Times. The statement did not make clear whether any American agencies would be held accountable.
[pullquote] One Warning May Have Been Withheld from Court during Sentencing [/pullquote]
In recent weeks, United States government officials have begun to acknowledge that Mr. Headley’s path from American informant to transnational terrorist illustrates the breakdowns and miscommunications that have bedeviled them since the Sept. 11 attacks. Warnings about his radicalism were apparently not shared with the drug agency that made use of his ties in Pakistan.
The director of national intelligence, James R. Clapper Jr., began an investigation into Mr. Headley’s government connections after reports last month that two of the former drug dealer’s ex-wives had gone to American authorities between 2005 and 2008, before the Mumbai attacks, to say they feared he was plotting with terrorists. Combined with the earlier warning from the former girlfriend, three of the women in Mr. Headley’s life reported his ties to terrorists, only to have those warnings dismissed.
An examination of Mr. Headley’s story shows that his government ties ran far deeper and longer than previously known. One senior American official knowledgeable about the case said he believed that Mr. Headley was a D.E.A. informant until at least 2003, meaning that he was talking to American agencies even as he was learning to deal with explosives and small arms in terrorist training camps.
D.E.A. Deployed Mumbai Plotter Despite Warning via NYTimes.com
For background, see the BBC’s excellent (and award-winning) Special Report on the 2008 Mumbai Attacks.
Here’s the summary of Scott Simon’s interview with Admiral and Mrs. Mike Mullen. Admiral Mullen is the serving Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I found their candor and compassion – no easy answers, no platitudes, no avoidance of responsibility – striking:
In September, four soldiers at Ft. Hood, veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, took their own lives in the course of one week. More than a hundred Army troops have killed themselves this year. Host Scott Simon talks with Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, and his wife, Deborah, about the increased efforts to curb suicides by military servicemen and women.
Link to interview. We’ll post transcript when it’s available, expected later today.
Design a Zero Environmental Impact Building and win $10,000. Metropolis Magazine and the U. S. General Services Administration announce the Next Generation ® 2011 Design Ideas Competition: Help the GSA meet its goal of Zero Environmental Impact for its 9,600 properties. Winning Designer gets $10,000. Deadline is January 31, 2011. (From Douglas Seidler’s website.)
After four known infant deaths, the first in 2003, Rubbermaid – the parent company of Graco Children’s Products – has recalled two million strollers, manufactured until 2007, with many believed to still be in use. Graco Recalls Strollers on Strangulation Concerns, by Andrew Martin in the New York Times on October 21st:
Doug McGraw, Graco’s president, said the recall was prompted in part because many more parents were buying and selling secondhand strollers, probably because of the prolonged economic malaise.
Some consumer advocates questioned why it took so long for federal authorities and Graco to issue the recall, which applies to Graco models Quattro Tour and MetroLite strollers and travel systems (car seat and stroller combinations). The strollers were deemed dangerous, especially to children under 1 year of age, because when left unharnessed, they can crawl through the opening between the seat and stroller tray and become trapped.
“We assume that if something is sold and hasn’t been recalled, the product must be safe,” said Nancy A. Cowles, executive director of Kids in Danger, a nonprofit group that advocates for safer children’s products.
Which is to say the distributed network matters as much as the renewable sources. From Generate Electricity Everywhere:
Problem Establishing local-scale power near end users ranks high on everyone’s spec list for Grid 2.0. That’s one reason Obama’s stimulus plan contains a grant that will reimburse property owners for 30 percent of the cost of a solar energy system. But utilities—former monopolies, after all—are reluctant to give up control over their antique, accident-prone grid. And people with enough rooftop real estate to squeeze out serious juice balk at the hassle.Solution Create a new class of energy service providers that act as middlemen between power companies and large commercial facilities with big rooftops. For instance, SunEdison builds and maintains solar plants on the rooftops of operations like Wal-Mart, Whole Foods, and Kohl’s in eight states. It’s a win-win arrangement: Electric companies get a trusted partner in power generation, and businesses get green energy at a fixed, competitive rate—without additional investment. The secret sauce isn’t photovoltaic panels; it’s the networking gear, sensors, and software that let a SunEdison control room in California manage hundreds of solar sites cost-effectively. And that means it’s suited for scaling up. Says Mark Culpepper, a veteran of Cisco Systems who is now CTO of SunEdison: “Generating power anywhere you can fit a panel totally changes the dynamic of the energy market.”
This is encouraging. Although not without limitations, and still in early days, the U.S. government is using a wiki to share and analyze intelligence:
Intellipedia is an online system for collaborative data sharing used by the United States Intelligence Community (IC). It was established as a pilot project in late 2005 and formally announced in April 2006 and consists of three wikis running on JWICS, IPRNet
, and Intelink-U . The levels of classification allowed for information on the three wikis are Top Secret, Secret, and Sensitive But Unclassified FOUO information, respectively. They are used by individuals with appropriate clearances from the 16 agencies of the IC and other national-security related organizations, including Combatant Commands and other federal departments. The wikis are not open to the public. Continue reading
This poster, by Robert Lachenman for the Work Projects Administration Federal Art Project, circa 1937 is impressive, we think, on its own terms – design and effectiveness. But the date – 1937 – was a surprise, and now it’s clear we have much to learn about alcohol-driving and other alcohol-plus risk activity/drug plus risk activity public health campaigns.
