Cameron has vowed an extra £10 million for non-lethal equipment and £30 million more for humanitarian assistance for Syrian people as the two politicians outlined further steps to “bring to an end the killing” of Syrian people.“We will double non-lethal support to the Syrian opposition in the coming year. Armored vehicles, body armor and power generators are about to be shipped,” Cameron said at the press conference after an Oval Office meeting with US president Barack Obama. Britain’s actions in Syria completely coincide with the US plans that the Obama administration voiced last week. Speaking after a meeting of the Syrian opposition, US Secretary of State John Kerry said the United States would double its non-lethal aid to opposition forces in Syria in the coming year bringing the total sum to $250 million. As for arming the Syrian opposition, Britain claims it has not “made decision to arm opposition groups in Syria”, however, Cameron said that it “is pushing for more flexibility in the EU arms embargo”.“What we have done is we have amended the EU arms embargo in order that we can give technical assistance and technical advice,” he said. He also said that UK will continue to examine the embargo to “see if we need to make further changes”.The current sanctions recently amended in April allow the supply of certain non-lethal equipment as well as technical and financing assistance related to it. However, a recently leaked six-page long draft proposal revealed the UK proposed two options to EU diplomats to amend the current embargo: the first, full exemption of Syrian National Coalition for Opposition and Revolutionary forces from the arms embargo and the second, to remove ‘non-lethal’ language to allow shipment lethal equipment to Syria. Cameron said Assad had to realize there could be no military victory for his forces. President Obama has backed Cameron’s words. From his side, he said that the “work to establish the use of chemical weapon in Syria” will continue and the findings “will help guide” the next steps. Obama said the US would be “very persistent” in pursuing a peaceful political transition that leads to Assad’s exit but leaves Syria “intact”.”I’m not promising it is going to be successful. Frankly, sometimes once the furies have been unleashed in a situation like we are seeing in Syria, it’s very hard to put things back together,” Obama said. Both Cameron and Obama welcomed “successful” talks the Prime Minister had with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, at which the two leaders sought to hammer out a common approach to ending Syrian conflict. “There is now common ground between the US, UK, Russia and many others that whatever our differences we have the same aim, a stable, inclusive and peaceful Syria free from the scourge of extremists,” Cameron said. … Read More
GOP thinks imitating BuzzFeed to raise money is WIN!
The GOP is going to make its own BuzzFeed, apparently. National Journal’s Brian Fung “won the Internet” yesterday with his report on the National Republican Congressional Committee’s thrilling new website, which has a sidebar, and features lists.The NRCC also hired 20 writers (the GOP will save publishing!) to create conservative versions of the soul-deadening crap BuzzFeed’s list-generators are forced to compile. While it may sound like the aim is to appeal to a new demo — kids who remember the ’90s and who also believe that balancing the federal budget with deep domestic spending cuts will also somehow spur economic growth — it’s actually not quite that ambitious: The point is to boost traffic to the NRCC website, and therefore to increase donations to the NRCC. It appeared to be working, too, even before the entire liberal Internet stopped to point and laugh at the notion of a “conservative BuzzFeed,” giving the project a massive amount of attention.Continue Reading… … Read More
10 Things To Know About The Northeast Blizzard
— 1. MORE THAN 650,000 LOST POWER IN NEW ENGLAND
Even the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant in Plymouth, Mass., had to shut down and turn to backup generators.
