Love the glint of gold on his chest.
Showing posts with label america. Show all posts
Showing posts with label america. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Thursday, August 09, 2007
Space shuttle Endeavour prepares for launch
The US space shuttle Endeavour is due to blast off from Florida on its first mission in nearly five years, carrying a former teacher who trained with the ill-fated Challenger crew and gear for the International Space Station (ISS).
The mission will be the second of four that the US space agency plans this year as it presses to finish construction of the $US100 billion space station before the three remaining US shuttles are retired in 2010.
Florida's weather, often marked by afternoon thunderstorms during the state's steamy summer, was expected to cooperate, with an 80 per cent chance of clear skies for the 6:36pm (local time) launch, NASA said.
With no technical issues or weather concerns, NASA managers cleared the newly refurbished shuttle for fuelling.
Filling the ship's tanks with 2.3 million litres of super-cold liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen was expected to take about three hours.
The shuttle's three main engines will guzzle the propellants in its 8.5-minute climb to orbit.
Docking at the space station would take place on Friday if the shuttle is launched on time.
Endeavour has not flown since before the February 1, 2003, Columbia disaster, in which seven astronauts were killed when their spacecraft disintegrated on re-entry into the atmosphere.
NASA and Columbia's crew had not been aware that a falling chunk of insulation foam had knocked a hole in the ship's protective heat shield during launch.
The agency now monitors lift-offs with dozens of cameras and shuttle crews scrutinise their ship's heat-resistant tiles when they reach space.
As I blog this, I can't help but wonder why America spends so much on space research. Sure, it's exciting, it's vision on a grand scale, but for a supposedly rich country they sure suck at looking after their own people, with welfare and health.
The basic wage wouldn't feed a family, basic infrascructure (like briges and leveys in New Orleans) are neglected, whilst the polititions keep sending their young, unemployed, poor and usually black young men to countries to fight a war that should not have happend.
Your thoughts?
Friday, August 03, 2007
Brooklyn Bridge Is One of 3 With Poor Rating
Only three of the 787 bridges maintained by the New York City Department of Transportation are rated in poor condition, and the Brooklyn Bridge — opened in 1883 — is one of them.
Throughout the New York region, state and local authorities have been double-checking the stability of bridges after the collapse of an interstate highway bridge in Minneapolis on Wednesday night. Today, Gov. Jon S. Corzine of New Jersey ordered state transportation officials to immediately examine more than 6,000 bridges throughout the state.
The latest annual bridge report card for New York City — which covers only the 787 bridges run by the city, not those run by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority or the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey — shows that only three bridges were rated as poor, the lowest rating, in 2006: the Brooklyn Bridge; a pedestrian bridge at East 78th Street over the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive in Manhattan, and a bridge at Willow Lake at 76th Road in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, Queens.
In a conference call with journalists this afternoon, city officials said that the state inspects all of the city’s vehicular bridges every two years. The officials said the heavily trafficked Brooklyn Bridge is safe, despite its poor rating.
“The poor rating for the Brooklyn Bridge means that there’s only components of the bridge that are in poor condition,” said Lori A. Ardito, first deputy commissioner at the city’s Department of Transportation. “They’re actually the ramps leading to the bridge — not the span of the bridge.”
The bridge is scheduled for a reconstruction to begin in 2010, a project expected to last two to three years.
Ms. Ardito said the city is taking no special actions in response to the Minnesota disaster. “We feel that the program we’ve been using is sufficient and we obviously are not speculating as to what happened in Minnesota,” she said. “Once we have the information, we’ll work from there.”
She said the city had invested $3 billion in its capital construction program for bridges over the last eight years, and would spend another $2 billion over the next two years.
She maintained that no bridges are currently “structurally deficient.” However, the Willis Avenue Bridge, which connects Manhattan and the Bronx over the Harlem River, is about to undergo a multimillion-dollar reconstruction after the United States Department of Transportation found “structural and seismic deficiencies.”
The state conducts the regularly scheduled inspections of city bridges, but the city has a 42-person unit that handles inspections on an emergency basis or if anything unusual arises.
The city invested in an ambitious bridge-repair effort after several of the city’s major bridges were found to be unsafe in the 1980s. In the most well-known job, the Williamsburg Bridge was closed for several months in 1988 to all but emergency traffic. “We had such poor corrosion that I could put my hand through the cracks,” Samuel I. Schwartz, a traffic consultant who was a city transportation official put in charge of the emergency repairs at the time, said today in an interview.
The New York region has had other bridge-related problems.
On June 28, 1983, a 100-foot section of the Mianus River bridge in Connecticut collapsed, hurling six people into the river 75 feet below, killing three and critically injuring three others.
