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Monday, January 4, 2010

The United States and the United Kingdom closed their embassies in Yemen Sunday, pointing to ongoing terrorist threats. The closures came after the two nations pledged to boost counter-terrorism support to the Yemeni government.

The American embassy’s website said the threats come from al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the group linked to the failed Christmas Day airplane bombing attempt in the United States. The message in part said, “The U.S. Embassy in Sana’a is closed today, January 3, 2010, in response to ongoing threats by Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) to attack American interests in Yemen.”

Further adding, “On December 31, the U.S. Embassy sent a warden message to Americans citizens in Yemen to remind them of the continuing threat of terrorist actions and violence against American citizens and interests throughout the world. The U.S. Embassy reminds U.S. citizens to maintain a high level of vigilance and to practice enhanced security awareness.”

Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism John O. Brennan said on CNN’s State of the Union with John King, “There are indications that al Qaeda is planning to carry out an attack against a target inside of Sana’a, possibly our embassy.” Brennan added, “And what we do is to take every measure possible to ensure the safety of our diplomats and citizens abroad, so the decision was made to close the embassy.”

A spokesperson for the British Foreign Office said their embassy would be closed on Sunday and a decision to reopen would be made on Monday.

The closures come a day after U.S. General David Petraeus visited the capital, Sana’a, to discuss security issues with President Ali Abdullah Saleh. The general, who oversees the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, recently announced that the United States would more than double its security aid to the impoverished nation.

The United States gave $67 million last year to Yemen, the only country that receives more aid is Pakistan with $112 million, according to the Associated Press.

Yesterday, in his weekly radio address, President Barack Obama linked the suspect in the attempted bombing of Northwest Airlines Flight 253 to al-Qaeda saying, “We know that he traveled to Yemen, a country grappling with crushing poverty and deadly insurgencies. It appears that he joined an affiliate of al-Qaeda, and that this group, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, trained him, equipped him with those explosives and directed him to attack that plane headed for America.”

Obama annouced, “So, as President, I’ve made it a priority to strengthen our partnership with the Yemeni government-training and equipping their security forces, sharing intelligence and working with them to strike al-Qaeda terrorists.”

Obama said that they had already results prior to the Christmas Day bombing attempt saying, “So, as President, I’ve made it a priority to strengthen our partnership with the Yemeni government-training and equipping their security forces, sharing intelligence and working with them to strike al-Qaeda terrorists.”

Britain has also announced plans to join with the United States in funding a counter-terrorism police unit in Yemen, as well as plans to hold an international conference on Yemeni security later this month.

Earlier today, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown told the BBC, “This is a new type of threat and it is from a new source which is obviously Yemen, but there are many other potential sources Somalia, as well as Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

Editor Hakim Almasmari, of the Yemen Post newspaper, thinks the conference might be advantageous if it results in more development projects for rural Yemen. However, he fears what any foreign-backed military attacks could mean.

“Al-Qaeda right now is not very strong,” Almasmari said. “Its followers are not more than 400 in all. However, if the U.S. does attack Yemen, al-Qaeda will get stronger and stronger because people who lose their families in the airstrikes will join al-Qaeda not because they want to but because they want revenge against the Americans and the Yemeni government for the attacks.”

The situation has gained new urgency as the government in Sana’a finds itself overwhelmed not only by the growing terrorist threat, but also two separate rebellions, one of which has become something of a proxy war, at least in rhetoric, between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

U.S. military experts have warned that vast reaches of the impoverished nation, with its booming population and dwindling resources, could spin permanently out of the government’s control.

Militant groups from Somalia said that they would send fighters to help aid al-Qaeda in Yemen. Yemen has vowed to keep foreign extremists out.

The U.S. embassy has faced attacks from the local al-Qaeda group before, with an assault outside its gates in 2008 that left 19 people – civilians and militants – dead.

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Ray Scott is running for the Family Coalition Party in the Ontario provincial election, in the Algoma-Manitoulin riding. Wikinews’ Nick Moreau interviewed him regarding his values, his experience, and his campaign.

