Monday, February 25, 2008
SECAUCUS, N.J. (AP) -- Modern technology is steering some drivers the wrong way in northern New Jersey. Truck drivers using GPS devices and online directions to reach an industrial section of Secaucus are reaching only a road block on Fifth Street.
The electronic maps don't show a gate that separates the residential and industrial areas. It's only open for a couple hours weekdays.
Mayor Dennis Elwell says residents started complaining about trucks clogging their street about a year ago as GPS devices increased in popularity. Some drivers have to call police to open the gate when their trucks are too big to turn around.
A spokesman for GPS maker Garmin International says a company has to receive a request or complaint and go through a thorough process before it can add items to map.
Monday, February 25, 2008
BERLIN (AP) -- Police dogs in the western city of Duesseldorf will no longer get their feet dirty when on patrol - the entire dog unit will soon be equipped with blue plastic fiber shoes, a police spokesman said Monday.
"All 20 of our police dogs - German and Belgian shepherds - are currently being trained to walk in these shoes," Andre Hartwich said. "I'm not sure they like it, but they'll have to get used to it."
The unusual footwear is not a fashion statement, Hartwich said, but rather a necessity due to the high rate of paw injuries on duty. Especially in the city's historical old town - famous for both its pubs and drunken revelers - the dogs often step into broken beer bottles.
"Even the street-cleaning doesn't manage to remove all the glass pieces from between the streets' cobble stones," Hartwich said, adding that the dogs frequently get injured by little pieces sticking deep in their paws.
The dogs will start wearing the shoes this spring but only during operations that demand special foot protection. The shoes comes in sizes small, medium and large and were ordered in blue to match the officers uniforms, Hartwich said.
"Now we just have to teach the dogs how to tie their shoes," he joked.
By PAUL DAVENPORT
The Associated Press
Friday, February 22, 2008; 9:25 PM
PHOENIX -- Federal authorities announced corruption charges Friday accusing Rep. Rick Renzi of engineering a swap of federally owned mining land to benefit himself and a former business partner and stealing from his insurance company's clients.
A lengthy federal investigation that had put the three-term Republican congressman under a cloud for more than a year culminated in a 26-page indictment issued Thursday against him and two other men. Renzi announced Aug. 23 that he wouldn't run for re-election in Arizona's mostly rural 1st Congressional District.
"Congressman Renzi deprived the citizens of Arizona of his honest services as a United States elected representative," U.S. Attorney Diane J. Humetewa said.
The indictment's 35 counts include charges of conspiracy, wire fraud, money laundering, insurance fraud and extortion. Most of the charges allege Renzi, 49, used his office to promote a land swap to collect on a debt owed by former Renzi associate James W. Sandlin of Sherman, Texas.
Renzi, Sandlin and Andrew Beardall of Rockville, Md., another of the congressman's former business associates, were to be arraigned in Tucson on March 6. Convictions on the most serious charges carry maximum penalties of 20 years in prison.
Renzi has denied wrongdoing, and his attorney, Kelly Kramer, issued a brief statement saying Renzi would "fight these charges until he is vindicated and his family's name is restored."
GOP leadership, however, immediately pressured Renzi to step down.
House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio called the charges against Renzi "completely unacceptable for a member of Congress" and said Renzi should "seriously consider whether he can continue to effectively represent his constituents under these circumstances."
Renzi had been considered in political peril ever since FBI agents raided his wife's insurance business in the southern Arizona town of Sonoita in October 2006. He immediately stepped down from the House Intelligence Committee, and followed that by taking a leave of absence from the House Financial Services and Natural Services committees.
Authorities accuse Renzi of using his position as a member of the Natural Resources Committee to push land deals for Sandlin. Renzi wanted Sandlin to make money so the congressman could be paid for an earlier land deal they made together, according to the indictment.
Attorneys for Sandlin did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
In 2005, Renzi promised to support proposed land exchanges sought by an unidentified investment firm and an unidentified company that owned mineral rights to a copper deposit on federal property in his district, but only if they bought property owned by Sandlin, the indictment states.
The mining company didn't make the purchase, prompting Renzi to tell the business' leaders, "No Sandlin property, no bill," the indictment states.
The investment group agreed to purchase Sandlin's land, and Renzi received $733,000 from Sandlin for helping with the sale, the indictment said.
The identities of the company and the investment group were not specified in the indictment, but they were previously identified as Resolution Copper of Superior, Ariz., and Preserve Petrified Forest Land Investors of Las Vegas, Nev.
