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Click here to review the complete article...
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Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Seismologist Roger Bilham: “In Recent Earthquakes Buildings Have Acted as Weapons of Mass Destruction
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Giant worm surfaces in West
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SPOKANE, Wash. -- Two vital specimens of the legendary hulk Palouse earthworm have been prisoner for the initial time in dual decades, University of Idaho scientists suggested Tuesday.
Last month, researchers found an adult and a youthful citation of the worm, that has spin a near-mythic quadruped in the Palouse segment of Washington and Idaho.
"We are commencement to benefit a little bargain about where we are expected to find the hulk Palouse earthworm," pronounced University of Idaho dirt scientist Jodi Johnson-Maynard in Moscow, Idaho, who has been heading the search.
A university matter pronounced the dual worms appeared to diffuse dual reports from the spin of the prior century that had combined to the parable of the earthworm: The creatures did not separate or smell similar to lilies.
The adult worm totalled about 10 or twelve inches entirely extended, whilst the youthful was 6 or 7 inches. The worms were translucent, permitting inner viscera to appear.
Both worms had pinkish heads and bulbous tails, dull distinct the flattened tails of nightcrawlers. The adult had a yellowish rope at the back of the head.
The Palouse earthworm was initial reported to the systematic universe in 1897.
According to an 1897 essay in The American Naturalist, the worm was usual in the Palouse in the 1890s.
The worm had been deliberate archaic until 2005, when Idaho connoisseur tyro Yaniria Sanchez-de Leon found a citation at Washington State Universitys Smoot Hill haven nearby Albion, Wash. She found that worm after it had been cut scarcely in half as she was digging a hole to representation earthworms and soil.
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Thursday, September 23, 2010
Armstrong in Europe to hope for for Tour de France
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PARIS - Lance Armstrong has arrived in Europe to step up preparations for the Tour de France.
The seven-time Tour hold up saidhis Twitter site Tuesday it "is good to be behind in Nice."
Armstrong mostly trains in the south of France, where he owns a house. He might contest in the Tour of Luxembourg from Jun 2-6, nonetheless competition organizers couldnt endorse his appearance Tuesday.
There is additionally the probability that Armstrong will float in the Dauphine Libere from Jun 6-13 or the Tour of Switzerland from Jun 12-20.
Armstrong has had usually a couple of competition days this season. Last week, he withdrew from the Tour of California after a crash, that resulted in an harmed left bend and cuthis face.
The Tour de France startsJuly 3.
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Wednesday, September 22, 2010
BMW owners are the misfortune drivers
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A BMW might be a contingency have car but most motorists see it as a contingency equivocate car on the road, it was disclosed today.
BMW owners were regarded as the misfortune drivers, a check by used-car website Compucars.co.uk showed.
The greatest faults motorists found with BMW drivers were naivet� of others and a miss of concentration.
They were additionally seen as aggressive, bold and disposed to highway fury and mostly tended to expostulate as well close to the car in front.
Drivers of Ford cars were seen as the next-worst motorists, followed by Volvo drivers.
Looking at difficulty of drivers rather than the tangible vehicles they own, the check of only over 1,000 people showed that outpost drivers and immature people were deliberate the misfortune drivers.
They were followed by cab drivers, old people and mothers on the propagandize run.
London drivers were reckoned to be the misfortune on the roads, followed by motorists in south-east England and the West Midlands. Sunday drivers were seen as marginally worse drivers than those travelling in the pour out hour.
Only 19% of those polled deliberate women to be improved drivers than men.
Compucars.co.uk organisation selling handling physical education instructor Rob Queen said: BMW drivers unfortunately are left tarnished with the same brush, due to a minority of bad drivers.
Urging BMW drivers to work on their pushing etiquette, he went on: For example, only observant interjection for being let by a space by an additional motorist will measure multiform spirit points and takes no bid at all.
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Monday, September 20, 2010
Christina Patterson Swedens doctrine in preparation priorities
If Britain were a bit some-more similar to Sweden, pronounced a Tory apportion last week, "I, for one, would not object". Well, nor would I. Lovely beaches, poetic forests, poetic lakes, poetic ginger biscuits. Oh yes, and poetic equality. Sweden has one of the smallest gaps in in in between abounding and bad in the world.
When we went each summer to revisit the Swedish mothers relatives, we were the poor. In the cafeteria on the vessel to Gothenburg, we would gawk in enviousness at blond family groups queuing up for prohibited dogs or meatballs and chips. My mom had brought ham rolls from home and, if we were lucky, a Penguin. Once, a man took empathize on us and charity to buy us a can of Coke. My father let him buy one in in in between us. We drank it, similar to suckling piglets, with 3 straws.
In the car to the two-room summer lodge we common with the relatives, we could frequency move for the tins of Chunky Chicken and Vesta beef curry that would, for the subsequent fortnight, feed us. On the beach, I stared in dishonesty at the young kids whose relatives paid for them a Storstrut. An early predecessor of the cornetto, it cost a total Swedish crown.
My cousins wore jeans to school, and emerged at eighteen with a fibre of preparation and smooth English. So did flattering majority everybody else. They went to their internal school. Everyone (well, 99 per cent, to be precise) went to their internal school. Nobody asked if it was a great or bad school. It was only a school. And, since that the people prepared in those schools are now overseeing the fourth majority rival economy in the world, and the one at large rated as the most appropriate in Europe for commercial operation creativity, it probably was flattering good.
What brought about these flattering great schools, and the poetic equivalence in this republic rated, no interjection to Bergman, Wallander et al, as one of the happiest and healthiest on the universe is, of course, greatly high taxation. My uncle, who was a vice-chancellor of a university and wrote books, lived subsequent doorway to a truck driver. Both had matching houses. Both paid for their young kids Storstruts. Both had summer holidays in small wooden chalets nearby the sea.
When Michael Gove, the shade Schools Secretary, praised Sweden on Radio 4s Any Questions on Saturday, he was articulate about the schools. He was talking, in fact, about the free schools, introduced by the centre-right bloc (yes, Messrs Gove and Cameron, coalition, and yes, underneath proportionate representation) seventeen years ago. Aiming to lift standards (well, even in Utopia you Must Try Harder) by introducing competition, it charity relatives the right to begin their own school. This being Sweden, that gives even the sons of CEOs free propagandize lunches, the state coffers poured forth. Now, roughly 10 per cent of young kids go to eccentric schools, but frequency any one pays for them.
The free schools complement in Sweden concerned immeasurable collateral investment, and charity those environment them up the chance, in the prolonged term, to have a profit. The Tories are charity conjunction of these: minimal collateral investment (because the coffers are empty) and no possibility to have a distinction since well, I"m not utterly certain why. For a celebration penetrating to safety the free standing of schools that have a packet, it seems a bit strange. The Swedish indication additionally took place in an greatly civic-minded society. Sweden has a clever convention of amicable and eremite activism, and traffic unions. Electoral turn-out, at some-more than 80 per cent, is the top in the world.
It might, in alternative words, be fruitful domain for the Big Society, the big thought rolled out in the call in to stick on the Government, differently well known as the Tory manifesto. Swedes are collaborative, responsible and greatly wakeful of the open good. They do hold there is such a thing as society, one in that people have responsibilities over relative and kin. They also, incidentally, hold in the big state, and similar to it. But the Tories werent articulate to Swedes. The Big Society big thought (Oliver Letwin"s, actually, not Cameron"s) sank similar to a lead balloon. Brits only cant be arsed. DIY, in the great British psyche, is for BQ.
Yesterday, on the Today programme, Michael Gove done a last-ditch try to inhale the Big Society behind to life. He cited dual or 3 examples of the intentional suggestion in movement and when great Evan Davis told him it was all sounding a bit half-baked, he pounded his doubt and talked of the conviction he hoped to harness.
Hes going to have to get harnessing flattering damn soon. If the Tories scratch by on Thursday, they"re formulation to open the initial free schools in September. Those relatives had improved edging their conviction with a bit of nous, and drive, and monetary know-how, as well as oodles of gangling time, if they wish small Jake and Chloe to get the preparation they"ve regularly dreamed of. But but Swedish levels of funding, of course.
On the alternative hand, he could only dont think about it. The free schools complement in Sweden has, according to the countrys own National Agency for Education, been costly and ineffective. In February, the director, Per Thulberg, told Newsnight that the foe in in in between schools had not led to improved results. It had, he said, led instead to larger amicable segregation.