Stay tuned for further interviews; every candidate from every party is eligible, and will be contacted. Expect interviews from Liberals, Progressive Conservatives, New Democratic Party members, Ontario Greens, as well as members from the Family Coalition, Freedom, Communist, Libertarian, and Confederation of Regions parties, as well as independents.

Monday, June 16, 2008

A Royal Navy pilot has safely ejected from his Harrier GR7 aircraft moments before it crashed in a field near the small village of Ashwell in the county of Rutland in England. The crash occurred at about 1350 BST today.

The pilot was taken by air ambulance to Queen’s Medical Centre in Nottingham for treatment for spinal injuries.

Local resident Vic Harrison spoke to the BBC about the incident: “I thought he didn’t stand a chance, but I looked up and saw the parachute of the pilot. I really thought he had hit the houses. It was a narrow miss – it must have been just 400 yards from our house. It has been an exceptionally lucky escape.”

The plane, from the nearby RAF Cottesmore airbase, was on a training mission and is said not to have been carrying any weapons.

• The following day the scene was preserved under tents Image: Adam Brookes.

• Police and military base of operations the day after the crash Image: Adam Brookes.

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has announced its first national authority for scientific research (NASR) to coordinate and fund scientific research in the country.

The national authority for scientific research was announced on March 7 by Shaikh Nahyan bin Mubarak Al Nahyan, UAE minister for higher education and scientific research. NASR will begin with an annual budget of AED100 million (approximately US$27.2 million). The authority hopes to receive additional contributions from the public and the private sector.

NASR will look to fund research projects in various fields, including engineering, technology, medicine, water and agriculture, proposing specific projects to be competed for by researchers at universities and private research institutes.

“Projects are going to be selected to help promote scientific research and the growth of UAE society and we will compare them with international scientific research criteria,” Gulf News quoted Al Nahyan as saying at the launch.

NASR will also train scientists and develop programmes for promoting public science awareness. It will also coordinate with government authorities on the issue of intellectual property rights, by providing advice on how companies and research centres should go about protecting their discoveries in the form of patents or licenses. It will also provide scholarships for researchers in the UAE to work on international research programmes, and organise national scientific conferences. NASR forms part of the UAE’s strategic plan to improve higher education and scientific research.

Zakaria Maamar, associate professor at the College of Information Technology at Zayed University, UAE, told Science and Development Network (SciDev.Net) that, “This initiative is another boost to the research and development activities that are carried out in the UAE. It will definitely provide researchers with the appropriate funds to sustain such activities and promote best practices in the community.”

Said Elnaffar, assistant professor at the college of information technology at the United Arab Emirates University, told SciDev.Net that, with this initiative, the UAE is taking the lead and setting a good example by building a strong development infrastructure founded on knowledge discovery and research.

This article is based on UAE launches national authority for scientific research by scidev.net (Wagdy Sawahel) which has a copyright policy compatible with our CC-BY 2.5. Specifically “CC-BY-2.0 UK“

Monday, May 19, 2008

Sahnoun Daifallah, of White City, Gloucester, was today remanded in custody by Cheltenham magistrates after being arrested for spraying a “foul-smelling, brown substance” from a sports bottle. The liquid is thought to have contaminated food, books, wine bottles, and other items across several stores in Gloucestershire.

Mr Daifallah, the court was today told, committed the offences over multiple days. The attack on a Tesco supermarket, where frozen chips and wine bottles were contaminated with what Tesco claims to be a “mix of human urine, faeces, and domestic products” happened on Friday. He is also accused of a similar offence in a Morrisons supermarket 4 miles away on the same day. Two days previously, Mr Daifallah is accused of spraying the substance inside a pub near Cheltenham, contaminating food, and contaminating over 700 books in a Waterstone’s bookstore in nearby Cirencester.

Mr Daifallah today confirmed that he was at the locations stated, however he indicated he will be pleading not guilty to the charges. He has been remanded in custody until May 28th, when he will appear before Stroud magistrates via videolink to be committed to Gloucester Crown Court – a decision made by magistrates after the estimated damage by the defendant was given at over £10,000, plus cleaning and replacement expenses.

