Monday, 21 October 2013

The European Union Times

410-meter asteroid ‘may collide’ with Earth in 2032

Posted: 20 Oct 2013 02:32 PM PDT

A potentially catastrophic asteroid has been discovered by astronomers, who say there’s a slim chance that the 410-meter-wide minor planet will crash into Earth in 2032, creating a blast 50 times greater than the biggest nuclear bomb.
The asteroid, described as 2013 TV135, was found in the Camelopardalis (Giraffe) constellation by the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory in southern Ukraine, the Minor Planet Center of the International Astronomers Union said.
“On the night of October 12, I was watching the Giraffe constellation, it was an in-depth monitoring as part of the comet search program,” Gennady Borisov from the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory told Itar-Tass news agency. “This is when the asteroid… was discovered. The first observations show that it moves quickly and is relatively close.”
The discovery has been confirmed by astronomers in Italy, Spain, the UK and Russia. In Russia, it was seen with telescopes at the Master Observatory in the Siberian republic of Buryatia, the IAU Minor Planet Center said.

The asteroid has been added to the List of the Potentially Hazardous Asteroids, which includes celestial bodies with orbits closer than 7.5 million kilometers from the Earth’s orbit.
However, the threat posed by the 2013 TV135 is minor. Updated estimates show that it has a one in 14,000 chance of colliding with our planet, which is five times as probable as the initial estimate of 1 in 63,000, but still negligible.
Astronomers say the asteroid’s orbit will be about 1.7 million kilometers away from the Earth’s orbit on August 26, 2032.
If the asteroid hits Earth, it would create an explosion equivalent to 2,500 megatons of TNT, which is 50 times greater than the biggest nuclear bomb ever detonated.

The man behind 2013 TV135 asteroid discovery, Gennady Borisov from the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory.

Scientists will be able to better evaluate the impact risk of 2013 TV135, and even determine its possible impact site on Earth by 2028, Timur Kryachko from the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory told the RIA Novosti news agency.
The discovery was mentioned by Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, who is pushing for the development of anti-asteroid defense systems.
“Here’s a super-task for our space industry,” Rogozin said of the asteroid on his Twitter page.
The 2013 TV135 has been given a 1 out of 10 rating on the Torino Scale, used to estimate asteroid impact hazards, which means it “poses no unusual level of danger” and “the chance of collision is extremely unlikely.”
According to NASA’s Near Earth Object Program, there is currently just one asteroid that has the same rating. It’s called 2007 VK184. At 130 meters wide, it has 1 in 1,820 chance of impacting Earth on June 3, 2048.
The chances that any other near-Earth asteroid will crash into earth in the next 100 years is estimated at “effectively zero” by NASA.
Source

