Almost 1 of 2 new Americans in 2008 was Latino
WASHINGTON – Hispanics made up nearly half of the more than 1 million people who became U.S. citizens last year, according to a Hispanic advocacy group.
The National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials said the number of Latinos who became Americans in fiscal year 2008 more than doubled over the previous year, to 461,317. That's nearly half of the record 1,046,539 new citizens overall in 2008, a 58 percent increase from 2007.
"Latinos who naturalize are eager to demonstrate their commitment to America by becoming full participants in our nation's civic life," said NALEO president Arturo Vargas, whose nonpartisan group works to improve the citizenship process and increase Latino participation in civic activities.
NALEO based its findings on Homeland Security Department data on the number of new citizens last year who immigrated from predominantly Spanish-speaking countries.
In a report released in March, the agency attributed the record number of new citizens to the nearly 1.4 million citizenship applications it received in 2007. Most were from people who wanted to beat a $265 increase in the citizenship application fee, from $330 to $595.
But the department also credited "special efforts" by Hispanic media, community groups and a union with high immigrant membership, all of which urged eligible permanent residents to pursue citizenship.
In fiscal year 2008, 231,815 people originally from Mexico became citizens, up almost 90 percent from 2007. Increases in citizenship among Latino immigrants from other countries were: 39,871 from Cuba, up 160 percent from the previous year; 35,796 from El Salvador, up 109 percent; 17,954 from Nicaragua, up 120 percent; and 17,087 from Guatemala, a 109 percent rise.
Most of last year's new Hispanic citizens lived in California, followed by Florida.
Vargas cited the data to encourage the Obama administration and Congress to ease the cost of applying for immigration benefits.
"Despite the record number of naturalizations, there are still millions of eligible legal permanent residents who have not yet applied for U.S. citizenship or who encounter barriers in the naturalization process," Vargas said.
On the Net:
National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials: http://www.naleo.org
Homeland Security Department statistical reports: http://www.dhs.gov/ximgtn/statistics/
I heard one commentator say we need to be using "contractors" for this kind of stuff.
US warship arrives as pirates' options dwindle
April 9, 2009 - 8:46am
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) - A U.S. destroyer kept watch Thursday on a drifting lifeboat where Somali pirates were holding an American ship captain hostage, a day after bandits hijacked a U.S.-flagged vessel for several hours before 20 crew members overpowered them.
The pirates took Capt. Richard Phillips as a hostage as they escaped the Maersk Alabama into a lifeboat in the first such attack on American sailors in around 200 years. Negotiations were believed to be under way, a relative of the captain said, but it was not clear who was conducting them.
Kevin Speers, a spokesman for the ship company Maersk, said the pirates have made no demands yet to the company. He said the safe return of the abducted captain is now its top priority.
The USS Bainbridge had arrived off the Horn of Africa near where the pirates were floating near the Maersk, he said.
"It's on the scene at this point," Speers said of the Bainbridge, adding that the lifeboat holding the pirates and the captain is out of fuel.
"The boat is dead in the water," he told AP Radio. "It's floating near the Alabama. It's my understanding that it's floating freely."
The U.S. Navy has sent up P-3 Orion surveillance aircraft and has video footage of the scene.
One senior Pentagon official, speaking on grounds of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation, described the incident now as a "somewhat of a standoff."
Though officials declined to say how close the Bainbridge is to the site, one official said of the pirates: "They can see it with their eyes." He spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of talking about a military operation in progress.
The Bainbridge was among several U.S. ships that had been patrolling in the region when the 17,000-ton U.S.-flagged cargo ship and its 20 crew were captured Wednesday.
Phillips' family was gathered at his Vermont farmhouse, anxiously watching news reports and taking telephone calls from the U.S. State Department to learn if he would be freed.