Resolution Copper on Friday issued a statement saying that it did not buy the Sandlin property after learning that Sandlin and Renzi "had a business relationship that made us uncomfortable."
Officials from the investment group could not immediately be reached Friday.
"Renzi was having financial difficulty throughout 2005 and needed a substantial infusion of funds to keep his insurance business solvent and to maintain his personal lifestyle," the indictment reads.
The 27 counts in that part of the indictment included conspiracy, wire fraud and money laundering.
Other charges including conspiracy, extortion and insurance fraud relate to allegations that Renzi funneled cash from his insurance firm in 2002 to fund his first campaign. Prosecutors allege Renzi and Beardall embezzled more than $400,000 in insurance premiums from Renzi's insurance business and misled customers and state insurance regulators.
Beardall's lawyer, Lucius T. Outlaw III [Ed. Note: Lucius T Outlaw III?!!], said his client is confident the facts will show he never tried to defraud the government or injure anyone.
Renzi is one of 24 co-chairmen for Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign in Arizona. McCain seemed surprised when asked about the indictment Friday at a campaign stop in Indianapolis, choosing his words carefully, shaking his head and speaking slowly.
"I'm sorry. I feel for the family; as you know, he has 12 children," McCain said. "But I don't know enough of the details to make a judgment. These kinds of things are always very unfortunate. ... I rely on our Department of Justice and system of justice to make the right outcome."
Government watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington applauded the Justice Department for holding Renzi "accountable given that his House colleagues refused to do so." The group has had Renzi on its "Most Corrupt Members of Congress" list for the last three years.
"Bluster aside, this latest in a string of congressional indictments demonstrates that Congress simply will not police itself," said CREW executive director Melanie Sloan.
The Renzi investigation began during the tenure of then-U.S. Attorney Paul Charlton, a Bush administration appointee who was forced from office as part of a Justice Department purge of U.S. attorneys around the country.
There has been speculation that the Renzi case figured in Charlton's ouster, but Humetewa said her office "had tremendous support" from the Justice Department and other federal law enforcement agencies.
February 23, 2008; 7:41 AM
PITTSBURGH (AP) -- People will increasingly interact with computers using speech or touch screens rather than keyboards, Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates said.
"It's one of the big bets we're making," he said during the final stop of a farewell tour before he withdraws from the company's daily operations in July.
In five years, Microsoft expects more Internet searches to be done through speech than through typing on a keyboard, Gates told about 1,200 students and faculty members Thursday at Carnegie Mellon University.
Gates also said the software that is proliferating in various branches of science, including biology and astronomy must become even more advanced.
"They're dealing with so much information that ... the need for machine learning to figure out what's going on with that data is absolutely essential," he said.
Microsoft is trying to establish ties not only with university computer science departments but also with reseachers in other scientific areas "to help us understand where new inventions are necessary," Gates said.
Gates plans to retire as Microsoft's chief software architect in July and focus on philanthropy.
That's really cool. Now, go wash your hair, bill.
February 24, 2008
LONDON (AP) -- Virgin Atlantic carried out the world's first flight of a commercial aircraft powered with biofuel on Sunday in an effort to show it can produce less carbon dioxide than normal jet fuels.
Some analysts praised the jumbo jet test flight from London to Amsterdam as a potentially useful experiment. But others criticized it as a publicity stunt and noted scientists are questioning the environmental benefits of biofuels.
"This breakthrough will help Virgin Atlantic to fly its planes using clean fuel sooner than expected," Sir Richard Branson, the airline's president, said before the Boeing 747 flew from London's Heathrow Airport to Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport.
He said the flight would provide "crucial knowledge that we can use to dramatically reduce our carbon footprint," he said.
Sunday's flight was partially fueled with a biofuel mixture of coconut and babassu oil in one of its four main fuel tanks. The jet carried pilots and several technicians, but no passengers.
Virgin Atlantic spokesman Paul Charles predicted this biofuel would produce much less CO2 than regular jet fuel, but said it will take weeks to analyze the data from Sunday's flight.
"It's great that somebody like Richard is willing to put some of his billions into an experiment aimed at reducing the climate change impact of aviation," said James Halstead, an airline analyst at the London stockbroker Dawnay Day Lochart.
"But there are a lot of unanswered questions about the usefulness of biofuels in the battle against global warming," he said.
The flight is the latest example of how the world's airlines are jumping on the environmental bandwagon by trying to find ways of reducing aviation's carbon footprint.
These efforts have included finding alternative jet fuels, developing engines that burn existing fuels more slowly, and changing the way planes land.