On April 5, 1987, a bridge on the Gov. Thomas E. Dewey Thruway collapsed — sending 10 motorists to their death — after floodwaters of the Schoharie Creek scoured gravel and silt from around the bridge’s footings. Scouring occurs when rushing water stirs up the stream bed around concrete structures, sometimes causing holes to form and structures to shift.
Although not directly bridge-related, the collapse of a part of the West Side Highway on Dec. 16, 1973, remains a vivid memory for many New Yorkers. On that day, a cement truck that was traveling to make repairs on the highway caused a 60-foot section of the northbound roadway to collapse at Gansevoort Street. The entire highway from the Battery north to West 46th Street was closed immediately.
Throughout the New York region, state and local authorities have been double-checking the stability of bridges after the collapse of an interstate highway bridge in Minneapolis on Wednesday night. Today, Gov. Jon S. Corzine of New Jersey ordered state transportation officials to immediately examine more than 6,000 bridges throughout the state.
The latest annual bridge report card for New York City — which covers only the 787 bridges run by the city, not those run by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority or the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey — shows that only three bridges were rated as poor, the lowest rating, in 2006: the Brooklyn Bridge; a pedestrian bridge at East 78th Street over the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive in Manhattan, and a bridge at Willow Lake at 76th Road in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, Queens.
In a conference call with journalists this afternoon, city officials said that the state inspects all of the city’s vehicular bridges every two years. The officials said the heavily trafficked Brooklyn Bridge is safe, despite its poor rating.
“The poor rating for the Brooklyn Bridge means that there’s only components of the bridge that are in poor condition,” said Lori A. Ardito, first deputy commissioner at the city’s Department of Transportation. “They’re actually the ramps leading to the bridge — not the span of the bridge.”
The bridge is scheduled for a reconstruction to begin in 2010, a project expected to last two to three years.
Ms. Ardito said the city is taking no special actions in response to the Minnesota disaster. “We feel that the program we’ve been using is sufficient and we obviously are not speculating as to what happened in Minnesota,” she said. “Once we have the information, we’ll work from there.”
She said the city had invested $3 billion in its capital construction program for bridges over the last eight years, and would spend another $2 billion over the next two years.
She maintained that no bridges are currently “structurally deficient.” However, the Willis Avenue Bridge, which connects Manhattan and the Bronx over the Harlem River, is about to undergo a multimillion-dollar reconstruction after the United States Department of Transportation found “structural and seismic deficiencies.”
The state conducts the regularly scheduled inspections of city bridges, but the city has a 42-person unit that handles inspections on an emergency basis or if anything unusual arises.
The city invested in an ambitious bridge-repair effort after several of the city’s major bridges were found to be unsafe in the 1980s. In the most well-known job, the Williamsburg Bridge was closed for several months in 1988 to all but emergency traffic. “We had such poor corrosion that I could put my hand through the cracks,” Samuel I. Schwartz, a traffic consultant who was a city transportation official put in charge of the emergency repairs at the time, said today in an interview.
The New York region has had other bridge-related problems.
On June 28, 1983, a 100-foot section of the Mianus River bridge in Connecticut collapsed, hurling six people into the river 75 feet below, killing three and critically injuring three others.
On April 5, 1987, a bridge on the Gov. Thomas E. Dewey Thruway collapsed — sending 10 motorists to their death — after floodwaters of the Schoharie Creek scoured gravel and silt from around the bridge’s footings. Scouring occurs when rushing water stirs up the stream bed around concrete structures, sometimes causing holes to form and structures to shift.
Although not directly bridge-related, the collapse of a part of the West Side Highway on Dec. 16, 1973, remains a vivid memory for many New Yorkers. On that day, a cement truck that was traveling to make repairs on the highway caused a 60-foot section of the northbound roadway to collapse at Gansevoort Street. The entire highway from the Battery north to West 46th Street was closed immediately.
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
International reaction to USA shootings
LONDON - The Virginia Tech shootings sparked criticism of U.S. gun control laws around the world Tuesday. Editorials lashed out at the availability of weapons, and the leader of Australia _ one of America's closest allies _ declared that America's gun culture was costing lives.
South Korea's Foreign Ministry said the government hoped Monday's shootings, allegedly carried out by a 23-year-old South Korean native, would not "stir up racial prejudice or confrontation."
While some focused blame only on the gunman, world opinion over U.S. gun laws was almost unanimous: Access to weapons increases the probability of shootings. There was no sympathy for the view that more guns would have saved lives by enabling students to shoot the assailant.
"We took action to limit the availability of guns and we showed a national resolve that the gun culture that is such a negative in the United States would never become a negative in our country," said Australian Prime Minister John Howard, who staked his political career on promoting tough gun laws after a gunman went on one of the world's deadliest killing sprees 11 years ago.
