Putin's birthday ....[ 1849 ]

Russian calendar girls in Putin birthday battle

 

The university authorities criticised the erotic calendar's producers

BBC., 8 October 2010 Last updated at 11:16 GMT

Female students at Russia's prestigious Moscow State University (MGU) have produced rival calendars - one erotic, the other sombre - for Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's 58th birthday.

First a group of journalism students posing in lingerie featured in a calendar with suggestive captions, such as:

"You put out forest fires, but I'm still burning."
Then another group hit back, posing in black, with their mouths taped shut.
Polls suggest Mr Putin is very popular.
He has been filmed riding bare-chested through the mountains, swimming in a Siberian river and sitting at the controls of a firefighting helicopter.

The Happy Birthday erotic calendar for 2011 was called "Vladimir Vladimirovich, we love you" and showed 12 pouting students in lingerie.
"How about a third time?" asked Miss February - hinting provocatively at a possible third presidential term for Mr Putin. He is eligible to run again in 2012.
A spokeswoman for the pro-Kremlin youth group Nashi, quoted by the Associated Press news agency, said the calendars had a 50,000 print run and went on sale in Moscow supermarkets.
Questions for Putin

 

Students in the alternative calendar asked provocative questions instead

Later a rival calendar appeared on the internet, with female students all wearing black and with their mouths taped shut - in apparent protest at the silencing of political dissidents.
The text on one page read "Who killed Anna Politkovskaya?" - referring to the still unresolved murder four years ago of a journalist who was one of the Kremlin's sharpest critics. She had exposed human rights abuses by security forces in Chechnya.
The alternative, sombre calendar bears the words "Vladimir Vladimirovich, we have some questions..." and "When will they free Mikhail Khodorkovsky?" - a reference to the highly controversial jailing of the former Yukos oil magnate, who was widely seen as challenging the Kremlin's power.
Yelizaveta Menshikova, one of the students in the sombre calendar, told bbcrussian.com that her calendar had received many expressions of support online.

"Breasts are pretty, yes - I have them too. But I also have a head on my shoulders. And we girls did this all ourselves, without producers," she said.
The dean of the journalism faculty at MGU, Yelena Vartanova, said she was annoyed that MGU had been associated with the erotic calendar.
"I simply don't understand what the journalism faculty and university have to do with this. To make their commercial project successful the girls used brands that they did not create, that do not belong to them," she said.

USA: The Hudson River tunnel ..[ 1848 ]

NJ governor kills Hudson River tunnel due costs

A rendering of the ARC Tunnel project's proposed Penn Station Expansion.

Credit: Reuters/NJ Transit/Port Authority of NY & NJ

By Jon Hurdle

TRENTON, NJ | Thu Oct 7, 2010 6:58pm EDT

TRENTON, NJ (Reuters) - One of the biggest U.S. transport projects ended on Thursday after New Jersey's governor said the state could not afford the risk that a new rail tunnel under the Hudson River could cost billions more than planned.

Republican Governor Chris Christie, who took office in January, said the $8.7 billion budget for the tunnel between New Jersey and New York City's midtown Manhattan could rise to more than $11 billion and even surpass $14 billion.

"We simply can't spend what we don't have," Christie told a news conference. "I had to figure out how I was going to pay for it. We simply can't."

Christie inherited the tunnel project from former Democratic Governor Jon Corzine. He halted work in mid-September for 30 days and asked his staff and federal transportation officials to review the cost estimates.

Under the original deal, the federal government and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey were each to pay $3 billion, with $2.7 billion coming from a combination of other federal funds, including stimulus and clean air funding, as well a contribution from the New Jersey Turnpike Authority.

But crucial to the funding plan was that New Jersey was to pay anything above the $8.7 billion estimate.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood requested to meet with Christie after the governor told him of his decision. The meeting is scheduled for Friday in Trenton, the governor's spokesmen said.

Christie's decision means no contract has been signed for completion of the project and the federal funding was not secured.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and New Jersey Transit both declined to comment on the termination of the project. New York Governor David Paterson said he was disappointed but respected Christie's decision and understood "the difficulty of governing in our current economic climate."

Christie has garnered national attention for progress made tackling the state's record $11 billion budget deficit during his first year in office. He has been invited by other Republicans across the country to campaign for them ahead of the November 2 congressional elections in a multi-state tour that has added fuel to speculation that he might consider a presidential run.

