Egypt Unveils Proposed Constitutional Changes - WSJ.com

Egypt Unveils Proposed Constitutional Changes - WSJ.com

By MATT BRADLEY And DAVID LUHNOW

CAIRO—Egypt's military rulers, hoping to set the stage for transparent democratic elections in six months, have unveiled a raft of proposed constitutional changes that include adopting a U.S.-style term limits of two four-year presidential terms.

The changes, announced late Saturday, come amid growing tensions between the military and protesters who ousted former President Hosni Mubarak from power earlier this month. Hours before the proposed amendments were announced, protesters and army personnel clashed near Tahrir Square, the site of this month's successful revolt.

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Reuters

Egyptian university students shouted slogans in Cairo's Tahrir Square on Sunday, demonstrating for schools to reopen.

n Sunday, some protest leaders welcomed the proposed constitutional amendments but said they fell short in some key areas.The proposed changes would overturn a Mubarak-era law that effectively allowed his ruling National Democratic Party to oversee elections, restoring full supervision of the vote to the country's independent judiciarThe changes also seek to loosen restrictions on the eligibility of presidential candidates, creating a more open field, and to forbid trials of civilians in military courts.

amendments will be put to a referendum in about two months, according to members of an eight-man legal panel appointed by the military to draft the new rules.

Some opposition and protest leaders said the committee's suggestions don't go far enough toward removing the instruments of autocracy that allowed Mr. Mubarak to cling to power for nearly 30 years.

"With all due respect, it's not enough," said Gamal Eid, the general director for the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, a Cairo-based advocacy organization. "We're not happy with the changes they made, and we're not happy with the way they chose the committee members to start with."

Mr. Eid said the NDP would retain too much influence in organizing elections, opening the door to vote rigging. He said the opposition movement also wanted a constitutional guarantee of independent and foreign monitoring of the vote.

The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces convened the eight-member committee two weeks ago to amend 10 of the most undemocratic articles in Egypt's constitution, which was suspended by the military following Mr. Mubarak's ouster Feb. 11.

The group was led by a prominent Islamist and historian and included a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, a once-outlawed Islamist group, as well as a Coptic Christian—appointments that were intended to signal tolerance and consensus, members said.

"There were no real disagreements, and everyone got along well," said Sobhi Saleh, a lawyer and former parliament member from the Muslim Brotherhood legislative bloc.

Members of the committee studied other constitutions, including the U.S. constitution, in drafting the changes. Indeed, the group could draw parallels to the U.S. Founding Fathers in one way: There were no women on the panel."We felt these were the first steps to hold clean elections and allow Egypt to move forward," said Hatem Bagato, the deputy head of Egypt's Constitutional Supreme Court, one of three court members on the panel. Mr. Bagato was emblematic of the committee's diversity: He is a Muslim who is known for his tolerant views and sends his daughters to private Catholic school.

Committee members defended the reform process, saying their proposals are meant as a temporary measure before parliamentary elections, tentatively scheduled to be held in about four months. The popularly elected parliament is then expected to select a constitutional congress of about 100 people to draft an entirely new document.

"Making a new constitution is not the role of eight people," said Atif Al Banna, a committee member. "This has to be with the participation of the political parties, political powers and civil-society organizations."

The committee's proposals come amid unsteady relations between Egypt's military and leaders of the revolt, some of whom are still organizing protests to meet their residual demands, such as prosecuting corrupt former regime officials, freeing hundreds of political prisoners and removing Mubarak-appointed ministers from Egypt's cabinet.

Some protesters who returned to Tahrir Square last Friday clashed with police and army personnel Saturday morning. Several demonstrators were briefly detained, including revolutionary youth leader Shadi El Ghazali.

In a nod toward reconciliation, the military apologized to the protesters on its Facebook page on Saturday morning for "unintentional clashes" between the military police and the "sons of the revolution."

Analysts and opposition leaders said the apology itself was a sea change in Egyptian politics.

"This was the first time the people in power in Egypt apologized for anything, but they did not take responsibility for what they did," said Ziad Al Alimi, one of the youth protest leaders.

