Saturday, December 14, 2013
CONTACT ME AT: manessmorrison2@yahoo.com



News Clips For The Day


US, Chinese warships narrowly avoid collision in South China Sea – NBC
By David Alexander, Reuters

A U.S. guided missile cruiser operating in international waters in the South China Sea was forced to take evasive action last week to avoid a collision with a Chinese warship maneuvering nearby, the U.S. Pacific Fleet said in a statement on Friday. 

The incident came as the USS Cowpens was operating in the vicinity of China's only aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, at a time of heightened tensions in the region following Beijing's declaration of an Air Defense Identification Zone farther north in the East China Sea, a U.S. defense official said. 

Another Chinese warship maneuvered near the Cowpens in the incident on December 5, and the Cowpens was forced to take evasive action to avoid a collision, the Pacific Fleet said in its statement. 

"Eventually, effective bridge-to-bridge communications occurred between the U.S. and Chinese crews, and both vessels maneuvered to ensure safe passage," a defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said in an email. 

The Cowpens had been in the Philippines helping with disaster relief in the aftermath of the massive typhoon that hit the region in November. The U.S. Navy said it was conducting regular freedom-of-navigation operations in the South China Sea when the incident occurred.

China deployed the Liaoning to the South China Sea for maneuvers in the midst of the tensions over the air zone, which covers air space around a group of tiny islands in the East China Sea that are administered by Japan but claimed by Beijing as well. 
Beijing declared the air zone late last month and demanded that aircraft flying through it provide flight plans and other information. The United States and its allies rejected the Chinese demand and have continued to fly military aircraft into the zone. 

Beijing claims most of the South China Sea and is involved in territorial disputes with several of its neighbors in that region as well. 
Asked if the Chinese vessel was moving toward the Cowpens with aggressive intent, an official declined to speculate on the motivations of the Chinese crew. 
"U.S. leaders have been clear about our commitment to develop a stable and continuous military-to-military relationship with China," the official said in the email. 
"Whether it is a tactical at-sea encounter, or strategic dialogue, sustained and reliable communication mitigates the risk of mishaps, which is in the interest of both the U.S. and China," the email said. 

The Pacific Fleet said the incident with the Cowpens underscored the need for the "highest standards of professional seamanship, including communications between vessels, to mitigate the risk of an unintended incident or mishap." 
"It is not uncommon for navies to operate in close proximity, which is why it is paramount that all navies follow international standards for maritime rules," the defense official said in the statement. 



“Sustained and reliable communication” apparently failed to be maintained here. At the last minute contact was made and the collision was avoided. We, of course, were in the Chinese waters at the time of “heightened tensions,” and an incident that looks like international posturing occurred. Couldn't two large ships see each other? It's just one more addition to the tensions. The UN does need to settle this claim on the islands by Japan and China. Japan appears to have the prior claim, according to the article two weeks or so ago, but China is the big boy. Hopefully, it won't come to war.




Student tried to cover up frat-link in fatal hazing: cops – NBC
By Tracy Connor, Staff Writer, NBC News

While college freshman Mike Deng lay brain dead after a hazing ritual gone wrong last weekend, his Pi Delta Psi "big brother" made a call from the hospital — telling others to get rid of anything that would identify them as fraternity members, court documents allege.

The apparent coverup attempt was detailed in a search warrant affidavit filed by police, who ultimately seized a heap of frat regalia, along with suspected marijuana, hallucinogenic mushrooms and paddles, from a house in the Poconos rented by the New York City students.

That's where, they say, Deng was repeatedly tackled running a gauntlet blindfolded and carrying a sand-filled backpack in the freezing dark during a fraternity gathering.

The papers say that the three Baruch College students who finally took Deng, 19, to the hospital early Sunday — more than an hour after he was knocked unconscious — initially claimed the finance major was wrestling in the snow, fell backward and hit his head.

During a second grilling, Sheldon Wong, described as the pledge educator, "showed great remorse and refused to provide information about the ritual and the incident," police wrote. Deng's big pledge brother, Charles Lai, said he was sleeping and didn't see what happened, they said.

Upon further questioning, though, Lai said he was taking part in the ritual known as The Gauntlet, telling cops that Deng was supposed to try to reach him "while other fraternity brothers physically prevent that from happening," the affidavit says.
Wong then gave details of the ritual, as well, "and states Deng was pushed but didn't see who did it."

