![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
pauldrye introduces us to the failed late-19th century Hawai'ian attempt to absorb Samoa into a Pacific islands state.zarq has provided an interesting roundup of articles and sundry on the news that Putongua is displacing Cantonese and other like tongues in the Chinese diaspora.When Christopher Skinner was killed on the weekend, one of the first things police did was look for security-camera video of the crime. Mr. Skinner, 27, who was engaged to be married to his boyfriend and planning to go to law school, was downtown at about 3 a.m. Sunday when he got into an altercation with two men. Police believe the men knocked him to the ground, got into their black SUV and ran him over – a despicable crime if there ever was one.
What police desperately need is evidence that would help them identify the men or their vehicle. If this were London, England, where thousands of CCTV, or closed circuit TV, cameras monitor public spaces, they might have it by now. But Toronto police have exactly 23 – yes, 23 – CCTV cameras. So, instead, police are going from store to store in the area around Adelaide and Victoria Streets, hoping a private security camera picked something up. So far, all they have is fragmentary images of Mr. Skinner walking on the street before the crime and of the SUV leaving the scene, but nothing on the crime itself.
The Skinner case makes a powerful argument for putting many more CCTV cameras on city streets. Stacy Gallant, the homicide detective investigating the murder, says he would like to see them on every corner, not just in the rowdy downtown entertainment district but in other high-risk parts of town. He calls them an “invaluable” crime-fighting tool. Even if they don’t capture the actual crime, they can help police build a timeline of what happened when, identify potential witnesses and corroborate or rebut evidence later given in court.
[. . .]
CCTV is no panacea. It isn’t likely to work in spread-out areas – say the troubled Malvern district – where you would need thousands of cameras to cover the turf. In Britain, which has more than four million CCTV cameras, evidence is mixed about how successful CCTV is at actually deterring crimes, as opposed to solving them after the fact. “Like every tool, it has to be used at the right time and the right place,” says Toronto Police Staff Sergeant Mark Barkley, who helps oversee the CCTV effort. “Cameras do not replace police officers; they support them.”
Then, of course, there is the whole issue of privacy. Opponents of CCTV say it is taking us toward an Orwellian world where the state can follow our every move. While it’s healthy to worry about Big Brother, those fears are overblown.
Three decades after Pete Seeger's visit, a modern constitution confirmed the power of the representatives of the banking elite that have long dominated the principality. As long as the economic prospects were fine, and a steady stream of day-visitors from Barcelona and Toulouse, each under four hours away by car, came for duty-free goods and to take money from their undeclared bank accounts, there was no reason to change. But the shifting economic climate - as well as pressure from France and Spain over banking secrecy - has altered that.
The elections of April 2009 for the twenty-eight seats in the Andorran parliament brought to power for the first time the Andorran Social-Democratic Party (PSA), headed by the lawyer Jaume Bartumeu. The traditional ruling party, the Reformist Coalition (and a recent split from it, Andorra for Change [ApC]) were pushed into opposition. There is also a small Green Party, which won 3.5% of the vote, and supports the PSA: its representatives are proud to declare that they are the first party in Andorran history to call for a "republic", i.e. the abolition of the "co-princes" arrangement.
All parties have committed themselves to meeting the demands of the new European banking and taxation systems: if Switzerland is unable to resist pressure from Europe and the USA, it is evident even to the most resistant of Andorrans that they cannot either, even as they point out that the biggest fraud in Europe is not the existence of tax-havens, but the European Union's VAT system. Sarkozy's threats, and the sharpening of the global-governance response to the crisis reflected in the formalisation of the Group of Twenty (G20) at the Pittsburgh summit on 24-25 September 2009, have served to focus minds in the co-principality.
However, as younger Andorrans are quick to point out, it is not just the banking and tax systems that are in need of change, but the whole "Andorran model" of banking, duty-free and winter sports. At present, considerable efforts are going into promoting Andorra as an all-year round tourist resort. The country has a rich heritage of Romanesque churches - although, sadly, over 80% of all the original frescoes are now housed elsewhere (in the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya in Barcelona, in private collections in the United States and other, unknown, places, and, in the case of some works stolen by the visiting members of the Gestapo during the second world war, in Germany). The country can certainly boast a healthy climate and its mountain slopes are ideal for summer walking.
Offshore supply vessels resembling large, floating flat-backed trucks fill Victoria Dock, unable to find charters in a sign of the downturn in Britain's oil industry.
With U.K. North Sea oil and gas production 44 per cent below its peak, self-styled oil capital of Europe Aberdeen fears the slowdown is not simply cyclical: it is targeting diversification into areas including green energy.
Throughout a hydrocarbon heyday that has run to almost five decades, the city has to some extent been preparing for the end.
The oil industry that at one stage sparked talk of Scotland as “the Kuwait of the West” has already outlived most predictions.
“I'm steering my kids away from anything to do with oil,” said John Irvine, a lorry driver who used to work on the rigs. “It's not going to last forever.”
[. . .]
The North Sea industry, with output of 2.5 million barrels of oil equivalent per day currently, pays more to U.K. government coffers than any other industry, is one of the highest spenders on goods and services and an important employer.