"We are on pins and needles," said Gina Coggio, 29, half-sister of Phillips' wife, Andrea, as she stood on the porch of his one-story house Wednesday in a light snow. "I know the crew has been in touch with their own family members, and we're hoping we'll hear from Richard soon."
Phillips surrendered himself to the pirates to secure the safety of the crew, Coggio said.
"What I understand is that he offered himself as the hostage," she said. "That is what he would do. It's just who he is and his response as a captain."
Coggio said she believed there were negotiations under way, although she didn't specify between whom.
With one warship nearby and more on the way, piracy expert Roger Middleton from London-based think tank Chatham House said the pirates were facing difficult choices.
"The pirates are in a very, very tight corner," Middleton said. "They've got only one guy, they've got nowhere to hide him, they've got no way to defend themselves effectively against the military who are on the way and they are hundreds of miles from Somalia."
The pirates would probably try to get to a mothership, he said, one of the larger vessels that tow the pirates' speedboats out to sea and resupply them as they lie in wait for prey. But they also would be aware that if they try to take Phillips to Somalia, they might be intercepted. And if they hand him over, they would almost certainly be arrested.
Other analysts say the U.S. will be reluctant to use force as long as one of its citizens remains hostage. French commandos, for example, have mounted two military operations against pirates once the ransom had been paid and its citizens were safe.
The Maersk Alabama, en route to neighboring Kenya and loaded with relief aid, was attacked about 380 miles (610 kilometers) east of the Somali capital of Mogadishu. It was the sixth vessel seized in a week.
Many of the pirates have shifted their operations down the Somali coastline from the Gulf of Aden to escape naval warship patrols, which had some success in preventing attacks last year.
International attention focused on Somali pirates last year after the audacious hijackings of an arms shipment and a Saudi oil supertanker. Currently warships from more than a dozen nations are patrolling off the Somali coast but analysts say the multimillion-dollar ransoms paid out by companies ensure piracy in war-ravaged, impoverished Somalia will not disappear.
The attacks often beg the question of why ship owners do not arm their crew to fend off attacks. Much of the problem lies with the cargo. The Saudi supertanker, for example, was loaded with 2 million barrels of oil. The vapor from that cargo was highly flammable; a spark from the firing of a gun could cause an explosion.
There is also the problem of keeping the pirates off the ships _ once they're on board, they will very likely fight back and people will die.
Pirates travel in open skiffs with outboard engines, working with larger ships that tow them far out to sea. They use satellite navigational and communications equipment, and have an intimate knowledge of local waters, clambering aboard commercial vessels with ladders and grappling hooks.
Any blip on an unwary ship's radar screens, alerting the crew to nearby vessels, is likely to be mistaken for fishing trawlers or any number of smaller, non-threatening ships that take to the seas every day.
It helps that the pirates' prey are usually massive, slow-moving ships. By the time anyone notices, pirates will have grappled their way onto the ship, brandishing AK-47s.
http://wtop.com/?nid=387&sid=1645156
I remember during the Olympics, China was disparaged in the press about shooting stuff in the atmosphere, to try and clear the smog. Here we are doing the same thing and yet it is ok for us to do it.
Obama to Look at Climate Engineering
WASHINGTON -- The president's new science adviser said Wednesday that global warming is so dire, the Obama administration is discussing radical technologies to cool Earth's air.
John Holdren told the Associated Press in his first interview since being confirmed last month that the idea of geoengineering the climate is being discussed. One such extreme option includes shooting pollution particles into the upper atmosphere to reflect the sun's rays. Mr. Holdren said such an experimental measure would only be used as a last resort.
"It's got to be looked at," he said. "We don't have the luxury of taking any approach off the table."
Mr. Holdren outlined several "tipping points" involving global warming that could be fast approaching. Once such milestones are reached, such as complete loss of summer sea ice in the Arctic, it increases chances of "really intolerable consequences," he said.
Twice in a half-hour interview, Mr. Holdren compared global warming to being "in a car with bad brakes driving toward a cliff in the fog."
