You get sterile pollen. A beekeeper
could look into the hive and say, "I've got all kinds of pollen in there
and the bees disappeared." Well, right, you've got pollen grains, but do
they have any nutrition in them? ... I think something happened at the end of
last year in many places in the temperate climate around the world, not just
here, and fouled up the bees' food supply. Unless somebody tells me
differently, I'm blaming it on the weather ... for whatever reason, we are
beginning to kind of move into a cycle where we are going to find more extremes
than we used to have. The droughts may be hotter and longer, the storms and
floods may be more severe. Things aren't going to be so nice in the
future" [9]. In fact the first half of 2006 was the warmest on record in
U.S.[10].
Some say that flowers are blooming
earlier than in the past, "Climate change and earlier springs have also
taken a toll. Plants like red maples and pussy willows, typically the first
pollen sources for honeybees, have been blossoming weeks before the bees can
fly in the spring, Conrad [author of Natural Beekeeping] said, so they miss out
on that important source of pollen" [11]. Wayne Esaias, a NASA climatologist
and beekeeper has been keeping tabs on the possible connection [12][13]. See
also Bees, Pollination and Climate Change: A Guide to Selected Resources.
Electromagnetic radiation
Further information: Electromagnetic radiation
and Mobile phone radiation and health
In April 2007, news of a University of
Landau study appeared in major media, beginning with an article in The
Independent that stated that the subject of the study was mobile phones and had
related them to CCD.[76] Cellular phones were implicated by other media
reports, but were in fact not covered in the study, and the researchers have
since emphatically disavowed any connection between their research, cell
phones, and CCD, specifically indicating that the Independent article had misinterpreted
their results and created "a horror story".[77][78][79]
The 2006 University of Landau pilot
study was looking for non-thermal effects of radio frequency ("RF")
on honey bees (Apis mellifera carnica) and suggested that when bee hives have
DECT cordless phone base stations embedded in them, the close-range
electromagnetic field ("EMF") may reduce the ability of bees to
return to their hive; they also noticed a slight reduction in honeycomb weight
in treated colonies.[80] In the course of their study, one half of their
colonies broke down, including some of their controls which did not have DECT
base stations embedded in them.
The team's 2004 exploratory study on
non-thermal effects on learning did not find any change in behavior due to RF
exposure from the DECT base station operating at 1880-1900 MHz.[81]
Like the links to CCD from variants
(herbicides, genetically modified crops, etc), the link of either cordless or
cellular phones, cell towers, interference by the High Frequency Active Auroral
Research Program (HAARP) or Ground Wave Emergency Network (GWEN) to CCD is
speculative.
Possible effects
The phenomenon is particularly
important for crops such as almond growing in California, where honey bees are
the predominant pollinator and the crop value in 2006 was $1.5 billion. In
2000, the total U.S. crop value that was wholly dependent on honey bee
pollination was estimated to exceed $15 billion.[82]
Honey bees are not native to the
Americas, therefore their necessity as pollinators in the US is limited to
strictly agricultural/ornamental uses, as no native plants require honey bee
pollination, except where concentrated in monoculture situations—where the
pollination need is so great at bloom time that pollinators must be
concentrated beyond the capacity of native bees (with current technology).
They are responsible for pollination
of approximately one third of the United States' crop species, including such
species as almonds, peaches, soybeans, apples, pears, cherries, raspberries,
blackberries, cranberries, watermelons, cantaloupes, cucumbers and
strawberries. Many but not all of these plants can be (and often are)
pollinated by other insects in small holdings in the U.S., including other
kinds of bees, but typically not on a commercial scale. While some farmers of a
few kinds of native crops do bring in honey bees to help pollinate, none
specifically need them, and when honey bees are absent from a region, there is
a presumption that native pollinators may reclaim the niche, typically being
better adapted to serve those plants (assuming that the plants normally occur
in that specific area).
However, even though on a
per-individual basis, many other species are actually more efficient at
pollinating, on the 30% of crop types where honey bees are used, most native
pollinators cannot be mass-utilized as easily or as effectively as honey
bees—in many instances they will not visit the plants at all. Beehives can be
moved from crop to crop as needed, and the bees will visit many plants in large
numbers, compensating via sheer numbers for what they lack in efficiency. The
commercial viability of these crops is therefore strongly tied to the
beekeeping industry.
Remedies
As of March 1, 2007 MAAREC offers the
following tentative recommendations for beekeepers noticing the symptoms of
CCD:[39]
1. Do not combine collapsing colonies with strong
colonies.
2. When a collapsed colony is found, store the
equipment where you can use preventive measures to ensure that bees will not
have access to it.
3. If you feed your bees sugar syrup, use Fumagillin.
4. If you are experiencing colony collapse and see a
secondary infection, such as European Foulbrood, treat the colonies with
Terramycin, not Tylan.
cccccccccccccccccccccccccccc
She entered the courtroom on Friday
afternoon wearing a tan dress, red flats and thick-framed glasses. She was
petite — about five feet tall and weighing 130 pounds — with brown hair hanging
halfway down her neck.
But her conventional appearance belied
the horrific experience she had lived through. Just over a year ago, the woman,
now 24, endured what prosecutors called a torturous 19 hours. A man raped and
sodomized her repeatedly after forcing his way into her apartment. He doused
her with bleach and boiling water, forced pain medication down her throat and
slit her eyelids with a butcher knife.
With remarkable poise, the woman
vividly detailed aspects of the attack for the first time publicly, testifying
on Friday in State Supreme Court in Manhattan at the trial of Robert A.
Williams, the man accused of torturing her.
But Mr. Williams, 31, who is six feet
tall and weighs more than 160 pounds, was not there to face his accuser. He
refused to leave his jail cell to go to court on Friday morning, Justice Carol
Berkman said in court. So the judge ordered the proceedings to go on without
him.
Mr. Williams had acted up during
previous hearings, and Justice Berkman had told him she would not force him to
be there. He faces 71 criminal counts, including attempted murder, rape and
assault.
The woman, who grew up in a small
Connecticut town, spoke firmly from the witness stand, telling of her pain and
fear during the attack. Although she appeared to breathe deeply at times, she
did not shed a tear during the hour spent responding to questions from the
prosecutor, Ann P. Prunty.
All members of the jury, meanwhile,
fixed their eyes upon her. Many covered parts of their faces with their hands
as she testified.
The woman recounted the day of the
attack, Friday, April 13, 2007. She was just a month away from graduating from
Columbia University with a master’s degree in journalism.
She testified that she was at the
journalism school on 116th Street and Broadway working on her résumé for a job
fair the following day. About 9:30 p.m., she said, she went home the way she
always did: taking the No. 1 train to the 137th Street station and then walking
toward her Hamilton Heights apartment building.
Everything was normal, she said, until
her building elevator door opened. She said she saw a “man standing in the
elevator who had a small rolling suitcase. I said, ‘Are you going up or down?’
He didn’t answer, so I got in.”
She said she pressed the button for
the fifth floor and he pressed the button for No. 6. The two rode up the
elevator side by side in silence. She became suspicious when he got out on the
fifth floor behind her, she said.
“I stepped out into the hallway and
started going toward my apartment, and I heard that he stepped off, too,” she
said. “And I heard the wheels of the suitcase, so I went faster.” http://Louis-j-sheehan-esquire.us
He started calling out for a Mrs.
Evans, she said, and she chose not to respond until she was in her apartment.
She turned to close her door and saw him standing just outside.
“There’s no Mrs. Evans here,” she
recalled telling him as he stood just feet away.
“He said, ‘Do you have a phone book,’
” she said. “I said, ‘No.’ I started to close the door all the way. I got about
a couple inches from close and he pushed it open, pushed me back against the
wall.
