Australian Elections..[ 1682 ]

Too early to celebrate - Abbott

Sky News com.au., 

Updated: 00:21, Sunday August 22, 2010

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott says it's too early to celebrate an election win.
Mr Abbott told a jubilant crowd at the Four Seasons ballroom in Sydney it was time for 'measured reflection on the magnitude of the task ahead'.
'There should be no premature triumphalism tonight,' he said.
Prime Minister Julia Gillard earlier declared the election 'too close to call' and congratulated independent MPs who could be vital in the likely case of a hung parliament.
Mr Abbott, whose speech was punctuated by repeated chanting of 'Tony, Tony, Tony', thanked the Australian people for their commitment to democracy, no matter who they voted for.
Mr Abbott said he was proud of every coalition supporter around the country.
'I have to say to you that I feel humbled as I think of the responsibilities that could lie ahead.'
The opposition leader singled out Nationals leader Warren Truss, deputy Liberal leader Julie Bishop, the Liberal party president Alan Stockdal, campaign director Brian Loughnane and opposition treasury spokesman Joe Hockey in his round of thank yous.
Mr Abbott thanked party members and supporters, and recognised Ms Gillard, saying it had not been an easy eight weeks for her as prime minister.
'She has certainly worked extremely hard for her cause under difficult circumstances,' he said.
Mr Abbott said Labor had definitely lost its majority.
The declaration was greeted by more cheers of 'Tony, Tony, Tony.'
'And what that means is that the government has lost its legitimacy,' he said.
A government which found it hard to govern effectively with a 17 seat majority would never be able to govern effectively in a minority government, Mr Abbott said.
The number of votes Labor had picked up at this election was 'a great fact,' Mr Abbott said.
'We do not have a clear result from tonight, and I want to say that until a clear result has emerged from this election, that the caretaker conventions under which the government has been operating for the last five weeks must continue,' he said.
Mr Abbott said the election had been a win for the public, whose judgment must always be respected.
Mr Abbott said the Labor Party had achieved the lowest primary vote of any governing party since World War II.
Australians had also responded to coalition policies, he said.
Mr Abbott called the election a 'referendum on the political execution of a prime minister', referring to Kevin Rudd.
'The Australian people have said that whatever else might characterise our political culture, it should never be characterised by the knock on the door at midnight from the faceless men of the Labor factions,' he said.

Iran: the Bushehr nuclear power plant ..[ 1681 ]

Iran to start up nuclear reactor

Standard co.uk.,.,21.08.10

Ιranian and Russian engineers have begun loading fuel into Iran's first nuclear power plant.

The news is a major milestone as Tehran forges ahead with its atomic programme despite United Nations sanctions.

Media stand near the Bushehr nuclear power plant with its reactor building in the background

The week-long operation to load fuel into the reactor at the Bushehr power plant in southern Iran ends years of foot-dragging by Russia, which signed a £640 million contract in 1995 to build the plant but delayed its completion several times.

Russia is one of six world powers leading efforts to ensure Iran does not develop a nuclear weapon and Moscow says the Bushehr project is essential for persuading Iran to co-operate.

But the US disagrees, saying Iran should not be rewarded while it defies UN demands.

Iran insists its programme is only for energy production.

"The start-up operations will be a big success for Iran," conservative MP Javad Karimi said in Tehran. "It also shows Iran's resolve and capability in pursuing its nuclear activities."

Russia has pledged to safeguard the site and prevent spent nuclear fuel from being shifted to a possible weapons programme.

The first truckload of fuel was taken from a storage site to a fuel "pool" inside the reactor building. Over the next 10 days, 163 fuel assemblies - equal to 80 tons of uranium fuel - will be moved inside the building and then into the reactor core.

TimeS / CNN Photos.. ..[ 1680 ]

Picture from Spain

Joseba Etxaburu / Reuters

Cattle Call
 
A fighting bovine leaps over participants during the second running of the bulls at the San Fermin festival in Pamplona, Spain.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/picturesoftheweek/0,29409,2002667_2163122,00.html#ixzz0xBrNXERz

NASA Image of the Day Aug 20th..,[ 1679 ]

The latest NASA "Image of the Day" image.

Massive Attack

This image shows the eruption of a galactic “super-volcano” in the massive galaxy M87, as witnessed by NASA's Chandra X-ray 

Observatory and NSF's Very Large Array (VLA). At a distance of about 50 million light years, M87 is relatively close to Earth and lies at the center of the Virgo cluster, which contains thousands of galaxies. The cluster surrounding M87 is filled with hot gas glowing in X-ray light (and shown in blue) that is detected by Chandra.

As this gas cools, it can fall toward the galaxy's center where it should continue to cool even faster and form new stars. However, radio observations with the VLA (red) suggest that in M87 jets of very energetic particles produced by the black hole interrupt this process. 

These jets lift up the relatively cool gas near the center of the galaxy and produce shock waves in the galaxy's atmosphere because of their supersonic speed. The interaction of this cosmic “eruption” with the galaxy's environment is very similar to that of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Iceland that occurred in 2010. With Eyjafjallajokull, pockets of hot gas blasted through the surface of the lava, generating shock waves that can be seen passing through the grey smoke of the volcano. 

This hot gas then rises up in the atmosphere, dragging the dark ash with it. 

This process can be seen in a movie of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano where the shock waves propagating in the smoke are followed by the rise of dark ash clouds into the atmosphere. In the analogy with Eyjafjallajokull, the energetic particles produced in the vicinity of the black hole rise through the X-ray emitting atmosphere of the cluster, lifting up the coolest gas near the center of M87 in their wake. 

This is similar to the hot volcanic gases drag up the clouds of dark ash. And just like the volcano here on Earth, shockwaves can be seen when the black hole pumps energetic particles into the cluster gas. 

Image Credits: X-ray: NASA/CXC/KIPAC/N. Werner et al Radio: NSF/NRAO/AUI/W. Cotton

Παρασκευή, 20 Αύγουστος 2010 7:00:00 πμ

Work Continues on New NASA..[ 1678 ]

Work Continues on New NASA Spaceships, Despite Uncertainties

By Clara Moskowitz

Published August 20, 2010

| Space.com

ATK

NASA's next-generation, five-segment solid rocket development motor - or DM-2 - is fully assembled in its test stand at ATK in Promontory, Utah. Engineers plan to conduct a static-fire test -- firing the rocket horizontally while it's bolted to the ground -- in September 2010.

NASA is pushing ahead with work on its new Orion space capsule and Ares rockets despite their ambiguous status as lawmakers discuss the agency's 2011 budget request. 

Orion and Ares are part of Constellation, a NASA program designed to take astronauts back to the moon. Under his 2011 budget proposal, President Barack Obama called for canceling Constellation and urged NASA to work toward sending humans to an asteroid and then on to Mars.

The outlook for Constellation's fledgling rocket and capsule spacecraft is not clear. Obama did recommend continuing development of Orion -- but only as an escape ship that could carry astronauts home from the International Space Station in an emergency.
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click for more :Work Continues on New NASA Spaceships