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At least 30 Iraqi childrenPosted on 11/12/2009 at 10:04 PM - 0 Comments - Post Comment - LinkAt least 30 Iraqi children riding in a bus were among the 160 people killed in Sunday's twin car bombings in Baghdad, the Interior Ministry said Monday.At least 540 people were wounded in Sunday's attacks, the deadliest in the capital in more than two years, the ministry said. One of the bombs exploded inflatable outside Baghdad's governorate building, the other outside the Justice Ministry. The bombs detonated in quick succession about 10:30 a.m., officials said. The children were packed in a mini bus that was outside the Justice Ministry building, a ministry official said. The vehicle carrying the explosives that detonated outside the ministry building was a stolen white pick-up from Falluja, Baghdad Gov. Salah Abdul Razzaq told CNN during his inspection of the bomb site. Images from the time of the attack showed the truck, linked to the Department of Water, pull up to the side of the building and blow up, he said. Plumes of smoke billowed from the sites as victims fled, some with blood streaming down their faces. The streets were strewn with debris, including charred cars and chunks of concrete. Some government buildings and others in the area were heavily damaged. Video: Suicide bombings kill dozens RELATED TOPICS Among the wounded were three American security contractors, the U.S. Embassy said, declining to provide further details. The area struck is close to the heavily guarded "Green Zone," which houses the embassy. The blasts sparked questions about Iraq's security and national elections planned for January. Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who visited the scene shortly after the explosions, said holding the inflatable bouncer elections as scheduled would send a strong message to the attackers. "The cowardly attack ... should not affect the determination of the Iraqi people from continuing their battle against the deposed regime and the gangs of criminal Baath party, and the terrorist al Qaeda organization,'" al-Maliki said in a written statement. U.S. President Barack Obama called the attacks an attempt to derail progress in Iraq, and pledged to work closely with the country as it prepares for elections. Obama spoke with the prime minister and President Jalal Talabani to express his condolences and reiterate U.S. support. In August, more than 100 people were killed in a series of bombings that led to tightened security in Baghdad. Blast walls were installed across the city and checkpoints were added. Two years earlier, three truck bombings killed hundreds in Qahtaniya, in northern Iraq. Sunday's attacks were the inflatable castles deadliest on Iraqi civilians since those blasts in August 2007. A day before Sunday's explosions, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, visited Iraq for the first time. During her trip, she made a condolence stop at the Foreign Ministry, one of six sites attacked in August. Iraqis are supposed to go to the polls January 16, but parliament has not passed key election legislation, putting the balloting in limbo. The president, prime minister and other top officials are scheduled to meet Monday to discuss the elections law and security concerns. Climate chief Lord Stern: give up meat to save the planetPosted on 11/12/2009 at 10:03 PM - 0 Comments - Post Comment - LinkPeople will need to consider turning vegetarian if the world is to conquer climate change, according to a leading authority on global warming.In an interview with The Times, Lord Stern of Brentford said: ¡°Meat is a wasteful use of water and creates a lot of greenhouse gases. It puts enormous pressure on the world¡¯s resources. A vegetarian diet is better.¡± Direct emissions of methane from cows and pigs is a significant source of greenhouse gases. Methane is pearl jewelry 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide as a global warming gas. Lord Stern, the author of the influential 2006 Stern Review on the cost of tackling global warming, said that a successful deal at the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December would lead to soaring costs for meat and other foods that generate large quantities of greenhouse gases. Related Links He predicted that people¡¯s attitudes would evolve until meat eating became unacceptable. ¡°I think it¡¯s important that people think about what they are doing and that includes what they are eating,¡± he said. ¡°I am 61 now and attitudes towards drinking and pearl jewelry wholesale driving have changed radically since I was a student. People change their notion of what is responsible. They will increasingly ask about the carbon content of their food.¡± Lord Stern, a former chief economist of the World Bank and now I. G. Patel Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics, warned that British taxpayers would need to contribute about £3 billion a year by 2015 to help poor countries to cope with the inevitable impact of climate change. He also issued a clear message to President Obama that he must attend the meeting in Copenhagen in person in order for an effective deal to be reached. US leadership, he said, was ¡°desperately needed¡± to secure a deal. He said that he was deeply concerned that popular opinion had so far failed to grasp the scale of the changes needed to address climate change, or of the importance of the UN meeting in Copenhagen from December 7 to December 18. ¡°I am not sure that people fully understand what we are talking about or the kind of changes that will be necessary,¡± he added. Up to 20,000 delegates from 192 countries are due to attend the UN conference in the Danish capital. Its aim is to forge a deal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions sufficiently to prevent an increase in global temperatures of more than 2 degrees centigrade. Any increase above this level is expected to trigger runaway climate change, threatening the lives of hundreds of millions of people. Lord Stern saidPosted on 11/12/2009 at 10:02 PM - 0 Comments - Post Comment - LinkLord Stern said that Copenhagen presented a unique opportunity for the world to break free from its catastrophic current trajectory. He said that the world needed to agree to halve global greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 to 25 gigatonnes a year from the current level of 50 gigatonnes.UN figures suggest that meat production is responsible for about 18 per cent of global carbon emissions, including the pearl jewelry destruction of forest land for cattle ranching and the production of animal feeds such as soy. Lord Stern, who said that he was not a strict vegetarian himself, was speaking on the eve of an all-parliamentary debate on climate change. His remarks provoked anger from the meat industry. Jonathan Scurlock, of the National Farmers Union, said: ¡°Going vegetarian is not a worldwide solution. It¡¯s not a pearl jewelry wholesale view shared by the NFU. Farmers in this country are interested in evidence-based policymaking. We don¡¯t have a methane-free cow or pig available to us.