“I screamed, ‘Help me! Help me!’ ” she
continued. “He told me to shut up and covered my mouth.”
The attacker dragged her over to the bed
of her small studio apartment, she said, while fastening a chokehold around her
neck. He slammed her head into the floor near the foot of her bed. “That’s when
I nearly blacked out,” she said. “My vision went sort of starry, and then I
went limp and then I came back.”
He threw her onto the bed, she said,
and made her take off her clothes. And then he began to rape her, she said.
“I thought he was going to kill me,”
she said. “I thought I was going to die. I just wanted to survive, so I did
what he told me.”
She added, “I was crying, screaming,
begging him not to hurt me.”
She said he asked her to turn her
television to a pornographic channel. She told him she did not have one. She
said she believed an infomercial was playing while he made her perform oral
sex.
Home
In this sparsely populated southern
African country, which has only about 100 Jews, the locals in the capital city
are still talking about The Bar Mitzvah.
Some 200 guests were flown in at the
host's expense from New York and Israel. The entertainment included Subliminal,
a leading Israeli hip-hop artist, backed by his 11-piece band and three sound
engineers. Gazza, a popular Namibian singer, also performed. The
out-of-towners, joined by 50 locals, celebrated for four days in March.
"It's the only four-day party
that's ever happened here," says Zvi Gorelick, a diamond-factory manager
who officiated at the religious service since Namibia has no rabbi.
The host? Jacob "Kobi"
Alexander, the Israeli-born, former chief executive of Comverse Technology
Inc., a New York software company, who is wanted in the U.S. on stock-options
backdating charges. He fled to this remote, arid outpost with his family in
July 2006 and has been fighting extradition ever since.
Mr. Alexander is accused in a 35-count
federal criminal indictment of fraudulently scheming to backdate Comverse stock
options to days when the stock was trading at low points, generating millions
of dollars in extra compensation for himself and other executives. If
convicted, he faces up to 25 years in prison. The timing of Mr. Alexander's
stock-option grants was first reported3 in The Wall Street Journal in March
2006, sparking federal probes.
Gregory Reyes, the former CEO of
Brocade Communications Systems Inc., has been sentenced to prison for his
options backdating crimes; so has the company's former personnel director.
Prosecutors last week indicted ex-Broadcom CEO Henry Nicholas on 25 counts,
including backdating and drug offenses; he has not yet entered a plea.
No Rush to Leave
But it's beginning to look like Mr.
Alexander is putting off his day in U.S. court indefinitely. Namibia has no
formal extradition treaty with the U.S. At the request of U.S. officials, Mr.
Alexander was arrested in Windhoek in September 2006. He was soon released on
$1.4 million bail, setting in motion a lengthy legal battle.
To the frustration of U.S.
prosecutors, Mr. Alexander has shown no sign that he is tiring of life in this
former German colony, known for its safaris and sand dunes. "There was
awhile where he was really stressed," says Mr. Gorelick. "But now
he's settled in."
The bar mitzvah of Mr. Alexander's
13-year-old son, Jordan, the oldest of his three children, was only the latest
public splash the millionaire ex-CEO has made here. Last fall, he and his wife,
Hana, announced an annual $20,000 scholarship award for Namibia's top 80
science and technology students in grades 10 and 12. Known as the "Kobi
and Hana Alexander Prize of Excellence," the couple has funded it for five
years.
"The secret for the success of
any nation is a well-educated populace and workforce," Mr. Alexander was
quoted as saying in a local newspaper. (His Namibian attorney, Louis Du Pisani,
said that an interview with Mr. Alexander for this story was "out of the
question, unfortunately.") http://louis-j-sheehaN.NET
Mr. Alexander has donated money to
Windhoek's only synagogue and a coastal soup kitchen that was struggling
financially. He also invested $2.9 million in an 84-unit low-income housing
project in Walvis Bay, according to Claudia Ramos, a real-estate agent handling
sales. She says the houses, priced at $25,000, are almost sold out. "We
sold 10 just last weekend," she says. "My agent sold nine
today."
She says she's only vaguely aware of
Mr. Alexander's legal situation. "I know that he's in a court case in
America," she says. "He doesn't speak about it; I don't ask."
Mr. Alexander has promised to invest
millions more in the country. "If you're Namibia, even if you want to
follow the rules and return him, what's the rush?" asked one U.S. official
familiar with the case.
The U.S. has provided reams of
documentary evidence to the Namibian prosecutor, but the case has been marked
by repeated postponements and hearings on procedural matters. Mr. Alexander's
local legal team has won time by filing a motion arguing that the magistrate
currently assigned to the case should be disqualified and replaced by the
magistrate who released Mr. Alexander on bail.
The motion is being argued in a higher
court where a two-day hearing is scheduled for next week. Until that matter is
resolved, the extradition case can't proceed.
"The defense is always playing
for time," says Johnny Truter, who is prosecuting the extradition case in
Namibia. He says he is still researching whether backdating stock options is a
crime in Namibia, a legal issue the case could turn on. He has plenty of time
to look into it -- Mr. Truter says that because of the country's crowded court
calendar, the extradition case will drag on until at least 2009.
Mr. Du Pisani calls that
"probably a conservative estimate. These things take a long time."
In the interim, his client has scored
a couple of legal victories. Although the Namibian government continues to hold
Mr. Alexander's passport -- preventing him from leaving the country -- a judge
has ruled that he can travel freely throughout Namibia. A court also gave Mr.
Alexander access to his Namibian bank accounts, which the government had
frozen. His bid to win permanent residency in the country is pending.
Meanwhile, back in New York, Mr.
Alexander is dealing with a raft of other litigation. In January, Comverse sued
him for fraud and other claims. Mr. Alexander countersued over severance pay
and other benefits. Robert G. Morvillo, a New York attorney who represents Mr.
Alexander in the U.S., says his client would not comment on these cases or on
the federal criminal indictment, for which he has not yet entered a plea.
Paul Baker, a Comverse spokesman,
says, "While it is company policy not to comment on ongoing litigation, we
are pursuing our claims against Mr. Alexander, on behalf of the company and its
shareholders."
Mr. Alexander also is named in a
series of Comverse shareholders' suits and, along with his wife, is fighting
the Justice Department over $48 million the agency froze following his
disappearance. A federal official says the frozen assets have decreased in
value some because of declining stock-market investments. Mr. Alexander did
manage to transfer $57 million to Israel.
Since fleeing to Namibia -- and buying
a $543,000 house in a guarded, gated community alongside a golf course -- the
Alexander family has received a steady stream of visitors from New York, Israel
and Europe.
Mr. Gorelick, who says he visited the
house weekly over four months to teach Mr. Alexander's son his religious
reading, still marvels over the bar mitzvah. It was one of only a handful
Namibia has witnessed over the past five years.
This one fell during the festive
Jewish holiday of Purim. In between the nightly parties, the guests packed the
local synagogue for a service, which began with an unscheduled performance of
holiday songs by the Israeli hip-hop band. "It took an hour before we
could start the service," says Mr. Gorelick.
The guests included numerous relatives
from Israel, as well as some of the bar mitzvah boy's former classmates at
Congregation Rodeph Sholom's school in Manhattan. Several kids who opted not to
travel from New York to Namibia sent a video greeting.
One former schoolmate didn't make the
invite list. His mother is a U.S. federal prosecutor.
Chief Justice Ron Castille should be
removed from the bench for making threatening remarks and attempting to use his
position to intimidate the League of Women Voters and their attorney.
Tyranny from the bench should not be
condoned. Castille needs to be reminded that no one is above the law, not even
judges. Perhaps his inflated sense of self-importance and arrogance has blinded
him to the concepts of justice and due process.