Feds do not consider San Onofre nuclear powerplant safe
David McNew / Getty Images / AFP Federal regulators have expressed significant concern about the safety of the San Onofre nuclear power plant, asking for more analysis on its damaged steam generators and requesting the plant to be able to run safely at full capacity.The power plant has been inactive since January, when a radiation leak led to the discovery of significant damage on many of its generator tubes. Many worried that the dangerous conditions at the plant could lead to California’s own Fukushima-like meltdown. Southern California Edison, which runs the plant, has since asked for permission to restart one of its twin reactors, Unit 2, at 70 percent power, which the company claims will end the vibration and friction that eroded the generator tubes.If the plant’s unit is restarted at 100 percent capacity, it may not be considered safe enough to stay open. But the National Regulatory Commission (NRC) on Wednesday said that the tubes must retain “structural integrity” during “the full range of normal operating conditions” in order to pass inspection, the Associated Press reported. If the San Onofre plant is evaluated under such conditions, it may not receive permission to restart again.An NRC evaluation of such conditions could trigger a longer review that will keep the plant inactive for many more months. The commission also asked Edison to explain how generator tubes would interact with each other if the plant operates at 100 percent capacity, as well as several other detailed questions that will help commissioners evaluate the feasibility of a partial restart.Failure of the generator tubes could release radiation, which has spurred environmental activists to lobby against a partial restart of the plant. Friends of the Earth, a group that has repeatedly criticized the nuclear power industry, has long pushed for the NRC to require Edison to seek an amendment to its operating license to restart the plant. Such an amendment would force Edison to undergo judicial-style hearings before it can restart, which could easily take two years.“Edison’s design errors have led to the multi-hundred million-dollar failure of brand new equipment which has in turn endangered the lives and livelihoods of millions of people in Southern California,” the environmental group wrote in a press release in November.Friends of the Earth Spokeswoman Kendra Ulrich told AP that the group is “encouraged that the NRC is asking hard questions.” The federal regulators have often come under scrutiny for ignoring and brushing off safety concerns and complaints about dangerous conditions at power plants across the nation.The San Onofre power plant, which used to supply power for 1.4 million homes, has been a particularly expensive failure. The plant spent $670 million on an overhaul in 2009 and 2010, only to discover the corroded generator tubes in early 2012. Decaying generator tubes also forced the plant to shut down its Unit 1 reactor in 1992, even though it was designed to last until at least 2004. … Read More
San Onofre Nuclear Plant Operator Ordered To Turn Over Records
LOS ANGELES — A federal board Friday ordered the operator of a shuttered nuclear power plant in California to turn over dozens of pages of documents that were withheld when the company submitted a plan to restart one of its damaged twin reactors.The records at issue were prepared by industry experts who have helped Southern California Edison investigate why the San Onofre plant’s nearly new steam generators caused excessive wear to hundreds of tubes that carry radioactive water.Read More…
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New York University Plans To Reopen Hospital Shut Down By Hurricane – The Chronicle Of Higher Education
New York University’s Langone Medical Center announced a phased reopening of Tisch Hospital, its flagship clinical facility, before the end of December. The hospital evacuated hundreds of patients when Hurricane Sandy knocked out power and one of its backup generators failed.Read More…
More on Hurricane Sandy 2012
On the Bright Side, New York’s AT&T Customers Have Been World’s Guinea Pigs
(Photo: Josh Hallett)
Maybe your AT&T service hasn’t always been everything you’d hoped it would be. But take heart New Yorkers, the lessons the telecommunications giant learned here are being applied all over the world.
The city’s vertical density and concentration of high-volume data users has made New York “a living laboratory for telecom engineers,” AT&T chief executive officer Randall Stephenson said today at a breakfast sponsored by the Association for a Better New York.
“This is a very unique place to try to engineer and design wireless networks,” Mr. Stephenson said. “We kept investing, we kept innovating, we kept learning. What we’ve done in New York is developed lessons that are being applied around the globe.”
One challenge Mr. Stephenson had in mind: How to keep cell towers online during events such as Superstorm Sandy, which wiped out service for thousands of New Yorkers.
“I don’t think many of you, or many of your landlords would be too enthusiastic about having 200 gallons of fuel sitting on top of your buildings to fire up backup generators,” he said.
Meanwhile, AT&T announced last week that it would spend $14 billion to expand broadband networks over the next three year as it seeks to expand its 4G LTE network to 300 million people.
That investment, Mr. Stephenson said today, would allow the company to install 50,000 new cell antennas nationwide, a vast increase from the 4,500 new cell sites deployed in the previous three years. Much of the new investment will center on New York, which Mr. Stephenson called the “very core” of the rapid development in mobile data usage.
If that proves out, perhaps New Yorkers won’t only have been guinea pigs for the rest of the world, but test cases for their own future selves. … Read More
