Showing posts with label 2017 at 10:34AM. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2017 at 10:34AM. Show all posts
Thursday, October 5, 2017
Wednesday, August 23, 2017
Friday, August 18, 2017
Xenophon confirmed as UK citizen. Parliamentary future is in doubt
The South Australian senator has told the Sunday Mail this morning that the British Home Office has confirmed his citizenship.
Senator Xenophon now joins a growing list of Australian politicians caught up in the citizenship debacle that means he may not be eligible to be a member of federal Parliament.
He described the category of citizenship that he is classed as was a “colonial relic” that needed to be addressed by the Australian Parliament.
Senator Xenophon will not resign from parliament but instead had sought advice from a constitutional lawyer.
“When the parliament resumes in a little over a fortnight, I will seek the support of the Senate to refer myself to the High Court sitting as the Court of Disputed Returns,” he said.
“Overnight and this morning I have sought legal advice from an authoritative constitutional law barrister, and it is appropriate that I keep working hard for South Australians in the Senate until the case is determined later this year.”
Senator Xenophon’s citizenship category is a historical category of citizenship formerly known as a Citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies.
“The literature on this and oral advice from the UK Home Office is that this form of citizenship is quote “useless”, and indeed in many cases it confers fewer rights than an Australian Citizen travelling on an Australian passport to the United Kingdom would have.
Source: Xenophon confirmed as UK citizen
Thursday, July 6, 2017
Monday, June 19, 2017
Grenfell Tower: PM Theresa May rejects call to seize EMPTY properties to house high-rise victims
A spokeswoman indicated the Prime Minister is not considering Mr Corbyn’s plan, raised by the Labour leader as his response to the Grenfell tragedy was favourably compared with Theresa May’s.
The No 10 official said: “Look, we don’t support proposals to seize private property.
“Our focus is on rehousing people as quickly as possible, in the borough and the neighbouring borough, and that still stands.”
Pressed again she said: “We do not support the proposals to seize private property.”
The Labour leader made his call in the aftermath of last week’s devastating blaze, which has so far claimed the lives of 79…
Thursday, June 8, 2017
Only Woman on List of 100 Highest-Paid Athletes
Out of all the world’s greatest athletes, Serena Williams is the only woman who ranks among the world’s highest paid.
The new list of Forbes’s list of the world’s 100 highest paid athletes in 2017, released Thursday, includes 99 male athletes, some of whom, like Williams, are at the top of their sport. Williams ranked 51st on the list, making a $27 million last year.
Outside of her tournament wins (including setting the Open-era record for 23 grand slam titles), most of Williams’s earnings came from more than a dozen endorsement partnerships with a variety of brands including Beats By Dre, Gatorade, JP Morgan Chase, Nike and Wilson, among others, according to Forbes. She also joined the board of SurveyMonkey in May, Forbes reports.
Forbes notes that her career earnings — $84 million — is close to $50 million more than those of any other female tennis player…
More: Serena Williams: Only Woman on List of 100 Highest-Paid Athletes | Fortune.com
Wednesday, June 7, 2017
Daniel Ricciardo has a strong message for Mercedes and Ferrari
MERCEDES and Ferrari, listen up. Daniel Ricciardo has a message for you.
The Scuderia and Silver Arrows may be engaged in what looks to be a two-horse race for this year’s constructors’ championship, but that doesn’t mean the men behind the wheels of their cars are the best in the business.
Red Bull has been hamstrung by its underperforming four-wheeler in 2017 and is third in the constructors’ standings, more than 80 points behind second-placed Ferrari. Ricciardo is coming off two podium finishes on the trot but he’s never been in serious contention to challenge for a race win as his RB13 just hasn’t had the pace to match his rivals…
MORE HERE: Daniel Ricciardo rates Max Verstappen, himself above Lewis Hamilton, Sebastian Vettel
Tuesday, May 30, 2017
Urinating dog joins Fearless Girl and Charging Bull in New York statue
The artist Alex Gardega installed Pissing Pug, alternatively known as Sketchy Dog, as an act of defiance against the Fearless Girl statue that was erected earlier this year next to the Charging Bull, installed in 1985.
