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The sun is in the pits of a century-class solar minimum, and sunspots have been puzzlingly scarce for more than two years. Now, for the first time, solar physicists might understand why.

At an American Astronomical Society press conference this week in Boulder, Colorado, researchers announced that a jet stream deep inside the sun is migrating slower than usual through the star’s interior, giving rise to the current lack of sunspots.

Rachel Howe and Frank Hill of the National Solar Observatory (NSO) in Tucson, Arizona, used a technique called helioseismology to detect and track the jet stream down to depths of 7,000 km below the surface of the sun. The sun generates new jet streams near its poles every 11 years, they explained to a room full of reporters and fellow scientists. The streams migrate slowly from the poles to the equator and when a jet stream reaches the critical latitude of 22 degrees, new-cycle sunspots begin to appear.

Howe and Hill found that the stream associated with the next solar cycle has moved sluggishly, taking three years to cover a 10 degree range in latitude compared to only two years for the previous solar cycle.

NASA for more

Canadian Environmental Minister Jim Prentice was met by a group of protesting polar bears when he arrived at the White House to meet with Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lisa Jackson and Energy Secretary Steven Chu in March. The protest followed a mounting chorus of concern about Canada’s tar sands – a particularly dirty form of petroleum deposit from which heavy oil is extracted – from First Nations, environmental groups and scientists.

‘The Canadian Government’s singular focus on handling the tar sands with kid gloves has become a lightning rod for environmental activism on both sides of the border,’ explained Merran Smith, Director of Climate with ForestEthics. ‘Canadians need to start asking themselves how much political capital and how much of our national agenda we are willing to sacrifice in Washington, defending the world’s dirtiest oil.’

‘There will be no shelter for politicians selling dirty oil in Washington,’ revealed Brant Olson of the Rainforest Action Network. ‘There comes a point when an issue is so polarizing that it begins to undermine a nation’s other diplomatic efforts in the capital, and for Canada, that issue is fast becoming the tar sands.’

New Internationalist for more

By Mahmood Delkhasteh

Mahmood Delkhasteh is an independent researcher who specialises in the Iranian revolution of 1979, in which he was a participant
The uprising in Iran against the stolen election exposes the true character and intentions of a regime that seeks to rule without and against its people, says Mahmood Delkhasteh.

The uprising in Iran, which began as a protest against the rigged election of 12 June 2009, caught the world by surprise. No one can be certain where this uprising will lead. What is certain is that Iran will never be the same again.

The brutal, sustained crackdown after spontaneous peaceful protests; the killings, the injuries, the arrests and the Stalinist-style television confessions; the attempts to blame foreign powers for fomenting a revolt that in fact emerged from deep popular anger at injustice (and even for the death of the innocent bystander Neda Soltani) – all this has ripped the legitimacy from Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s government.
These pitiless responses indicate how determined this regime is to stay in power. But they have also put the future of the regime at risk. For the protest wave has exposed the deep rifts inside the regime itself, reflecting the sense of millions of Iranians that their country has been captured and is ruled by brute force.

Open Democracy for more

By DAVID BARBOZA

SHANGHAI — There they go again.

Fueled by renewed confidence in economic growth here, and perhaps the kind of frenzied buying that took place a few years ago, Chinese stock prices are once again soaring.

The Shanghai Composite Index rose 52 points Thursday, to close at 3,060.25, putting the index up 68 percent this year.

In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng Index fell slightly Thursday, but only after ending its best quarter in 15 years on Tuesday. That index is up about 20 percent for 2009.

Though well off their 2007 highs, Chinese stock markets are again among the world’s best performing this year.

Economists say China’s growth has begun to pick up after a sharp slowdown late last year and early this year. Sales of homes and cars are strong, and manufacturing has seen modest improvement, though worries remain about the strength of the recovery.

Still, as far as stocks go, analysts say it’s almost 2007 all over again.
“Sentiment has staged a remarkable recovery,” said Jing Ulrich, chairwoman of China equities at J.P. Morgan. “This is about confidence. The money has always been there, even in the dark days of 2008.”

NY Times for more

By B. R. Gowani

South Asian store owners in the US
Have many role models
Of the exploitative US variety
And have many dreams of becoming
Rich and powerful

So they’ve become ruthless
And are merciless with their workers

Workers work without overtime pay
And with very little base pay
And are exploited to the to the maximum
Just one illustration:

Stages of urination

Check there’re no customers in store
Check the washroom is vacant
Check there’re no cars in parking lot
Run to the restroom
Start unzipping while running
Then start the process

Meanwhile the door detector announces
Customer’s arrival

Grab the calm soldier
Hurriedly push him in
The covered area of the base
While sprinkling drops of holy water
Here and there
And rush back to attend customer/s
Once the store is customer-less again
Run to wash the hands

B. R. Gowani can be reached brgowani@hotmail.com

Police surveillance and intimidation of political activists is hitting new heights. Olly Zanetti dodges the long lenses to expose Big Brother’s latest attack on the right to protest.

Caught on camera: a police surveillance officer captures Greek and British protesters on film at a London demonstration against police repression, December 2008. Photo by: MARC VALLÉE

‘If you’re gonna take my picture, be careful with my nose. Get a good angle with your camera, and get my finest pose…’

Standing on a makeshift stage at the Climate Camp entrance, two women sing to the cameras that have been trained on them and other campaigners since the event began. Like Climate Camps across the world, 2008’s action in Kent, England, took place in the centre of the media’s glare. But it wasn’t a news crew these activists were singing to. Rather, the serenade was addressed to police photographers from the Forward Intelligence Team: ‘the FIT’, as they have come to be known.