The detective wrote that he also learned through interviews "that while at the hospital [Lai] made a phone call, using his cellular phone, to a male at the residence and told him to dispose of all fraternity memorabilia and items."
Efforts to reach Lai and Wong, along with members of the national board of Pi Delta Psi, were unsuccessful.



Marijuana and hallucinogenic mushrooms – that may help to explain the incident. Asian youths are supposedly such good students, and I assume good citizens, but in a group male bonding session they act just like American teenagers – they abandon their common sense. I have never liked fraternities and sororities, though I think the sororities don't do such mischievous pranks to their pledges.

I would like to see all purely social organizations thrown off campus, so people would have to join groups that have a social service, self-improvement, or other useful activity at their heart. When I was in high school there was a debating club, the band, the school paper, future teachers, etc. Those organizations should be headed by the University and ban hazing. I say that, because high school and college marching bands also engage in hazing sometimes. The only real group activity in most fraternities is their alcohol and drug parties, and they actively keep out non-members, so the regular student body would have little opportunity to come to one of their parties. Of course, there would be a major outcry if fraternities were banned, especially from alumni. Those extraverted, highly social people on campus wouldn't allow such a radical move.





Newly detected greenhouse gas is 7,000 times more potent than CO2 – NBC
Denise Chow LiveScience


Smog shrouds downtown Los Angeles, a city with one of the worst air quality levels in the country.

A greenhouse gas that is thought to have a potent impact on global warming was detected in trace amounts in the atmosphere for the first time, according to a new study.

Researchers at the University of Toronto discovered very small amounts of an industrial chemical, known as perfluorotributylamine (PFTBA), in the atmosphere. While only traces of PFTBA were measured, the chemical has a much higher potential to affect climate change on a molecule-by-molecule basis than carbon dioxide (CO2), the most significant greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, and a major contributor to global warming, said study co-author Angela Hong, of the University of Toronto's department of chemistry. 

"We look at potency on a per-molecule basis, and what makes this molecule interesting is that, on a per-molecule basis, it's very high, relative to other compounds in the atmosphere," Hong told LiveScience.

Potency measured
This potency is measured as radiative efficiency, which describes how effectively a molecule is at preventing long-wave radiation from escaping back into space. The higher the radiative efficiency, the greater that molecule can influence climate. This value is then multiplied by the greenhouse gas's atmospheric concentration to determine its total climate impact. [The Reality of Climate Change: 10 Myths Busted]
"It takes into consideration where it would exist in the atmosphere, how it absorbs heat, and what else is in the atmosphere," Hong explained. "It's not an intrinsic property; it's a measure of how it would behave in the Earth system."

In these meteorological terms, PFTBA has the highest potential to affect climate of all known chemicals to date, the researchers said.
"Calculated over a 100-year time frame, a single molecule of PFTBA has the equivalent climate impact as 7,100 molecules of CO2," Hong said.
But, it's important to note that the amount of PFTBA in the atmosphere is still far less than global concentrations of carbon dioxide, she added.
"If we had more (PFTBA) in the atmosphere, we'd see more warming," she said. "This is very potent on a per-molecule basis, but there's very little of it in the atmosphere."
Just a pinch of PFTBA

For the study, the researchers collected atmospheric data from November 2012 to December 2012, and measured the proportion of PFTBA in the atmosphere at 0.18 parts per trillion. This means that for every 1 trillion air molecules, less than a full molecule of PFTBA is present. For comparison, the proportion of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere exceeded 400 parts per million earlier this year.

PFTBA has been used in electrical equipment since the mid-1900s. So far, there are no policies in place to regulate its use, particularly within the context of climate change, Hong said.

There are also no known ways to destroy or remove PFTBA from the atmosphere, and the chemical has a very long life span. Molecules of PFTBA could linger in the lower atmosphere for hundreds of years, according to the researchers.
Yet, much is still unknown about the chemical's history, including whether concentrations of PFTBA have changed over time.

"Our measurements are snapshots within the November to December 2012 period, so we can only see how things varied during that time," Hong said. "We don't have any historical measurements, so we can't project backward or forward."
The researchers hope their findings encourage others to study the chemical's behavior, and how it could affect global warming.

"This work is the first measurement ever, but we're not in the monitoring business," Hong said. "It would be really nice if we could get other people to measure and monitor PFTBA."

The study was published online Nov. 27 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.