Fearless Girl, designed by the artist Kristen Visbal, was intended to be a comment on gender inequality, appearing on the eve of International Women’s Day, but caused the bull’s sculptor, Arturo Di Modica, to claim his work had been hijacked and the meaning subverted.
Alex Gardega told the New York Post: “It has nothing to do with feminism, and it is disrespect to the artist that made the bull …
Monday, May 22, 2017
Ariana Grande fine following incident at Manchester concert
Singer Ariana Grande is safe following an incident at her concert in Manchester, England that left at least 19 people dead, according to her representative.
“Ariana is OK. We are further investigating what happened,” Joseph Carozza, Grande’s publicist with Republic Records, told the LA Times.
Universal Music Group, the umbrella group for Republic Records, said in a statement on Facebook: “We are deeply saddened to learn of tonight’s devastating event in Manchester. Our thoughts and prayers are with all those affected by this tragedy.”
The incident occurred Monday night following Grande’s performance at the Manchester Arena as concert goers were leaving the venue, around 10:30 p.m. local time.
Nineteen people have been confirmed dead and more than 50 injured, according to the Greater Manchester Police.
Police say they are treating this as a terrorist incident until they know otherwise.
Grande’s opening acts were rapper BIA and Victoria Monet.
BIA confirmed she was safe in a tweet that has since been deleted. “GUYS WE ARE OKAY !!! THANK YOU WE LOVE YOU,” she wrote.
Grande, 23, was in town performing the first of three concerts in the UK.
Her next concert was to take place on May 25 at the O2 Arena in London.
On early Tuesday local time, the arena tweeted that it “will advise as soon as we can as to the status of those shows.”
Other dates included shows in Belgium, Poland, Germany and Switzerland.
It is not known whether the tour will continue as planned.
Since opening in 1995, the Manchester Arena has welcomed acts like U2, Lady Gaga, and the Rolling Stones. With over one million visitors per year, the venue claims to be “one of the busiest venues in the world and the largest indoor arena in Europe,” according to its website.
Grande’s “Dangerous Woman” tour kicked off in 2016 in support of her third album, which shares the same title.
She was absent from Sunday’s 2017 Billboard Music Awards because of her tour schedule.
On Friday, Grande shared a message of thanks to followers on social media in honor of her album’s first year anniversary.
She wrote that she was “having the time of my life touring this album and singing it for you every night!!”
The pop singer launched her career as a teen, snagging a role in the Broadway play “13” before she landed the role of Cat Valentine on the Nickelodeon television series “Victorious.”
In 2015, Grande’s image was briefly tarnished after she was videotaped appearing to touch donuts in a Los Angeles shop with her tongue before making disparaging comments about the United States.
The singer tweeted an apology after the video went viral.
“I am EXTREMELY proud to be an American,” she wrote. “What I said in a private moment … was taken out of context and I am sorry for not using more discretion with my choice of words.”
She offered a fuller apology later saying, “Seeing a video of yourself behaving poorly, that you have no idea was taken, is such a rude awakening, that you don’t know what to do — I was so disgusted with myself.”
Rapper Bia, whose name is Bianca Landrau, talked to Billboard in March about opening on tour for Grande.
She called the singer “a dope soul inside and out.”
“She’s a beautiful person,” Landrau said. “I’m just honored to be on her tour. It’s an amazing show. She puts so much work in. One of the most hardest working girls I know, so it’s just so amazing to see it.”
The 25-year-old Latina rapper was signed to the record label of producer Pharrell Williams after being discovered on You Tube and gathered more exposure when she appeared on the Oxygen reality show “Sisterhood of Hip Hop.”
