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Thursday, April 14, 2005

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang told reporters that China is protesting Japan’s plan to allow drilling for gas and oil in disputed waters in the East China Sea, characterizing the move as “a serious provocation”.

On Wednesday, Japan announced that they would begin processing applications to allow oil and gas drilling firms to explore in the disputed area, east of the “demarcation line” which has held up applications to drill in the area for decades.

“The Chinese and Japanese positions differ on that matter, but we need to continue talks from a big point of view, without inflaming conflicts, and to turn the sea of conflict into a sea of coordination,” Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi told a news conference.

Qin Gang said that China reserved “the right to take further reaction,” according to Xinhua.

“China has never ever recognized and will never recognize the demarcation line,” Qin told reporters.

Japan’s exploration of the disputed zone could start early next month, and will be defended by Japanese military vessels, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

Thursday, June 28, 2007

The World Heritage Committee of the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation has today announced in Christchurch, New Zealand that the Sydney Opera House has been added to the World Heritage List of culturally significant sites.

It is the third time that a bid has been made to include the Opera House in the list, after failing to receive enough votes in 1981 and 1996. Roni Amelan, UNESCO spokesman said the decision to list the Opera House was unanimous.

“There was consensus that it was a truly outstanding, iconic building that was a defining moment in 20 century architecture,” said Mr Amelan.

The committee described the Opera House as daring and influential. “It is a daring and visionary experiment that has had an enduring influence on the emergent architecture of the late 20th-century,” claimed the committee. “The building is a great artistic monument and an icon.”

The Sydney Opera House becomes the youngest building to be listed on the register, being built in October 1973. It joins other landmarks such as the Taj Mahal, Statue of Liberty and the Egyptian Pyramids. The Opera House becomes only the second Australian building on the list, joining the Melbourne Royal Exhibition Building and Carlton Gardens, which were added in 2004.

As a result of the listing, a 2.5 kilometre buffer will be enforced around the Opera House to protect views to and from the building. If the World Heritage values of the site are breached, the site can be placed on an endangered list and removed from the register.

Australian Prime Minister, John Howard said the Opera House is treasured throughout the world. “The Opera House, and its setting at Bennelong Point on Sydney Harbour, is an iconic and treasured place, not just for Australians but also internationally,” he said.

An excited NSW Premier, Morris Iemma informed state parliament of the UNESCO’s decision.

Jorn Utzon, the architect of the Opera House gave a statement from his home in Denmark expressing the honour of having one of his buildings listed on the register.

“World Heritage listing gives the building … a completely new value,” Mr Utzon said. “It is a gift to the city of Sydney.” Mr Utzon said it was the vision of those who worked on the construction of the Opera House for it to be Sydney’s greatest landmark.

Wednesday, July 13, 2005

The U.S. space agency NASA called off the launch of Space shuttle Discovery today after a problem with a fuel sensor in the external tank used to detect fuel exhaustion. According to the agency-run NASA TV, the low-fuel sensor was either malfunctioning or damaged. The launch was already facing the threat of a scrub due to thunderstorms in the area.

The sensor is one of four used to trigger the engine cutout after launch. Although only two are required for normal operation, and the Shuttle can be flown with one, NASA elected to maintain full redundancy. Should more of the sensors fail, the engine might burn out due to lack of fuel, a situation that has not been tested.

The problem was detected during a simulation of an empty tank. When placed in a mode simulating an empty tank, three of the sensors correctly registered that the tank was empty, while the faulty sensor stayed in the “full” state. NASA is currently unsure whether the problem relates to the sensor, the instrumentation circuits reporting the sensor’s state, or the simulation circuits.

The problem comes after a separate incident yesterday when a cockpit window cover fell from the Orbiter, damaging thermal protection tiles. A similar problem caused the replacement of the fuel tank in June. NASA described the problem as an “intermittent fault”.

The launch, which was scheduled for 3:51 ET (20:51 UTC), would have been the first launch of a shuttle since Columbia‘s February 2003 crash which killed all crew members aboard.

It is still unknown to NASA officials what caused the sensor to become defective. It is also unknown at the moment whether the issue will be fixed on the launch pad, or in the Vehicle Assembly Building – in which it takes close to a full day’s time to transport a shuttle between the two areas.

In the interim, the crew of the shuttle will stay at KSC unless there are further delays, in which case the crew might be transported back to JSC in Houston for refresher training.

Sunday, December 4, 2005

The US commander of the Multinational Security Transition Command in Iraq said that he had no knowledge of the National Strategy for Victory in Iraq document released by the US President. This, along with speculation that the document was chiefly authored by a public opinion analyst recruited by the White House have led to some critics claiming that the drafted ‘strategy’ is targeting US public opinion, not the Iraqi insurgency.