Mr. Al Alimi said protesters are continuing to negotiate with the military while marshalling their numbers for further protests on Friday.

Write to David Luhnow at david.luhnow@wsj.com

Global warming message cooked

Global warming message cooked

Written by Administrator

Friday, 07 January 2011 17:07

As winters get harsher and the snow piles up, more and more scientists are now warning of global cooling. That's the message that more and more scientists want to get out as the global warming message slowly disappears from the mainstream media stage. On his website "NoTricksZone" Peter Gosselin lays out a list of 31 international scientists in the fields of climate and meteorology who disagree with AGW science (man-caused global warming) and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change forecasts, and are projecting much cooler weather for the next one to three decades. "Expect global cooling for the next two to three decades that will be far more damaging than global warming would have been," says Don Easterbrook, Professor Emeritus, Dept. of Geology, Western Washington University. Easterbrook points out that 30-year cooling trends in the past including 1945-1977, 1880-1915 and 1790-1820 are similar to trends that the earth could face in the next 30 years. full story at http://www.interlakespectator.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=2918102 editorial by John Coward

Zoo better to house northern animals

Zoo better to house northern animals

Re: Lucy? Laracque Doesn't Forget, The Journal, Dec. 19.

Georges Laraque has given much to Edmonton, not only in his hockey efforts, but also in the countless hours he has given to so many worthy causes in our city and province. His advocacy for Lucy the elephant is not the same as some of the shameless, self-promoting entertainment industry celebs indulging in pushing uninformed animal rights. He has even offered $100,000 without demanding concession rights. He should be commended for trying to move Lucy and end this blight on Edmonton's image.

This initiative should be looked upon by the zoo and the City as an opportunity. Media reports have shown an ailing, warm-climate elephant forced to trudge around in the snow. This does Edmonton and Alberta no good in the eyes of the many city dwellers across North America and Europe who equate all animals with pets or cartoons like Bambi and Babar. Their views may be shallow but they are real and affect how they think of other things like tourism.

Edmonton's zoo has wisely been turning it's focus away from children's entertainment to wildlife conservation and environmental education. Many look forward to the zoo's new Arctic exhibits. It is time to fully move away from storybook large tropical animals to emphasizing wildlife conservation and the preservation of gene pools from threatened populations of northern animals.

In Sunday's Journal, there were articles in the Sunday Reader showcasing the potential plight of certain populations of polar bear and musk ox. Why, oh why, does not Edmonton have polar bears and musk oxen in its zoo?

Threatened Canadian populations of these wonderful mammals live relatively nearby. I have photographed both in the wild and they are a wonderful sight. They would be a far better reason to visit Edmonton than seeing an ailing elephant trudging in the snow. These would make a far more practical exhibit than large tropical animals. We are one of the most northerly larger cities in the world.

What about maintaining grizzlies and mountain caribou in proper enclosures to preserve their genes as well as to show tourists and Albertans?

Our city's leaders should get behind a move for Lucy. Let Lucy enjoy the company of her own kind for the last part of her life. Make her the last elephant at our zoo.

Dan Backs Edmonton

© Copyright (c) The Edmonton Journal

Read more: http://www.edmontonjournal.com/better+house+northern+animals/4028662/story.html#ixzz19IixmxsG

YouTube - crazy lady.avi

jim breuer

Liftoff of Private Rocket to Usher In a New Phase

Scott Audette/Reuters

SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket sitting on the launching pad on Monday at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla.

By KENNETH CHANGPublished: December 7, 2010

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Without fanfare, without crowds of curious spectators, the future of the United States’ space program sits on a launching pad here.

The rocket, a Falcon 9 built by Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, or SpaceX, for short, is unassuming — a runt compared to NASA’s space shuttles. It is scheduled to lift off on Wednesday morning and place into orbit an empty capsule, designed to carry cargo and eventually astronauts, which will circle the Earth twice before splashing down in the Pacific. The mission is to last less than three and a half hours.

Although the flight lacks in theatrics, it marks a major shift in the space program toward private industry. It is the first demonstration flight under a National Aeronautics and Space Administration contract that is to lead to SpaceX’s ferrying supplies to the International Space Station.