He is quoted as saying that the suit
entered by the league "slanders the entire Supreme Court of
Pennsylvania." It isn't the suit that tarnished the court's reputation. It
was the court's outrageous behavior in engineering the 2005 legislative and
judicial pay grab that brought the court's ethics into question.
Additionally the court's credibility
was further eroded when the Legislature rescinded the raise, but the court,
instead of taking the high road and giving back their ill-gotten gains, issued
a shallow, self-serving ruling, in order to keep their plunder.
Behavior such as Castille's further
erodes the court's reputation.
Castille should welcome the suit as an
opportunity to clear the court's reputation; that is, of course, unless there
is something to hide.
Here's a quick geopolitical quiz: What
country is three times the size of Texas and has more than 300 days of blazing
sun a year? What country has the world's largest oil reserves resting below
miles upon miles of sand? And what country is being given nuclear power, not
solar, by President George W. Bush, even when the mere assumption of nuclear
possession in its region has been known to provoke pre-emptive air strikes,
even wars?
If you answered Saudi Arabia to all of
these questions, you're right.
Last month, while the American people
were becoming the personal ATMs of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting
Countries, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was in Saudi Arabia signing away
an even more valuable gift: nuclear technology. In a ceremony little-noticed in
this country, Ms. Rice volunteered the U.S. to assist Saudi Arabia in
developing nuclear reactors, training nuclear engineers, and constructing
nuclear infrastructure. While oil breaks records at $130 per barrel or more,
the American consumer is footing the bill for Saudi Arabia's nuclear ambitions.
Saudi Arabia has poured money into
developing its vast reserves of natural gas for domestic electricity
production. It continues to invest in a national gas transportation pipeline
and stepped-up exploration, building a solid foundation for domestic energy
production that could meet its electricity needs for many decades. Nuclear
energy, on the other hand, would require enormous investments in new
infrastructure by a country with zero expertise in this complex technology.
Have Ms. Rice, Mr. Bush or Saudi
leaders looked skyward? The Saudi desert is under almost constant sunshine. If
Mr. Bush wanted to help his friends in Riyadh diversify their energy portfolio,
he should have offered solar panels, not nuclear plants.
Saudi Arabia's interest in nuclear
technology can only be explained by the dangerous politics of the Middle East.
Saudi Arabia, a champion and kingpin of the Sunni Arab world, is deeply
threatened by the rise of Shiite-ruled Iran.
The two countries watch each other
warily over the waters of the Persian Gulf, buying arms and waging war by proxy
in Lebanon and Iraq. An Iranian nuclear weapon would radically alter the
region's balance of power, and could prove to be the match that lights the
tinderbox. By signing this agreement with the U.S., Saudi Arabia is warning
Iran that two can play the nuclear game.
In 2004, Vice President Dick Cheney
said, "[Iran is] already sitting on an awful lot of oil and gas. No one
can figure why they need nuclear, as well, to generate energy." Mr. Cheney
got it right about Iran. But a potential Saudi nuclear program is just as
suspicious. For a country with so much oil, gas and solar potential, importing
expensive and dangerous nuclear power makes no economic sense.
The Bush administration argues that
Saudi Arabia can not be compared to Iran, because Riyadh said it won't develop
uranium enrichment or spent-fuel reprocessing, the two most dangerous nuclear
technologies. At a recent hearing before my Select Committee on Energy
Independence and Global Warming, Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman shrugged off
concerns about potential Saudi misuse of nuclear assistance for a weapons
program, saying simply: "I presume that the president has a good deal of
confidence in the King and in the leadership of Saudi Arabia."
That's not good enough. We would do
well to remember that it was the U.S. who provided the original nuclear
assistance to Iran under the Atoms for Peace program, before Iran's monarch was
overthrown in the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Such an uprising in Saudi Arabia
today could be at least as damaging to U.S. security.
We've long known that America's
addiction to oil pays for the spread of extremism. If this Bush nuclear deal
moves forward, Saudi Arabia's petrodollars could flow to the dangerous
expansion of nuclear technologies in the most volatile region of the world.
While the scorching Saudi Arabian sun
heats sand dunes instead of powering photovoltaic panels, millions of Americans
will fork over $4 a gallon without realizing that their gas tank is fueling a
nascent nuclear arms race.
A preliminary examination by the
Dallas County Medical Examiner’s Office found that David Jacobs, a convicted
steroids dealer who had linked several N.F.L. players to the use of
performance-enhancing drugs, committed suicide, according to the police.
The police said that Jacobs had two
self-inflicted gunshot wounds — one in the abdomen and the other in the head —
and said no suicide note was found at the scene.
Jacobs and his girlfriend, Amanda Jo
Earhart-Savell, were found shot to death early Thursday morning at his home
here. The police said they had not determined the precise circumstances
surrounding Earhart-Savell’s death, but said she sustained multiple gunshot
wounds.
“Our investigation is consistent with
murder-suicide,” Andrae Smith, a public information officer for the Plano
police, said Friday.
According to a report by the Dallas
television station WFAA, the Plano police recovered 146 vials of steroids, 10
syringes, scales, bags with steroids and marijuana, several computers, a
.22-caliber semiautomatic gun and ammunition from Jacobs’s home. The police
also reportedly found 10 expended .40-caliber bullet casings, 6 expended bullet
slugs and a bullet fragment.
Jacobs, who was convicted on federal
steroid distribution charges last year, began cooperating with N.F.L. officials
shortly after he was sentenced to probation May 1. At a meeting last month, he
provided the N.F.L. with documentary evidence and testimony that tied several
players to performance-enhancing drugs.
In an interview with The New York
Times in April, Jacobs described how he provided two N.F.L. players with
steroids and human growth hormone and said they supplied other players with the
banned substances. He also said he counseled several players on how to exploit
loopholes in the N.F.L.’s drug-testing program.
Jacobs’s case received national
attention because a Web site for a supplements store that Jacobs owned boasted
that he had counseled players on the Dallas Cowboys and the Atlanta Falcons.
In April, The New York Times reported
that federal prosecutors — based on information developed from their
investigation of Jacobs — were looking into whether Matt Lehr, an offensive
lineman for the New Orleans Saints, had distributed performance-enhancing drugs.
Lehr, who was suspended for testing positive for a banned substance in 2006,
played for the Cowboys from 2001 to 2004 and for the Falcons from 2005 to 2006.
Lehr’s lawyer has denied that his
client sold banned substances and said Jacobs fabricated information about Lehr
after he had refused to pay Jacobs’s legal fees. Jacobs said he never asked
Lehr for money.
Jacobs said he stopped using steroids
in April 2007. Depression and suicide are symptoms of steroid withdrawal, but
those effects normally last for several months at most, said Dr. Gary I.
Wadler, an internist and a member of the World Anti-Doping Agency.
“If he did indeed stop using steroids
in April of 2007, then it is highly unlikely he would still have any
significant psychiatric side effects of using steroids,” Wadler said in a
telephone interview. “Because of the fact that he committed suicide, it raises
the question, do we really know what the period of drug usage was?”
Don Hooton, whose 17-year-old son,
Taylor, a high school pitcher in Plano, committed suicide in 2003 after he had
used steroids, said Jacobs’s death further draws attention to the problem of
steroid use in Plano.
Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
“There’s just this tendency to want to
deny that this problem is going on in a community,” Hooton, who started the
Taylor Hooton Foundation to fight steroid abuse, said in a telephone interview.