Australians warned forest fire crisis could last weeks

Posted: 20 Oct 2013 02:25 PM PDT

Australians still in the path of forest fires 140 kilometres west of Sydney were told on Saturday it was too late to be evacuated and they should take whatever shelter they could find.
Lithgow, at the foot of the Blue Mountains in the south-eastern region, had lost nearly 200 homes in the firestorm that swept through Thursday.
The blaze is the latest of dozens in an emergency that Rural Fire Service (RFS) commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons warned could last “weeks, not days.”
Thousands of volunteers have been drafted to battle blazes that have blackened around 100,000 hectares and cost one life.
Walter Linder, 63, died of a suspected heart attack as he defended his home from the flames.
“I’ve had no advice of others missing or feared dead,” Fitzsimmons said. “Looking at the damage and destruction across these areas, we’re expecting numbers to be in the hundreds when it comes to homes and buildings and infrastructure, and we simply can’t ignore the reality that there may be people still within their homes that may not have gotten out.”
A change in the weather saw temperatures and winds subside, giving crews backed by water-bombing aircraft a chance to contain the fire by controlled burns ahead of the front.
Fire conditions were described on Thursday as the “worst in a decade” in the south-east, with strong winds, high temperatures and tinder-dry woodland.
Phil Koperberg, a former RFS commissioner, was appointed to lead a Blue Mountains recovery team. He said there had been worse fires in the region in the 1950s and ’60s, but it was unprecedented at the October start of the southern hemisphere summer.
“We’ve always had fires but not of this nature and not at this time of year and not accompanied by the record-breaking heat we’ve had,” he told The Australian newspaper, characterizing the development as a “feature of a slowly evolving climate.”
Almost 200 homes destroyed in fires in Australia
The New South Wales Rural Fire Service (RFS) says 193 homes have been destroyed and 109 damaged in the fierce bushfires that have affected the state’s Blue Mountains since Thursday.
Firefighters have been making the most of cooler weather overnight to work on containment lines around six major bushfires in New South Wales before conditions worsen in the coming days.
One of the worst affected areas was around Springwood and Winmalee in the Lower Blue Mountains.
The RFS says it has inspected about 95 per cent of the Springwood fire ground – where the 193 homes were lost – although it says that figure may change.
One man died trying to protect his home from a fire than burnt from Doyalson to Catherine Hill Bay, at Lake Macquarie.
Watch and act warnings remain in place for fires in the Southern Highlands, Wyong, Mount Victoria, Lithgow, Heatherbrae and Springwood in the Blue Mountains.
Around 190 firefighters are working to contain the Springwood fire which is still burning out of control.
Australian bushfires claim their first life
Australians were warned Friday that the worst forest fires in a decade were likely to claim more lives after a 63-year-old man who suffered a heart attack while trying to defend his home became the first reported victim.
Bushland is still blazing in the south-east after scorching heat and strong winds whipped up a conflagration that burned through 50,000 hectares and had a perimeter of 400 kilometers.
Over 100 houses were feared destroyed in Thursday’s inferno, with the most serious losses in the Blue Mountains 70 kilometres west of Sydney.
Mike Gallacher, the emergency services minister in the New South Wales state government, said the bodies of those who tried to outrun the flames may be found in burned-out vehicles.
Flames ring Sydney as forest fire season starts
A pink haze hung over Sydney on Thursday as bushland blazed on all three flanks of Australia’s biggest city at the start of the annual forest fire season.
Strong winds and temperatures of 34 degrees in south-eastern Australia saw officials ban the lighting of fires outdoors and urge residents to prepare rural properties for “ember attacks,” when embers from a fire are carried by winds.
“The sky’s very dark, with the sun burning orange through the dark smoke,” a resident told national broadcaster ABC as more than 100 mostly volunteer firefighters tried to hold back a blaze at Springwood, in the Blue Mountains 70 kilometres west of Sydney.
In Newcastle, 170 kilometres north of Sydney, a plume of smoke closed the airport.
Residents of Balmoral, 120 kilometres south of Sydney, were urged to pack up and leave after reports of a house being razed and 20 more under threat.
Fire-fighting aircraft were grounded because it was not safe to fly due to high winds and low visibility.
Rural Fire Service spokesman Joel Kursawe told reporters that winds of up to 80 kilometres per hour were capable of carrying burning embers over 6 kilometres.
Rural Fire Service deputy commissioner Rob Rogers tweeted: “Residents please take extreme care. Very serious danger to life today.”
Source

