TOKYO (AP) - A volcano erupted near Tokyo early Monday, spewing a plume of smoke more than a mile (1.6 kilometers) high and raining ash down on parts of the city. There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage.
Mount Asama, about 90 miles (145 kilometers) northwest of Tokyo, erupted at 1:51 am (0451 GMT) Monday, according to Japan's Meteorological Agency. Chunks of rock from the explosion were found about 3,300 feet (1,000 meters) away from the volcano.
The agency said volcanic ash fell on nearby areas as well as parts of Tokyo. TV reports showed neighborhoods sprinkled with white flakes.
An alert level of three, which urges nearby residents to take caution, was kept in place for a 2.5 mile (4 kilometer) radius. Alert level four advises residents to prepare for evacuation, while level five, the highest, orders evacuation, according to the agency.
The last major eruption of Mount Asamo took place in September 2004, the agency said.
With 108 active volcanos, Japan is among the most seismically busy countries in the world. The country lies in the "Ring of Fire" - a series of volcanoes and fault lines that outline the Pacific Ocean.
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20090202/D9635SB01.html
US seamen are being trained to fend off pirates
PORTLAND, Maine (AP) - With an alarming number of tankers and cargo ships getting hijacked on the high seas, the nation's maritime academies are offering more training to merchant seamen in how to fend off attacks from pirates armed not with cutlasses and flintlocks but automatic weapons and grenade launchers.
Colleges are teaching students to fishtail their vessels at high speed, drive off intruders with high-pressure water hoses and illuminate their decks with floodlights.
Anti-piracy training is not new. Nor are the techniques. But the lessons have taken on new urgency—and more courses are planned—because of the record number of attacks worldwide in 2008 by outlaws who seize ships and hold them for ransom.
At the California Maritime Academy in Vallejo, Calif., professor Donna Nincic teaches two courses on piracy. Students learn where the piracy hotspots are and how they have shifted over the years.
"If I've done anything, I've shown them that this isn't a joke, it's not about parrots and eye patches and Blackbeard and all that," Nincic said. "It's very real and it's a problem without an easy solution."
Emily Rizzo, a student at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy in Buzzards Bay, Mass., worked aboard a 760-foot cargo ship last year as part of her training. As the vessel sailed the Malacca Straits in Southeast Asia, she served on "pirate watches," learned to use hoses and took part in drills with alarms indicating the ship had been boarded.
The training "brought to light just how serious it is," said Rizzo, a 22-year-old senior from Milwaukee. "The pirates can get on board these huge ships and they know what they're doing. It's not like the old days."
The International Maritime Bureau reported 293 piracy incidents in 2008, an increase of 11 percent from the year before. Forty-nine vessels were hijacked, and 889 crew members were taken hostage. Eleven were killed and 21 reported missing and presumed dead, according to the bureau.
Piracy hotspots have been identified off East Africa and in Southeast Asia, South America and the Caribbean.
Typically, small numbers of pirates—as few as two and up to 15 or 16—draw up alongside ships in motorized skiffs and use grappling hooks and rope ladders to clamber aboard. Some of the biggest ships might have no more than two dozen crew members.
Often the pirates are armed with knives and guns. Pirates off the coast of Somalia have taken to firing automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades.
In the old days, ships were armed with cannons to guard against pirates. But nowadays, crew members for the most part do not carry guns. And maritime instructors say that arming crews is not the answer.
It is illegal for crews to carry weapons in the territorial waters of many nations, and ship captains are wary of arming crew members for fear of mutinies, Nincic said. Also, some worry that arming crew members would only cause the violence to escalate.
Instead, the best defense is vigilance, Nincic tells students.
"If you demonstrate a culture of awareness, that you look like you know you're in pirate waters and are clearly standing watch, patrolling, etc., the pirates know you're going to be more difficult to board and are possibly going to wait for the next ship and board the one that's easier," she said.
The Maine Maritime Academy in Castine, Maine, is putting together a new anti-piracy course on nonlethal defense for ship crews, said Ralph Pundt, chairman of the school's marine transportation department.
The course would teach how crews can use observation techniques, lights, fire hoses and evasive action. The best way to combat pirates, Pundt said, it to keep them from boarding in the first place.
Michael Durnan, a 42-year-old senior at Cal Maritime, was working on a tanker filled with soybean oil in 2001 when he confronted four pirates standing on the ship's stern in the Bay of Bengal off Bangladesh.
Durnan approached the men with a 2-by-4, but they threw some equipment overboard and then jumped over themselves, escaping into the darkness in small fishing boats.
"They take everything and sell everything," he said. "Anything on a ship can be sold to somebody for something."
___
On the Net:
Maine Maritime Academy: http://www.mainemaritime.edu
California Maritime Academy: http://www.csum.edu
Massachusetts Maritime Academy: http://www.maritime.edu
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D963KOSG0&show_article=1
February 3, 2009
India set to follow cheap car with £7 laptop
The government-developed computer prototype will assist in bridging the 'digital divide' between rich and poor
India has already given the world the 100,000-rupee (£1,450) Tata Nano car and a no-frills mobile telephone that costs less than 800 rupees.
The laptop that may be sold for less than the cost of a paperback book has been more than three years in the making.
It forms part of the National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology, India’s new scheme to boost learning in rural areas through the internet.
Government officials said that a prototype of the rudimentary computer was expected within months. K. K. Pant, a government spokesman, said: “This basic computing and internet access device will be an extremely powerful learning tool in the hands of the country’s youth.”