It's impossible to keep up with the progress of science and technology -- it's moving too fast since the Industrial Revolution. So many of the problems to our environment that emerge are a byproduct of something that we do all the time without realizing the other effects of the activity. Farming is a major source of water pollution. Cows when they chew their cud belch up large quantities of CO2. Cars, buses and power plants are the main polluters. Every now and then a push emerges to make car exhaust cleaner by mandating changes on the auto industry, but it remains a major problem.

Our population growth is one of the main causes of all this pollution. We drive cars, eat large quantities of beef, negligently pour discarded motor oil and other chemicals into the city drains. The aggregate of these activities is overwhelming our environment, and every effort to change is too little, too late.

I am not encouraged. I can only watch it happen. I admit I drive a car and eat beef. I don't pour anything down the city drains or litter. I wish the population as a whole could be made more conscious of things that could be done. Most people in the US are too involved in their daily activities to care very much. It may be a lost cause.



­
Africa Wanders From Mandela's Path To Democracy – NPR
by Greg Myre

­ When Nelson Mandela was released from prison in 1990, Africa's record on democracy was abysmal. One stark fact summed it up: Not a single African leader had ever lost his job at the ballot box in the three decades since African countries began receiving independence around 1960.

But with Mandela leading the way, South Africa became the most prominent example of the emerging democracies and open elections that spread across the continent in the 1990s.

The end of the Cold War also meant that the U.S. and the Soviet Union withdrew support for many African dictators. In some African states, this created the space for competitive politics. It other places, the dictators fell and the nations collapsed into chaos. Think Somalia.

So which way are the trend lines pointing today?
African nations are holding elections with greater regularity than ever before. However, a change of power through elections is still relatively rare and many authoritarian leaders have learned how to hold elections for show while making sure the preferred outcome is never in doubt.

In a eulogy for Mandela on Tuesday in South Africa, President Obama described him as the "last great liberator of the 20th century." Then, in a message directed at leaders across the continent, the U.S. president said it was not sufficient to simply praise Mandela.

"There are too many of us who happily embrace Madiba's legacy of racial reconciliation, but passionately resist even modest reforms that would challenge chronic poverty and growing inequality," Obama said, referring to Mandela by his clan name.

Democracies, At Least In Name
This year reflected the mixed picture and contradictory trends when it comes to democracy in Africa.

In Senegal, the African country that's perhaps been the most stable over the past half-century, challenger Macky Sall easily won the presidential runoff election in March 2012 over Abdoulaye Wade, a two-term incumbent whose third term was opposed by many voters. Both rounds of presidential voting were carried out smoothly.
Meanwhile, in Zimbabwe's election in July, President Robert Mugabe, who is 89 and has ruled for 33 years since independence, won another term. International observers described the election as flawed due to ballot box irregularities and intimidation by Mugabe's party.

"Africa is getting to the point where elections are becoming the norm in most countries," said Brooks Spector, a former U.S. diplomat who now lives in South Africa and writes about African politics for the website The Daily Maverick. "However, the record of governance in many countries is still very spotty."

Coups Outnumber Democratic Transitions
Coups are less common than they used to be, but African leaders are still more likely to be tossed out at the point of a gun than in a multiparty election.
In the Central African Republic in March, Muslim militias ousted President Francois Bozize, who is Christian. This marked the first time Muslims have come to power in a predominantly Christian nation. The ongoing fighting has displaced hundreds of thousands. French troops are now trying to restore order and the U.N. has voted to send in a peacekeeping force.

The Economist magazine last year judged there to be only one full African democracy — the Indian Ocean island nation of Mauritius — and 11 "flawed democracies" out of the more than 50 African nations.

The U.S. group Freedom House, which ranks the relative freedom of countries worldwide, said in its 2013 report that overall, conditions in Africa have declined for the past five years.

"While the region saw several significant gains, especially in West Africa, civil conflicts and the emergence in some countries of violent Islamist groups prevented an overall upgrade for political freedom," the report said.

Even In South Africa, Cynicism Grows
Next year, South Africa will hold its fifth election since the end of apartheid two decades ago. Vigorous debate in parliament is the norm, the media is aggressive and lively and ordinary citizens remain extremely proud of the country's democracy.
However, there's growing cynicism over corruption and the sense that the African National Congress, Mandela's party, has become complacent after so many years in full control of the government.

Nelson Mandela, 1918-2013
The ANC remains the overwhelming electoral favorite, even though President Jacob Zuma is so unpopular in some circles that he was repeatedly jeered and booed when he appeared at Mandela's memorial service.