65% of the Greek Households in Debt

Posted: 20 Oct 2013 02:07 PM PDT

In light of the arrogant and brazen internationalism courtesy of Antonis Samaras and the unconstitutional and unlawful persecution of the leader and Members of Golden Dawn, he is now expecting people to give a “thank you” to the international usurers, who with the help of this domestic political puppet continue to steal from the Greek People.
The lackeys of militant journalism sunk to the lowest depths of rot and corruption, attempting unsuccessfully to turn the public opinion against the Golden Dawn, in a frantic attempt to salvage the privileges of their bosses. To achieve this, they made up stories like us “slaughtering lambs in villages to practice killing”, finding thousands of weapons (which have not been found, but they insist) saying we want to drive tanks into the parliament and other fairy tales. The news that really is shocking, not covered by the propaganda regime, nor the soiled pages of the yellow press is that of 65% of Greek households are in debt!
This is not a figment of the imagination and not an exaggeration of Golden Dawn as some may claim. This is the result of information collected by the General Secretary for Consumer Affairs (GSEE) and talk that our people are being driven to financial ruin and then to extinction.
Unfortunately for the sick minds of the regime who create propaganda and crime against the Greeks, the People’s Association-Golden Dawn can not be accused of the same thing. If it was like that, it would be played in all forms of media with pompous titles and descriptions of terror. One can only imagine the headlines.
GSEE, estimates that those households who received a mortgage loan from 2008 onwards, are unable to pay, so they sink automatically into the status of slavery interest, of which this enriches the financiers and maintainers of this vicious and corrupt post-dictatorship Regime. Note that even 2 and a half years before, the proportion of indebted households amounted to 10%! It does not take a math genius to figure out what is happening.
At the same time while this unprecedented crime is occurring, the government-funded journalists have undertaken the contracted work of slinging mud at the People’s Nationalist Movement, seeking to portray it as a threat to the Greek people and their freedoms. Yet the actual evidence of crime right in front of our people’s faces requires no journalistic lackey to say: It is the continued impoverishment of an entire people, the vile theft of their work and sacrifice, phasing out all prospects for survival. The perpetrators have gone against the People and the Country, and the Greek people know them well. That is why the voice of the Greek Nationalists will never silenced!
Source

Experts slash Germany growth forecast by half

Posted: 20 Oct 2013 01:54 PM PDT

A Siemens worker in Germany works on a turbine.

Leading economic think tanks have slashed this year’s annual growth forecast for Germany by half, as uncertainty in the eurozone continues.
On Thursday, the Munich-based Ifo together with Berlin-based DIW, Halle-based IW, and Essen-based RWI economic research institutes estimated that Germany’s gross domestic product (GDP) would grow by 0.4 percent this year, which is down from an earlier prediction of 0.8 percent.
“The German economy is facing an upturn. It will be carried by domestic demand,” the four institutes said in a joint statement.
The figures largely correspond with forecasts by the German government, which has predicted the eurozone’s largest economy will grow by 0.5 percent in 2013 and 1.6 percent the following year.
The German institutes said they saw a marked upswing from 2013, and forecast the growth for 2014 to stand at 1.8 percent.
“Growing employment and marked pay increases have already provided for a robust development in private consumption for quite some time,” they said.
According to a report released by the German Federal Labor Office on October 1, the country’s unemployment level rose by 25,000 in seasonally adjusted terms last month, following a 9,000 rise in the previous month. This is while economists initially expected a drop of 5,000 claims.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has insisted that the country is experiencing good economic performance as well as low unemployment rate.
This is while, the German powerhouse in electronics and electrical engineering, Siemens AG, is planning to axe 15,000 jobs over the next year as the economic crisis in Europe continues to worsen.
Europe plunged into financial crisis in early 2008. Insolvency now threatens heavily debt-ridden countries such as Greece, Portugal, Italy, Ireland and Spain.
Source

UK doctors given bonuses for placing patients on ‘death lists’

