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London, Aug 24 (ANI): Harry Potter stars Daniel Radcliffe and Tom Felton were seen cheering side by side at The Oval recently.
The two actors, who are rivals in the wizard films, are said to have enjoyed the game immensely, reports the Sun.
Radcliffe, 20, revealed that he loved the romance and history of the game, and that his favourite player Paul Collingwood made batting “look like trench warfare”.
While Felton, 21, joked in a radio interview that cricket had “brought us together”. (ANI)
Kabul, Aug.13 (ANI): For the vast majority of troops at the International Security and Assistance Force (ISAF) headquarters, Afghanistan remains an enigma, a threatening land lying beyond the concertina wire of the base.
When ISAF troops venture out from their base into the “red zone” (i.e. the comparatively safe streets of Kabul) they are prepared for combat.
Barreling through the crowded streets of a city that has been called a comparative “safety zone” by those fighting in the south, they jam the phone signals of average Afghans with their ECMs (electronic counter measures) and jam the roads with their convoys.
Defeat takes the form of thousands of casualty-phobic troops ensconced behind the walls, sand bags, and blast barriers of a well-protected safety bubble.
One would think that the coalition vehicles driving around Kabul in combat posture and menacingly waving 50 caliber machine guns at Afghans were storming a Taliban sangar (trench) in Helmand, not competing with rush hour traffic.
The only Afghan most ever meet is the Hazara carpet seller on base who serves authentic Afghan food once a month. And the only coalition soldiers most Afghans meet are encased in armor-plated vehicles or flak jackets.
Only a small percentage of “fobbits” (those who live in forward operating bases or FOBs) actually interact with average Afghans due to hyper-protective S.O.P. (standard operating procedures) meant to lessen their risks from interaction with Afghans.
ISAF troops suffer from a siege mentality that led the United States dangerously close to losing the war in Iraq in 2005 and 2006. U.S. forces in Iraq were more concerned with force protection than protecting the center of gravity in Iraq, the Iraqi people.
It was only when Generals Petraeus and Odierno pushed their troops out of the bases and into the streets of Iraq that they began to make headway in the counterinsurgency.
This meant more meetings with Iraqi people, who began to feel that the Americans were protecting them.
For the most part, the coalition has ceded the countryside of the south and parts of the east to the enemy, who took advantage of the vacuum left by enemy troops in 2003 when the U.S. was focused elsewhere.
The White House’s fear of engaging in grassroots nation building allowed the Taliban to fill the void. Pro-government khans and mullahs were executed, villagers cowed into submission, and “vanguard” groups sent onto the next province to lay mines and kill “infidel collaborators.” With no visible coalition presence outside of the provincial capitals, the Taliban swarmed the countryside.
Much the same thing happened in Afghanistan in the 1980s under the Soviets, who controlled the major roads and cities and remained safe in their bases for fear of sustaining casualties.
The U.S. Marines’ recent efforts to clear and hold territory in Helmand Province represent a welcome break from this barracked mentality.
It is only by establishing a reliable coalition presence in contested places like Helmand that the coalition can show the Afghans that they are there to stay and protect them. (ANI)
London, May 7 (ANI): A robotic submarine is undergoing final preparations to dive to the deepest-known part of the oceans.
According to a report by BBC News, if successful, Nereus, the robotic submarine, will be the first autonomous vehicle to visit the 11,000m (36,089 ft) Challenger Deep in the Pacific Ocean.
Only two other vehicles have ever visited the spot before, both of them human operated.
The 5 million dollars submarine will make the attempt in late May or early June after a series of increasingly deep dives.
“Instead of jumping directly into the deep end of the swimming pool with the vehicle, we’ll probably dip our toe in first,” said Andy Bowen of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and one of the designers of Nereus.
“We’ll work at 1,000m, 4,000m, 8,000m and then take a deep breath and see if we can get to 11,000m,” he added.
Ian Rouse, head of the deep platforms group at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton, described the project as a “great technical challenge”.
“Below 6,500m deep (21,325ft), there are vehicles that can do a better job than Nereus due to its compromises in design,” he told BBC News. “However, from 6,500m to 11,000m, Nereus has the field pretty much to itself,” he added.
Other teams, notably the British, French, Russian and Japanese will be watching the mission “with interest”.