The FIT’s interest extends from demonstrations to the back-room planning meetings of local activist groups. They are at the forefront of a new wave of intimidatory and disproportionate policing and surveillance practices aimed largely, it seems, at cataloguing and riling nonviolent protesters. Set up by Metropolitan Police Inspector Barry Norman and Sergeant Andy Brittan, the FIT gained notoriety in 1995. The pair attended Reclaim the Streets actions, filmed demonstrators, and attempted to engage them in dialogue, borrowing tactics from the monitoring of football hooliganism in the early 1990s.

Armed with upmarket cameras and camcorders, officers overtly record everything and everyone in their sights. They have even been known to quote their surveillance findings back at activists. ‘We know what you’re up to,’ seems to be the FIT message – the act of data gathering remade as a method of control.

Indeed, the results of FIT surveillance, and so-called intelligence-led policing, hit the headlines recently when, in the early hours of 14 April, 114 activists were pre-emptively arrested for allegedly conspiring to commit criminal damage and aggravated trespass in a demonstration at Ratcliffe-on-Soar coal-fired power station. This pre-emptive policing raises serious civil liberties concerns, as Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, notes. ‘In the light of the policing of the G20 protests, people up and down the country will want to be confident that there was evidence of a real conspiracy to commit criminal damage by those arrested and that this was not just an attempt by the police to disrupt perfectly legitimate protest.’

New Internationalist for more

Israeli naval vessels head into port in Ashdod. The Israeli navy boarded a boat carrying pro-Palestinian activists and humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip on Tuesday in defiance of an Israeli blockade and brought the vessel to a port in Israel. Amir Cohen/Reuters.

A boat carrying foreign activists and three tons of medical supplies was rerouted Tuesday. Meanwhile, the fishing industry – a key source of jobs and protein – has been crippled.

By Mel Frykberg | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
from the June 30, 2009 edition

Ramallah, West Bank – Bringing fresh attention to its blockade of the Gaza Strip, Israel on Tuesday turned back a boat attempting to deliver three tons of medical supplies to Gazans.

After a radio message asking the small ferry to turn back was ignored, the Israeli Navy boarded the boat and redirected the vessel to the Israeli port of Ashdod. Reuters quoted a police source as saying that the activists aboard, members of the US-based Free Gaza movement, would “likely be deported.”

“Yesterday evening the Israeli Navy contacted the boat while at sea clarifying that it would not be permitted to enter Gaza coastal waters because of security risks in the area, and the existing naval blockade,” the Israeli military said in a statement, adding that humanitarian aid would be sent to Gaza “subject to authorization.”
The naval blockade – part of a wider Israeli effort to seal off the tiny coastal strip controlled by the Islamist militant group Hamas – not only prevents such shipments, it is also devastating a key Gazan industry and source of food: fishing.

Citing security concerns and fears of arms smuggling, Israel has progressively tightened the blockade over the past 15 years. Once a thriving enterprise, Gaza’s fishing industry is now on the verge of collapse. Fishermen are cut off from the heavily populated shoals, and have seen total revenue drop by half in less than a decade.

“We are witnessing a huge crisis where the livelihoods of thousands of fishermen, associated laborers, and their dependents have been decimated by Israel’s blockade and closure,” says Erminio Sacco of the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Following the Oslo peace accords, signed in 1994 between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA), Israel permitted the fishermen to go 20 nautical miles (NM) out to sea.

This was restricted to 12 NM in 2002, after the outbreak of the second Palestinian intifada in 2000.

CS Monitor for more

Holidaymakers at a Mombasa beach during a Christmas break. A new book raises suggests that the beaches at the heart of Kenya’s tourism could be submerged in the rising sea in the not-so distant future due to global warming.

By Murithi Mutiga, Citizen Correspondent, Nairobi

Mombasa is known all over the world as a city of sun-kissed beaches and luxurious hotels packed with tourists having the time of their lives.

But in just 20 years, this world-renowned tourist haven may become an island of misery in which vast stretches of land are submerged in sea.

Salinity will make the water unfit for human consumption, it is feared, and local agriculture will collapse due to excess salts in the soil.

That is the grim projection of scientists who are now warning that authorities must take urgent steps to save the coastal city from collapsing under the weight of the effects of global warming.

“We are already seeing adverse climate change signals. Some hotels at the South Coast are building sea walls to deal with waves, something we have not seen before,” says Dr Samuel Mariga, assistant director in charge of climate change at the Kenya Meteorological Department.

“All our models indicate that temperatures will continue going up and we must put in place adaptation and mitigation measures to deal with the problem.”

Dr Mariga’s views tally with those presented in a new book focusing on how cities can best cope with effects of changing climactic conditions.

The book, “Adapting Cities to Climate Change”, highlights challenges facing Mombasa, Dhaka, Cotonou, Mumbai, Rio de Janeiro, Shanghai and Durban.

The Citizen for more

1 Jul 2009, REUTERS

WASHINGTON: Standing by your man suddenly seems to be going out of fashion for some US women in the public eye. This month, the wives of at least two famous men caught cheating — sexually and financially — very openly declared that their spouses’ behavior was actually quite scandalous.

Ruth Madoff, reacting to her husband Bernard being sentenced to 150 years in prison for bilking investors with a massive Ponzi scheme, said she felt “embarrassed,” “ashamed” and “betrayed” by a man she had known for half a century.

“The man who committed this horrible fraud is not the man whom I have known for all these years,” she said shortly after her husband’s sentencing on Monday.

Last week, after South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford tearfully admitted to an affair with a woman, his wife Jenny — who was not by his side at his public confession — left little doubt about her feelings.

Times of India for more