At first, Mr. Holdren characterized the potential need to technologically tinker with the climate as just his personal view. However, he went on to say he has raised it in administration discussions.
Mr. Holdren, a 65-year-old physicist, is far from alone in taking geoengineering more seriously. The National Academy of Science is making climate tinkering the subject of its first workshop in its new multidiscipline climate challenges program. The British parliament has also discussed the idea.
The American Meteorological Society is crafting a policy statement on geoengineering that says "it is prudent to consider geoengineering's potential, to understand its limits and to avoid rash deployment."
Last week, Princeton scientist Robert Socolow told the National Academy that geoengineering should be an available option in case climate worsens dramatically.
But Mr. Holdren noted that shooting particles into the air -- making an artificial volcano as one Nobel laureate has suggested -- could have grave side effects and would not completely solve all the problems from soaring greenhouse gas emissions. So such actions could not be taken lightly, he said.
Still, "we might get desperate enough to want to use it," he added.
Another geoengineering option he mentioned was the use of so-called artificial trees to suck carbon dioxide -- the chief human-caused greenhouse gas -- out of the air and store it. At first that seemed prohibitively expensive, but a re-examination of the approach shows it might be less costly, he said.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123920773503201665.html
Lightning may predict hurricane intensity
Scientists have discovered a link between increased lightning and the strongest winds in hurricanes, a study reports online this week in the British journal Nature Geoscience.
Lead author Colin Price of Tel Aviv University in Israel and colleagues found a significant increase in lightning about a day before the most intense winds in the hurricanes they studied. The authors say this bit of advance warning could lead to better intensity forecasts.
Price and his team tracked the wind speeds of all Category 4 and 5 hurricanes, typhoons and cyclones around the world from 2005 to 2007 and compared them with global lightning data. (Category 4 storms have sustained wind speeds of 131 mph and above.) "Of the 58 hurricanes analyzed, only two showed no significant correlation between lightning and wind speed," the authors report.
Though hurricane track predictions have become significantly more accurate in recent decades, the accuracy of hurricane intensity forecasts have remained about the same.
"One of our biggest challenges is in providing skillful intensity prediction in our one- to five-day forecasts," Chris Landsea, science and operations officer at the National Hurricane Center in Miami, said in an e-mail. "So any method for assisting NHC in these predictions is welcome."
Price says real-time lightning data have become far more accessible in recent years and can now be monitored continuously at any location around the globe.
Other scientists agree that the study has merits but say additional research is needed to determine whether a link exists. "Can the authors' observations be translated into improved forecasts of hurricane intensity? Perhaps, but not without much more work," meteorologist John Brown of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder, Colo., said in an e-mail.
Joe Golden, also an NOAA meteorologist, agrees: "This study is heavy on statistics and weak on the physical linkages between lightning and hurricanes."
http://www.usatoday.com/weather/research/2009-04-08-hurricane-lightning_N.htm
You need to ask first, i think the days of getting it free are over, but ask first or go to jail. It is a good thing trying to get grease for making bio-diesel, but ask first.
Duo accused of trying to steal restaurant grease April 8, 2009 - 9:22pm
WESTLAND, Mich. (AP) - Two Detroit-area men face larceny and trespassing charges after authorities say they tried to steal used restaurant grease. Westland police Sgt. Steve Borisch said 52-year-old Christopher Kind and 44-year-old Richard Tallent were arrested early Tuesday at a restaurant in the city 10 miles west of Detroit.
Borisch said an employee of a business that collects and recycles grease under contract with area restaurants had blocked the two with his truck. He told police 1,000 pounds of grease worth about $160 had been drained from a nearby eatery's grease tank.
The Detroit News and Detroit Free Press said Kind and Tallent are free on bond.
Borisch didn't immediately return a message asking if the suspects had attorneys.
http://wtop.com/?nid=456&sid=1645640
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