“The Nereus team is very experienced in designing and building other underwater vehicles, so I have no doubt they will succeed,” said Rouse.
The tests will take place on a research cruise between the 23 May and 6 June.
The Challenger Deep is the deepest-known part of the ocean, located in the Marianas Trench near the island of Guam in the west Pacific.
It is the deepest abyss on Earth at 11,000m-deep, more than 2km (1.2 miles) deeper than Mount Everest is high. At that depth, pressures reach 1,100 times the pressure at the surface.
Nereus aims to give researchers access to 100 percent of the seafloor. In its intelligent, autonomous mode, Nereus can map large areas of the ocean floor.
“The autonomous vehicle, as the name sounds, has autonomy from the human operators onboard the ship,” explained Bowen.
In this configuration, Nereus is able to fly pre-programmed missions, mapping vast swathes of the seafloor.
“It has sufficient onboard intelligence and batteries to find areas of particular interest through the use of chemical sensors, sonar and digital photography,” said Bowen. (ANI)
New Delhi, April 20 (ANI): A two-year investigation has revealed that the length of the Great Wall of the Ming Dynasty era in China, is estimated to be more than 2,551.8 kilometers longer than earlier thought.
According to the State Administration of Cultural Heritage (SACH) and State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping (SBSM), the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) Great Wall is 8851.8 kilometers long.
Their joint investigation has increased the length of the Ming Dynasty Great Wall by 2551.8 km.
The Ming portion of the Great Wall is the most visually striking and well-preserved portion of the world famous monument.
The Great Wall was originally built by China’s first emperor Qin Shi Huang (259-210 BC) in the Warring States Period (475-221 BC). It was listed as a United Nations World Heritage Site in 1987.
The newest survey result shows that the Ming Dynasty Great Wall starts from the Hushan section of the Great Wall in northeastern Liaoning Province, and ends at Jiayu Pass in northwestern Gansu Province.
It passes through 10 provinces, cities and autonomous regions in north China, including Liaoning, Hebei, Tianjin, Beijing, Shanxi, Inner Mongolia, Shaanxi, Ningxia, Gansu and Qinghai.
It has an artificial wall of 6259.6 kilometers, 359.7 kilometers of trench cutting part, and 2232.5 kilometers of natural defensive barriers such as hills and rivers.
GPS positioning system, infrared range finder and other mapping technologies have been used during the survey.
The survey will now go on to research the Qin and Han Dynasty Great Wall and other portions of the Great Wall, lasting until late 2010. (ANI)
GreenBiz Staff
If sustainability were quick and easy — as many consultants suggest — we’d have done it by now.
Everyone’s talking green, but global carbon dioxide emissions are climbing, and climate scientists tell us we have under a decade to solve the problem. We need fewer visionaries, and more grunts. It’s time to make stuff happen. Auden Schendler, a sustainability foot soldier with fifteen years in the trenches, shows the way in this witty, human and contrarian book.
Brutally honest and hopeful, Getting Green Done is the first sustainable business book to offer a peek under the hood of the “green” movement, showing what it means to implement climate solutions in the real world. You’ll learn that sustainability is more like trench warfare than surgery — and that we’re going to have to do a lot better than we’ve done if we hope to solve climate change.
London, April 2 (ANI): A group of builders, digging at a site in London, have unearthed what they believe is the fabled Staff of Moses.
According to a report in The Sun, the piece of wood was found by digger Charlie Kingston and his team as he dug a 20ft-deep trench on a site in east London.
At first, the workmen thought the historic artefact, which dates back to hundreds of years before Christ, was just an old tatty piece of wood.
But, after initial tests by archaeologists and biblical scholars, the iconic find is being hailed as one of monumental importance.
The Staff was at Moses’ side throughout key milestones in the Bible story of Exodus.
It was used to part the Red Sea, invoke a plague on the Egyptian Pharaoh, produce water from a rock and could even transform itself into a snake.
The exact location of the Staff has been kept secret to stop ‘treasure-hunters’ and onlookers flocking to the area.
“I was tipping out some earth when one of my mates Archie Tan shouted to stop, and pointed at the bucket,” Kingston said.
“When we scraped off the mud, we thought it might just be a beaten-up walking stick. “We’re amazed at what they are saying it could turn out to be,” he added.
