This new image from the Solar Dynamics Observatory’s Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) shows in great detail a solar prominence taken from a March 30, 2010 eruption.
Τετάρτη, 28 Απρίλιος 2010 7:00:00 πμ
Nearly 2 feet of snow falls in NY, New EnglandBy WILSON RING, Associated Press Writer Wednesday, April 28, 2010 (04-28) 07:53 PDT Montpelier, Vt. (AP) -- A late-season snowstorm dumped up to 2 feet of heavy, wet snow on northern New York, Vermont and New Hampshire by Wednesday morning, cutting off power to thousands, closing some schools and leaving roads slippery. "It definitely caught people off guard, considering we had 80 degrees back in March. It's a problem because some people swapped their (snow) tires out already," said Vermont highway dispatcher Greg Fox. About 30,000 customers were without power in Vermont, New Hampshire and northern New York at 8:30 a.m. Wednesday. Utility officials said it could be Thursday before power is fully restored. "We've been hammered all night," said New York State Police Trooper Eric LaValley of the Ray Brook barracks, in the Adirondack Mountains. Large storms so late in the season are rare. On April 23, 1993, 22 inches of snow was reported in Malone, N.Y., and on April 27, 1874, 24 inches of snow was reported in Bellows Falls, Vt., said Mark Breen, the senior meteorologist at the Fairbanks Museum and Planetarium in St. Johnsbury. "You really do have to stretch to find events like this," Breen said. Many trees across the region have already started to bud, but temperatures didn't fall much below freezing. "The green part isn't a problem. Snow is basically protecting leaves from temperatures getting colder," Breen said. Instead, the danger to the trees comes because the leaves gives the snow more surface area to cling to, making them more susceptible to breaking under the weight of the snow. Snowfall records were set Tuesday and Wednesday at the Burlington International Airport, the National Weather Service said. Tuesday's 2.8 inches at the airport eclipsed the record of 1.3 inches set on the date in 1946, and by 7 a.m. Wednesday 2.7 inches had fallen, beating the record of seven-tenths of an inch set on the date in 1966, said meteorologist Brooke Taber. |
MOSCOW, April 28 (RIA Novosti) Leading Russian business daily Vedomosti has filed an unprecedented lawsuit against the speaker of the Russian parliament's lower house, the newspaper said in a statement on Tuesday.
At a meeting of State Duma faction leaders with President Dmitry Medvedev on April 2, Boris Gryzlov of the pro-Kremlin United Russia party suggested Vedomosti had links to the terrorists behind the Moscow metro bombings that killed 40 people.
The business daily said such comments were damaging to its reputation
"I would like to cite an example that I personally find bewildering," Gryzlov said. "The fact of the publication in the Vedomosti newspaper of the headline 'Revenge for the Caucasus'; the fact of the article by Alexander Minkin in Moskovsky Komsomolets; and Doku Umarov's announcement [claiming responsibility for the attacks]."
"If we analyze these three sources, we will see they were practically cooked in the same pot. It gives rise to the suspicion that these publications and the actions of the terrorists are connected," he added.
Vedomosti editor Tatyana Lysova sent a letter to Gryzlov on April 6 asking the Duma speaker to explain his comments and to provide evidence that the newspaper had links with terrorists.
"If your words were emotionally colored and were not based on concrete facts...Vedomosti's editorial staff would like to receive an official apology," the letter said.
Vedomosti's statement on Wednesday said Gryzov had not responded to the letter, forcing the paper to turn to the courts to get "an apology and retraction of his words."
Moskovsky Komsomolets journalist Minkin previously said the speaker's comments "were very similar to the criminal offence called libel" and asked the authorities to open an investigation. However, he recognized that Gryzlov had immunity from prosecution as a Duma deputy and told Ekho Moskvy radio station he did not expect the parliament to allow the case to go forward.
The Gazeta daily reported that a senior United Russia member expressed surprise over Minkin's and Lysova's reactions. It quoted Andrey Isayev as saying that Gryzlov's position was quite natural since Russian media behaved "absolutely irresponsibly" after the March 29 subway attacks.
Gordon Brown today accused a voter of being “bigoted” after she confronted him over immigration policy.
In a huge gaffe, the Prime Minister left a radio microphone on his lapel for a walkabout switched on after he climbed into his car in Rochdale.