¡± On average, a British person eats 50g of protein derived from meat each day ¡ª the equivalent of a chicken breast or a lamb chop. This is a relatively low level for a wealthy country but between 25 per cent and 50 per cent higher than the amount recommended by the World Health Organisation. Su Taylor, a spokeswoman for the Vegetarian Society, welcomed Lord Stern¡¯s remarks. ¡°What we choose to eat is one of the biggest factors in our personal impact on the environment,¡± she said. ¡°Meat uses up a lot of resources and a vegetarian diet consumes a lot less land and water. One of the best things you can do wholesale pearl jewelry about climate change is reduce the amount of meat in your diet.¡± The UN has warned that meat consumption is on course to double by the middle of the century. Holidaymakers are facing ChristmasPosted on 11/12/2009 at 10:00 PM - 0 Comments - Post Comment - LinkHolidaymakers are facing Christmas travel misery after unions representing British Airway¡¯s 14,000 cabin crew said that they would ballot staff on strike action.Nine months of negotiations over changes to crew working practices, a pay freeze and redundancies formally broke down yesterday as Unite, the union, called for industrial action. The ballot is expected to take at least four weeks and if cabin crew vote to take action, the first strikes are likely to be in early December. A series of rolling strikes could ground planes and cripple the airline in the run up to the busy Christmas travel freshwater pearl period. Related Links However, Willie Walsh, BA¡¯s chief executive, vowed yesterday to press ahead with his cost cutting plans for the loss-making airline. ¡°I think this just reinforces my view that the unions have failed to grasp the critical need for BA to make significant changes for the future of the business,¡± he told The Times. ¡°We have got a business to run and we have got significant improvements to make in our cost base and all parts of the business have got to contribute to that. BA has been hit hard by the recession with passenger numbers, particularly in business and first class, down dramatically. The airline lost £401 million last year and BA's management wants to reduce its cabin crew budget by about £140 million a year. It has proposed a series of measures to do so, including freezing pay and reducing the allowances given for overseas travel. More than 1,000 cabin crew will be given voluntary redundancy and a further 3,000 will move to part-time work. Mr Walsh said yesterday that he could not rule out the possibility of further compulsory redundancies. BA also wants to change the way cabin crew work by reducing the number of staff on certain routes and forcing freshwater pearl jewelry senior crew to compensate by joining the food service teams. Two weeks ago BA raised the stakes by saying it would impose these working practice changes from November 16th. A last ditch meeting between Mr Walsh and Derek Simpson, joint general secretary of Unite, failed to break the deadlock last week. The mood among many cabin crew is said to be in favour of industrial action. Mr Simpson said: "BA management's determination to impose unacceptable contractual changes on cabin crew leaves us no alternative. Negotiation, not imposition, is the only proper way to conduct industrial relations." BA's management is understood to be working on contingency plans, but if cabin crew strike the airline will almost certainly be pearl jewelry wholesale forced to cancel flights during December. Mr Walsh, speaking in Las Vegas after BA¡¯s inaugural flight to Sin City, refused to comment on possible contingency plans. He said: ¡°The changes that we are making from mid-November will go ahead regardless and I have made that very clear to them. We have got fantastic cabin crew but we can¡¯t avoid the realities of the cost structures that we have within the business and they simply are not sustainable. This is a business that is losing money. I don¡¯t take any comfort out of the fact that we have lost money last year and are losing money this year although we are making progress it still will be two consecutive years when BA has made a loss.¡± More than £100 million was wiped off the value of BA yesterday as its share price fell 10.1p to 199.7p. Weather eye: Storm lead to weather warnings for shippingPosted on 11/12/2009 at 9:20 PM - 0 Comments - Post Comment - LinkA devastating storm struck Britain 150 years ago and led to the world¡¯s first weather warnings for shipping. On October 25, 1859, a mighty gale swept across the country, uprooting pearl jewelry trees, ripping off roofs and wrecking dozens of ships.In the Irish Sea the Royal Charter, a sail and steam ship, was returning to Liverpool from Australia, carrying 430 passengers and crew and more than £300,000 in gold bullion, a fortune at the time. But in the early hours of October 26 hurricane-force winds wholesale pearl jewelry drove the ship on to the rocky coast at Anglesey. ¡°The sea was breaking over the ship with terrific fury, and the persons on board were running frantically about the deck in a state of despair,¡± one survivor recalled. The ship split in half, and more than 400 people were killed. Only a few years earlier, the new Meteorological Department, the predecessor of today¡¯s Met Office, was founded and led by Admiral FitzRoy. Weather forecasting then was a new science, but after the sinking of the Royal Charter, FitzRoy wrote to The pearl jewelry wholesale Times that storm warnings could have saved the ship. Two years later he had set up a shipping weather forecast system by collecting barometer readings from around the country using the new electronic telegraph system. Pressure readings were plotted on a weather map and signs of approaching storms were telegraphed to coastal stations, where beacons were hoisted for passing ships to see. |
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