Zuma has been involved in a series of controversies, alienating many South Africans. A government watchdog group is currently investigating $20 million in state spending to upgrade Zuma's private home. Zuma's office says it was for improved security, but reports say it also included a swimming pool and other luxuries.

The criticism directed at Zuma is seen as part of a larger frustration with many apartheid-era problems that remain unresolved: a lack of decent housing, high unemployment and a shortage of good schools. The government has been unable to get a handle on crime and corruption is seen as becoming more widespread and entrenched.
"You can't eat democracy," is a catchphrase for South Africans who support the country's electoral politics, but believe the government hasn't been able to deliver for millions of its impoverished citizens.



On the television news was a report on a white backlash that is occurring in South Africa, as white groups set up boot camps to train young whites for a race war. On the other hand, the following long article on genocide against white farmers is found at this web site – http://www.genocidewatch.org/southafrica.html. Wikipedia also has a long article on the subject. The Wikipedia article Rainbow Nation describes the image as a simplified and candy coated reality. The racial hatred on both sides continues.

The whites are, however, a small minority, so their ability to overwhelm the black factions is not great, it seems to me, and according to the genocide watch article, the police are not actively arresting and convicting the young blacks who have killed white farmers. The government has to enforce this “rainbow” or it will be a mere fiction. I hope civil war doesn't destroy the democracy that has been set up and the vision of Mandela for egalitarianism. It would be a shame for his influence to have been so temporary.




­ White House Hires A Crisis Manager, Easing Democratic Worries – NPR
by Mara Liasson

­ It's not big enough to be called a shakeup, but the new hire announced this week at the White House is important: John Podesta will come on board in January as a counselor to the president.

Podesta is a Democratic wise man, the founder of the Center for American Progress, a policy and personnel incubator for Democratic administrations, and he just started a new think tank on income inequality — the problem President Obama says will animate his second term.

Podesta is also a second-term crisis management specialist. He was Bill Clinton's White House chief of staff from 1998 to 2001, helping him survive impeachment.
His hiring has already soothed some jangled nerves among the current president's supporters in Washington.

"I thought, 'Fantastic,' " says Dee Dee Myers, Clinton's former press secretary. She is one of a small, inside-the-beltway group of Democrats who have been desperate for reassurance that the recently unsteady Obama White House was getting its act together.
With the Podesta announcement, the White House appears to have sent that message.
"I think they've known for a while that they need to reach out, they need to broaden their circle a little," Myers says. "The president has been famously reluctant to do that. So how do you widen the lens? One of the ways you do that is you reach out and you bring in new people, and it's very helpful to bring in people who come preloaded with tremendous experience."

A Fan Of Executive Powers
Podesta is not a completely new face in the Obama camp. He ran the president-elect's widely praised transition team in 2008 and 2009, and he's been advising the White House from the outside.

Heard On 'Weekend Edition Saturday'
In November 2012, host Scott Simon talked with John Podesta about the transition from the first Obama administration to the next. Podesta served as co-chair of President Obama's 2008 transition team.
 
For some time he's been telling the Obama team that as legislative action becomes increasingly less likely, it should focus more on using the president's executive powers. Podesta told NPR in January that Obama has plenty of authority under the Constitution to change and implement policy.

"I think that he's got a lot of cards to play, and I think he can be extremely successful," he said.

The White House has taken Podesta's advice — often to the frustration of Congress. With Podesta inside the administration, the president will probably do even more.
"The execution of government does make a difference," said Podesta in another NPR interview. "It sounds incremental, but in the end of the day, putting those points on the board will make a difference in terms of what the growth rate is, what the unemployment rate is."

GOP: Podesta Can't Change What's Already Broken
Execution of government is a Podesta focus — and lately it's been an embarassing weakness for the Obama administration.

Not surprisingly, Republicans dismissed the latest personnel move as a distraction, pointing to a series of troubles — from Syria to NSA eavesdropping and, above all, to the health care rollout — that have hurt the president's ratings on credibility and competence.

"I won't give the president advice on his own staff," says Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, "but the problem here is the substance of his No. 1 issue. The issue he wanted to be most associated with is a failure, and no amount of shifting the chairs around on the Titanic is going to solve that problem."

Podesta can't erase the fact that the health care website didn't work or that the president made a promise that he now says ended up being inaccurate. But Democrat Steve Elmendorff says that Podesta can help — a lot.

