Pollutants may threaten Mexico's coast: study

WASHINGTON (AFP)– Pharmaceuticals, pesticides, chemical run-off from highways and many other pollutants infiltrate the giant aquifer under Mexico's"Riviera Maya," a new study shows.

The report published in the journal Environmental Pollution argues that the waste contaminates a vast labyrinth of water-filled caves under the popular tourist destination on the Yucatan Peninsula.

The polluted water flows through the caves and into the Caribbean Sea. This pollution may have contributed to the loss since 1990 of up to 50 percent of corals on the reefs off the region's coast, the report said.

And, with a 10-fold increase in population through 2030 expected, the problems are likely to worsen, the study noted.

"These findings clearly underline the need for monitoring systems to pin-point where these aquifer pollutants are coming from," said Chris Metcalfe, senior research fellow of the United Nations University's Canadian-based Institute for Water, Environment and Health.

"As well, prevention and mitigation measures are needed to ensure that expanding development does not damage the marine environment and human health and, in turn, the region's tourism-based economy," Metcalfe added.

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EPA to Regulate Milk Spills Just like Oil Spills

It appears that the Environmental Protection Agency, in a story too weird to be fiction, has decided to regulate milk in the same way it does oil. In effect, milk spills will be considered just as hazardous as oil spills.

According to the Wall Street Journal,via Fuel Fix:

"Two weeks ago, the Environmental Protection Agency finalized a rule that subjects dairy producers to the Spill Prevention, Control and Countermeasure program, which was created in 1970 to prevent oil discharges in navigable waters or near shorelines. Naturally, it usually applies to oil and natural gas outfits. But the EPA has discovered that milk contains'a percentage of animal fat, which is a non-petroleum oil,' as the agency put it in the Federal Register.

"In other words, the EPA thinks the next blowout may happen in rural Vermont or Wisconsin. Other dangerous pollution risks that somehow haven't made it onto the EPA docket include leaks from maple sugar taps and the vapors at Badger State breweries.

"The EPA rule requires farms— as well as places that make cheese, butter, yogurt, ice cream and the like— to prepare and implement an emergency management plan in the event of a milk catastrophe. Among dozens of requirements, farmers must train first responders in cleanup protocol and build'containment facilities' such as dikes or berms to mitigate offshore dairy slicks.

"These plans must be in place by November, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture is even running a $3 million program'to help farmers and ranchers comply with on-farm oil spill regulations.' You cannot make this stuff up."

This is clearly another in what Sarah Palin so artfully suggested is a"WTF Moment" coming from the Obama administration. Clearly the EPA has gone completely out of control and needs a little adult supervision, as well as a healthy decrease in its budget.

The economic ramifications are rather obvious, if this regulation is allowed to stand. The prices of milk, butter, cheese, ice cream and yogurt will sky rocket. This will not only be a drag on the farm economy but also on people who have to shop for food every week for their families.

The political fallout is also pretty clear. Dairy producing states like Vermont and Wisconsin are generally considered to be blue states, which vote reliably Democratic for most elections. Wisconsin may be changing since it gave Russ Feingold the Royal Order of the Boot from the United States Senate.

In any event, dairy farmers are not going to be pleased to find that the EPA considers them as much of a threat to the environment as Exxon and BP and has mandated that they spend a lot of money to build"containment facilities" to ensure that spilled milk does not get into the environment.

One wonders what Ben and Jerry, purveyors of Hippy ice cream, are going to think about this. Perhaps, as warm supporters of the administration, they can apply for waivers from the new regulation, much as unions are getting out from under the strictures of health care reform. Tough luck for Blue Bell, though, as it is located in Texas.

This runs counter to President Obama's promise in the State of the Union to hunt down regulations that impede business and get rid of them. To be credible, the Obama administration needs to take care that while they are doing this, no new regulations of that nature are imposed.