Gillian Duffy, 65, had told Mr Brown of her concerns about anti-social behaviour and immigration. Mr Brown was smiling and polite with the pensioner to her face, saying: “A good family, good to see you. It's very nice to see you, take care.”
But he let slip his irritation as he was driven away. Mr Brown said: “That was a disaster. You should never have put me with that woman.”
When asked by an aide what she had said, he replied: “Everything. She is just a sort of bigoted woman, she said she used to be Labour.”
By Mark Hudson
Published: 12:28PM BST 28 Apr 2010
Looking at pictures of Cucu Diamantes, you’d assume she had a tiny little voice. Matchstick-thin, unfeasibly leggy in mile-high stilettos, clad only in make-up and fin-de-siècle bordello underwear, the Cuban-born singer exudes camp artificiality and carries so little body ballast you’d expect little from her but a squeak or an effete attempt at a Marlene Dietrich purr.
In fact, her larynx has an earthiness, a Cuban housewife’s voice made hoarse bellowing along alleys laden with washing – or that’s certainly the way it sounds. And her manner is similarly down to earth.
“Even when I was at school, people said I sounded like an old lady,” she chuckles ruefully over a fuzzy, time-delayed phone connection from Havana. “I think it’s my soul talking, the person inside me.”
Surely smoking had something to do with it. – for the taste.”
This voice is heard to stirring effect on her first solo album, Cuculand, a stylish blend of belting Latin melody, eclectic Hispanic rhythm – from driving Colombian cumbia to Seventies-style New York boogaloo – disco, rock and jazz assembled with a wonderfully sure pop feel by Diamantes’ Venezuelan-born husband, bass player and long-time musical collaborator Andres Levin. It’s a cocktail that could give her a platform way beyond the Latin crossover crowd.
“The album is about love,” she says, “about the sacrifices we make when we try to love. If one person gives you pain, another will give you real love. I believe in love, particularly in these times when people seem more in love with the internet and Facebook than with each other.”
Diamantes sprang to fame with Yerba Buena, the New York hipster fusion band she formed with Levin in 2002. Probably the first Latin act to fully engage with that uniquely New York milieu where gay culture and celebrity clubbing meet street music and the artistic avant garde, Yerba Buena blended hip hop and Cuban rhythm with Afrobeat and Middle Eastern elements to bracing effect.
Born in a poor part of Havana, of Spanish, African, Chinese and French descent, Diamantes woke up every Saturday and Sunday to the throbbing of the bata – Afro-Cuban ritual drums. “There were religious parties every weekend,” she says, “and I would take part in them. I use those drums on several songs on my album, to remind myself of where I come from.”
Hardly knowing her parents, she was raised by a lesbian aunt, a cartoonist, who instilled in her a love of art. She won a scholarship to study art in Rome, after which she faced a choice of becoming a conservation assistant in Barcelona, working on Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia cathedral, or pursuing her real passion – music – in New York. She chose the latter, teaching Afro-Cuban movement at a ballroom dancing school before becoming a dancer with transsexual nightclub superstars Sophia Lamar and Amanda Lepore.
Down the mangling line from Havana, I hear her talking about hormone supplements and breast sizes, and begin revising my impression of the person I’m talking to. Is she saying she’s a man?
“No,” she cackles in horror. “I only pretended to be a transsexual. For me it was a fantasy to work with those people. I learnt from them about the diva process, about transforming yourself with make-up and costume, to become a performer of the night.”
From there she founded Yerba Buena with Levin, with the aim of “experimenting without thinking too much”.
“Everything we do, we do with laughter. We’ve been working together every day for 13 years, and it still feels like we’ve just started,” she says.
Now she’s in Cuba, working on a film to accompany her music – “a cross between Magical Mystery Tour and Priscilla Queen of the Desert, but shot in the deep places of Cuba” – as she braces herself for the international reaction to her album. How would she feel to achieve global success as a kind of thinking man’s Shakira?
“A what?” she booms down the line from Havana, and again I feel the conversation take an awkward turn. “A Shakira with a male part?” No, I fumble desperately for the right term, a Shakira for… intellectuals.
“I’ve been called the Cuban Amy Winehouse, but none of these descriptions feel relevant to me. I won’t lie to you: success would make things a lot easier moneywise. But it isn’t something I’ve ever pursued. To preserve the innocence of my mind, to wake up every morning knowing I’m going to learn something new, that’s the passion that drives me.”