United States News
The latest news from and about U.S. issues.Tuesday, August 05, 2008
Arctic Map shows dispute hotspots.
BBC News, August 5, 2008 - “British scientists say they have drawn up the first detailed map to show areas in the Arctic that could become embroiled in future border disputes. A team from Durham University compiled the outline of potential hotspots by basing the design on historical and ongoing arguments over ownership. Russian scientists caused outrage last year when they planted their national flag on the seabed at the North Pole.” Read more.
Clean Tech: One Sector Is Bucking Global Economic Blues.
Wall Street Journal, August 5, 2008 - “The global economy and markets may be tottering, but clean tech is still a magnet for investment dollars. Private equity and venture capital deals in clean-energy companies notched a record $5.8 billion in the second quarter, according to New Energy Finance, a London-based clean-energy consultant. The big winners? Wind power, solar power, and second-generation biofuels. The dark cloud? Uncertain equity markets, which pushed back several planned listings and are making it harder for early-stage investors to cash out.” Read more.
Learning to Speak Climate.
NY Times Opinion, August 5, 2008 - “Sometimes you just wish you were a photographer. I simply do not have the words to describe the awesome majesty of Greenland’s Kangia Glacier, shedding massive icebergs the size of skyscrapers and slowly pushing them down the Ilulissat Fjord until they crash into the ocean off the west coast of Greenland. There, these natural ice sculptures float and bob around the glassy waters near here. You can sail between them in a fishing boat, listening to these white ice monsters crackle and break, heave and sigh, as if they were noisily protesting their fate.” Read more.
Official: Mexico open to new NAFTA talks.
Truth about Trade & Technology, August 2, 2008 - “The Mexican government dismisses talk of disbanding NAFTA as politics, the country’s economy minister said Friday, but it would back the idea of a new round of North American trade talks, with the aim of including issues such as the environment and labor. Eduardo Sojo, in Chicago this week to address the U.S.-Mexican Chamber of Commerce, was responding to criticism of the 15-year-old trade accord that resurfaced during the Democratic presidential primaries this year. ‘What we do believe that we need in the region, in North America, is more integration, not less integration,’ Sojo said in an interview with the Tribune.” Read more.
US races to erect controversial steel fence on Mexican border.
AFP, August 5, 2008 - “Just west of El Paso, near where Spanish conquistador Juan de Onate crossed the Rio Grande from Mexico in 1598, construction crews have completed a steel fence authorities say is a new model for border security. The five-meter (18-foot) tall fence has a mesh woven so tightly that feet and fingers cannot grab hold, but it still allows people to see through. Steel pylons are set close enough to stop a truck from bursting through, and two meters of reinforced concrete underground deters any tunneling. The structure is designed to push would-be illegal immigrants and drug smugglers out into the desert where they are more easily caught, said Border Patrol Agent Martin Hernandez.” Read more.
Monday, August 04, 2008
Not so fast.
Grist, August 4, 2008 - “President Bush keeps repeating his call for Congress to lift the moratorium on offshore drilling. Republican presidential candidate John McCain is consistently drilling home the same message. And on Wednesday of last week, Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne said that just in case the ban is lifted, his department is laying the groundwork so offshore drilling in new areas could begin in as few as three years. What drilling proponents don’t say is that even if the congressional ban were lifted, many of the most promising untapped offshore areas would likely remain off-limits to oil and gas exploration. Bush, McCain, and GOP congressional leaders all say that states should decide whether to open their shorelines to drilling—and that states should get a share of drilling royalties as an inducement to say yes. But many governors and other leaders in coastal states are saying, ‘No, thanks!’” Read more.
The Global Need for University / Industry Cleantech Transfer.
Renewable Energy World, August 4, 2008 - “The pace at which universities and academic institutions are developing new technologies aimed at solving the world’s energy and climate change challenges is truly amazing. Many of the cleantech ventures that are being developed at universities around the world right now have incredible potential, yet barriers to commercialization prevent most from being realized. While some top U.S. universities have tech transfer specialists on staff and departments dedicated to the commercialization of research, many others, especially in the BRIC nations (Brazil, India and China), don’t have readily available access to investors and industry.” Read more.
Energy Follies.
NY Times Editorial, August 4, 2008 - “It’s hard not to be exasperated and even a little frightened by the Senate’s selfishly partisan approach to the nation’s energy challenge in the days leading up to its August recess. Given one last shot at taking modest but meaningful steps to deal with tightening oil supplies and climate change, the Senate instead settled for a schoolyard blame game whose main purpose was to exploit public dismay over rising gasoline prices for short-term political gain.” Read more.
Sunday, August 03, 2008
Mexican Drug Cartels Out of Control in the U.S. and Mexico.
American Chronicle, August 3, 2008 - “For years now US federal officials have reported that the Mexican drug cartels are operating in dozens of US cities, and have consolidated their control of the entire corridor of the supply chain of illegal drugs from deep in Mexico north to the U.S. border and beyond. Nationwide, the Mexican drug cartels are now the dominant distributors of wholesale quantities of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamines and marijuana in the United States. No other group is positioned better to expand there already nationwide operation and take over total distribution of drugs in the south eastern part of the country too, then are the Mexican drug cartels as they now do in the south western part of the country.” Read more.
Plight of Underground America.
The Huntsville Item, August 3, 2008 - “‘Underground America’ began long before the issues surrounding illegal immigration surfaced as a dominant issue of the 21st century. The term is best illustrated by the movement involving the operations of clandestine escape networks that began in the 1500s, and was later connected with organized abolitionist activity in the 1800s. Neither an ‘underground’ nor a ‘railroad,’ the informal system emerged as a loosely constructed network of escape routes that originated in the South, intertwined throughout the North, and eventually ended in Canada. A runaway slave, like an illegal worker from Mexico and other parts of Central America, moved in secrecy and darkness along designated routes across the Ohio River by ‘Following the North Star.’” Read more.
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