The experiment by Virgin Atlantic and its partners - Boeing, General Electric and Imperium Renewables - also comes at a time when high oil prices and the U.S. economic slowdown are promoting consolidation in the airline industry.
Aircraft engines cause noise pollution and emit gases and particulates that reduce air quality and contribute to global warming and global dimming, where dust and ash from natural and industrial sources block the sun to create a cooling effect.
About a year ago, the European Commission, the executive of the European Union, said greenhouse gas emissions from aviation account for about 3 percent of the total in the EU and have increased by 87 percent since 1990 as air travel cheapened.
Charles said Virgin's Boeing 747-400 jet and its engines did not have to be redesigned to use biofuel on the test flight.
He said CO2 emissions on a normal flight are generally three times the fuel burned, and that technical engineers on the test flight would take readings and analyze data to estimate its greenhouse gas emissions.
Wed Feb 13, 2008
By Will Dunham
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The most primitive bat ever found fluttered around about 52 million years ago, but lacked a key feature seen in most bats -- the ability to echolocate, hunting and navigating using a kind of sonar.
A team of scientists announced the discovery on Wednesday of a medium-sized ancient bat called Onychonycteris finneyi that possessed fully developed wings and was completely capable of flying. But they said that based on the evidence from its skeleton it lacked the ability to echolocate.
Kevin Seymour of the Royal Ontario Museum in Canada, one of the scientists who describe it in the journal Nature, said this bat appears to settle a long-standing debate of which came first in bats -- echolocation or flight. The answer is flight.
"It is like this is sort of half way to being a modern bat. It's the most primitive bat that we know. It could clearly fly. But it could not echolocate. The evidence from the skull and throat region shows us none of the features that echolocating bats have," Seymour said in a telephone interview.
Bats are the second most common type of mammal living today, constituting a fifth of all mammal species. Only rodents, which make up half of mammals, are more plentiful.
Bats also are an ancient form of mammals, and scientists have struggled to understand their early evolutionary history. Onychonycteris, unearthed in 2003 in southwestern Wyoming, appears to be filling in some important gaps.
"MISSING LINK"
"It's clearly a bat, but unlike any previously known," Nancy Simmons of the American Museum of Natural History in New York said in a statement. "In many respects it is a missing link between bats and their nonflying ancestors."
Echolocation is a form of sonar used by several mammals to navigate and hunt. They use high-pitched sounds to find the location of objects by the sounds reflected from them. Most bats use it to find flying insects to catch in mid-air. Other mammals with this ability include whales, dolphins and shrews.
The scientists called the fossil of Onychonycteris beautifully preserved, representing a previously unknown bat family. But while they call it the most primitive bat, they said a bat with more modern features, Icaronycteris, lived at the same time. Icaronycteris used echolocation, they said.
Seymour said there is nothing unusual about more primitive forms living alongside more advanced ones. "That's completely normal. Think today of the monotremes living in Australia, the egg-laying mammals," Seymour said. These include the platypus.
The wingspan of Onychonycteris was about 12 inches. It had short, broad wings, suggesting it probably could not fly as quickly as most bats that appeared later. Rather than flapping its wings continuously while flying, it may have alternated flapping and gliding while in the air.
Its teeth suggest its diet consisted mostly of insects, like most bats today. It had claws on all five of its fingers, while modern bats have them on only one or two digits of each hand. Its limb proportions are different from all other bats.
Seymour said scientists are not certain from what type of mammal bats evolved, but it could have been a tree-dwelling insectivore like a shrew.
Bats are one of only three types of vertebrates in the history of Earth to develop the ability to fly, joining the flying reptiles called pterosaurs, which went extinct 65 million years ago, and birds.
Four Deputies Suspended
February 13, 2008
TAMPA, Fla. (AP) -- Four sheriff's deputies have been suspended after a paralyzed man was tipped out of his wheelchair at a Florida jail.
Jail surveillance footage from Jan. 29 shows a veteran deputy dumping Brian Sterner out of his wheelchair and searching him on the floor after he was brought in on a warrant after a traffic violation.
Sterner said that when he was taken into a booking room and told to stand up, the deputy grew agitated when he told her he could not.
Sterner can drive a car but has not been able to walk since a 1994 wrestling accident. He has partial use of his arms.
The deputy seen tipping the wheelchair has been suspended without pay. Three others are on administrative leave.
The chief deputy said the officers' actions were "indefensible" and "anything short of dismissal would be inappropriate."
Sterner's lawyer hopes there's a criminal investigation.