Christie is pushing a lean-government, low-tax agenda that includes limiting annual increases in the state's property taxes, the highest in the nation. He has refused to raise money by increasing taxes on gasoline, among the lowest-priced in the country.

New Jersey Democratic Party Chairman John Wisniewski said there was no evidence that the Hudson River tunnel would exceed its estimated budget and accused Christie of canceling the project in a bid to fuel his growing national profile.

"It fits with his national agenda," Wisniewski said. "There is no better time to get public works projects than now and the governor is throwing away this opportunity."

One century-old Hudson River commuter train tunnel runs between New Jersey and Manhattan's Pennsylvania Station. Transit advocates say the tunnel is so overcrowded that commuters frequently endure long delays.

Christie had repeatedly stressed that New Jersey is too cash-poor to pay for any cost overruns by itself. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who supported the project, has said the city did not have money to contribute to the project.

Digging for the tunnel, which was estimated to create 6,000 jobs, began in June 2009. It was to open in 2018.

Critics have called Christie overbearing and confrontational toward the New Jersey state legislature, which is Democrat-controlled. But his fans praise his straight talk, his forceful style and his record of getting things done.

A major driver of weather and climate....[ 1847 ]

A Little Water Goes a Long Way

Posted October 7, 2010

 

(506 KB, PDF) acquired August 1 - 31, 2010

Of the 1.39 billion cubic kilometers (331 million cubic miles) of water on Earth, just a thousandth of 1% (1.39 million cubic km) exists as water vapor. Yet this tiny amount of water has an outsized influence on the planet: It is a potent greenhouse gas and a major driver of weather and climate.

This map shows the distribution of water vapor in Earth’s atmosphere during August 2010. Even the wettest regions would form a layer of water only 60 millimeters (2.4 inches) deep if the entire column of air was condensed from the top of the atmosphere to the surface. The map was compiled from observations by the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) and the Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit (AMSU-A) on NASA’s Aqua satellite.

The map is one of several ways scientists can visualize the movement of water around the planet, as demonstrated in a new fact sheet examining the water cycle. Here is an excerpt:

“Studies have revealed that evaporation from oceans, seas, and other bodies of water provides nearly 90% of the moisture in our atmosphere. Most of the remaining 10% is released by plants through transpiration. Plants take in water through their roots, then release it through small pores on the underside of their leaves. In addition, a very small portion of water vapor enters the atmosphere through sublimation, the process by which water changes directly from a solid (ice or snow) to a gas.

Together, evaporation, transpiration, and sublimation, plus volcanic emissions, account for almost all the water vapor in the atmosphere. While evaporation from the oceans is the primary vehicle for driving the surface-to-atmosphere portion of the hydrologic cycle, transpiration is also significant. For example, a cornfield 1 acre in size can transpire as much as 4,000 gallons of water every day.

Water continually evaporates, condenses, and precipitates, and on a global basis, evaporation approximately equals precipitation. Because of this equality, the total amount of water vapor in the atmosphere remains approximately the same over time.”

NASA image by Robert Simmon, using AIRS & AMSU data. Caption compiled by Mike Carlowicz.

Instrument: Aqua - AIRS

NASA Image of the Oct 7th..[ 1846 ]

The latest NASA "Image of the Day" image.

And Away

The nose of an inflatable half-scale model of a NASA F/A-18 in front of the NASA Aeronautics exhibit points skyward as a host of hot-air balloons ascend at the 2010 International Balloon Fiesta in Albuquerque, N.M. 

Image Credit: NASA/Jay Levine

Πέμπτη, 7 Οκτώβριος 2010 7:00:00 πμ

Bulava submarine-launched ballistic missile..[ 1845 ]

Russia's Bulava missile hits target in test

MOSCOW, October 7 ., RIA Novosti

A ballistic missile launchrom a Bulava submarine-

A test warhead from a Bulava submarine-launched ballistic missile successfully hit its target on the Kura test range in Russia's Far East Kamchatka region, the Defense Ministry said on Thursday.

The missile was fired from the Dmitry Donskoy submarine in the White Sea.

Bulava test launches were put on hold after a failed launch on December 9, 2009, which was caused by a defective engine nozzle.

The Bulava (SS-NX-30), a three-stage liquid and solid-propellant submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM), has officially suffered seven failures in 13 tests.