Source: EPA Spilled Milk Regulation Indicative of Broader Problem, William O'Keefe, Fuel Fix, February 3rd, 2011

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Egypt coverage gives Al Jazeera surge in US viewers

NEW YORK (Reuters)– The Egyptian crisis may provide the Qatar-based satellite news channel Al Jazeera its best chance yet to capture a larger share of the U.S. audience.

Even the White House is tuning in, said Al Anstey, managing director of Al Jazeera's 4-year-old English-language service.

Much as CNN capitalized on its coverage of the 1990-91 Gulf War, Al Jazeera English has won praise for its on-the-spot reporting and context about the protests. It will be talking to U.S. cable operators about deals"in the coming days and weeks," Anstey said in a telephone interview from Qatar.

"Many people are switching us on in the United States for the first time, thereby increasing the pressure on the operators to actually put us out onto people's TVs," he said.

Al Jazeera, not carried in most U.S. cable and satellite television markets, has a reputation for being anti-American but has also come under fire from Arab states since its inception in 1996.

Egypt ordered Al Jazeera to shut down its operations there and Al Jazeera has had its signal cut. Its correspondents are barred from several Arab states and it has mesmerized Arab viewers who once had little choice but state TV.

Meanwhile, the channel has experienced a surge in its U.S. online audience. By Friday its website's live feed had been seen by 9.4 million viewers, Al Jazeera said. Of those, 3.5 million viewers were in the United States.

Lacking a major TV distribution deal in America, the channel has focused on web distribution.

The full 24-hour channel of Al-Jazeera English is only offered in three U.S. TV markets, the largest being Washington D.C through Comcast, Verizon FiOS and Cox, to a possible audience of 2.4 million, said a spokeswoman for Al Jazeera.

CHANGING PERCEPTIONS

Since January 28, traffic to its website has spiked about 1,000 percent, with about half that audience of U.S. origin.

Al Jazeera was barred in Tunisia before its acclaimed coverage of the revolt that toppled Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali. Now its Egypt coverage could mark another turning point.

"Al Jazeera has probably achieved a revolution in its perception in the United States through its coverage of Egypt," said Marc Lynch, professor of Middle East Studies at George Washington University.

But he said some distributors"will probably always be suspicious or at least fearful of a backlash on carrying it."

Maureen Huff, a spokeswoman for Timer Warner Cable, one of the largest U.S. cable companies, said it was"willing to talk" about carrying Al-Jazeera English and was not afraid of a backlash.

Some experts say the American public could benefit from an outsider view considering cable news is dominated by domestic coverage."Al-Jazeera English is a channel we need badly in the United States," said Erik Nisbet, professor of communication at Ohio State University.

Before its coverage of the Egyptian demonstrations, the channel had 60,000 followers on Twitter. It now has nearly 180,000, said Mohamed Nanabhay, head of online services at Al Jazeera English.

Its Facebook followers have doubled to 340,000, he said.

"This has shown that Americans do care about foreign news and international affairs," he said."The huge interest in Egypt and in Tunisia, it has really blown that myth away."

(Reporting by Christine Kearney; editing by Daniel Trotta and Todd Eastham)

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Neil Armstrong honors German rocket pioneer

The first person to walk on the moon, Neil Armstrong, made a rare public appearance at Alabama's space center Thursday to honor a NASA pioneer who helped figure out how to drive a rover on the moon.

Armstrong, 80, presented an award at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville to Georg von Tiesenhausen, 96, whom the former astronaut warmly called"Dr. von T."

"It's very comfortable for me to be in the company of many old associates,"said Armstrong, who has made infrequent public speeches since landing on the moon in 1969. He has since taught, worked in industry and served on two panels that investigated NASA accidents, including the space shuttle Challenger explosion in 1986.

Standing under a full-size Saturn V test rocket from the Apollo program, Armstrong praised von Tiesenhausen as a space visionary, a great teacher and a topflight engineer.