We"re already rather great at amicable segregation. We dont need lessons in it from countries that are finding it for the initial time. Its essentially utterly simple. Its high taxes and large open spending that have done Sweden the next to multitude that Gove says he admires. It was a complement of near-universal state schools, but majority in the approach of choice, that constructed the tutorial standards that have done it thrive. Not conviction schools, not free schools, not grow-your-own or collect "n" brew schools, and not Eton. Yup, if Britain were a bit some-more similar to Sweden, I wouldnt intent at all.
c.patterson@independent.co.uk
For serve reading: Andrew Brown: Fishing in Utopia (2008)
More from Christina Patterson
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Monday, September 13, 2010
West hopes Iranians assimilate sanctions aim the regime
Martin Fletcher: Analysis & ,}
The complaint with sanctions is that they can essentially assistance those they are supposed to hurt, as despots from Robert Mugabe to Saddam Hussein have abundantly demonstrated. They give such regimes an outmost rivalry opposite whom they can rally their people, a stratagem for abrasive inner dissent, and an forgive for their own mercantile mismanagement.
That is a sold risk in Iran, where the system of administration has outlayed the last year brutally suppressing the renouned rebel triggered by Mahmoud Ahmadinejads theft of the presidential election, and portraying the antithesis Green Movement as a apparatus of horse opera powers focussed on destroying the Islamic Republic.
Officials admit the danger, but disagree that this ultimate turn of UN sanction targets the regime, not the Iranian people. Indeed, the cost of Russian and Chinese await was that the measures did not mistreat Irans day-to-day economy.
The sanctions blacklist 41 Iranian companies, twenty-two for their links to Irans nuclear or ballistic barb programmes, twelve since they are owned or controlled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and 3 because they are continuous to IRISL, the state shipping association that increasingly uses bombard companies to costume the tenure of sanctions-busting vessels. They aim only one bank, First East Export Bank, since China argued that inventory some-more would mistreat the ubiquitous economy.
Hurting the system of administration but deleterious the ubiquitous economy is all but impossible, however. The IRGC has severely stretched the reach in new years and right away controls some-more than half Irans mercantile wake up together with majority of the oil, gas and building a whole sectors. It owns, for example, the blacklisted engineering firm Khatam al-Anbiya that earns billions of dollars from polite and troops building a whole projects and helps account the IRGCs operations.
Irans economy is already in a parlous state. There is 0 growth. The official stagnation rate is 11.8 per cent, but in being some-more than twenty per cent. Oil prolongation fell eight per cent last year due to miss of investment and bad technology, and unfamiliar banking pot are shrinking.
Officials have no disbelief President Ahmadinejad and his hardline supporters will portray the sanctions as piece of a Western tract opposite the Islamic Republic, but disagree that the Wests priority has to be the curtailment of Irans chief programme not assisting the opposition. They goal long-suffering Iranians will assimilate that the sanctions are targetting not them, but the instruments of their repression.
Commenting is no longer accessible on this site. To have your contend on this story, click here to revisit the new site, www.thetimes.co.uk
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Premier League as it happened: Chelsea win the pretension Football
Premier League updates live Carrie Dunn & ,}
Catch up on all the movement from the last day of the deteriorate as Chelsea won the title in resounding fashion.
Arsenal 4-0 Fulham FT How it happened
Aston Villa 0-1 Blackburn FT How it happened
Bolton 2-1 Birmingham FT How it happened
Burnley 4-2 Tottenham FT How it happened
Chelsea 8-0 Wigan FT How it happened
Everton 1-0 Portsmouth FT How it happened
Hull 0-0 Liverpool FT How it happened
Man Utd 4-0 Stoke FT How it happened
West Ham 1-1 Man City FT How it happened
Wolves 2-1 Sunderland FT How it happened
Friday, September 10, 2010
Simon Jenkins: As the Cumbria shootings show theres no such thing as safe. Stop spending income on the security run that is using amok in the open zone
The toughest doctrine to pull from the Whitehaven tragedy is that there competence be no doctrine at all. We cannot stop people carrying rows at home or work, receiving leave of their senses, anticipating a gun and going berserk. Such things frequency happen. But even the mostauthoritarian state contingency concede a little personal liberty, and everybody accepts the ensuing risk. No free village can be unconditionally protected withoutlosing the freedom.