From 1925 to 1928, bandleader and
trumpeter Louis Armstrong led a recording group, known as the Hot Five and Hot
Seven, through nearly 90 recordings. These tracks are now considered among the
most seminal, enduring and influential recordings not only in jazz but in
American music and include "Big Butter and Egg Man," "Hotter
Than That," "Struttin' With Some Barbecue," "Potato Head
Blues," and "S.O.L. Blues." In these dozens of sides, Armstrong
abandoned the traditional collective improvisation of New Orleans-style jazz
and almost single-handedly transformed the music from a group art into an art
form for the soloist. He left behind two- and four-bar breaks of earlier jazz
in favor of entire choruses of improvisation. In the 1920s, Armstrong would,
more than anyone else, take the role of soloist to new heights in American
music.
[illustration]
Ryan Inzana
Having switched in 1925 from the
cornet to the trumpet, Armstrong set new standards for trumpeters, extending
the playable range of the instrument with impressive high notes. Besides his
technical mastery, what else set him apart? His big, beautiful tone; his rich
imagination as a soloist; his perfect sense of time; his deep understanding of
the blues; his projection and authority; and the force of his musical
personality.
And he boasted a gift for
personalizing the material he recorded, transforming it into music that is
unmistakably his in sound and style and ownership. The essence of jazz --
making something new out of something old, making something personal out of
something shared -- has no finer exemplar than Armstrong.
On a summer's day in late June 1928,
Armstrong and his quintet, the Hot Five, went into a recording studio in
Chicago and created his supreme masterpiece, one that summarizes the brilliance
of his art and points a way forward for all jazz -- and many other kinds of
music as well. He chose a piece composed by his mentor, King Oliver, called
"West End Blues" -- a work named for a resort outside of New Orleans,
the city from which both Armstrong and Oliver had come. Oliver recorded
"West End Blues" nine days before Armstrong, but it is Armstrong's
June 20 version that made history. In it, he transforms Oliver's piece from an
ordinary, slow blues into an artistic achievement of the highest order.
Right off the bat, in the dazzling
opening cadenza, you can hear Armstrong's musical virtuosity, daring and
imagination. In classical music, a cadenza -- a free-sounding, virtuosic
passage -- typically comes at the end. Here, Armstrong boldly opens the piece
in this surprising, unaccompanied way. Its bravura nature underscores the
influence that opera had on Armstrong: Growing up in culturally polyglot New
Orleans, he was a musical sponge.
Except for a lackluster trombone solo
in the second chorus, each of the five choruses makes musical magic. One
marvels at the clarion sound of Armstrong's trumpet, the unique tone of his
scatting vocals, the unpredictable piano solo of Earl Hines, and Armstrong's
long-held note in the final chorus.
With this recording, Armstrong
inaugurated an era of modern musical expression where individuality and genius
could dazzle and shine. As a trumpeter and singer, Armstrong set a sky-high
benchmark of originality and artistry, and he came to influence -- directly or
indirectly -- just about every instrumentalist and singer in jazz and,
ultimately, many performers of other kinds of music. He became, to fellow musicians,
a hero of epic proportions.
The "West End Blues" track
has been widely reissued. It is available on the single-disc "Ken Burns'
Jazz: Louis Armstrong" (Sony Legacy), as well as on the four-disc
"Louis Armstrong: The Complete Hot Five and Hot Seven Recordings"
(Sony Legacy). JSP Records has issued them as the four-CD "Louis
Armstrong: The Hot Fives and Sevens," with superior remastering by the
U.K. engineer John R.T. Davies.
While musicians long recognized the
brilliance of the recording -- it was a favorite of young Billie Holiday -- the
canonization of Armstrong's disc took on momentum in 1968 when
composer-conductor Gunther Schuller, in his "Early Jazz," devoted
five pages of the book to extolling the virtues of "West End Blues."
It "served notice," he argued, "that jazz had the potential to
compete with the highest order of previously known expression." The
recording became a highlight of the 1973 "Smithsonian Collection of
Classic Jazz," a cornerstone of jazz education for 25 years, and it was
inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1974. Jazz textbooks now recognize it
as a landmark recording, and classical-music textbooks discuss it alongside
Beethoven symphonies and Schubert songs. "West End Blues" has been
transcribed and published in the series "Essential Jazz Editions" so
that high-school and college ensembles can perform and learn from it. It is
even included in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's list of "500 Songs That
Shaped Rock and Roll."
After 80 years, Louis Armstrong's
"West End Blues" is still musically fresh and emotionally compelling.
Now those are signs of transcendent art.
They waited in a hot, stifling hall --
there was no air conditioning.
They waited in a long, slow line -- it
took at least 30 minutes to make it to the end. http://Louis-J-sheehan.info
Many of them waited for nothing more
than a "thank you" -- no money was up for grabs, and there were no
guarantees.
That was the scene Wednesday in
Building 52 of the Harrisburg State Hospital, when 490 people showed up for an
extras casting call for the movie "Another Harvest Moon." Producers
held two sessions -- one in the morning, when 268 people were photographed, and
one in the afternoon, which drew 222 tryouts.
"Another Harvest Moon,"
starring Ernest Borgnine, Doris Roberts, Anne Meara, Piper Laurie and Cybill
Shepherd, is being produced by Aurora Films, based in Lancaster. Filming is
expected to begin next week.
Set in a nursing home, it centers on
Frank (Borgnine), who suffers a series of strokes and fears losing memories of
his late wife.
Producers said they were pleased with
the turnout.
"It's an unpaid role, and these
people stood out in line for an hour in the heat to be a part of it," said
Brad Kenyon, executive producer and part-owner of Aurora Films.
Kenyon stood behind a camera and
tripod during the morning session, taking a picture of each potential extra. A
chalkboard behind him said anyone selected would be notified in the next two
days. He said the filmmakers didn't have specific criteria for selecting
extras.
"I don't want to use the word
generic, but basically background, something that won't really conflict with
the storyline," he said.
It took hopefuls at least 30 minutes
to make it through the line. Trading that long wait for a few seconds in front
of a camera didn't bother many. They had numerous reasons for showing up.
"We didn't have anything else to
do," said Darlene Kelso, who came from Chambersburg with her husband, Joe.
"My daughter said it to me first: It's on your bucket list, being in a
movie."
Kelso said she didn't know if she had
a chance of being selected for the movie. Joe, who was carrying a walking stick
with a small alligator head at the top, was more confident.
"I'm in if they're looking for
uglies," he joked.
Although the movie's setting means
many of extras will be older, younger people came for the casting call. Lilli
Buell came with her son Alex, 12, and daughter Caroline, 4.
Alex was quick to tout his resume.
"I've been in a school musical
before," he said.
He wasn't the only one with
experience.
"I've been in a couple of movies
and ended up on the cutting-room floor or in a crowd where you couldn't see
me," said Barbi Johnson of New Cumberland.
Johnson said she was an extra in the
1999 film "Girl, Interrupted," which also was filmed on the state
hospital grounds. "I was one of those 'ladies over 60,' I think," she
said.
Filming in Pennsylvania is one of the
goals of the producers of "Another Harvest Moon."
"I'm really thrilled to be
providing an opportunity for people to have a once-in-a-lifetime
experience," said Chad Taylor, a producer of the film, a partner in Aurora
Films and a guitarist for the York-based band Live.
"I can't believe people showed up
at 7 a.m.," he said. "It goes to show you there are a lot of people
in this community that want to be involved in feature-length films."
countries decided in 1985 to link
their production quotas to their reserves. What then seemed wise provoked
important increases of the estimates in order to increase their production
rights. This also permits the ability to obtain bigger loans at lower interest
rates. This is a suspected reason for the reserves rise of Iraq in 1983, then
at war with Iran.
In fact, Dr. Ali Samsam Bakhtiari, a
former senior executive of the National Iranian Oil Company, has stated
unequivocally that OPEC's oil reserves (notably Iran's) are grossly overstated.