By ASHOK SHARMA
The Associated Press
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
NEW DELHI -- Conservationists welcomed an Indian government plan to create eight new reserves to protect the country's dwindling tiger population, and called Wednesday for more action to prevent illegal trading in tiger parts.
It will take five years to set up the new reserves, which will cover an area of more than 11,900 square miles at a cost to taxpayers of about $153 million, the government's Tiger Project announced Tuesday. Private groups will also contribute funds.
The aim of the reserves is to protect the existing tiger population and stamp out poaching, said Rajesh Gopal, the Tiger Project secretary.
"The (government) assessment shows that though the tiger has suffered due to poaching, loss of quality habitat and loss of its prey, there is still hope," Gopal said in a statement.
New estimates suggest India's wild tiger population has dropped from nearly 3,600 five years ago to about 1,411, the Tiger Project said.
Belinda Wright, director of the Wildlife Protection Society of India, said the government may have overestimated the number of tigers in 2003, but that the falling numbers were still shocking.
"I think it's a very serious wake-up call," Wright told The Associated Press. The population of tigers in Asia is estimated at around 3,500 today compared to nearly 5,000 in 1997, she said.
Unless the government drastically improves enforcement steps against poachers and illegal wildlife traders, the number of tigers will continue to dwindle, she said, adding that India, Nepal and China - where demand for tiger parts is strongest - should cooperate to prevent the trade.
The Tiger Project plans to employ retired soldiers to patrol the reserves and hunt for poachers. It will also fill empty park ranger posts, establish eco-tourism guidelines to benefit local populations and speed up projects to relocate villages from inside the new tiger reserves.
Many impoverished villagers take on lucrative work for poaching gangs. Some 250 villages - an estimated 200,000 people - will be relocated under the plan, and each relocated family will be given 1 million rupees - about $25,600 - the government said.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008; 12:34 PM
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) -- Amsterdam, famed for its red light prostitution district, on Wednesday gave escort services six weeks to apply for official city licenses.
The order is part of a campaign to combat money laundering, human trafficking and abuse in the sex industry, which was legalized in the Netherlands in 2000.
To obtain a license, escort agencies must have a fixed address and telephone number, and must guarantee that prostitutes are healthy and work in safe conditions, the city said.
Escort agencies have six weeks to comply - or face being shut down.
n the past 18 months, the city has purchased and shut down around a third of the windows in its famed Red Light District, where scantily clad women have beckoned customers for hundreds of years.
Many were reopened last month as shops for young fashion designers.
The city also closed its most famous high-end brothel, Yab Yum, and ordered the closure of several sex theaters.
By some estimates, nearly a third of tourists who visit Amsterdam visit the Red Light District - most just for a peep.
Council spokesman Edwin Oppedijk said the city estimates that 120 escort agencies, which until now have escaped monitoring, will be affected by the licensing order.
Around 1,200 prostitutes who operate solo won't be affected.
Differentiating between legitimate escort services and pimps who are exploiting women can be difficult, Oppedijk said.
"The intention is not to shut them down, but if they are involved in illegal practices, that can be the result," he said.
So far only a handful of the estimated 60 escort services have requested a license. It was unclear how the new ordinance would be enforced.
by Guo Shipeng and Benjamin Kang Lim
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
BEIJING (Reuters) - A police chief in north China shot dead a senior local Communist Party official and a woman before killing himself, fanning speculation of a seamy corruption scandal that has drawn huge interest and is likely to alarm Beijing.
Wang Zhiping, deputy Party chief of Hohhot, capital of the northern region of Inner Mongolia, and a female tax official were found dead in his office on February 5, Caijing magazine said.
Wang, 54, a former soldier, was gunned down by Guan Liuru, police chief of Hohhot's economic development zone, Caijing said in a report on its Web site (www.caijing.com.cn) on Wednesday.
"An investigation team from the Ministry of Public Security has been sent to Hohhot," said the report, which was republished by major news portals, including state news agency www.xinhuanet.com.
A Hong Kong-based rights watchdog, the Information Centre for Human Rights and Democracy, also reported the scandal which is likely to alarm officials in Beijing obsessed with stability and their own clean image.
Guan's motive was not immediately known.
China has seen a series of violent crimes involving senior officials in recent years as corruption becomes a rampant problem, one that the Party says will threaten its own survival if not curbed.
In September 2007, Duan Yihe, former head of the local legislature in Jinan, capital city of the eastern Shandong province, was executed for blowing up his mistress with a car bomb.
