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Sunday, May 2, 2010

A car containing a bomb was discovered in Times Square, New York City, causing the evacuation of streets surrounding the area.

Reports say the vehicle, a Nissan Pathfinder, parked outside a theatre on 45th Street and Seventh Avenue, had smoke coming out of the back at around 6:30 p.m EDT (10:30 p.m. UTC). Unconfirmed reports say an unknown man ran away from the car. A roughly square area of the city, its boundaries formed by 43rd and 48th Street and 7th and 8th Avenue, was evacuated.

The New York Police Department bomb squad was called in and were able to retrieve the package using a robot. Officials removed gunpowder, consumer-grade fireworks, two five-gallon cans of gasoline, three propane tanks, electrical wiring, and two clocks with batteries that apparently were fashioned as one or two detonators. The bomb has been described as “amateurish”. No casualties or injuries were reported.

As of yet police have not named a suspect and are reviewing security footage. The car used by the suspect was stolen and had a non-matching license plate; the legitimate owner of the plates does not appear to have been involved in the incident.

President Barack Obama has congratulated the speediness with which the New York Police Department responded.

New York has been in a state of constant alert since the attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001. In September 2009, a plot to attack the New York Subway with suicide bombers was uncovered by police. In December 2009, Times Square was evacuated due to a illegally parked van, although it contained no explosives. On March 6, 2008, a small bomb was set off in front of the United States armed forces recruiting station in Times Square.

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Member states of the eurozone have offered to give Greece thirty billion euro in emergency loans for the debt-stricken country, should the latter want it.

The loans’ price will be determined using formulas by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and will be set at around five percent.

The Luxembourgish prime minister, Jean-Claude Juncker, speaking on behalf of eurozone finance ministers, commented that “[t]he total amount put up by the eurozone member states for the first year will reach 30bn euros.” He added that “[t]his is certainly no subsidy” to Greece.

The prime minister also noted that financing would be “completed and co-financed” by the IMF. European Union monetary affairs chief Olli Rehn remarked that the IMF would make a “substantial contribution” to the loan package as well, perhaps around ten billion euros.

The Greek economy has spent more than it has earned for several years now, and currently faces a budget deficit equal to 12.9% of its economic output, or a total debt of 300 billion euros. The country intends to try and reduce the deficit to 8.7% this year.

Saturday, January 26, 2008

A 16-year-old male from Novato, California has been arrested in Tennessee over allegations he intended to hijack a commercial passenger airliner in the United States.

The boy, who was unnamed due to his age, was a passenger on board Southwest Airlines Flight 284 from Los Angeles to Nashville on Tuesday, with his parents reporting him missing at 11:30 am the same day. Although he remained calm throughout the flight and made no hijacking attempt, authorities report he had handcuffs, duct tape and yarn inside the aircraft cabin with him. Although his arrest was only made public on Friday, it is reported that he was detained immediately on reaching Nashville International Airport.

George Bolds, a spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) said that the items were “suspicious” and that the boy had informed the FBI he had indeed intended to hijack the aircraft. An FBI agent told reporters that he felt the plot was ill-conceived, saying “His plan had a low probability of success.”

The FBI also conducted a search of his home on Thursday, finding in his room “a photograph of the inside of a small aircraft, something you’d find in a bookstore.”

Subsequent to his arrest he pled guilty on Friday to a “delinquent act,” according to local officials. A juvenile court judge ordered him to be returned to California for continued perusal of that charge as well as others set to be made. He is currently in Davidson County Juvenile Detention Center in Nashville.

Authorities believe that the teen was suicidal, but the FBI dismissed earlier reports alleging that he intended to crash the airliner into a Hannah Montana concert in Lafayette, Louisiana.

Thursday, March 5, 2009

US stock markets dropped to twelve-year lows on Thursday, amidst falling confidence in the financial sector and worries over whether the US automobile manufacturer General Motors will be able to keep operating.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped by 4.08%, or 280.52 points, at the closing bell, reaching a level of 6595.32, a new 12-year low. The Nasdaq Composite lost 54.15 points, or 4%, to 1299.59, while the Standard & Poor’s 500 plunged by 30.27 points, or 4.25%, closing at 682.60.

Every stock in the Dow Jones, other than Wal-Mart, either lost ground or remained even, and all stocks in the S&P 500 index lost ground.

General Motors’ shares lost 15.5% after the auto firm announced that its auditors had “substantial doubt” over whether it would be able to keep operating.

Shares of financial companies were lower by nine percent, with Bank of America losing 11.7% and Citigroup falling by 9.7%.

“What’s most worrisome is that we haven’t hit the crescendo yet,” said Bill Groeneveld, the head trader for vFinance Investments. “Asset-management divisions are getting calls to just liquidate everything, and we haven’t seen the big players come back in at all.”

“This is one of the worst bear markets in the last 100 years; it started out with the credit crisis and the subprime [loans], but it is like a forest fire that has raced across the clearing and ignited other parts: Autos, auto parts, the insurance companies have been hit very hard. The credit crisis is causing an unraveling of industry after industry because the banks don’t lend,” said David Dreman, the chief investment officer of Dreman Value Management.

European markets were also lower today, with the London’s FTSE index losing 3.2% and the DAX index of Germany falling by five percent.

Saturday, October 4, 2014

US biologists from the Universities of Pittsburgh and Vermont have found that social spiders of species Anelosimus studiosus exhibit apparent group selection, determining a trait affecting the colony’s survival. According to one of the researchers, this is the first experimental evidence of group selection in wild populations driving adaptation to local conditions. The study was published in journal Nature on Wednesday.