In an interview to Bloomberg in July 2006, he stated that world oil production
is now at its peak and predicted that it will fall 32% by 2020.
Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Declared reserves with suspicious
increases (in billion of barrels) Colin Campbell, SunWorld, 80-95
Year Abu
Dhabi Dubai Iran Iraq Kuwait
Saudi
Arabia Venezuela
1980 28.00
1.40
58.00 31.00
65.40
163.35
17.87
1981 29.00
1.40
57.50 30.00
65.90
165.00
17.95
1982 30.60
1.27
57.00 29.70
64.48
164.60
20.30
1983 30.51
1.44
55.31 41.00
64.23
162.40
21.50
1984 30.40
1.44
51.00 43.00
63.90
166.00
24.85
1985 30.50
1.44
48.50 44.50
90.00
169.00
25.85
1986 31.00
1.40
47.88 44.11
89.77
168.80
25.59
1987 31.00
1.35
48.80 47.10
91.92
166.57
25.00
1988 92.21
4.00
92.85 100.00
91.92 166.98
56.30
1989 92.20
4.00
92.85 100.00
91.92 169.97
58.08
1990 92.20
4.00
93.00 100.00
95.00 258.00
59.00
1991 92.20
4.00
93.00 100.00
94.00 258.00
59.00
1992 92.20
4.00
93.00 100,00
94,00 258.00
62.70
2004 92.20
4.00
132.00 115.00
99.00 259.00
78.00
2007 ? ? 136.30
115.00 101.50 262.30 80.00
The world's total declared reserves
are 1.3174 trillion barrels (January 2007).[citation needed] The years 2004 and
2007 were added later. Some figures from the year 2007 are missing because
these are from a listing in the Oil and Gas Journal from dec. 2006, which
listed only the top ten suppliers.
oil reserves of OPEC
1980-2005.[citation needed]
oil reserves of OPEC
1980-2005.[citation needed]
The table suggests that, firstly, the
OPEC countries declare that the discovery of new fields, year after year,
replaces exactly or near exactly the quantities produced, because the declared
reserves do not vary a lot from one year to the other. For example, Saudi
Arabia extracted 9.55 million barrels per day (1.518×106 m3/d) in 2005, i.e. 3.4 billion
barrels per year (540×106 m3/a). Yet, their stated reserves do not decline, implying
that they discover previously unknown reserves of exactly this amount, year
after year. Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates, declares exactly 92.3 billion
barrels (14.67×109 m3)
since 1988, but in 16 years, 14 billion barrels (2.2×109 m3) were extracted.[citation
needed]
Also, there is much competition
between states. For example, Kuwait gave to themselves 90 billion barrels (14×109 m3) of reserves in 1985, the year
of the reserves link. Abu Dhabi and Iran responded with slightly higher
numbers, to guarantee similar production quotas. Iraq replied with around 100.
Apparently, with all this amount of inflation, Saudi Arabia was forced to
reply, two years later, with its own revision.[citation needed]
Other examples suggest the inaccuracy
of official reserve estimates:
* January 2006, the magazine Petroleum
Intelligence Weekly declared that reserves of Kuwait were in fact only 48
billion barrels (7.6×109 m3), of which only 24 Gbbl (3.8×109 m3) were "completely proven", backing this statement
on "leaks" of official confidential Kuwaiti documents. The value is
half of the official estimate.[50]
* Shell company announced 9 January 2004 that
20% of its reserves had to pass from proven to possible (uncertain). This
announcement led to a loss in the value of the stock; a lawsuit challenged that
the value of the company was fraudulently overvalued. Shell later revised its
reserves estimates three times, reducing them by 10.133 billion barrels (1.6110×109 m3) (against 14.5 Gbbl/2.31×109 m3). Shell's president, Phil
Watts, resigned.
* As can be seen on the table the reserves
declared by Kuwait before and after the Gulf War 1990-1991 are the same, 94
billion barrels (14.9×109 m3), despite the fact that immense oil-well fires ignited by
the Iraqi forces had burned off approximately 6 billion barrels (950×106 m3).[citation needed]
* In 1970, Algeria increased its "proven
reserves" estimate (until then 7–8 Gbbl/1.1×109–1.3×109 m3) to 30 billion barrels (4.8×109 m3). Two years later, the estimate was increased to 45 billion
barrels (7.2×109 m3).
After 1974, the country's estimate was less than 10 billion barrels (1.6×109 m3) (as reported by Jean
Laherrère).
Notes of Louis Sheehan
* Pemex (state company of Mexico) in September
2002 decreased its reserve estimate by 53%, from 26.8 to 12.6 billion barrels
(4.26×109 to 2.00×109 m3). Later the estimate was
increased to 15.7 billion barrels (2.50×109 m3).
* Other examples exist of reserves being
underestimated. In 1993, the reserves of Equatorial Guinea were limited to some
insignificant fields; the Oil And Gas Journal estimated them at 12 million barrels
(1.9×106 m3). Two giant fields and
several smaller ones were discovered, but the numbers announced stayed
unchanged until 2003. In 2002, the country still had 12 million barrels (1.9×106 m3) of reserves according to the
journal, while it was producing 85 million barrels (13.5×106 m3) in the same year. The reserves
of Angola were at 5.421 billion barrels (861.9×106 m3), (four significant numbers, it gives the impression of
great precision) from 1994 to 2003, despite the discovery of 38 new fields of
more than 100 million barrels (16×106 m3) each.
Note however that the definition of
proven reserves varies from country to country. In the USA, the conservative
rule is to classify as proven only the reserves that are being produced[cn]. On
the other hand, Saudi Arabia classifies as proven reserves known fields not yet
in production[cn]. Venezuela includes non-conventional oil (bitumens) of the
Orinoco in its reserve base.
Notes of Louis Sheehan
No Argentine has left a bigger mark on
the world than legendary revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara, yet
there is no major monument in his homeland to the face that launched a million
T-shirts. http://louis-j-sheehan.biz
That changes Saturday with the
unveiling of a 12-foot bronze statue in this town where he was born 80 years
ago.
Since he was killed trying to foment
revolution in Bolivia in 1967, the Marxist guerrilla has been a source of
inspiration for revolutionary movements from Northern Ireland to East Timor, a
symbol of rebellion for three generations of Western youth, and a marketing
phenomenon selling everything from snow boards to air freshener.
[See more]1
Josefina Tommasi
For four decades since his death, Mr.
Guevara's presence has loomed large over the Latin American region.
Until recently, however, Argentina
itself has played down its ties to this larger-than-life character, whose
nickname comes from the country's most common slang, a catch-all word meaning
"hey" or "dude." For many Argentines, he evokes painful
memories of the bloody 1970s, when young Che-wannabes took up arms in the name
of revolution. The ensuing turmoil gave rise to a brutal right-wing military
dictatorship.
Even today, Mr. Guevara's image is
often associated with social conflict, a link that has been reinforced lately as
pro-government protestors have hoisted Che banners during confrontations with
critics of populist President Cristina Kirchner.
When a government tourism official
told Argentine travel agents at a conference last November that Mr. Guevara's
high name recognition among Europeans meant he deserved a place in Argentina's
"national brand," he drew boos from his audience.
"Che motivated a lot of idiots to
go about killing people either because they had money or a uniform. How
unenlightened is that?" said Michael Poots, a Buenos Aires travel agent.
Among Mr. Guevara's enduring critics
in Argentina are members of his own extended family. In an article titled
"My Cousin, El Che," Alberto Benegas Lynch wrote last year that to
wear a Che T-shirt "is like flaunting the gloomy image of the swastika as
a peace symbol."
Troubles at Home
Even in Mr. Guevara's birthplace of
Rosario, a genteel port city of 1.3 million, he remains a divisive figure. The
local soccer team's fans have embraced his iconic photo as a kind of unofficial
mascot, and the city itself has been in Socialist hands for 16 years. But the
city has long met opposition when it tried to commemorate Mr. Guevara. For a
decade and a half, the middle-class residents of the stately apartment building
in which the infant Ernesto spent his first two months blocked the city's
efforts to place a small plaque near the entrance. The residents feared they
would be invaded by long-haired radicals and drum-banging protesters.
Michael Casey speaks with Argentinians
about the style and mystique that still surround long-departed revolutionary
Che Guevara. (June 13)
Finally, in 2006, the city
compromised: Instead of a plaque on the building, it placed a thin, vertical
red sign on the sidewalk with an arrow pointing to Mr. Guevara's birthplace.
Until Saturday's statue unveiling,
Rosario's only other reminder of its native son was a mural in a small,
community park a few blocks away. Yet even that was subject to cynical
put-downs: For some time, a graffitist with a permanent marker changed the
plaque there to dedicate the plaza to "Cli-Che Guevara."
During the 1990s, guerrilla graffiti
wars over Mr. Guevara broke out in Buenos Aires. Admirers would spray-paint a
well-known Cuban saying, "Seremos Como El Che" (We Will Be Like Che)
on walls around the capital, to which rival graffitists would respond by
putting a single word underneath it: "fiambres." That literally means
cold cuts, but in Argentine slang it means "dead." Louis J. Sheehan,
Esquire
A People's Statue
Sculptor Andrés Zerneri, who crafted
the statue, wanted to avoid such clashes. Rather than rely on public money, Mr.
Zerneri called on people to donate household objects for the bronze casting.
Each donor was given a vote in deciding where to erect it. The artist says his
statue honors Mr. Guevara "as a symbol ... chosen by the people and not
dictated by power, as is the case with other monuments."
A year ahead of schedule, Mr. Zerneri
reached his target of three and a half tons of bronze after doorknobs, fire-pokers,
plaques and thousands of door keys flooded into his Buenos Aires studio from
14,000 people around Argentina and the world, most of whom voted for Rosario as
the statue's future home. Among the donated items were keys that belonged to
victims of Argentina's military dictatorship of the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Mr. Zerneri, a 35-year-old artist more
known for his abstract work, became inspired by his countryman after reading his
writings. To convey the idea that Mr. Guevara represents more than just
warfare, the artist rendered the revolutionary without weapons.
Mixed Emotions
Ambivalence about Mr. Guevara is not
surprising, considering his complicated legacy. As a medical student, he
traveled throughout Latin America and became convinced that global revolution
was the only cure for endemic poverty. In Mexico, he met Fidel Castro and
played a prominent military role in overthrowing Cuban dictator Fulgencio
Batista in 1959. He then served in several high-ranking positions in the new
Cuban government, including a brief stint running the central bank.
Mr. Guevara was an unflinching
revolutionary with a reputation for strict discipline or cold brutality,
depending upon who tells the history. In Cuba, he oversaw tribunals that
executed hundreds from the Batista regime. During his time as a guerrilla, he
also executed at least one suspected traitor. He secretly left Cuba in 1965 in
an unsuccessful attempt to start revolutions elsewhere, including the Congo and
Bolivia, where he was captured and killed.
In the 1970s, students across
Argentina sought to imitate Mr. Guevara by joining armed revolutionary
movements. An era of fratricide between the left- and right-wing factions of
the country's Peronist political dynasty ushered in a military coup and still
more violence. In the following seven years, a period known as the "Dirty
War," the regime arrested, tortured, exiled or murdered tens of thousands
of people. As many as 30,000 people were never seen again.
No Beards, No Berets
The military government was so
anti-Che that it banned his image and writings, and even put pressure on anyone
wearing a scruffy beard or a beret. It was also difficult to carry the Guevara
name in Argentina. Some family members, including the revolutionary's mother
and his youngest brother, Juan Martín, were jailed for sympathizing with Mr.
Guevara's politics. Even today, Juan Martín -- who runs a wine bar in Buenos
Aires and holds the import license for Habano cigars from Cuba -- keeps a
deliberately low profile.
Che Guevara's image improved here in
recent years, partly because a 2001 economic collapse after a decade of
free-market policies generated a sharp, leftward swing. A big slump in the
Argentine peso that same year also made the country a much cheaper destination
for tourists, including European backpackers eager to see Mr. Guevara's
homeland.
Capitalists' Tool
If Argentina seems to be finally
embracing its wayward son, it might be partly thanks to his afterlife as a
marketing phenomenon. The Che posters that now dominate Buenos Aires souvenir
stands are targeted at a stream of young visitors. Maps of "Che's
Route," based on his book "The Motorcycle Diaries" and the 2004
movie of the same name, are available in many bookstores. And the national
tourism secretariat has launched a "Footprints of Che" program to
promote towns, such as Rosario and Córdoba, where Mr. Guevara once lived.
Aldo Marinozzi, a tourism consultant
in Rosario, says the revival is also helped by the fact that Argentina has been
dictator-free for 25 years, ensuring that a younger generation of Argentines
knows Mr. Guevara not as symbol of Cold War conflict but as an icon of popular
culture. Citing the frequency with which Argentine rock bands adopt Che as a
symbol, Mr. Marinozzi says: "You could say he has been rehabilitated by
rock music."
When broadcast television stations
first transmitted their signals digitally at the end of the 1990s, consumers
received a benefit besides clearer pictures: a multitude of new channels made
possible by digital compression technology.
The effort, in large part, was a
roaring failure. Virtually no one watched them because getting the channels required
an external digital receiver. Some early programmers soon went bust.
But a new crop of digital channels
from traditional broadcasters are making their way into homes, and industry
executives say that this time, they have figured out how to do it right.
It helps that more homes now have TVs
capable of receiving digital channels over the air and more cable systems are
offering the channels. The government-mandated switch to all-digital
broadcasting by early 2009 will also help the industry.
With digital broadcasting, a standard
TV station can “multicast” three or more channels in the space occupied by just
one in the old analog days. So in addition to the regular Channel 2,
broadcasters can transmit Channels 2.2 and 2.3. Many local stations are starting
to fill those “subchannels” with news, weather and other programming.
Some ambitious ventures have not fared
well. In 2006, the Tube Music Network started a music video subchannel that
aimed to recreate MTV’s early, family-friendly days. The Tube was to be a
“clean, irreverent channel you can trust,” its founder, Les Garland, said at
the time. But last October, the network shut down because of “financial
limitations,” according to its Web site.
ABC News Now began life four years ago
as a 24-hour news service on digital multicast. But ABC has abandoned broadcast
distribution and reconfigured the programming to reflect the style of “Good
Morning America.” It is available to 44 million consumers only through premium
broadband, mobile services and cable.
“We thought this is a better business
proposition,” said Paul Slavin, ABC News’s senior vice president for digital,
who said less than 10 percent of the service’s revenue comes from ads.
Naples’ garbage — the plastic
Ferrarelle water bottles, the soggy copies of Internazionale magazine, the
decomposing kitchen compost — has ended up here, waiting to be dumped into an
incinerator on the outskirts of this tidy German city.
For months, mountains of rotting trash
have grown in the streets of southern Italy because the region has run out of
places to put it. So for the time being — 11 weeks, actually — a 56-car train
will arrive in Hamburg every day after a 44-hour journey, each bearing 700 tons
of Neapolitan refuse.
“We are doing this because we were
asked to provide emergency aid, but we will do it only for a few months, not
years,” said Martin Mineur, the director of two of Hamburg’s incinerators, as a
steady stream of trucks carrying garbage from the train station roared by.