Thursday, June 23, 2011

NASA’s Cassini–Huygens spacecraft has discovered evidence for a large-scale saltwater reservoir beneath the icy crust of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. The data came from the spacecraft’s direct analysis of salt-rich ice grains close to the jets ejected from the moon. The study has been published in this week’s edition of the journal Nature.

Data from Cassini’s cosmic dust analyzer show the grains expelled from fissures, known as tiger stripes, are relatively small and usually low in salt far away from the moon. Closer to the moon’s surface, Cassini found that relatively large grains rich with sodium and potassium dominate the plumes. The salt-rich particles have an “ocean-like” composition and indicate that most, if not all, of the expelled ice and water vapor comes from the evaporation of liquid salt-water. When water freezes, the salt is squeezed out, leaving pure water ice behind.

Cassini’s ultraviolet imaging spectrograph also recently obtained complementary results that support the presence of a subsurface ocean. A team of Cassini researchers led by Candice Hansen of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona, measured gas shooting out of distinct jets originating in the moon’s south polar region at five to eight times the speed of sound, several times faster than previously measured. These observations of distinct jets, from a 2010 flyby, are consistent with results showing a difference in composition of ice grains close to the moon’s surface and those that made it out to the E ring, the outermost ring that gets its material primarily from Enceladean jets. If the plumes emanated from ice, they should have very little salt in them.

“There currently is no plausible way to produce a steady outflow of salt-rich grains from solid ice across all the tiger stripes other than salt water under Enceladus’s icy surface,” said Frank Postberg, a Cassini team scientist at the University of Heidelberg in Germany.

The data suggests a layer of water between the moon’s rocky core and its icy mantle, possibly as deep as about 50 miles (80 kilometers) beneath the surface. As this water washes against the rocks, it dissolves salt compounds and rises through fractures in the overlying ice to form reserves nearer the surface. If the outermost layer cracks open, the decrease in pressure from these reserves to space causes a plume to shoot out. Roughly 400 pounds (200 kilograms) of water vapor is lost every second in the plumes, with smaller amounts being lost as ice grains. The team calculates the water reserves must have large evaporating surfaces, or they would freeze easily and stop the plumes.

“We imagine that between the ice and the ice core there is an ocean of depth and this is somehow connected to the surface reservoir,” added Postberg.

The Cassini mission discovered Enceladus’ water-vapor and ice jets in 2005. In 2009, scientists working with the cosmic dust analyzer examined some sodium salts found in ice grains of Saturn’s E ring but the link to subsurface salt water was not definitive. The new paper analyzes three Enceladus flybys in 2008 and 2009 with the same instrument, focusing on the composition of freshly ejected plume grains. In 2008, Cassini discovered a high “density of volatile gases, water vapor, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, as well as organic materials, some 20 times denser than expected” in geysers erupting from the moon. The icy particles hit the detector target at speeds between 15,000 and 39,000 MPH (23,000 and 63,000 KPH), vaporizing instantly. Electrical fields inside the cosmic dust analyzer separated the various constituents of the impact cloud.

“Enceladus has got warmth, water and organic chemicals, some of the essential building blocks needed for life,” said Dennis Matson in 2008, Cassini project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

“This finding is a crucial new piece of evidence showing that environmental conditions favorable to the emergence of life can be sustained on icy bodies orbiting gas giant planets,” said Nicolas Altobelli, the European Space Agency’s project scientist for Cassini.

“If there is water in such an unexpected place, it leaves possibility for the rest of the universe,” said Postberg.

Monday, November 5, 2007

The Australian Prime Minister John Howard is bracing himself for the probable interest rate rise on Wednesday. Experts are saying that a rise is almost certain and that as many as three could occur within the next three months. Interest rates have never risen so close to a federal election (this year’s election on November 24) but the Prime Minister says that some interest rate rise is unavoidable in a good economy.

“Now is not the time to replace an experienced government on economic issues with an inexperienced government,” Howard warned today. Labor leader Kevin Rudd recalls the Prime Minister’s promise at the 2004 election to keep interest rates low – labelled the ‘big interest rate con’ by the opposition leader.

Treasurer Peter Costello reaffirms the Coalition’s policy on the workplace relations laws, saying that a reversal of the laws by a Labor government would push up inflation and interest rates.