"Nobody can make up for where they are," says Elmendorff, who was senior advisor to former House Democratic Leader Dick Gephardt. "The president's admitted they've made some mistakes. The staff has admitted they made some mistakes, and they need to fix it. And what John can do is provide direction and a fresh set of eyes and ears on how to move forward and do the right thing."

Podesta and the White House have a lot on their plate for the new year. They've got to get the health care law working; they need to figure out how to help Democrats get through the 2014 elections with the least amount of damage; and then, starting with the president's State of the Union speech early next year, they need to map out the final chapter of the Obama presidency.


Another adviser never hurts, and Podesta has been a trusted helper to Obama and Clinton in the past. According to this article other Democrats approve of this move, so I do too.





­ Scientists Map Vast Reserves Of Freshwater Under The Seabed – NPR
by Alan Yu

­ Not all the water in the sea is seawater.
Scientists think there are vast reserves of fresh groundwater buried under the oceans — a potentially valuable resource for coastal cities that need freshwater.
A recent report in Nature estimates the amount of fresh groundwater around the world at about 120,000 cubic miles — that's 100 times more than all the groundwater that has been pumped up from wells since the 1900s. The reserves are scattered across coastal regions around the world.

Researchers drilled down at various spots and used modeling techniques to calculate how much water there is altogether. The water isn't immediately drinkable, but it's much less salty than seawater and therefore cheaper to desalinate.

The study's lead author, Vincent Post of the National Centre for Groundwater Research and Training in Australia, says scientists knew such freshwater reserves existed but thought they formed only under rare conditions, according to ScienceDaily.
"Our research shows that fresh and brackish aquifers below the seabed are actually quite a common phenomenon," Post tells the science news site. He adds, "Knowing about these reserves is great news because this volume of water could sustain some regions for decades."

Two-thirds of the world's population will be living under water stress conditions by 2025, according to estimates by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. In particular, coastal regions of the U.S., South America, the southern parts of Africa, Europe and Australia could see their water supply drop by 20 percent or more by 2050, according to the United Nations Environmental Program.

This isn't the first time scientists have found fresh groundwater buried in the seafloor, but the study is the first global survey of all the known undersea reserves, says Mark Person, professor of hydrology at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology. He says scientists have made such discoveries around the world — including in coastal regions off Massachusetts, New Jersey, Florida, Indonesia and Tanzania.

"There's just been an explosion of interest in documenting all these instances of freshwater," says Person, one of the study's authors.

So how did all this water get there? Several million years ago, the sea level was a lot lower, so rainwater and runoff from glaciers filled up the water tables in these areas. Over time, sea levels rose and covered up the aquifers, which are sealed in by layers of sediment.

And why is this just coming to light? The depth of these reserves ranges from 650 to 3 miles. Person points out oil companies have to drill much deeper than that to find oil, so their instruments are not turned on at the level of these freshwater reserves.
Post tells ScienceDaily that there are two ways to get to the water: "Build a platform out at sea and drill into the seabed, or drill from the mainland or islands close to the aquifers."

That's not likely to come cheap.
While places such as Cape May, N.J., are already drilling and desalinating freshwater underground for use, getting to freshwater reserves under the oceans will probably be more expensive, says Kenneth Miller, professor of earth and planetary sciences at Rutgers University.

Miller's research has involved drilling into freshwater reserves offshore, and he says drilling three holes about 2,500 feet down cost around $13 million. And some reserves will be saltier – and need more processing — than others, depending on what kinds of sediment surrounds them. Finer grains seal in fresher water while coarser grains hold saltier water, Miller says.

"[Tapping the freshwater reserves] represents a potential alternative that may be economic," says Person, the study co-author. He notes, however, that the scientists have not yet tapped into one of these reserves and that this is a non-renewable resource.

And the study points out that water is relatively cheap now, but these reserves could be important if coastal areas have less water in the future.



Even if we do tap into groundwater under the sea it's likely to be partly salty, and it is a non-renewable source of water, so we need to be investing in desalination plants soon if not now, as Cape May is already doing, which could process sea water as well and will be needed to provide for our ever growing population. It could be useful at the present in areas that are often drought stricken, such as Florida and Texas. The more experience we have with desalination, the more of the “glitches” in the process will be worked out when 2050 comes. 2030 is only 15 years from now and global warming is expected to produce even more droughts.