Source: Ariana Grande fine following incident at Manchester concert – CNN.com
Saturday, May 6, 2017
Saturday, April 29, 2017
Farmland to provide all of Japan’s electricity. Farmers Producing Crops/Solar Energy Simultaneously
The practice of food and energy double-generation, known as “solar sharing” in Japan, was originally developed by Akira Nagashima in 2004. Nagashima, a retired agricultural machinery engineer, studied biology and learned of the light saturation point at which increase in the level of sunlight does not cause any further increase in the rate of photosynthesis. (Actually, only a small fraction of the incident sunlight is needed for plants to reach maximum rate of photosynthesis; too much light can be damaging, and plants have evolved mechanisms to protect themselves from being ‘sunburnt’; see [2] Harvesting Energy from Sunlight with Artificial Photosynthesis, SiS 43).
Nagashima came up with the idea of combining PV with farming. He devised and originally patented a special structure like a garden pergola, which was tested in fields with different crops and shading rates. The structures are made of pipes and rows of PV panels mounted above ground, and arranged at certain intervals to allow enough sunlight for photosynthesis. There is no concrete footing so the structures can be easily dismantled; the system is designed to allow adequate sunlight for crops and space for agricultural machinery to be used, as stipulated by MAFF guidelines.
According to Nagashima, the MAFF guidelines are to ensure that farmers remain farmers, and not to fully convert productive farmland into solar facilities. Based on his tests in the Chiba Prefecture, he recommends about 32 % shading rate. Farmers are required to report their annual crop cultivation, and if the amount cultivated on the solar-shared farmland falls below 80 %, they will be required to dismantle the PV system.
Solar-sharing pays
Japan requires about 2.5 million acres of land to supply the entire country’s electricity with PV [1]. Under the solar-share scheme, it will take about 7 million acres of farmland to supply the same amount of electricity. Japan currently has more than 11.3 million acres of available farmland.
Solar sharing could well be a readily available alternative to artificial photosynthesis [2] in harvesting sunlight, as batteries for energy storage improve and come down in price [4] (Renewable Ousting Fossil Energy, SiS 60).
Before the industrial revolution, farmers provided both crops and energy in the form of firewood and charcoal to society, Nagashima said [1], solar-share farming will do the same again and revitalize the farming sector.
Sources: CECHR@CECHR_UoD
MORE: Japanese Farmers Producing Crops and Solar Energy Simultaneously
Saturday, April 8, 2017
Indonesia: Jemaah Anshorut Daulah; 6 shot dead in East Java
Indonesia has the world’s largest Muslim population and has been on high alert over a recent resurgence in radicalism inspired by the extremist group Islamic State.
After a police chase the six abandoned their vehicle in a village in the Tuban area, not far from the industrial city of Surabaya, and attempted to flee into a plantation where they were all killed in a second gunbattle with police, East Java Police spokesman Frans Barung Mangera said on Saturday.
Police were monitoring the vehicle prior to the attack, he said, in connection with the Friday arrest of three suspected members of the group, Jemaah Anshorut Daulah (JAD), who were allegedly planning an attack on a police station and had bought M16 machine guns from the southern Philippines.
“We tried to stop that vehicle, but the vehicle did not stop,” Mangera said, adding that those in the vehicle “took out weapons and shot at officers”.
Indonesia has had some major successes tackling militancy inspired by al-Qaeda’s attacks on the United States in 2001. But there has been a resurgence of Islamist activity in recent years, some of it linked to the rise of Islamic State.
VIDEO: Indonesia: Jemaah Anshorut Daulah members shot dead in East Java | Perth Now
Monday, February 27, 2017
Al-Qaeda’s second in command killed in US drone strike
A senior al-Qaeda leader is thought to have been killed by a US drone strike in Syria‘s Idlib province.
The SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors extremist groups, said Abdullah Muhammad Rajab Abdulrahman, who had been deputy to al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, was thought to have been killed last night in an attack on a car.
Egyptian-born Abdulrahman, known by his nom de guerre Abu al-Khayr al-Masri, had also been close to Osama Bin Laden, who was killed by a team of US Navy Seals in Pakistan in 2011.
MORE HERE: Al-Qaeda’s second in command killed in US drone strike | Daily Mail Online
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)