Posted: 20 Oct 2013 01:36 PM PDT

General practitioners in England have been receiving £50 bonuses for placing patients on controversial ‘death lists’ in order to reduce the number of occupied hospital beds. The move is yet another tactic aimed at cutting NHS costs, UK media reported.
Each death which occurs outside an NHS hospital has been calculated to save the health system some £1,000 ($1,600) in England. On average, deaths which occur inside NHS hospitals cost the service around £3,065 (just under $5000), while those elsewhere cost £2,107 (around $3,400).
Doctors have been given bonuses for drawing up ‘end-of-life advanced care plans’ for patients they predict will die within a year.
The payments in question apparently have the intention of keeping NHS costs as low as possible.
According to documents seen by the Daily Mail on Sunday, a “key objective” of the project – which underwent a trial period in England’s east – was “to shift the place of death” away from hospitals, thus “reducing …healthcare costs.”
“I think it’s got everything to do with money, with the cost of a hospital bed being £200 a day,” Dr Anthony Cole, acting chairman of the Medical Ethics Alliance, told the paper. He stated his belief that its advocates were mired in financial concerns, and suggested that it may result in insufficient medical care in a patient’s final days.
The ‘Yellow Folder’ pilot scheme was trialed in 41 medical practices in Ipswich and East Suffolk, and lasted from July 2011 until last month. The doctors received payment for every care home patient they successfully signed up to an end of life plan. Ipswich and East Suffolk Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), which ran the scheme, would not tell the paper how much money it allocated for bonuses.
Patients on the program were required to state their preferred location of death, whether they would like to be resuscitated, and their preferred drugs for the final hours of their life.
An NHS ‘Call to Action’ pack, available on the trust’s website, cited a “growing population with more complex needs” as one of the main issues facing British healthcare. It stated that the “number of people with multiple long term conditions [is] set to grow from 1.9 to 2.9 million from 2008 to 2018.”
However, people behind the development of the scheme have cited the primary motivation to be to give patients a more comfortable death. According to surveys cited by the Mail, 66 percent of people would prefer to be at home at the end of their lives, whereas only 43 percent actually do, on account of the majority being admitted to hospital.
On Thursday, Britain’s Daily Telegraph reported that senior members of Britain’s upper chamber, the House of Lords, said that the NHS is being faced with bankruptcy, as it will become unable to cope with Britain’s aging population. One member reportedly called the system a “demographic time bomb.”
NHS cost-cutting has been making waves in the British press over the past few days. On Saturday, it emerged that some patients are being transported to hospitals in police cars because of a massive shortage of ambulances. On Sunday, the head of England’s Accident and Emergency departments said that a lack of available consultants during weekends posed a risk to patients.
Critics argue that the scheme could cause patients to be denied important medical treatment. Three months ago, the paper published a report documenting how ambulance crews can choose whether to transport people to hospital if they have stated on their ‘care plan’ that they would like to die at home.
“Why should a GP be paid for this conversation, as opposed to any other?” said Dr Gillian Craig, a retired geriatrician. “I feel doctors are paid very well and there should be no extra payments. Anything else is open to abuse and misuse.”
She added that the program may even block the course of treatment by “closing the door on potentially life-saving hospital treatment…a doctor may not realize that, while the person appears to be dying, they actually have a reversible condition.”
In a new study recently published in Britain’s Lancet, it was found that a separate UK palliative care pathway – Liverpool Care Pathway for the Dying Patient – “provides the same quality of care as that usually provided to cancer patients who are dying in hospital.” The scheme was adopted in the late 1990s and began to garner serious criticism in the UK press as it grew. The study went on to add that “any initiative to replace the pathway in England should be grounded in scientific evidence and tested in controlled trials before it is implemented.”
NHS trusts adopting the Liverpool Care Pathway are offered financial incentives for doing so. More than six out of ten of those trusts – just over half the total – have received or are due to receive financial rewards amounting to at least £12 million (just under $19 million), according to The Daily Telegraph.
The scheme involves the withdrawal of tests or treatments deemed unnecessary for the patient. In a 2012 letter to the newspaper, six doctors warned that hospitals may be using the scheme to reduce strain on hospital resources.
“Remarks on the Liverpool Care Pathway by Professor Patrick Pullicino…gave rise to controversy. But he is not wrong to say that there is no scientific way of diagnosing imminent death. It is essentially a prediction. Other considerations may come into reaching such a decision, not excluding the availability of hospital resources,” the letter read.
Source

Italian protesters take on police during mass march against austerity budget

Posted: 19 Oct 2013 01:33 PM PDT

Violence broke out between police and demonstrators in Rome on Saturday as tens of thousands took to the streets to protest Italy’s new budget.
“We are laying siege to the city!” chanted the crowd, as a small minority pelted the police and government buildings with water bottles and eggs.
A group of protesters turned over garbage bins and set some of them on fire in front of the Economy Ministry.
Police say they confiscated tear gas canisters and rocks from some of the radicals in the predominantly youthful crowd and found chains stashed away along the route of the march.
Organizers estimated that 70,000 people took part in the protest, while authorities placed the number closer to 50,000.
“With this budget the government is continuing to hurt a country which is already on its knees,” said Piero Bernocchi, leader of the left-wing COBAS trade union that was behind the demonstration.
“Even after austerity has proven to be disastrous, with debt rising, the economy crumbling, and unemployment soaring, they still continue with these policies.”
Earlier this week, Prime Minister Enrico Letta – who is presiding over a fractious Left-Right coalition – presented the 2014 budget that immediately came under a firestorm of criticism from both sides of the political spectrum.
Left-wingers criticized the document for freezing state sector pay and pensions, while right-wingers and businesses said it failed to stimulate growth with insufficient cuts to Italy’s oppressive corporate taxes.
Italy annually spends around 800 billion euro – a sum it cannot afford as it struggles with a recession that started more than two years ago. The latest budget aims to cut the deficit to 2.5 percent – still worse than most of Europe.
On Friday, a general strike paralyzed transport links in the country and forced the cancellation of flights in and out of Rome.
But Saturday’s protests weren’t just about pay. Some called for the government to abandon an expensive fast-train link with France. Others demanded that Italy provide more social housing. Many bemoaned the country’s treatment of immigrants, who have suffered several tragic incidents in recent months as they attempted to reach the coast of Italy.
Letta has gone on television to defend his government, but dissenters have not been placated and say that even bigger demonstrations will be staged next week.
Source