“This is not a long-term solution. Italy will have to solve Italy’s problem.”
But Italy’s problem has echoes in all
of Europe, where Naples looks increasingly like a foul-smelling version of an
untenable past, and Hamburg its future. Despite population growth, Hamburg
produces less garbage today than it did almost a decade ago. What it does
generate is either recycled or removed to high-tech, low-polluting
incinerators.
Outside Naples, Europe’s trash may not
yet be overflowing in the streets. But across the Continent, longstanding landfill
sites are filling up quickly, and in Europe’s small spaces there is little room
for new ones. The problem has made it imperative for European nations to cut
their waste.
By 2020, the European Union will
require member nations to reduce the amount of trash sent to landfills to 35
percent of what it was in 1995. It has already begun severely restricting and
reducing the use of landfills, a k a garbage dumps, because of the host of
health and environmental problems they produce.
But none of this will be easy. Italy,
Spain, Greece and Britain each still send more than 60 percent of their garbage
to landfills. A recent study found that they, as well as Ireland and France,
are unlikely to meet those long-term landfill targets.
(In 2006, the United States sent 55
percent of its waste to landfills, according to the Environmental Protection
Agency.)
“Look, no one wants waste — you want
to ignore it, or throw it away, or have huge piles of it out of sight in
landfill as they do in Britain,” said Barbara Helferrich, a spokeswoman for the
European Commission Environment Directorate. “It’s a difficult problem, but
some countries are definitely much better than others in waste management.” http://Louis-j-sheehan-esquire.us
It is perhaps not surprising that
Hamburg should take the lead. Its environmental waste policy is controlled by
the German Green Party, which governs the city in a coalition with the
conservative Christian Democratic Union. On the street, pedestrians are
required to divide trash into four types of bins, depending on its recycling
potential.
Germany and a few northern European
countries have spent most of the last decade developing strategies to reduce
and dispose of the waste generated by modern life: closing polluting landfills
and investing heavily in recycling and trash reduction programs.
For the trash that remains, they have
developed state-of-the-art incinerators that minimize noxious emissions with a
series of filters and have put the energy generated to good use, by heating
homes and water, for example.
But incinerators take at least four
years to build, officials here say. Getting permits and planning permission to
deal with a smelly, undesirable problem often takes longer. For instance,
although German officials agreed in February to take trash from Naples, it took
months to get permission for trash trains from Naples to cross Austria.
On Thursday, the trash transfer
program was briefly suspended after Hamburg officials found a small amount of
radioactive medical waste in one of the railroad cars; Italian officials
promised better monitoring.
But a number of countries have trash
problems that will not wait.
“We have described the U.K. as the
dustbin of Europe because we put more to landfill than any other country in the
E.U., and our landfill space is running out very quickly,” said Nick Mann of
the British Local Government Association. Waste in Britain is increasing 3
percent a year, and its dumps will be filled to capacity in nine years.
Mr. Mann said: “A large percentage of
our calls are about trash. There’s a front-page story on bins almost every day.
Trash is a really hot issue.”
Unfortunately, public concern about
trash does not translate to solutions, Ms. Helferrich said. Those depend more
on the structure of government, management expertise and national priorities.
Italy “has money from the E.U.,” Ms.
Helferrich said. “They have technical support. But they still don’t have a
plan. Naples has not applied E.U. legislation, and they have been dragging
their feet to come up with a proper solution.”
In fact, after years of warnings, the
European Commission filed suit against Italy in early May, charging that it had
failed to meet its obligation to collect and dispose of its garbage. Officials
in Hamburg express a degree of sympathy, since until 2000 Hamburg sent a vast
majority of its trash to landfills, too — most of it to the former East
Germany. It was cheap and easy to truck away prosperous Hamburg’s trash to
poorer towns looking for hard currency.
But a decade ago, the state
environment minister decided to end the practice. “After a while, they didn’t
want to take it, and we didn’t want to export it,” said Reinhard Fiedler, who
runs Hamburg’s waste management program. “We had ambitious environmental
politicians and also there was a lack of space for landfill. There’s been a
complete turnaround.”
This city of about 1.8 million people
produced 1.6 million tons of garbage a year in 1999, and only 50,000 tons went
to recycling. Today, despite growing in size, it generates only 1.4 million
tons; 600,000 tons of it is incinerated and 800,000 tons of it is recycled,
said Volker Dumann, Hamburg’s environment minister.
“The trend is to recycle more and
incinerate less and to generate less waste altogether,” he said. Indeed,
Hamburg’s incinerators have excess capacity to accommodate Italian trash
because so much trash from the city is now recycled.
In addition to conventional recycling
of things like bottles and cans, there are programs to reuse brick in
construction and even reuse X-ray materials, for example. “It is very expensive
to get rid of waste here, so there is a big incentive to generate less,” Mr.
Dumann said. Residents pay a heavily graduated garbage tax that depends on the
size of their bins.
Hamburg’s incinerators not only
dispose of trash, but also feed the heat generated into the heating grid. One
plant here, run under contract by the Swedish energy giant Vattenfall, heats
water for a large part of downtown Hamburg.
So it was not surprising that when
Italy had a garbage problem, it turned to Germany for a solution: On Feb. 28 a
delegation from the Italian region of Campania, which includes Naples, flew to
Berlin to ask for help from Germany’s Environment Ministry. Last year, one
German city, Bremerhaven, quietly took a small amount of Naples’ trash for
incineration. This year, as the crisis deepened — it ultimately helped bring
down the left-wing government — a larger rescue was needed.
The German Environment Ministry agreed
to take 200,000 tons, and asked Germany’s states, which control the country’s
waste programs, to volunteer. Some states, like Hesse, which includes
Frankfurt, refused to take Italian trash. But Hamburg said yes. Hamburg has
three incinerators: one privately run by Vattenfall, one public, and one a
public-private partnership. German incinerators normally receive more than 150
euros (about $237) per ton of trash, although Hamburg officials would not say
how much, if anything, they were paid by Naples. http://louis-j-sheehaN.NET
But the agreement has its limits. “The
German government and the states expect the Italian government to present a
coherent program of measures to ensure a long-term solution for the waste
disposal problems of the Campania region,” the document said.
Indeed, citizens here offer only
grudging approval of the plan to rescue Italy, which they tend to regard as a
messy younger brother. “Of course no one wants trash,” said Jochem Wutschke, a
businessman having lunch in front of Hamburg’s majestic town hall. “But the
facilities here are able to burn it; they have the capacity. And they’re able
to earn money.”
Naples and a host of other countries
and cities have been long ignoring growing trash problems that are hazardous
and environmentally damaging. Landfills leach toxic chemicals into the ground
and produce methane, a gas far more potent than the CO2 from car or factory
emissions in terms of its effect on global warming.
To reduce landfills’ use, governments
are encouraged to reuse, recycle and then incinerate if necessary. In the
United States, the Environmental Protection Agency recommends a similar “waste
management hierarchy,” with landfills as the last option.
While incineration does produce
greenhouse gas in the form of CO2, newer incinerators are relatively clean,
using new technology to filter out heavy metals, nitrous oxides, particles and
sulfites. In addition, Hamburg has placed its incinerators within the city,
both so that emissions from garbage truck transport are minimized and so that
the heat from burning trash can be fed into the local heating grid. The
Vattenfall plant is just 15 minutes from the city center, on an industrial road
lined with recycling plants.
But that, in a way, makes the local
politics of trash even more difficult. Politicians in Naples have said the
region has been unable to build planned incinerators in Naples because of local
opposition. But Guido Bertolaso, Italy’s new trash chief, is not buying that
anymore. “As you drive around Europe, you see incinerators in lots of
neighborhoods,” he said.
