Not only does the break-up of ice pose a threat to the SP-40 station, it could also cause environmental pollution in the area, Russian Natural Resources Minister Sergey Donskoy said in a statement on Thursday.Currently there are 16 scientists working at the Russian station, which “has no chance of surviving through this summer,” according to the head of Russia’s high-latitude Arctic expeditions Vladimir Sokolov.“The station’s ice floe is cleaved and it was decided to dismantle the station to prevent an emergency situation,” Sokolov told RIA, adding that currently there is no threat to personnel.The Yamal nuclear-powered icebreaker is scheduled to leave for the drifting polar station on May 31, and it will take the ship about 10 days to reach SP-40, he explained.The early evacuation comes some three months before the October-launched station was due to finish its work, which included hundreds of ocean plumbing probes, and thousands of temperature and weather observations. It also comes at a time when it is getting increasingly hard to find a suitable ice floe for an Arctic station on the landless North Pole.Over the last 35 years Arctic ice coverage has declined by nearly 50 per cent because of climate change, satellite tracking images have revealed. In 2012, the melting of ice proceeded at the highest rates ever observed, the UN has said.Russia opened its first North Pole station SP-1 in 1937, and has since undertaken numerous polar rescue missions and early evacuations. The previous research station, SP-39, was moved to another ice floe in 2012, also due the breaking of ice, and in 2010 SP-37 had to be evacuated by a nuclear-powered icebreaker. By the time the researchers of SP-35 were rescued in July 2008, the ice floe they were drifting on had diminished from a 15 square kilometer block to a piece just 300 meters across. … Read More
Swedish extradition request for Assange ‘a fit-up’ – UK intel chatter
The Australian, who has been stranded at Ecuadorian embassy in London for almost 12 months, cited instant messages he received from Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the British signal intelligence body.One message from September 2012, which Assange read out in a Sunday night interview with Spanish TV program Salvados, says: “They are trying to arrest him on suspicion of XYZ … It is definitely a fit-up… Their timings are too convenient right after Cablegate.”Another conversation he cited goes: “He reckons he will stay in the Ecuadorian embassy for six to 12 months when the charges against him will be dropped, but that is not really how it works now is it? He’s a fool… Yeah… A highly optimistic fool.”Assange did not explain who the people exchanging the messages were, but said he managed to obtain them because they were not classified.”[GCHQ] won’t hand over any of the classified information,” he said. “But, much to its surprise, it has some unclassified information on us.”GCHQ confirmed to RT that it released the info to Assange under the Data Protection Act. It can be used by individuals to obtain personal information that UK bodies have about them. The agency is exempt from the Freedom of Information Act, the usual mechanism for getting information of interest released by officials.It stressed that the comments Assange received do not reflect GCHQ’s official stance in any way.“As was made clear to Mr. Assange when the information was disclosed to him, the comments that he refers to in his recent interview were a small number of casual observations on a current affairs issue made by a handful of staff on GCHQ’s internal informal communication channels. The comments were entirely unrelated to the individuals’ official duties,” a spokesman for the agency said in an email.A British court ordered that Assange be extradited to Sweden, where authorities want to question him on sex-related allegations. He refuses to go to there unless it guarantees that it won’t extradite him to the US, where he faces espionage charges over data released by WikiLeaks.Ecuador has given Assange asylum and houses him in a small basement room in its London embassy. UK law enforcement keeps a close eye on the embassy, ready to arrest Assange should he leave the diplomatically-protected building.The cost of the surveillance, which is believed to involve two police vehicles and eight officers on duty at all times, is now over $16,500 a day, Scotland Yard recently reported. The operation cost British taxpayers over $5 million since Assange got his refuge on June 19, 2012. By the time the anniversary falls, the sum is expected to have gone over $6.3 million. … Read More
Google Glass: obedience to the Matrix
It’s now being suggested that Google Glass, the computers worn over the eyes, can be used to catch rogue stock traders before they wander off the reservation and destroy the firms they work for. … Read More