Portuguese protesters demand resignation of government

Posted: 19 Oct 2013 01:11 PM PDT

Tens of thousands of Portuguese have staged anti-austerity demonstrations in the country’s two most populated cities, demanding the resignation of the government.
On Saturday, thousands of people took to the streets of the capital Lisbon against new wage and pension cuts planned in the country’s 2014 budget.
According to organizers, up to 70,000 people attended the rally.
The protesters called on President Anibal Cavaco Silva to reject the 2014 budget bill and send it to the Constitutional Court to be shot down.
The bill includes the cutbacks Portugal has agreed to implement under the terms of its international bailout package.
President Cavaco Silva can decide to send the budget to the Constitutional Court and Portuguese citizens can also plead the court to check its compliance with the constitution.
Over the past year and a half, the court has already rejected some government austerity measures, forcing it to come up with alternatives.
The protesters shouted anti-government slogans, such as, “Government out!” and “Liars, liars, we want new elections!”
Armenio Carlos, the leader of the country’s largest union, the 750,000-strong CGTP, told the rally in Lisbon, “Let’s fight so that the measures in this budget are declared unconstitutional.”
Meanwhile, thousands of anti-austerity protesters held another demonstration in the country’s second largest city of Porto.
According to organizers, between 50,000 to 60,000 people attended the rally in Porto, but police put the number of the participants at 25,000.
The long-drawn-out eurozone debt crisis, which began in Greece in late 2009 and later on reached Italy, Spain, France , Portugal, Britain, Ireland, and Cyprus is viewed as a threat not only to Europe but also to many of the world’s other developed economies.
The worsening debt crisis has forced EU governments to adopt harsh austerity measures and tough economic reforms, which have triggered massive demonstrations in many European countries.
Battered by the global financial downturn, the Portuguese economy fell into a recession, which compelled the country to negotiate with the International Monetary Fund for a bailout loan in 2011.
Source