Indeed, there are now 70 incinerators
in Germany and each opening has been accompanied by a degree of protest that
quickly subsided, Mr. Mineur said: “Most of these projects are not welcome
initially, but once the plants are working, nobody says anything.”
This article has been revised to
reflect the following correction:
Correction: June 10, 2008
An article on Monday about a temporary
agreement by Hamburg, Germany, to incinerate the trash of Naples, Italy,
referred incorrectly to Hamburg’s political leadership. It is a coalition of
the conservative Christian Democratic Union and the environmentally conscious
German Green Party; it is not governed solely by the Green Party. (The Greens
do control Hamburg’s environmental waste policy.)
Industry executives seem to expect the
next generation of digital subchannels to have niche programming enhanced with
local content.
One of the newcomers, LATV, a
bilingual music and entertainment network geared toward the 12- to 34-year-old
Hispanic population, recently signed an affiliation agreement with Tribune
Broadcasting, adding New York, Chicago and Dallas stations as multicast
carriers. In one year, LATV has gained 33 affiliates.
To increase the channel’s relevance in
each market, an affiliate can add local programming in one half-hour of the
day’s schedule. Miami, for example, uses anchors from its primary channel to
produce one-minute segments for local sports updates.
“We give the local stations the
opportunity to reach new Hispanic advertisers,” said LATV’s president, Howard
Bolter.
Another programmer — RTN or Retro
Television Network — also views local content as a key to its success. The
network, which began operation in 2005, offers its more than 70 affiliates
well-known TV shows from the 1960s through the 1980s, like “Get Smart” and
“Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,” in addition to old commercials.
Each affiliate receives a program
stream customized to its needs. The network will also supply a three-hour block
of children’s programming when required. The local stations split advertising
revenues and can insert local news, weather and sports.
With most TV viewers still unable to
receive multichannel feeds from local broadcasters, cable carriage remains an
important factor for the commercial success of digital subchannels.
Kevin J. Martin, chairman of the
Federal Communications Commission, has proposed that cable systems be required
to carry all of a broadcaster’s digital feeds. The cable industry objects,
saying market forces will resolve the issue. In 2007, 1,600 individual
broadcast channels and subchannels, owned by 600 stations, were carried by
cable systems nationwide, said Brian Dietz, a spokesman for the National Cable
and Telecommunications Association.
The Comcast system in San Francisco
carries 10 subchannels, for example, and the one in Union, N.J., carries 8.
They feature news, weather, Hispanic-oriented content and PBS programming.
Los Angeles’s largest PBS station,
KCET, broadcasts three digital subchannels in addition to its main,
high-definition service: KCET Orange, geared toward residents of Orange County;
PBS World, featuring documentaries; and V-me, a Spanish-language service. The
station expects all the channels to be available via cable eventually.
Yet even with the increased number of
viewers from cable, advertising dollars remain low. Because the new multicast
channels are not Nielsen-rated, spot ads are difficult to sell, and most
advertising revenue comes from local advertisers and sponsorship packages.
“This is a concept sale,” said Daniel
Crowe, LATV’s founder. “Advertisers are investing in us because they understand
our content and model.”
With the camera rolling, Christian
Boeving, a fitness model who is paid to endorse bodybuilding products, freely
admitted he had used steroids since he was 16.
That was two years ago, when a friend
from the gym he uses, Christopher Bell, was filming “Bigger, Stronger, Faster,”
a documentary on steroids that was released on May 30.
Mr. Boeving said he had nearly
forgotten about the interview until he heard from the film’s representatives
just before it was shown in January at the Sundance Film Festival. “They said,
‘Look, we’re just letting you know you mentioned the word steroids in it,’ ”
Mr. Boeving said. “But I didn’t think I would get into that much trouble,
because I thought it was pretty apparent that the top people in the industry
use steroids to look like we do.”
A company whose products he endorsed,
Iovate Health Sciences, apparently did not think so, and promptly severed Mr.
Boeving’s contract. Iovate Health Sciences did not return calls for comment
last week.
Mr. Boeving had represented
over-the-counter dietary supplements in Iovate’s MuscleTech division, including
Hydroxycut, which is meant to burn fat, and Nitro-Tech, which is meant to build
muscle. But the type of performance-enhancing steroids Mr. Boeving referred to
in the movie are legal only with a doctor’s prescription; he said in an interview
that he had a prescription for testosterone.
While he may not been breaking the
law, Mr. Boeving was apparently breaking a taboo in the bodybuilding world, one
that Mr. Bell’s documentary was aiming to expose. “Ever since I was a kid, I’ve
been looking at muscle magazines,” Mr. Bell said in an interview. “I would see
these guys that are huge, and they’d say, take this pill and you’ll look like
this. We know that’s not the case.”
Mr. Boeving said he had worked with
Iovate for nearly nine years and was in the midst of renegotiating his contract
when “Bigger, Stronger, Faster” had its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival
in January. Mr. Boeving said that after the premiere, he was suspended without
pay; he flew to the Iovate headquarters in Ontario to plead his case, but, he
said, MuscleTech has not renewed his contract.
Mr. Boeving said he was not allowed to
say how much the contract was worth, but said the company’s contracts for
athletes typically ranged from $36,000 to $300,000 a year. “I was able to live
off my contract, put it that way,” he said.
Though the loss of income is tough,
Mr. Boeving said, he does not regret his on-screen candor.
“Even in the film, I said, ‘look, I do
take the products I said I take — I do take Hydroxycut, I do take Nitro-Tech,
but I take other things as well,’ ” he said. “They felt like people were going
to walk away feeling like steroids, not MuscleTech products, made my physique
what it is, and they have built this industry on telling people, ‘This is what
I did to build my physique,’ ” Mr. Boeving said.
There is probably no
marijuana-friendlier place in the country than here in Mendocino County, where
plants can grow more than 15 feet high, medical marijuana clubs adopt stretches
of highway, and the sticky, sweet aroma of cannabis fills this city’s streets
during the autumn harvest.
Lately, however, residents of
Mendocino County, like those in other parts of California, are wondering if the
state’s embrace of marijuana for medicinal purposes has gone too far.
Medical marijuana was legalized under
state law by California voters in 1996, and since then 11 other states have
followed, even though federal law still bans the sale of any marijuana. But
some frustrated residents and law enforcement officials say the California law
has increasingly and unintentionally provided legal cover for large-scale
marijuana growers — and the problems such big-money operations can attract.
“It’s a clear shield for commercial
operations,” said Mike Sweeney, 60, a supporter of both medical marijuana and a
local ballot measure on June 3 that called for new limits on the drug in
Mendocino. “And we don’t want those here.”
The outcome of the ballot measure is
not known, as votes are still being counted, but such community push-back is
increasingly common across the state, even in the most liberal communities. In
recent years, dozens of local governments have banned or restricted cannabis
clubs, more formally known as dispensaries, that provide medical marijuana, in
the face of public safety issues involved in its sale and cultivation,
including crime and environmental damage.
“If folks had to get their dope,
sorry, they would just have to get it somewhere else,” said Sheriff Mark Pazin
of Merced County, east of San Francisco, one of the many jurisdictions to
impose new restrictions. http://Louis2J2Sheehan2Esquire.US
Under the 1996 law, known as
Proposition 215, patients need a prescription to acquire medicinal marijuana,
but the law gave little guidance as to how people were to acquire it. That gave
rise to some patients with marijuana prescriptions growing their own in limited
quantities, the opening of clubs to make it available and growers going large
scale to keep those outlets supplied.
In turn, that led to the kind of
worries that have bubbled up in Arcata, home of Humboldt State University,
where town elders say roughly one in five homes are “indoor grows,” with rooms
or even entire structures converted into marijuana greenhouses.