NASA, under a new space exploration blueprint signed into law in October, will now embark on a similar strategy for sending astronauts to orbit — buying rides from commercial companies rather than operating its own rocket.

Few details have been revealed about the so-called commercial crew program, but the earlier cargo program, started in 2006, demonstrates some of the promise of greater bang for the buck. During a news conference on Monday, Philip McAlister, acting director of commercial spaceflight development at NASA, pointed to the $253 million NASA paid SpaceX so far for development of the Falcon 9 and Dragon capsule and to the four years that it took to reach the first demonstration flight — cheaper and quicker than previous rocket programs.

“Both of those things are remarkable,” Mr. McAlister said at the news conference, “and an anomaly in terms of any historical development that I’m aware of, in terms of a traditional NASA development.”

The hope is that the commercial crew program, with NASA likely to invest several billion dollars over the next six years, will enlist companies like SpaceX to drive down the cost of space travel and allow NASA to devote its limited budget to more ambitious missions to send astronauts farther out into the solar system.

The cargo program also offers reason for caution because companies do not always meet their lofty predictions.

The program ran into an almost immediate speed bump when one of the two companies NASA chose, Rocketplane Kistler, could not raise the money it needed. NASA canceled Kistler’s contract the following year and had to run a second competition, which was won by the Orbital Sciences Corporation of Dulles, Va.

SpaceX has been able to meet 17 of the 22 milestones in its contract, but took twice as long as it expected to do so. When it signed its contract in 2006, it predicted that it would get the first demonstration flight off in 2008.

Because of the fixed-price contract, NASA did not pay extra, but SpaceX had to seek additional financing from investors. Fixed-price contracts save taxpayers money if a company eventually completes its obligations, but waste time and money if the company fails like Kistler did. Orbital, which has received $155 million for meeting 15 of 21 milestones, is aiming for a demonstration flight late next year and beginning its cargo deliveries early in 2012.

NASA has also already paid the two companies an additional $333 million under the cargo delivery contracts.

NASA officials have also begun hedging their bets, saying that one additional space shuttle flight is needed to carry up supplies before the shuttles are retired next year. The extra supplies would provide a buffer in case the schedules of SpaceX and Orbital slip. “That gives us a little bit of margin there to make sure that station isn’t in dire circumstances before the commercial providers come fully online,” said William H. Gerstenmaier, NASA’s associate administrator for space operations.

Without the extra flight, the space station would start running short of supplies in 2012. Congress has authorized the extra flight, but NASA’s budget for 2011 has not yet been completed.

Even success in the cargo program does not assure success in carrying astronauts. Launching people into orbit is more complex and expensive, and a worry is that NASA’s exacting standards to make spaceflight as safe as possible would place expensive and onerous conditions on the companies.

Douglas R. Cooke, associate administrator of NASA’s exploration systems mission directorate, which is running the commercial crew and cargo development programs, said that a draft of the human rating standards required of the commercial companies the same 1-in-1,000 chance of a fatal accident during launching that NASA’s Ares I rocket and Orion capsule sought to meet.

Perhaps more important, the path to making a profitable business out of sending a crew into space remains unclear. A commercial market has existed for decades for the launching of satellites; for example, SpaceX has already signed a $492 million contract with Iridium Communications Inc. to launch Iridium’s next-generation communication satellites.

But NASA’s commercial crew needs might be as few as two flights a year, and no definite market beyond that yet exists for the flights, which will cost at least tens of millions of dollars per seat. John Elbon, vice president for commercial crew transportation at Boeing, which is also interested in bidding for the NASA business, said Boeing’s analysis showed that the NASA business would probably be enough to be profitable. But it is the potential of the other markets, like space tourism or private space stations, that make it much more attractive.

With Congress looking to rein in costs across the federal government, however, the commercial crew program might be squeezed even before it gets into full swing. President Obama had originally sought $6 billion over five years. Mr. Cooke said that NASA was looking at whether it could make do with half as much, $3 billion. “We’re looking at different options like that,” he said.