Around 40 per cent of Aberdeen area's £10.5-billion economy is reliant on the industry, according to the Aberdeen and Grampian Chamber of Commerce.
Oil has pushed unemployment in the Granite City, as Aberdeen is known for the hard, volcanic rock from which most of its buildings are constructed, to less than half the U.K. average.
But with Brent crude at around $80 a barrel, nearly half where it was a year ago, the port authority says the harbour is quieter now.
Yemen has experienced extremely rapid population growth over the last century. The total fertility rate was stable somewhere between 8-9 for the better part of the 20th century and only started to decline slowly in 90's. According to UN estimates, it still at a high level of about 5.3. The result is of course entirely predictable. From a relatively small population of 4.5 million in 1950 it now has about 25 million people, which the UN expects to double again to more than 50 million by 2050. Yemen has an extraordinarily young population with a median age of about 18 years and almost two thirds of the population younger than 25.
Such a young population would be a challenge for far more functional states than Yemen. With a stagnant economy and a state so weak it's barely existant outside cities, Yemen can't provide jobs and education for its young. The unemployment rate is estimated (and it's probably a very rough estimate) to be aroundd 35%. The education system can't keep up with the exploding population and it is estimated that around 2/3 of women are illiterate and more than two million children do not attend school.
Hannan, an 18-year-old mother of one from Lahej, near Aden, said that only the comparatively well-off could plan for cuts in supply. “In a good week we’ll have a water supply all week but then the following week there will be water only for a day or two,” she said.
She and her husband, a factory worker, pay 3,000 riyals (£9) for a week’s supply of water from a touring water truck when the taps run dry. With an income of only 20,000 riyals (£60) per month, this means the family often spend half their income on water.
“There are a lot of people who can’t afford it and they have to rely on their neighbours to help,” she said.
Her neighbour, Anisa, 40, said: “When the water goes, it’s a sign of trouble in the community.”
Water available across Yemen amounts to 100 to 200 cubic metres per person per year, far below the international water poverty line of 1,000 cubic metres.
Groundwater reserves are being used faster than they can replenish themselves, especially in the Sanaa basin, where water once found 20 metres below the surface is now 200 metres deep, and despite the rainwater tanks on the roofs of most houses.
In desperation some citizens have dug unlicensed wells, compounding the problem. In Taiz, in the south, tapwater is available only once every 45 days. In the mountainous Malhan district in the north, women and children climb a 1,500m mountain to collect water from a spring, often in the small hours to avoid long queues.
Yesterday, Tuesday, October 20 2009, the last Coach Canada bus departed the Guelph bus terminal for its run down Highway 6 to Waterdown, McMaster University, and Downtown Hamilton. The service, which Coach Canada claimed was a money loser, was reduced in August from four or five trips a day to one round trip a week.
On October 31, GO Transit will begin a new daily bus service between Square One in Mississauga and the University of Waterloo, making stops at Wilfred Laurier University, Downtown Kitchener, Highway 24 in Cambridge, and Milton (with two weekday round trips connecting to GO trains there).
These two pieces of news are more related than one may think.
This is the third time this year GO Transit has expanded its bus service well outside its traditional territory of Greater Toronto and Hamilton. In September, GO launched two new bus services connecting to the Lakeshore GO train; a route from Oshawa GO to Downtown Peterborough and Trent University, and from Burlington GO Station to Grimsby, St. Catharines and Niagara Falls. In addition, it has grand plans to extend GO train service to the VIA Station in Kitchener. One might be inclined to see these moves as empire-building.
GO Transit has provided service outside its area for many years, with some routes transferred from the TTC-owned Grey Coach Lines. These include: a local bus from Toronto through Brampton to Guelph; a bus extension from the Bradford GO Station (itself in Simcoe County) to Barrie; and a weekday bus connection to Orangeville via Brampton GO Station.
With this, we are seeing GO Transit transform even more from a commuter system to a regional transit provider.
This article addresses questions of U.S. international legal and space policy arising from current proposals of the U.S., Russia, China and India to establish national bases on the Moon, in part with the purpose of mining and bringing to Earth Helium-3 (He-3). He-3 is an isotope of helium that is available in quantity only on the Moon and could, as an ideal fuel for nuclear fusion reactors, furnish humanity a virtually unlimited source of safe, non-polluting energy for centuries to come. For example, it is estimated that 40 tons of liquefied He-3 brought from the Moon to the Earth – about the amount that could comfortably fit in the cargo bays of two of the existing U.S. space shuttles – would provide sufficient fuel for He-3-based fusion reactors to meet the full electrical needs of the U.S. – or a quarter of the entire world’s electrical needs – for an entire year. However, there is as yet no international consensus on whether, or how, any nation or private enterprise can exploit or acquire title to He-3 or other lunar resources. The article calls attention to what may become a “race to the Moon” to obtain He-3 and discusses: (1) the technical and economic prospects for the development of He-3-based energy; (2) the present legal situation concerning the exploitation of lunar resources such as He-3; and (3) policy options for the U.S. regarding the establishment of an international legal regime capable of avoiding conflict in the exploitation of He-3 and other lunar resources and facilitating the broad scale development of He-3-based energy.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
branchandrootdancing_serpent