The researchers found that, depending on the availability of resources at the location of the colony and the size of the colony, the spider colonies have a different composition, promoting colony survival. The collective colony trait the scientists analyzed is the shifting ratio of “aggressive” and “docile” female spiders. The authors suggest two possible causes of colony extinction from inappropriate ratio in a large colony, depending on the availability of resources: egg cannibalism when there are few resources and a high proportion of “aggressive” female spiders, and social parasites when there are abundant resources and a high proportion of “docile” female spiders.

To check whether the self-regulation of spider colonies can be considered an adaptation to local conditions, the scientists placed artificially assembled colonies in different locations, with resource availability similar to or different from their home location. In cases of high risk of extinction, colonies self-regulated the ratio of “aggressive” and “docile” female spiders to match not resource conditions of the site they were placed at, but resource conditions of the home site from which they were taken.

Coauthor Jonathan Pruitt, University of Pittsburgh assistant professor of behavioral ecology, said, “These findings provide compelling evidence that the mechanisms that colonies use to regulate their compositions are themselves locally adapted, presumably because of the survival advantages they confer to the colony”. “They’re continuing to make the phenotypes, the trait at a group level, that would have been advantageous if they had stayed home […] But they seem to have no idea that they’re at a new site and that what they’re doing is going to doom the whole colony. All the friends die”.

Coauthor Charles Goodnight, at the University of Vermont, said: “Biologists have never shown an adaptation in nature which is clearly attributable to group selection […] Our paper is that demonstration.”

Friday, May 23, 2008

Three Gonets satellites have been launched by the Russian Space Forces atop a Ukranian-built Rokot carrier rocket. Lift-off, from site 133 at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Northern Russia, occurred at 15:20:09 GMT this afternoon.

The three Gonets satellites will be used to provide store-dump communication services. This is the second launch of modernised Gonets-D1M satellites. They will be operated by Gonets SatCom, an organisation which was previously part of the Russian Federal Space Agency, but which was privatised in 1996. Whilst Gonets is a civilian system, it has been reported that these satellites will also be used for military applications. Reports have suggested that the satellites have received military designations of Kosmos-2437, 2438 and 2439 under the Kosmos system. Such designations have previously been assigned to, and in some cases later removed from, civilian satellites.

A small technology demonstration satellite, Yubileiny, was also launched. It was built to celebrate the 50^th anniversary of the launch of Sputnik 1, and will be operated by NPO PM. It will broadcast audio and visual programmes on amateur radio frequencies, detailing the history of the space programmes of Russia and the Soviet Union, as well as signals imitating those of Sputnik 1.

The Rokot is a small carrier rocket derived from the UR-100 missile. Its upper stage, the Briz-KM, is a scaled-down version of the Briz-M upper stage used on Proton rockets. This is the first launch of a Briz upper stage of either type since the failure of a Briz-M during a March Proton launch, which left the AMC-14 satellite stranded in Medium Earth orbit.

This is the 25^th orbital launch of 2008 in spaceflight, and the 13^th launch of a Rokot. The next Rokot launch is scheduled for early-mid September, with the GOCE satellite for the European Space Agency.

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

The Iranian police forces have faced criticism from Ayatollah Hashemi Shahrudi, the head of the judiciary who was appointed by Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, for their re-invigorated campaign to do away with un-Islamic dress.

Ayatollah Shahroudi proclaimed, “Tough measures on social problems will backfire and have counter-productive effects.” Others have, of course, made it clear that un-Islamic dress can lead to moral corruption, engender innumerable vices, and hurt the Islamic character of the nation.

Some believe that no one had any issue with the creation of an Islamic atmosphere. The core of the matter revolves around the implementation of the Islamic dress code; additionally, heavy-handed measures should be shunned. For instance, Mehdi Ahmadi, information head of Tehran’s police, told Al Jazeera: “Some citizens may complain about the way the law is being enforced but they all agree with the plan itself.”

According to one student, “You simply can’t tell people what to wear. They don’t understand that use of force only brings hatred towards them, not love.” Nevertheless, Hojatoll-Islam Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi, Iran’s interior minister who is in charge of policing, prognosticated positive feedback from the populace when he said, “People are unhappy with the social and moral status of the society. They expect that the fight against social insecurity be properly implemented.” Thus, Hujjat al-Islam Pour-Mohammadi re-iterated the necessity of proper implementation and methodology towards the restoration of morality in the Islamic Republic. Islamic officials and religious people affirm that this is indispensable to promote righteousness, curb sin, and bring open sinners to justice.

Following the Islamic Revolution in 1979, hijab became mandatory in Iran for every woman including foreigners after over 98% of citizens voted for an Islamic government. Women may face caning up to 74 strokes for failing to observe hijab. In this recent crackdown, the authorities have arrested many citizens throughout the country. Not only have women been taken into custody for their hair being uncovered on their foreheads and tight clothes that show body shapes, For men they need to cover from knee to their waist as according to Sharia. Even a foreign journalist was detained because the photograph on her press card was indecent.

It has not been clear whence the directive for the re-newed clampdown emanated. Some have blamed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad while Gholam Hossein Elham, the government spokesman, stated to reporters, “The police work as agents of the judiciary to confront crimes. The government as an executive body does not interfere in the affairs of the judiciary.” The following pre-election speech seems to corroborate this latter statement: