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5 June 2008
World's biggest solar farm at centre of Portugal's ambitious energy plan in country without oil or gas
From a distance the bizarre structures sprouting from the high Alentejo plain in eastern Portugal resemble a field of mechanical sunflowers. Each of the 2,520 giant solar panels is the size of a house and they are as technically sophisticated as a car. Their reflective heads tilt to the sky at a permanent 45 degrees as they track the sun through 240 degrees every day.

The world's largest solar photovoltaic farm, generating electricity straight from sunlight, is taking shape near Moura, a small town in a thinly populated and impoverished region which boasts the most sunshine per square metre a year in Europe.

When fully commissioned later this year, the £250m farm set on abandoned state-owned land will be twice the size of any other similar project in the world, covering an area nearly twice the size of London's Hyde park. It is expected to supply 45MW of electricity each year, enough to power 30,000 homes.

Portugal, without its own oil, coal or gas and with no expertise in nuclear power, is pitching to lead Europe's clean-tech revolution with some of the most ambitious targets and timetables for renewables. Its intention, the economics minister, Manuel Pinho, said, is to wean itself off oil and within a decade set up a low carbon economy in response to high oil prices and climate change.

"We have to reduce our dependence on oil and gas," said Pinho. "What seemed extravagant in 2004 when we decided to go for renewables now seems to have been a very good decision."  read more »

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DENALI NATIONAL PARK, Alaska (AP) — Two young backpackers rationed peanut butter sandwiches and granola bars, growing hungrier as they wandered for six days in the dense vegetation of Denali National Park. Erica Nelson and Abby Flantz were down to their last granola bar Wednesday, the day they were rescued. Trekking through the remote park, they regularly clicked on their cell phone until they finally found reception that led to their rescue. "We got a signal and I said, 'Wow, I have to call my mom,'" Nelson told reporters before heading with her family to Houston, where she plans to serve as maid of honor Saturday in her sister's wedding.

What started as an overnight hike June 12 turned into an intensive search that cost more than $118,000 and sometimes involved 100 people from volunteer groups and state and federal agencies, according to park spokeswoman Kris Fister. Rangers estimate the women logged at least 20 miles before they were picked up by a helicopter crew outside the northeastern side of the 9,400-square-mile park, Fister said.

Nelson, 23, of Las Vegas and Flantz, 25, of Gaylord, Minn., had no idea they had trigged a search of that magnitude. They were reported overdue when they failed to show up at work Saturday at Denali Princess Wilderness Lodge, a hotel outside the park. But after a few days of being lost, they did figure that people might be concerned. "We were gone long enough, we knew there might be searches for us, but we didn't know it would be this big," Flantz said.

The women said they each packed only bare essentials, such as two sandwiches and granola bars, thinking that would be enough for their short trek. They brought a compass and a map but still lost their bearing, mistaking one river for another. They tried to follow the river, but that proved impossible many times, Flantz said. "There were steep hills, so we had to get away from them and there was this high brush we had to push through," she said. "I cried a little bit, but not much."

The days wore on and they rationed their food, but ran out of water and drank river water or melted snow. They ripped up a shirt to bandage scratches and blisters. Hiking exhausted them, but they trudged on when the weather was good, hoping their destination was over the next bend. At night they slept in a tent. Along the way, they saw plenty of bear tracks, steering far from the fresh prints. The only wildlife they saw, however, was a porcupine. The last couple of days it rained, so they mostly stayed in the tent, conserving their waning energy.

By Wednesday, the cell phone's battery was weak, but Nelson finally got through to her mother, Ellane, who was listening to park officials give a morning briefing on the search. That was the day Nelson's sister, Alecia, and her future brother-in-law were to decide whether to postpone their wedding. Nelson told her mother she and Flantz were alive and well but gave the wrong location of their whereabouts, so searchers couldn't find them. She called her mother again about 3:30 p.m., and officials told her to hang up and text message instead to save the dying battery. Then they were able to locate the signal several miles north of the 100-square-mile area they had been searching.

The search area, about 180 miles north of Anchorage, is a mix of national park and state-owned lands. It includes dense alder and willow, some black spruce forest, but also miles of tundra. Flantz, who plans to return to work on Saturday, said she's not giving up on outdoor adventures — but next time she'll be better prepared.

Officials said it was unlikely the women merely decided to extend their camping trip. Nelson was scheduled to fly Sunday night to Houston so she could be maid of honor in her sister's wedding. Nelson said she thought a lot about her sister when she was lost. "The whole time I was just, we got to keep going. I got to make it to her wedding," Nelson told KTUU.

Fister said she believed the wedding was still on.

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Photos courtesy of AP Photo/Matt Hage and Laurent Dick

Original Source: Associated Press and KATU

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They were going for the gold and they got it - Firefox has set a world download record with the release of Firefox 3 with 8.3 million downloads. beating its own goal by three million. Mozilla reported that there were around 8,000 downloads a minute, with a one-day estimate of between five and seven million downloads. Almost 2,7 million users have downloaded Firefox 3 only in the United States. Germany has ranked second in the Top 10 of Firefox fans with 700,000 downloads, while in Spain and France the browser has surpassed 300,000 downloads.

Mozilla Firefox, the little Web browser with the quirky name, has grown up fast. Four years ago, Firefox was an obscure project Microsoft felt free to ignore. Now it has grabbed about a fifth of the market worldwide. And while Microsoft has shipped only one upgrade to its Internet Explorer in that time, Firefox just hit its fourth major release. Like the earlier 1.0, 1.5 and 2.0 versions, Firefox 3 -- a free download for Windows 2000, XP and Vista; Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5; and recent Linux releases at http://mozilla.com - makes the Web easier and safer to use in a few distinct ways.

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Conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan drive up world refugee numbers, accounting for more than half of the world’s refugees in 2007. More than two million Iraqis have sought refuge in Syria and Jordan, and three million Afghans have fled to Pakistan and Iran, the refugee agency said. Iraq and Afghanistan are behind a rise in the number of refugees worldwide for the second year in a row.

The U.N. refugee agency says the number of people fleeing violence and repression worldwide has risen to 11.4 million, largely due to the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. VOA's Sonja Pace reports from London on UNHCR's status report for 2007.

Launching the report, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres, said that for the second year in a row the number of people fleeing their countries and displaced from their homes is on the rise. "We have today 11.4 million refugees worldwide, but we have 26 million people displaced within the borders of their own countries," he said.

Guterres says conflicts are largely to blame. Refugees from Iraq and Afghanistan alone make up half the world's total. The 11.4 million tally does not include the millions of Palestinians living as refugees in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world.  read more »

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Iran has withdrawn around $75 billion from Europe to prevent the assets from being blocked under threatened new sanctions over Tehran's disputed nuclear ambitions, an Iranian weekly said. "Part of Iran's assets in European banks have been converted to gold and shares and another part has been transferred to Asian banks," Mohsen Talaie, deputy foreign minister in charge of economic affairs, was quoted as saying.

Iranian officials were not immediately available to comment on the report in Shahrvand-e Emrouz, a moderate weekly, which did not specify the time period for the withdrawals which it said were ordered by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

"About $75 billion of Iran's foreign assets which were under threat of being blocked were wired back to Iran based on Ahmadinejad's order," the weekly said. Iran's Etemad-e Melli newspaper, also quoting Talai, last week also reported that the world's fourth-largest oil exporter was withdrawing assets from European banks but did not give any figures.

Britain will freeze overseas assets of Iran's largest bank, Bank Melli. "Action will start today," Prime Minister Gordon Brown said on Monday.

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Photos Courtesy of Reuters and The Jerusalem Post

Original Source: Javno and Associated Press

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The U.S. space shuttle Discovery and its seven-member crew returned to earth Saturday after a successful two-week mission to the International Space Station. The shuttle safely touched down at 11:15 a.m. local time (1515 UTC) at the U.S. space agency's landing strip at the Kennedy Space Center in the southeastern state of Florida.

The mission's highlight was the delivery and installation of a new $1 billion Japanese science laboratory. The 11-meter long lab is now the largest module on the orbiting space station.

The Discovery crew also dropped off a new toilet pump to allow the Russian space station crew to fix their on board facilities. Discovery made 217 orbits and travelled 5.7 million miles around the Earth before it was given the green light to return home yesterday morning.

But on Friday Nasa engineers were forced to carry out last minute checks on the shuttle after astronauts spotted something floating away from their space ship. It turned out be a 12 inch metal clip from the rudder.

After four hours, the crew were told that its absence posed no danger for re-entry - during which temperatures around the shuttle can reach more than 2,500 degrees C.

Extensive checks are carried out on space shuttles before they begin re-entry after Columbia burned up as it entered the atmosphere, killing all seven crew on board, after foam panels in its heat shield were damaged during lift-off.

Commander Mark Kelly brought the shuttle safely back to Earth at 4.15pm (BST) yesterday afternoon through slightly cloudy skies. Television cameras were able to track the shuttle as it made its final approach, landed and deployed its brake parachute.

As Discovery came to a safe stop, Kelly said: "Great to be back." NASA officials described the landing as being as "smooth as it gets".

Astronauts also exchanged a member of the orbital outpost's permanent crew. American astronaut Greg Chamitoff remained on the space station for a six-month mission. He replaced U.S. astronaut Garrett Reisman who returned home after 95 days in space.

Reisman's wife, Simone Francis, was waiting at the Kennedy Space Center. Over the past week, Reisman described in quite romantic terms how much he missed her, calling her "my favourite Earthling".

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Images Courtesy of AP Photo/NASA, BBC News

Original Source: BBC News (with video), The Telegraph, and VOA News

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WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Thursday delivered its third consecutive rebuff to the Bush administration’s handling of the detainees at Guantánamo Bay, ruling 5 to 4 that the prisoners there have a constitutional right to go to federal court to challenge their continued detention.

The court declared unconstitutional a provision of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 that, at the administration’s behest, stripped the federal courts of jurisdiction to hear habeas corpus petitions from the detainees seeking to challenge their designation as enemy combatants.

Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said the truncated review procedure provided by a previous law, the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, “falls short of being a constitutionally adequate substitute” because it failed to offer “the fundamental procedural protections of habeas corpus.”

Justice Kennedy declared: “The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times.”

'Habeas corpus' (Latin: [We command] that you have the body) is the name of a legal action, or writ, through which a person can seek relief from unlawful detention of themselves or another person. The writ of habeas corpus has historically been an important instrument for the safeguarding of individual freedom against arbitrary state action.  read more »