Earth’s core deceives scientists

Posted: 19 Oct 2013 11:58 AM PDT

Scientists have virtually denied the existing hypothesis about the formation of the Earth’s core. It was believed that the metal core of all celestial bodies is formed under the same scheme. However, recent experiments demonstrated that there are other ways to form the core. It turns out that this process should be seen as unique to each celestial body.
Scientists base the hypotheses of formation of the mantle and the core of our planet on the composition of the two layers. Looking at the structure of the mantle, we can see that the closest to the Earth’s crust is a layer of molten magma. At a depth of three thousand miles the mantle becomes solid or as geologists joke, “ceramic,” as it is mainly composed of oxygen, silicon and magnesium with small additions of iron.
Interestingly, the core has a similar structure. Its top layer is liquid, and under it, at the very center of the planet, there is the hard part of the nucleus. But the chemical composition of this layer of the Earth is very different. Nearly the entire core is composed of iron and related metals. There is a legitimate question – how at the dawn of the formation of our planet almost all of the iron has managed to concentrate in the core? This element could not leak through the solid “ceramic” mantle that makes up a large part of our planet.
This is supported by numerous laboratory experiments with mixtures of silicate minerals and iron. The latter is always present in the formation in the form of tiny isolated structures trapped at the joints between minerals grains. It cannot escape at ordinary temperature and pressure. Therefore, the scientists had no choice but to assume that the mass “lowering” of iron in the center of the planet was only possible in the early stages of the Earth’s development, when the temperature in it was so high that the upper part of the “ceramic” mantle completely melted. Thus, iron droplets could seep through the mantle and collect at its base, and then under the effect of gravity sank further. This is how the core was ultimately formed.
Until now, this theory of the vertical stratification of the Earth was supported by the majority of scholars, but recently some of them proposed to revise this model. It all started after a series of studies led by Professor Wendy Mao of Stanford University (USA). They have been studying the process of eliminating iron from silicates that occurs at a depth of 1,000 kilometers from the Earth surface in the part of the mantle that is sufficiently hard.
The researchers conducted a series of experiments in which they studied the behavior of minerals in the samples that were under extreme pressure and temperature between the tips of the diamond crystals. As a result, they found that when the pressure inside the mantle increases, liquid iron begins wetting the surface of the silicate minerals grains. This results on the flows of molten iron gathering into streams in the solid mantle (this process is called percolation). Having carefully studied the conditions of this process, scientists have found that it can occur even when the mantle is hot enough to form an entire “ocean” of magma through which iron quietly slips into the core.
The lead scientist Dr. Mao commented that for the percolation to be effective, the molten iron has to lay continuous channels through the firm area. This was thought to be impossible, but now we know that under certain conditions known to have existed on the planet it can happen.
Many colleagues of the Stanford geophysicist immediately appreciated the value of this research. Dr. Geoffrey Bromiley with the University of Edinburgh (UK) said that the new data from the group of Professor Mao indicate that the formation of the core was not a simple, single-stage event. He added that this complex process must have had a no less complex effect on the subsequent chemistry of the Earth.
He believes that this study raises important questions about the beginning of the formation of the planet’s core. According to the generally accepted theory, the study of meteorites and asteroids’ cores will be able to tell us about our own planet, but according to Dr. Bromiley, a discovery made by Professor Mao and her colleagues found that the formation of each core of a large planet is a unique process. If the findings of the scientists are correct, this means that the immersion of iron in the core could proceed quite intensively during the cooling of the Earth as well. This is impossible for small celestial bodies that have a mantle of lower weight and a different chemical composition.
However, Dr. Bromiley suggested that the process of formation of the nucleus could be influenced by other factors. For example, it could be a collision of the Earth in the early stages of its development with asteroids and other heavenly bodies. He added that at this time scientists who study this process had more questions than answers.
The scientist said that the metal core in celestial bodies significantly smaller than the Earth was seen rather frequently. He is unsure of the processes of the core formation in these bodies because they have never been large enough to allow for the percolation. So far, there is no answer to this question, but it is not ruled out that it will be revealed in the near future.
Source

Fire in Brazilian port burns 180,000 tons of sugar

Posted: 19 Oct 2013 11:46 AM PDT

Firefighters attempt to extinguish a fire in a warehouse storing sugar at the Brazilian port of Santos, the biggest of Latin America, on October 18, 2013.

A massive fire has ravaged about 180,000 tons of raw sugar in Brazil’s largest port, pushing international prices to a one-year high.
The blaze, which started at around 06:00 a.m. local time (1000 GMT) on Friday, damaged all of Copersucar’s warehouses at the Santos port, putting the world’s biggest sugar trader’s 10 million tons of export capacity offline for at least six months.
Sugar prices in New York’s futures markets went up by six percent when the news of the fire flashed across the world.
“The fire affected some 180,000 tons of raw sugar,” said a statement issued by Copersucar.
Copersucar, which represents 47 sugar mills in Brazil and recorded revenue of $4.1 billion in 2012, inaugurated an expansion project in June at Santos. The project doubled the firm’s export capacity to 10 million tons annually.
“The causes of the incident are not yet known and are being investigated,” the statement added.
“A conservative estimate would be six months to get this in operational form (again),” said a US trader. “The jewel in their crown has been effectively destroyed.”
Santos port officials said firefighters struggled for six hours to bring the inferno under control.
The officials also said that the fire is the biggest in the history of the port of Santos, which is located some 80 kilometers (49 miles) from Sao Paulo.
Source