The builders and their bosses could now be in for a huge windfall, with experts confident other relic could also be hiding beneath the soil.
However, a comprehensive archaeological dig could take months, if not years, to complete so it may be some time before they see any financial reward.
According to historian Dr Henry Jones, the Staff might well run into millions of pounds if it is sold at an auction.
“If this is the Staff of Moses, it is of unimaginable importance,” he said. (ANI)
London, March 3 (ANI): Scientists have found a discarded bottle at a waste site in the US that contains the oldest sample of bomb-grade plutonium made in a nuclear reactor, dating back to 1944.
According to a report by BBC News, the sample dates to 1944 and is a relic from the infancy of the US nuclear weapons programme.
A team from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory used nuclear forensic techniques to date the sample and track down its origins.
The type of plutonium in the bottle – known as Pu-239 – is a so-called alpha emitter. These alpha particles are too bulky to penetrate skin or paper, but they can cause poisoning if swallowed or inhaled.
It has a half-life (the time it takes for half the radioactive nuclei in a sample to decay) of 24,110 years.
The bottle in question was discovered in a burial trench at the Hanford nuclear site in Washington state, north-western US.
Established as part of the Manhattan Project in 1943, Hanford was home to the world’s first full-scale plutonium production facility.
The Manhattan Project was the US’ bid to build the world’s first nuclear weapon during World War II. The project’s roots lay in fears that Nazi Germany was investigating similar technology.
The Hanford site is now the focus of a massive environmental cleanup effort due to high levels of radioactive waste that remain at the site.
While excavating a burial trench in December 2004, clean-up personnel discovered a safe which contained a jug filled with whitish liquid slurry.
Further tests revealed the bottle contained a type of plutonium made by re-processing spent fuel in a manner consistent with early operations at Hanford.
Realising the historic potential of the find, Jon Schwantes and colleagues from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory carried out further tests on the sample.
In order to determine its age, the researchers analysed the different forms, or isotopes, of plutonium and uranium in the sample.
They found it had been separated from the spent fuel in 1944.
In order to determine which reactor had produced the sample, they compared plutonium isotope ratios from the contents of the bottle against technical data from nuclear research reactors that were operating at the time the sample was made.
Their results strongly suggested the plutonium was manufactured at the prototype X-10 reactor at Oak Ridge in Tennessee, which began operating in 1943, a year after the Manhattan Project was authorised. (ANI)
Washington, Jan 27 (ANI): A team of archaeologists has found evidence which suggests that a Greek cult worshipped Zeus, the “king of Gods”, and sacrificed animals as part of rituals, atop Mount Lykaion in Arcadia 3,200 years ago.
According to a report in Discovery News, the archaeological team, from the University of Pennsylvania Museum, discovered burnt animal bones, petrified lightning and a bronze male hand grasping a silver lightning bolt at the mountaintop site of a Mycenaean Greek cult, whose members gathered around an “open fire altar”.
“Zeus was a sky god, and the lightning bolt was one of his important emblems,” project field director David Gilman Romano told Discovery News.
Romano and his team dug a trench at the high-altitude site and uncovered a trove of artifacts, including burnt bones – mostly from goats and sheep – human and animal figurines, drinking vessels, miniature bronze tripods, silver coins and a small double-headed axe known as a labrys, a motif incorporated into labyrinths found elsewhere in Greece and around the world.
The bronze male hand holding the silver lightning bolt likely represents Zeus, according to the archaeologists.
It was found near a sample of glass-like fulgurite, otherwise known as petrified lightning, which is formed when lightning strikes sandy soil.
It is not clear if the fulgurite was formed on the mountain or elsewhere.
“The altar would have been situated on top of the hill and may have been represented by a ring of stones,” Romano said, adding that it was flanked by a nearby sacred area known as a temenos, which appeared to have no temple or other structure.
Early writings suggest that Mycenaean cult members sacrificed animals – and possibly even humans – before feasting.
Romano and his colleagues haven’t found any human bones at the site, but indicated they would not be surprised if they did.
The recent discoveries support the writings of Pausanias, a second century B.C. Greek historian who described “the birthplace of Zeus” at Arcadia in his multi-volume Description of Greece.
In addition to searching for human remains on the mountaintop, the archaeologists continue to look for a shrine to Pan – god of mountain wilds – that historical texts suggest might be nearby. (ANI)
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