The military, political and economic strategy for Iraq, outlined last week by President Bush in a speech at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, was based by a 35-page document titled the National Strategy for Victory in Iraq. A metadata tag on the document posted on the White House website identified its author as a computer user ‘feaver_p’. It is believed to refer to Dr. Peter D. Feaver, a special advisor to the National Security Council staff.

A political scientist at Duke University, Dr. Feaver analyzed public opinion polls about the Iraq war and attitudes towards war casualties. Dr. Feaver found that US public opinion will support military engagement abroad, despite growing casualties, provided that the public believed that the war was being fought for a worthy cause and that victory was achievable.

Dr. Feaver was one of the people who helped “conceive and draft” the document, according to a White House staffer, who said that Meghan L. O’Sullivan, the deputy national security adviser for Iraq and Afghanistan, and her staff played a larger role. White House officials confirmed to the New York Times that the document’s “creation and presentation strongly reflected the public opinion research”.

The document “reflects the broad interagency effort under way in Iraq” according to an NSC spokesman Frederick Jones and had received major contributions from the Departments of Defense, State, Treasury and Homeland Security, as well as the director of National Intelligence.

On Friday, Lt. Gen. Martin Dempsey, whose Multinational Security Transition Command is responsible for building Iraq’s security forces, told reporters that he had seen the strategy document for the first time when it was released to the public. The White House had said that not all senior officers in Iraq had necessarily seen the document and Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said that he had read and critiqued the document on several occasions.

Earlier, replying to questions about the President’s strategy, White House press secretary Scott McClellan said that the document was an “inter-agency document” and an “unclassified version” of the administrations “strategy for victory in Iraq” published for the public to view.

Christopher F. Gelpi, of Duke University, who co-authored Dr. Feaver’s work titled Casualty Sensitivity and the War in Iraq, stated, “The Pentagon doesn’t need the president to give a speech and post a document on the White House Web site to know how to fight the insurgents. The document is clearly targeted at American public opinion.” In their work together, Gelpi, Feaver and Reifler found that the most important factor which determines the US public’s tolerance for US military deaths in a war is the public’s beliefs about the likelihood of success, and a secondary, but still important, factor, was found to be the public’s belief in the rightness of a war.

Friday, February 16, 2018

On Tuesday, the city council of Berkeley, California adopted by unanimous vote a resolution declaring their city a “sanctuary” for adult recreational cannabis use and sale. The resolution by the Berkeley council “declared [the City of Berkeley] to be a sanctuary for recreational cannabis customers, providers, and landlords.”

The resolution bars city employees including police from assisting federal law enforcement officials, namely the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, in enforcing federal laws relating to cannabis. The city’s measure includes protection for cannabis, but not other substances controlled and regulated by the federal government. California voters approved a referendum in 2016 that legalized cannabis production and sale in the state. That law took effect on January 1 this year.

The resolution was drafted by Mayor Jesse Arreguin and Councilmembers Ben Bartlett and Cheryl Davila.

While cannabis became legal for adults at least 21 years old under California state law, it remains a prohibited substance under the federal Controlled Substances Act. Under the U.S. Constitution, federal law is given supremacy to contradictory state and local law.

In 2008, the city previously declared itself a sanctuary city for medical cannabis, opposing federal officials seeking to shutter legal-in-California cannabis dispensaries.

In a tweet following the vote, the Berkeley mayor wrote, “In light of threats by Attorney General [Jeff] Sessions regarding a misguided crackdown on our democratic decision to legalize recreational cannabis, we have become what may be the first city in the country to declare ourselves a sanctuary city for cannabis.” The attorney general is the top federal law enforcement official in the U.S.

Last month, Sessions repealed a policy from the previous presidential administration providing legal shelter to states that legalized recreational cannabis. A January 4 memo from Sessions called for Justice Department prosecutors to enforce the federal ban on cannabis use and sale.

By another vote during the same meeting the city council reduced the sales tax on cannabis from 10 percent to 5 percent in a bid to draw more business.

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Yesterday, Pierre Gemayel was shot in his car and was declared dead at the hospital. He was the Lebanese industry minister.

Today, his corpse was driven into his native town of Bikfaya followed by thousand of people mourning him.He is the fifth personality assassinated in Lebanon in one year and the fifth of the Gemayel’s family according to his father, former president Amin Gemayel.

One week ago, Samir Geagea, the commander in chief of the Lebanese Forces, announced rumor of assassination of one minister.

The funeral of Pierre Gemayel will be held tomorrow in the cathedral of Beirut.

According to the White House National Security Council spokesman, President Bush, having expressed his condolences to Lebanon’s Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, affirmed “the unwavering commitment of the United States to help build Lebanese democracy, and to support Lebanese independence from the encroachments of Iran and Syria.”