"He is and has been a person who imagines what can be, and he has the skills to convert that imagine into reality,"said Armstrong, whose remarks broadcast over the Internet.

Von Tiesenhausen was among dozens of engineers who helped develop V-2 rockets for Germany during World War II and moved to the United States after the fighting ended. They formed the backbone of the fledgling U.S. space program at Huntsville's Redstone Arsenal in the 1950s and '60s.

Working under Wernher von Braun, von Tiesenhausen helped design the battery-powered rover that astronauts drove on the lunar surface during the last three Apollo missions to the moon in 1971 and 1972.

The tribute honored von Tiesenhausen both as an innovative space designer from decades ago and an engaged, inquisitive man who still works with students, has an up-to-date cell phone and knows about pop sensation Lady Gaga.

Von Tiesenhausen, who received a lifetime achievement award in education from the state-operated space museum, only recently gave up lecturing to students.

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Grim forecast for UK play about climate change

LONDON (Hollywood Reporter)– A very convincing Polar Bear strolls onstage at one point in"Greenland," the National Theatre's ambitious but disappointing play about climate change but it's about the only believable character in the production.

Four British playwrights, Moira Buffini, Matt Charman, Penelope Skinner and Jack Thorne, interviewed a raft of experts in order to devise the play, which has an impressive design but lacks focus and is woefully out of date.

It's a series of set pieces staged busily by director Bijan Sheiban that involve recurring characters in an assortment of settings from the Arctic Circle to the 2009 Copenhagen summit on climate change to the TV game show"Deal or No Deal."

Designer Bunny Christie makes it a very big show with videos splashed large across the back of the stage that show maps, graphs, news footage, talking heads and, most effectively, a flock of Guillemots seeking shelter in the melting icepack at the North Pole.

There are some attempts at narrative with Lyndsey Marshal as Phoebe, a government aide looking for ammunition for the green cause from an intense researcher named Ray (Peter McDonald). His computer models that predict what will happen to the planet are terrifying in the extreme and he likes to play a game with Phoebe that he calls"the worst case scenario."

One of them seems irrelevant but curious: the 500 million members of Facebook combine to pay off Africa's debt and the US government closes down Facebook. But Phoebe works for the UK's Labour government, which is ancient history since last year's election put a coalition of Conservatives and Liberal-Democrats in power.

There's a schoolboy, Harold (Sam Swann) who wants to study geography and we see him 34 years later as Harry (Michael Gould), a solitary monitor of what happens to birds and bears when the polar icecap begins to disappear. Gould is effective with some sorrowful lines about the beauty and tragedy of nature, and mankind's role in its fate.

Isabella Laughland plays an earnest young woman named Lisa who is determined to do something, anything, to protest what is going on although she's not very clear on what is going on. But Laughland captures the determination and charm of a committed youngster.

There's a series of conversations between a mother and daughter who fail to communicate on any issue regarding efforts to lead a green life and leave the mother filled with uncomprehending guilt and deeply confused. She says,"On Monday, they say we're all going to die and on Tuesday they want to sell me a pension."

The politico and the researcher end up at Copenhagen with some representatives from Mali, and the videos show clips from the summit, but the description of what happened is out of date.

China's carbon footprint, the impact of importing meat and fruit from far away countries, and the way supermarkets wrap it up in plastic are all invoked as matters of concern. There's a lot of information and many sides of the issue are presented, often in eye-catching ways, but it becomes inevitably didactic.

The episodic production does serve to mirror what appears to be the world's general confusion on how to proceed with all the things that affect the climate and there are some startling images. Attempts at humor are infrequent, though, and the play's exchanges lack real bite. When the researcher suggests that the environment is not a religion, the politico insists heatedly,"Of course it is!"

Whatever it is, the National Theater is right to address the subject even if this attempt is underwhelming. The most potent image of the night came at the end when from the theatre's ceiling came tumbling masses of bits of paper of different sizes. Someone has to clean that up every night.