The tragedy in a Tasmanian tourist resort left 35 people dead. Afterward, Australia's gun laws were changed to prohibit automatic weapons and handguns and toughen licensing and storage restrictions.
Handguns are also banned in Britain _ a prohibition that forces even the country's Olympic pistol shooting team from practicing on its own soil. In Sweden, civilians can acquire firearm permits only if they have a hunting license or are members of a shooting club and have no criminal record. In Italy, people must have a valid reason for wanting one. Firearms are forbidden for private Chinese citizens.
Still, leaders from Britain, Germany, Mexico, China, Afghanistan and France stopped short of criticizing President Bush or U.S. gun laws when they offered sympathies to the families of Monday's victims.
Editorials were less diplomatic."Only the names change _ And the numbers," read a headline in the Times of London. "Why, we ask, do Americans continue to tolerate gun laws and a culture that seems to condemn thousands of innocents to death every year, when presumably, tougher restrictions, such as those in force in European countries, could at least reduce the number?"
The French daily Le Monde said the regularity of mass shootings across the Atlantic was a blotch on America's image.
"It would be unjust and especially false to reduce the United States to the image created, in a recurrent way, from the bursts of murderous fury that some isolated individuals succumb to. But acts like this are rare elsewhere, and tend to often disfigure the 'American dream.'"
Britain's 46 homicides involving firearms last year was the lowest since the late 1980s. New York City, with 8 million people compared to 53 million in England and Wales, recorded 590 homicides last year.
In Italy, there are three types of licenses for gun ownership: for personal safety, target practice and skeet shooting, and hunting. Authorization is granted by the police. To obtain a gun for personal safety, the owner must be an adult and have a "valid" reason.
Italy's leading daily Corriere della Sera's main story on the shootings was an opinion piece entitled "Guns at the Supermarket" _ a critical view of the U.S. gun lobby and the ease with which guns can be purchased. State-run RAI radio also discussed at length what it said were lax standards for gun ownership in the United States.
More...
South Korea's Foreign Ministry said the government hoped Monday's shootings, allegedly carried out by a 23-year-old South Korean native, would not "stir up racial prejudice or confrontation."
While some focused blame only on the gunman, world opinion over U.S. gun laws was almost unanimous: Access to weapons increases the probability of shootings. There was no sympathy for the view that more guns would have saved lives by enabling students to shoot the assailant.
"We took action to limit the availability of guns and we showed a national resolve that the gun culture that is such a negative in the United States would never become a negative in our country," said Australian Prime Minister John Howard, who staked his political career on promoting tough gun laws after a gunman went on one of the world's deadliest killing sprees 11 years ago.
The tragedy in a Tasmanian tourist resort left 35 people dead. Afterward, Australia's gun laws were changed to prohibit automatic weapons and handguns and toughen licensing and storage restrictions.
Handguns are also banned in Britain _ a prohibition that forces even the country's Olympic pistol shooting team from practicing on its own soil. In Sweden, civilians can acquire firearm permits only if they have a hunting license or are members of a shooting club and have no criminal record. In Italy, people must have a valid reason for wanting one. Firearms are forbidden for private Chinese citizens.
Still, leaders from Britain, Germany, Mexico, China, Afghanistan and France stopped short of criticizing President Bush or U.S. gun laws when they offered sympathies to the families of Monday's victims.
Editorials were less diplomatic."Only the names change _ And the numbers," read a headline in the Times of London. "Why, we ask, do Americans continue to tolerate gun laws and a culture that seems to condemn thousands of innocents to death every year, when presumably, tougher restrictions, such as those in force in European countries, could at least reduce the number?"
The French daily Le Monde said the regularity of mass shootings across the Atlantic was a blotch on America's image.
"It would be unjust and especially false to reduce the United States to the image created, in a recurrent way, from the bursts of murderous fury that some isolated individuals succumb to. But acts like this are rare elsewhere, and tend to often disfigure the 'American dream.'"
Britain's 46 homicides involving firearms last year was the lowest since the late 1980s. New York City, with 8 million people compared to 53 million in England and Wales, recorded 590 homicides last year.
In Italy, there are three types of licenses for gun ownership: for personal safety, target practice and skeet shooting, and hunting. Authorization is granted by the police. To obtain a gun for personal safety, the owner must be an adult and have a "valid" reason.
Italy's leading daily Corriere della Sera's main story on the shootings was an opinion piece entitled "Guns at the Supermarket" _ a critical view of the U.S. gun lobby and the ease with which guns can be purchased. State-run RAI radio also discussed at length what it said were lax standards for gun ownership in the United States.
More...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