A version of this article appeared in print on December 8, 2010, on page A19 of the New York edition.

Capsule Built by SpaceX Returns Safely From Orbit - NYTimes.com

Capsule Built by SpaceX Returns Safely From Orbit - NYTimes.com

Scott Audette/Reuters

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket lifting off in Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Wednesday.

By KENNETH CHANG

Published: December 8, 2010

Related

• Liftoff of Private Rocket to Usher In a New Phase (December 8, 2010)

Enlarge This Image

SpaceX

The Dragon capsule returning safely to Earth.

The launch, a test of a commercially developed spacecraft designed to take cargo and eventually astronauts to the International Space Station, was successful from beginning to end on Wednesday.

The flight was the first demonstration flight in a program by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to use private companies to ferry cargo and supplies to the space station.

“It reinforces what the president laid out and what Congress endorsed as the future of space transportation,” said Lori Garver, NASA’s deputy administrator. “This does indeed validate the path we are on.”

Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, or SpaceX, launched its Falcon 9 rocket, carrying a Dragon capsule, at 10:43 a.m. Eastern time from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The rocket appeared to operate flawlessly as it headed skyward.

Nine minutes later, the Dragon capsule reached orbit. It circled the Earth twice at an altitude of 186 miles before re-entering the atmosphere. Slowed by three parachutes, it softly splashed in the Pacific Ocean about 500 miles west of northern Mexico. Ms. Garver said she had been told it landed within a mile of the recovery ship.

The entire flight lasted less than three and a half hours.

A second demonstration flight, going close to the space station but not docking, is scheduled for next spring. A third and final demonstration flight under SpaceX’s $278 million development contract would dock at the station.

With the success of the first flight, SpaceX is likely to pursue its desire to combine the second and third demonstration flights. With the completion of the demonstrations, SpaceX would then begin delivering cargo under a separate contract, worth $1.6 billion.

New Planet found outside our Solar System | Thfire.com - iNews

New Planet found outside our Solar System | Thfire.com - iNews

New Planet found outside our Solar System

Posted by Shane On November - 18 - 2010 ADD COMMENTS 754 views

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Astronomers claim to have discovered the first planet originating from outside our galaxy.

The Jupiter-like planet, they say, is part of a solar system which once belonged to a dwarf galaxy.

This dwarf galaxy was in turn devoured by our own galaxy, the Milky Way, according to a team writing in the academic journal Science.

The star, called HIP 13044, is nearing the end of its life and is 2000 light years from Earth.

The discovery was made using a telescope in Chile.

Cosmic cannibalism

Planet hunters have so far netted nearly 500 so-called “exoplanets” outside our Solar System using various astronomical techniques.

But all of those so far discovered, say the researchers, are indigenous to our own galaxy, the Milky Way.

This find is different, they say, because the planet circles a sun which belongs to a group of stars called the “Helmi stream” which are known to have once belonged to a separate dwarf galaxy.

This galaxy was gobbled up by the Milky Way between six and nine billion years ago in an act of intergalactic cannibalism.

The new planet is thought to have a minimum mass 1.25 times that of Jupiter and circles in close proximity to its parent star, with an orbit lasting just 16.2 days.

It sits in the southern constellation of Fornax.

The planet would have been formed in the early era of its solar system, before the world was incorporated into our own galaxy, say the researchers.

“This discovery is very exciting,” said Rainer Klement of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany, who targetted the stars in the study.

“For the first time, astronomers have detected a planetary system in a stellar stream of extragalactic origin. This cosmic merger has brought an extragalactic planet within our reach.”

Dr Robert Massey of the UK’s Royal Astronomical Society said the paper provided the first “hard evidence” of a planet of extragalactic origin.

“There’s every reason to believe that planets are really quite widespread throughout the Universe, not just in our own galaxy, the Milky Way, but also in the thousands of millions of others there are,” he said, “but this is the first time we’ve got hard evidence of that.”

End Days

The new find might also offer us a glimpse of what the final days of our own Solar System may look like.