Venue: National Theater, London (Through April 2) Cast: Lyndsey Marshal, Peter McDonald, Isabella Laughland, Michael Gould, Sam Swann, Paul McCleary Playwrights: Moira Buffini, Matt Charman, Penelope Skinner, Jack Thorne Director: Bijan Sheibani Dramaturg: Ben Power Set designer: Bunny Christie Lighting designer: Jon Clark Video designer: Finn Ross Music and sound: Dan Jones Puppetry: Mark Down

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Russia Loses New Military Satellite in Space, Reports Say

Russia has reportedly lost contact with its newest military satellite just hours after launching it into space today (Feb. 1), according to Russian reports.

The satellite, called Geo-IK-2, blasted off atop a three-stageRockot boosterfrom Russia's northern Plesetsk Cosmodrome at about 5 p.m. Moscow Time (9 a.m. EST, 1400 GMT). But just two hours after liftoff, the satellite went missing, according to Russia's Itar-Tass and Interfax news agencies.

"There is no contact with the satellite," Russia's Interfax-AVN news service quoted an unnamed Russian space industry source as saying.

The Geo-IK-2 spacecraft is reportedly an Earth-observation satellite designed to build three-dimensional maps to aidthe Russian military. It was expected to launch into a circular orbit about 600 miles (1,000 km) above the Earth, according to Agence France-Press.

But the satellite did not enter the proper orbit, with some Russian reports suggesting its current flight path brings it as low as 205 miles (330 km) above the ground, AFP reported.

The satellite launch failure comes just five weeks after Russian President Dmitry Medvedev fired two top-ranking space officials and reprimanded Anatoly Perminov, chief of Russia's Federal Space Agency, following thebotched launch of a Proton rocketcarrying three new navigation satellites.

In theDec. 5 launch failure, the Proton rocket's Block DM-3 upper stage was loaded with too much fuel. The basic miscalculation sent the Proton rocket off course. The new Glonass-M navigation satellites onboard that rocket crashed into the Pacific Ocean north of Hawaii.

Today's launch failure, however, occurred on a different type of rocket.

The Rockot booster design is based on components built for Russia's SS-16 intercontinental ballistic missiles. It has two core stages topped with a Breeze-KM upper stage used to send satellite payloads into their final orbits.

According to Interfax, Russia's Defense Ministry is forming a commission to investigate today's launch failure. Russia's Federal Space Agency will form part of that commission, the news agency stated.

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Biogen reports 6 new cases of PML with Tysabri

BOSTON (Reuters)– Biogen Idec Inc said six patients taking its multiple sclerosis drug Tysabri developed a potentially fatal brain infection in December, bringing the total number of such cases associated with the drug to 85.

The biotechnology company said that as of January 7, the overall incidence of progressive multifocal leukoecephalopathy, or PML, was 1.06 per 1,000 patients, up from 1.0 in 1,000 last year.

Biogen, which makes the drug with Irish drugmaker Elan Corp Plc, temporarily withdrew Tysabri from the market in 2005 after it was first associated with the condition; it was brought back, with stricter safety warnings, in 2006.

The drug is widely considered the most effective on the market, but its sales have been crimped by concerns over PML. The risk of the condition increases with the length of treatment.

After two years of monthly infusions, the incidence of PML is now 2.13 per 1,000 patients.

The overall rate of PML in clinical trials was 1 in 1000, a benchmark that has now been exceeded.

Of the 85 cases of PML reported, 16 patients have died, while 69 are still alive with varying degrees of disability.

Biogen is developing a test that it hopes will allow doctors to screen patients to identify which might be more likely to develop PML.

Biogen shares were down$2.02 or 2.9 percent to$66.76 in afternoon New York trading, while Elan shares were down 10 cents or 1.5 percent to$6.37.

(Reporting by Toni Clarke, editing by Gerald E. McCormick)

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