The machine is the country’s answer to the American One Laptop per Child project, which set out to produce a computer for $100 (£68). That high-profile venture led by the scientist Nicholas Negroponte ran into problems after several companies, including the chip manufacturer Intel, refused to cooperate. As a result, the cost of Mr Negroponte’s laptop will be closer to $200.
Technology experts, mindful of Mr Negroponte’s experiences, have suggested that India’s plans for an even cheaper machine are unrealistic. The respected website arstechnica.com said: “Can India do it? The inner-philanthropist hopes so but the realist who buys technology says ‘No way’. ”
The technology website said that the price of computer components was too high to make a 500-rupee laptop. Analysts at the financial management company Merrill Lynch estimated that the Negroponte laptop screen alone cost about £20. “India’s $10 price hopes appear to be nothing more than pure fantasy,” it concluded.
A government official confirmed that plans for the laptop would be outlined today but refused to give further details. Officials had put the cost of the machine previously at about 1,000 rupees but believed that the price would come down if it was mass produced. Some critics have branded the scheme a publicity stunt timed to coincide with the forthcoming general elections. Plans to cut the price to the bone appear to hinge on domestic technology that uses low levels of power.
The laptop is the result of cooperation between several of India’s elite technology institutions, including the Vellore Institute of Technology, the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore and the Semi-conductor Laboratory that forms part of India’s Space Department. Private companies are also taking part.
Down memory lane
1953 IBM’s drum memory 650, the world’s first mass-produced computer, sold for $200,000 to $400,000 (then £1,400)
1959 An integrated circuit, an essential piece of technology in computers, cost $1,000 (then £355). It now costs less than $10
1962 The IBM 7094, a data-processing system built for solving complicated scientific calculations, sold for an average price of $3,134,500 (then £1.2m). It was removed from IBM’s marketing campaign in 1969
1977 Apple sold its Apple II for $1,195 (then £680). It had only 16 kilobytes of random-access memory and the price did not include the monitor
1981 The first IBM PC cost $1,565 (then £775) and had the memory for a few text files. Source: Times archives
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/technology/article5639463.ece
Two children should be limit, says green guru
Sarah-Kate Templeton, Health Editor COUPLES who have more than two children are being “irresponsible” by creating an unbearable burden on the environment, the government’s green adviser has warned. Jonathon Porritt, who chairs the government’s Sustainable Development Commission, says curbing population growth through contraception and abortion must be at the heart of policies to fight global warming. He says political leaders and green campaigners should stop dodging the issue of environmental harm caused by an expanding population. A report by the commission, to be published next month, will say that governments must reduce population growth through better family planning. “I am unapologetic about asking people to connect up their own responsibility for their total environmental footprint and how they decide to procreate and how many children they think are appropriate,” “I think we will work our way towards a position that says that having more than two children is irresponsible. It is the ghost at the table. We have all these big issues that everybody is looking at and then you don’t really hear anyone say the “p” word.” The Optimum Population Trust, a campaign group of which Porritt is a patron, says each baby born in Britain will, during his or her lifetime, burn carbon roughly equivalent to 2½ acres of old-growth oak woodland - an area the size of Trafalgar Square. The British population, now 61m, will pass 70m by 2028, the Office for National Statistics says. The fertility rate for women born outside Britain is estimated to be 2.5, compared with 1.7 for those born here. The global population of 6.7 billion is expected to rise to 9.2 billion by 2050. Porritt, who has two children, intends to persuade environmental pressure groups to make population a focus of campaigning. “Many organisations think it is not part of their business. My mission with the Friends of the Earth and the Greenpeaces of this world is to say: ‘You are betraying the interests of your members by refusing to address population issues and you are doing it for the wrong reasons because you think it is too controversial,” he said. Porritt, a former chairman of the Green party, says the government must improve family planning, even if it means shifting money from curing illness to increasing contraception and abortion. He said: “We still have one of the highest rates of teenage pregnancies in Europe and we still have relatively high levels of pregnancies going to birth, often among women who are not convinced they want to become mothers.
http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/families/article5627634.ece
Weapons Cache Found Near Home Of Former N.J. Cop
VINELAND, N.J. (CBS 3) ―-
Click to enlarge - A cache of 250 weapons and nearly half a million rounds were found in an underground bunker on the property of a former Vineland Police officer.
- State Police discovered a massive cache of weapons at the home of a former Vineland Police officer who was taken into custody on aggravated assault charges.
- Troopers were called to the home of Brian Hinkle on Rosemont Avenue in Franklin Township after reports he was in possession of property stolen from an area home sometime last week. Hinkel served as a police officer in the 1980's.
- Authorities said Hinkel, 59, was apprehended following an altercation with a trooper last Thursday. When the troopers arrived at the home, Hinkel ran into his kitchen and brandished a loaded handgun forcing detectives to physically disarm and detain him. Hinkel was arrested on three charges of assault on an officer.
- Chopper 3 was over the four-acre property after investigators discovered a massive cache of weapons in an apparent underground bunker. Investigators said 259 weapons were found along with a half million rounds of ammunition during a search of the grounds.
- Authorities say the investigation began on Tuesday and has taken three days to carry out the search warrant, prompting officials to say that it is perhaps the largest cache of weapons that they have ever uncovered in an investigation.
- An underground bunker was also discovered on the grounds containing more weapons and ammunition which were seized and taken into evidence.
- Hinkel remains free on bail pending a court date.
- Hinkel's assumed associate remains at large on charges of burglary.
- The incident remains under investigation.
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