HIP 13044 is nearing its end. Having consumed all the hydrogen fuel in its core, it expanded massively into a “red giant” and might have eaten up smaller rocky planets like our own Earth in the process, before contracting.

The new Jupiter-like planet discovered appears to have survived the fireball, for the moment.

“This discovery is particularly intriguing when we consider the distant future of our own planetary system, as the Sun is also expected to become a red giant in about five billion years,” said Dr Johny Setiawan, who also works at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, and who led the study.

“The star is rotating relatively quickly,” he said. “One explanation is that HIP 13044 swallowed its inner planets during the red giant phase, which would make the star spin more quickly.”

The new planet was discovered using what is called the “radial velocity method” which involves detecting small wobbles in a star caused by a planet as it tugs on its sun.

These wobbles were picked up using a ground-based telescope at the European Southern Observatory’s La Silla facility in Chile.

NASA Discovers a New Planet In Our Solar System - Planet X

NASA Discovers a New Planet In Our Solar System - Planet X
Date: 09/12/2005

Literally Planet X, especially if you use Roman numerals, NASA scientists have discovered a 10th planet in our solar system.

The planet, larger than Pluto, was discovered using the Samuel Oschin Telescope at Palomar Observatory near San Diego, Calif. The discovery was announced today by planetary scientist Dr. Mike Brown of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., whose research is partly funded by NASA.

But, Is It a Planet?

While this object has many similarities to others in the Kuiper belt, its sheer size in relation to the nine known planets means that it can only be classified as a planet, according to Dr. Brown. Currently about 97 times further from the sun than the Earth, the planet is the farthest-known object in the solar system, and the third brightest of the Kuiper belt objects.

"It will be visible with a telescope over the next six months and is currently almost directly overhead in the early-morning eastern sky, in the constellation Cetus," said Brown, who made the discovery with colleagues Chad Trujillo, of the Gemini Observatory in Mauna Kea, Hawaii, and David Rabinowitz, of Yale University, New Haven, Conn., on January 8.

A Halloween Treat

Catalogued as 2003UB313, it was first photographed with the 48-inch Samuel Oschin Telescope on October 31, 2003 by Brown, Trujillo and Rabinowitz. At that time the object was so far away that its motion was not detected until they reanalyzed the data in January of this year. In the last seven months, the scientists have been studying the planet to better estimate its size and its motions.

How Big Is It?

"It's definitely bigger than Pluto," said Brown, who is a professor of planetary astronomy.

Scientists are able to estimate the size of a solar system object by its brightness, just as one can infer the size of a faraway light bulb if one knows its wattage. The reflectance of this planet is not yet known. Scientists can not yet tell how much light from the sun is reflected away, but the amount of light the planet reflects puts a lower limit on its size.

"Even if it reflected 100 percent of the light reaching it, it would still be as big as Pluto," says Brown. "I'd say it's probably one and a half times the size of Pluto, but we're not sure yet of the final size.

"We are 100 percent confident that this is the first object bigger than Pluto ever found in the outer solar system," Brown added.

The size of the planet is limited by observations using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, which has already proved its mettle in studying the heat of dim, faint, faraway objects such as the Kuiper-belt bodies. Because Spitzer is unable to detect the new planet, the overall diameter must be less than 2,000 miles, said Brown.

Test flight of new private spacecraft set for Wednesday; cracks prompted 1 day delay

Test flight of new private spacecraft set for Wednesday; cracks prompted 1 day delay

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - A test flight for a new private spacecraft is set for Wednesday morning.

Space Explorations Technologies Corp. had been aiming for a Tuesday launch from Cape Canaveral. But the company, known as SpaceX, delayed the flight to repair cracks in the upper-stage rocket nozzle.

It will be the first launch under a NASA program to get supplies to the International Space Station via private companies once the shuttles stop flying next year.

SpaceX's Dragon capsule won't fly to the space station. Rather, it will circle Earth twice in a flight demo, then splash into the Pacific. It will be the first attempt by a commercial company to recover a spacecraft re-entering from orbit.

___

Online:

NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/offices/c3po/home/cots_project.html

SpaceX: http://www.spacex.com/