China,, Heavy rainfall ..[ 1453 ]

Heavy Rain in China

Posted July 14, 2010

  

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Heavy rains had already pushed many lakes and rivers in the Yangtze Valley close to flooding by early July 2010, and rain kept falling.  

Global Times reported that 39 people had drowned along the Yangtze between July 8 and 13, and some 810,000 hectares of cropland had been destroyed.

This color-coded image shows rainfall amounts around the city of Shanghai from July 6 to 12, 2010. The heaviest rainfall amounts—400 millimeters or nearly 16 inches—appear in dark blue. 

The lightest amounts—50 millimeters or less than 2 inches—appear in light green.

The heaviest rainfall amounts occur west-southwest of Shanghai. The Yangtze River empties into the ocean just north of Shanghai, but the river’s route takes it through an area southwest of the city, including the area experiencing heavy rain.

This image is based on data from the Multisatellite Precipitation Analysis produced at Goddard Space Flight Center, which estimates rainfall by combining measurements from many satellites and calibrating them using rainfall measurements from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite.

Afghanistan ( Kandahar), Taliban suicide attack ..[ 1452 ]

Eight dead in Kandahar suicide attack

 

Kandahar is at the centre of the fight against the Taliban insurgency

BBC 14 July 2010 Last updated at 11:17 GMT  

Three American soldiers and five Afghan civilians have died in a Taliban suicide attack on a police base in southern Kandahar province, Nato said.

A suicide car bomber rammed the compound entrance before insurgents fired rockets and machine guns in Tuesday evening's raid.Afghan police backed by Nato troops repelled the attack, Nato said.

Earlier on Tuesday, a rogue Afghan soldier killed three British soldiers in Helmand province.
Nato said a "full-scale manhunt" is under way for the Afghan soldier, who escaped after killing the three Gurkhas in Nahr-e Saraj.

Taliban claim In the suicide attack on the Kandahar police base, international troops and police fought off the insurgents, Nato said on Wednesday.

The compound belongs to the elite National Civil Order Police, which operates within the Afghan police force and mans 11 checkpoints around Kandahar city.

The dead civilians were three Afghan translators and two security guards, Kandahar provincial police chief Sardar Mohammad Zazai told the Associated Press news agency.

Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi said they carried out the attack, in a telephone call to the Associated Press.According to the militant group, 13 international troops and eight Afghan security forces were killed in the raid.

Nato said it was the third time in as many days that insurgent attacks had been repelled by Afghan and Nato forces.
The insurgents have stepped up attacks on government targets in Kandahar as US reinforcements are poised for an expected Nato offensive in the city, which is the spiritual birthplace of the Taliban.

London: Scary poster banned from the Tube..[1451 ]

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Scary London Dungeon poster banned from the Tube

Tony Bassett
The London Evening Standard., 14.07.10

A digital poster for an exhibition at the London Dungeon has been banned for scaring children.

The advert “Bloody Mary: Killer Queen” appeared beside escalators at Underground stations. 

It showed a portrait of the Tudor Queen — daughter of Henry VIII — sitting passively.

Too much: video frightened children

Then suddenly she turns to the viewer, appears to scream and her face changes into a zombie-like creature with rotting teeth and red eyes.

The Advertising Standards Authority said it “overstepped the limit of acceptability”. 

Four passengers said the ad was likely to frighten and distress children. 

One said his eight-year-old had been scared by the contorted face, while another said they had noticed children being shocked and upset.

Merlin Entertainments, which runs the London Dungeon, said it had planned to use the poster during the summer and Halloween. 

Seb Thompson, a spokesman for Merlin Entertainments, said: “We are in the business of scaring with a historical twist and we pride ourselves on advertising that is provocative and edgy.” 

The company's general manager, Nicola Ratcliffe, added: “We are amazed by the ASA's decision.”

Turkey:State policy against the Kurdish minority ..[ 1450 ]

         Ankara reviews PKK recruitment     

( UPI )Published: July 13, 2010 at 12:57 PM
ANKARA, Turkey, July 13 (UPI) -- State policy against the Kurdish minority and cultural repression of women is creating more recruits for the Kurdistan Workers' Party, intelligence reports say.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a conversation Monday with her Turkish counterpart Ahmet Davutoglu expressed her commitment to the fight against the Kurdish terrorist group known by its Turkish initials PKK.

Kurdish women taking water

"The PKK remains a common enemy of Turkey, the United States and Iraq and is a threat to the stability of the region," a U.S. State Department spokesman said. "And we continue to support efforts by Turkey and Iraq to deal with the problem of the PKK."

A report by the Turkish police academy's International Terrorism Center said migration from rural areas to urban communities was putting stress on families in the Kurdish south of Turkey. The report found that migration was being used as an incentive to join the separatist organization, Turkey's daily newspaper Today's Zaman reports.


"Anger at the state, some mistakes of the past, forcing people out of villages, threats from soldiers and public humiliation have caused immense resentment among the people," the report read. "Joining the PKK and taking up arms has been shown by the PKK as the only way to get out."
The report also found that women were finding the militant group attractive because its policies toward them was moderate compared to the general view in Turkey, Today's Zaman added

NASA, Image of the Day,July 13th...[ 1449 ]

The latest NASA "Image of the Day" image.

Farewell Lutetia

On its way to a 2014 rendezvous with comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft, with NASA instruments aboard, flew past asteroid Lutetia on Saturday, July 10. 

 

The instruments aboard Rosetta recorded the first close-up image of the biggest asteroid so far visited by a spacecraft. Rosetta made measurements to derive the mass of the object, understand the properties of the asteroid's surface crust, record the solar wind in the vicinity and look for evidence of an atmosphere. 

The spacecraft passed the asteroid at a minimum distance of 3,160 kilometers (1,950 miles) and at a velocity of 15 kilometers (9 miles) per second, completing the flyby in just a minute. 

 

But the cameras and other instruments had been working for hours and in some cases days beforehand, and will continue afterwards. 

Shortly after closest approach, Rosetta began transmitting data to Earth for processing. Lutetia has been a mystery for many years. Ground telescopes have shown that it presents confusing characteristics. 

 

In some respects it resembles a ‘C-type’ asteroid, a primitive body left over from the formation of the solar system. In others, it looks like an ‘M-type’. 

These have been associated with iron meteorites, are usually reddish and thought to be fragments of the cores of much larger objects. 

 

Image Credits: 

ESA 2010 MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/RSSD/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA

Τρίτη, 13 Ιούλιος 2010 7:00:00 πμ