There is right away a drawn out idea that the holds of in isolation shortcoming that should tie together neighbourhoods and nations comparison have eroded. This is put down to all from the nanny state to good dependency, risk aversion, unpleasant youth, as well majority income and recurrent security. When the dominant Labour apportion Ed Balls criminialized cinema of young kids in schools and vetted relatives for sex crimes, the end of open reason were strained. Yet no one stopped him. People muttered, "Well, you can"t be as well safe."
On each First Great Western train, an proclamation is done after each stop revelation passengers to see about for questionable people or parcels and inform them rught away to the police. It creates for a miserable journey. If you come in a supervision building, you are told that the stream rapt standing equates to an approaching militant conflict is "highly likely". This serves no role but to dismay people in to surrender the Home Office ever some-more power.
I would be astounded if former ministers David Blunkett and Charles Clarke were not penning articles claiming that Whitehaven "proves" the need for temperament cards and wider rapist checks. Goaded by the media, officials will be drafting writings requiring all guns to be banned, all cab drivers tested for mental instability and all contentious family groups reported by their solicitors to the police. That approach we can bail out all the cares and woes on the state and explain they are no shortcoming of ours.
The majority sensitively essential preference taken by David Cameron given reaching Downing Street was to face down the majority guileful run in government: the military and security services. He refused the motorbike outriders dear of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown to get them screaming by the London traffic. He additionally pronounced it was ludicrous not to travel the 200 yards from his bureau to parliament. There competence be an infinitesimally larger risk in you do so – gleefully dramatised by each journal – but he motionless to take it. If his insurance group found the risk as well great, they could regularly go behind on the beat.
What was poignant was not Cameron"s reason but the greeting to it. He was not praised for shortening security costs, saving motor fuel or receiving exercise, let alone for bravery. The complete domestic community, guided by the police, castigated him.
The Times non-stop the inform with: "Asthe budding apportion enters the lobbyof the House of Commons, a man emerges from a tangle of people, produces a gun and shoots him in the chest. Far-fetched? No, it happened, despite dual centuries ago." Nobody mentions that given afterwards council has been incited in to a satire of Fort Knox. The contributor pitied bodyguards whose pursuit is right away "tougher and some-more stressful than it ought to be".
Meanwhile, a sketch of the budding apportion on foot down the travel was captioned deploring his "worrying demeanour", that was that he was "deep in examination and preoccupied to any hazard or danger". This alarmism was steady in each newspaper. Each steady the old saw that the militant "only has to be propitious once – we have to be propitious always".
Even Cameron was incompetent to forestall the military from stationing dual guards toting submachine guns outward his suburban home, prior to he changed to Downing Street. The philharmonic in a accessible London travel was obscene. Such weapons are obsolete in such a constricted space but they join forces with those who twirl them with personal machismo – as might have played a piece in Whitehaven. It takes nerves of steel to exclude this protection, as Lord Baker commendably did when home cabinet member underneath John Major. Many ministers (and ex-ministers) keep their armed guards as a pointer of status.
Since Cameron came to power, Scotland Yard has been furloughed Fleet Street lecture opposite him. Last week Dai Davies, former head of the chosen kingship and tactful insurance branch, pronounced the military were "tearing out their hair since he [Cameron] is being all arrogant about security". It was "almost an call in for someone to conflict him". Davies"s conflict is similar to BA cabin stewards observant their boss, Willie Walsh, wants planes to pile-up rather than give them some-more money.
Last week "well-placed military officials" were quoted as scheming a security examination of each of the 650 MPs "in the light of comprehension that sole Muslim self-radicalisers might be targeting politicians". This was related to the separate stabbing of the MP Stephen Timms, and to "terrorist chatter" about unsound security for Britain"s universe crater football team.
Events such as the G8, the Olympics and the World Cup suggest large paydays for the security industry. Charles Hill, before of Scotland Yard"s art and antiquities squad, was this week quoted angry that "virtually nothing" was being outlayed on
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