"Don't Mix Em,'" by Robert Lachenman for the Work Projects Administration Federal Art Project (1937)
Thanks to Wikimedia Contributor Trialsanderrors and, of course, Wikimedia Commons.
Link to image page on Wikimedia Commons.
Cigarette Smoke
Mayor Bloomberg is concerned about air pollution in New York City. Bloomberg has data that show elevated levels of nicotinimides in non-smoking New Yorkers. Believing this results from second hand smoking, he wants to prompt New Yorkers to quit smoking. It’s logical – cigarette smoke contains nicotine. But what if the body produces nicotinimides in response to particulates and ozone?
Industrial Smog
In her piece Use Bio-Heat as a substitute for #2 Heating Oil, the architect Ellen Honigstock of The Toeprint Project points out that 9,000 of the 960,000 buildings in New York City – less than 1% – use #4 and #6 oil – the dirtiest heating oil. Those 9,000 buildings are responsible for over 86% of the soot and ozone pollution in the air.
Honigstock explains:
No. 2 and No. 6 Heating Oil
These particulates contribute to the failure of New York City’s air to meet the National Ambient Air Quality Standards and the failing grade received from the American Lung Association’s State of the Air Report not to mention all the unnecessary cases of childhood asthma in New York City’s kids.
Generally speaking, when crude oil comes off the boat into the refinery, the sludgier oil (called residual oil) sinks to the bottom while more refined products, which are less viscous such as propane, gasoline, kerosene etc… (called distillates) rise to the top.
#6 oil is barely refined sludge. It’s the least expensive of the heating oils and has the highest fuel content which starts to explain why people continue to use it.
It is solid at room temperature. This means that the entire oil tank must be kept to at least 90 degrees at all times in order for the oil to burn properly. #2 oil, while more expensive per gallon, burns much cleaner, doesn’t require any additional energy to make the combustion process work properly and typically requires less maintenance than boilers burning #6.
Environmental Defense Fund, with support form the Urban Green Council issued a very informative report called “The Bottom of the Barrel: How the Dirtiest Heating Oil pollutes our Air and harms our Heath” including a great interactive map showing all the buildings currently using #6 and #4 oil.
There’s more at The Toeprint Project – including how New York City residents can find bio-fuel to heat their buildings.
People in American Samoa were given only eight minutes warning that a tsunami, which killed 32 people in the unincorporated territory, resulting from the 2009 Samoa earthquake, was approaching. A report published by the United States Congress admits that the warning was issued sixteen minutes after the 8.0 magnitude earthquake struck Samoa. The tsunami killed nearly 200 people in American Samoa, Samoa and Tonga.
The report, written by the National Research Council, describes the length of time between the earthquake and the initial tsunami warning being issued as “relatively long”, and states that the standard time for such a warning to be issued to be around two minutes. The study also revealed that one third of tsunami sensors are not working at any given time.
John Orcutt, a seismologist and head of the committee that wrote the report, described the delay as a “major concern”, but he also said that “a large number of people” in American Samoa “didn’t understand and there were lives that were lost because people simply didn’t take the action to get away from the shore when they felt this huge earthquake. People have to understand the signs of a tsunami and head to higher ground.”
The Federal Emergency Management Agency, whose purpose is to coordinate the response to a disaster that has occurred in the United States and that overwhelms the resources of local and state authorities, and the Government of American Samoa did not respond to e-mails regarding the news.
via American Samoa received eight minutes warning before 2009 tsunami – Wikinews, the free news source.
Via WikiNews:
Kenyan court jails seven pirates for 2009 attempted hijack of Maltese ship:
A court in Mombasa, Kenya has sentenced a group of seven Somali pirates to five years each in jail, according to a statement by the European Union. Anti-piracy mission EU Navfor said the septet were arrested by Spanish navy sailors after attacking Malta-registered cargo vessel Anny Petrakis.
Presiding over the conviction and sentencing, Timothy Ole Tanchut told the men he “…[had] concrete proof that you attacked a vessel in the high seas and I order you to serve five years in prison,” ruling that they will be deported to Somalia after serving their sentences. They have been in custody since May 7 last year when a Spanish crew captured them coming to the aid of the Anny Petrakis. The arrests followed warning shots fired by a naval helicopter.
This is the third pirate gang jailed in the last two years, bringing the total serving sentences in Kenya to around 15; around 100 suspects await trial in custody. Trials have been difficult to arrange owing to issues around finding locations; Kenya has international agreements with the EU, the United States and Denmark, as well as a separate treaty with EU-state the United Kingdom. These allow Kenya to try pirates like these ones handed over by Spain in exchange for support of the nation’s judicial system. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the European Union, Australia and Canada have all chipped in with donations to fund the court.
WikiNews, Friday 24 Septem,ber 2010.
Found this excellent graphic, which tells a story in very few words – the expansion of United States copyright laws over time – on Wikimedia Commons. It was created by Tom W. Bell in connection with his article Escape From Copyright: Market Success vs. Statutory Failure in the Protection of Expressive Works, I think he makes a persuasive case 
– but whether or not you agree with his conclusions, this particular point is clear and concise because of Mr. Bell’s infographic.
