moving

moving to LJ, bellweathers.

revamp coming

yes. another revamp. i’ll try to keep it as the last one.

Protest In Thai

Mass Thai protest over leadership

Protesters in Thailand accuse General Prem Tinsulanonda of “engineering a coup” three years back. “Coup” as “coup d’état”, the overthrow of a government, usually led by military. They want him and current PM Abhisit Vejjajiva (protesters say he took power illegally, according to the BBC) to resign from their posts in government.
Tinsulanonda was a former army commander and PM.
The protesters gathered around Tinsulanonda’s house were clad in red while protest leaders gave speeches and denounced the two.

Read more @ Q13 Fox News and the BBC.

flooding all round

Southern Africa swamped by floods 4/7/09

Between Namibia and Mozambique, rivers are rising and flooding the lands around them. More than 100 have died, approximately 100,000 are now homeless, and millions have been affected by the floods.

Heavy rains in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and northern Zambia.

Worst flooding in half a century.

Australian deluge worsens floods 4/2/09

Storm with strong winds and heavy rains hit eastern Australia, knocking out power and blocking roads.

Recorded almost thirty inches of rain in 48 hours from some areas.

Southern Australia experiencing very dry conditions.

NOAA Forecasters: Red River Will Crest Again in Fargo-Moorhead in Late April

After the flooding in late March, another flooding from the Red River is expected later in the month of April.

The flooding of ’97 brought the river to a 54 foot crest.

Minnesota Public Radio has an entire section on the flooding of the river. Here for a comparison between the ’09 flooding, so far, and the ’97 flooding.

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Information from the BBC, NOAA, and Minnesota Public Radio was used in this post.

scriptfrenzy

I’m taking a break from the news posts today, will continue them again tomorrow. But some interesting things I heard about today you might want to search: Cherry blossom fests start up this week, marking the beginning of spring, a thirteen-year-old boy drove 1, 300 miles, and the earthquake in Italy this last weekend. 

Script Frenzy is a fun program that starts at the very second April 1st rolls along and ends once the last second of April 31st drops to the bottom of the hourglass. There’s a simple goal: write 100 pages in the month of April. This is the third year SF is running and my second year. Don’t think that you need to know anything about scriptwriting or telling a story. Last year, I knew not a drop of rainwater about scriptwriting or telling a story in this format. And in that month I learned how to write a script! This year I’m figuring out radio drama, and it’s going well so far. 

Darn editing half of me. I just have to keep that away.

The site doesn’t offer a reward (except for the icons and certificates you get at the end to show that you’ve completed the task! ) but that’s the thing. What could be more rewarding than finishing a script that you can call your own? Bet very few of your friends and colleagues have done that. 

Just check out the site. There’s still enough time left in April to get to that finish line.

To Cut Back On Emissions

US to be ‘pragmatic on climate’

Obama has plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050, as he said back in the November campaigns of 2008. The BBC has an animation that shows how the greenhouse effect works. Pershing, head of the US delegation in the UN says the US would help fund developing nations’ development of “clean technology”, just not as much as they are asking for. Clean technology: Just another phrase for renewable energy, like solar or wind.
It’s just like what we learn in social studies, the developed nations are looking at the developing nations to cut back on emissions and the developing nations are looking at the developed nations to cut back on their emissions.

Negotiators from China, India and Papua (representing vulnerable states) all told BBC News that the US and other rich nations needed to cut emissions much harder and offer concrete funding.

-BBC News

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Information from the BBC was used in this post.

Drugs for Weapons

Mexico arrests ‘drug cartel boss’

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Smugglers have been bringing illegal drugs over the border from Mexico in trade for weapons from the US. Border security was increased, a couple of weeks back.

Vicente Carrillo Leyva, the suspect drug cartel leader was arrested in Mexico City, the BBC article says. There is a map of Mexico on the above link that shows the areas affected by the drug gangs.
Gangs have been fighting over territory, killing over eight thousand people, one thousand so far this year, in Mexico. The border security increase included bringing in more immigration, customs and anti-drug agents, and gun law enforcement officers.
Even Hilary Clinton admitted the US was also to blame for the drug-weapons smuggling and violence, after Mexico said the US was not gaining any results from trying to stop weapons being brought down to Mexico, as US gun laws are less strict.
Drugs being smuggled over to the US included cocaine and marijuana.

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Information from the BBC was used in this post.

Chickens Do Math

Baby chicks do basic arithmetic

Don’t be waiting for the “April Fools!” This is real.

All I know about chickens is that they live up to around a year or so. I couldn’t find anything relevant to this on the internet, so I’ll just leave this up here for you to see. Isn’t it interesting?

Going To Mars

Mars ‘journey’ experiment begins

The project was in announced back in late 2006, with two volunteers coming from France and Germany and four from Russia.
So it is basically a simulation of what it actually would be like for humans to hop on board and head to Mars–and back–except that they would get to leave early if there were problems, like homesickness. The volunteers will work and act with mission control and the space craft as if they were heading to Mars. Meaning they will be working each day, eating the same food astronauts eat, etc. Emails sent to mission control would also meet a twenty-minute delay.
Lasting for 105 days, this is just a preliminary of the complete experiment to be carried out sometime around the close of 2009 and the start of 2010.
The ESA provides a link to updates from the volunteers.
NASA has a page about Mars, and more. Mars is the closet in comparison with Earth, having some clouds and ice. Scientists have found evidence for liquid water on Mars.
 

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Information from the BBC, the ESA, NASA, and Space Daily were used in this post.

new use

I think I’ll be using this blog to learn more about the news, now. Feel free to post your comments/knowledge on the news post. All I plan to do is pick a news item each day (or whenever I have time) and learn more about it.