Eideard

The standing joke about the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach used to be that they were like the diesel version of elephant graveyards: the place where old trucks went to die. But lately, they have become a proving ground for technology that produces little or no pollution.

On Tuesday, the first of 25 heavy-duty all-electric trucks rolled off a new Los Angeles assembly line. All are slated to work at the Port of Los Angeles or to make short hauls to and from the harbor. The small fleet results from a partnership involving the Port of Los Angeles, the South Coast Air Quality Management District and a small business called Balqon Corp…

The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach have launched the nation’s most ambitious port cleanup effort, which bans the oldest and dirtiest trucks and charges cargo fees to help fund the purchase of thousands of new clean diesel and natural gas trucks. The ports also have been offering seed money for promising new technologies.

The Nautilus E30 has a range of 40 miles (under a full load) to 60 miles (when not hauling). It powers up by plugging into a 230-volt or 480-volt charger for about three hours.

Balqon Chief Executive Balwinder Samra received $527,000 from the L.A. port and the air board to fund development of the electric truck. As part of the deal, Samra moved his company from Orange County to Harbor City, near the port, and he will pay a royalty of $1,000 to the port and the air board for every truck he sells that isn’t used at the port.

Bravo! I spent way too much time on the export side of international commerce watching tired old diesels roll down to wheeze and wait to offload at cargo terminals.

I wonder if they’ve gotten rid of the need for bribes to get your shipment out in time, as well.

Founders: John and Alice Tyler

Two scientists who found warning signs of climate change in the upper atmosphere and in the deepest ice sheets will share the 2009 Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement.

The award, consisting of a $200,000 cash prize and gold medals, will go to Richard Alley, professor of geosciences at Penn State University, and Veerabhadran (Ram) Ramanathan, professor of atmospheric and climate sciences in the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego…

The prize committee recognized the two “for their scientific contributions that advanced understanding of how human activities influence global climate, and alter oceanic, glacial and atmospheric phenomena in ways that adversely affect planet Earth.”

Alley is widely credited with showing that Earth has experienced abrupt climate change in the past, and likely will again. He based his work on a meticulous study of ice cores from Greenland and West Antarctica. Up to two miles thick, the ice sheets contain a unique record of Earth’s climate history.

“His wonderful book ‘The Two-Mile Time Machine’ (on the climate record from Greenland ice cores and its implications for humankind) combines good science with a serious message and succeeds, equally, with novices and experts.”

One of the world’s leading atmospheric scientists, Ramanathan was the first to show that ozone-depleting aerosols could aggravate the greenhouse effect. In 1980, he correctly predicted that global warming from carbon dioxide would be detectable by the year 2000.

I’ve mentioned before that I worked with one of the folks who wrote the definition of ice geologist during the original IGY in the 1950′s. Some wonderful times learning about ice cores – when we were supposed to be designing stress-corrosion cracking tests on non-ferrous metals.

If you have an enquiring mind, I see no reason ever to limit your studies or interests. Life isn’t long enough to specialize. I know that sounds contradictory; but, reflect for a bit on this journey and how you find new ways to understand it all.

Daylife/AP Photo by David Zalubowski

With eyes tearing, some stare off into space. Others sit quietly with an expressionless pain as they wait for the inevitable.

When you are called before this court, it’s the end of the line. You are about to lose your home. This is foreclosure court in Fort Myers, Florida.

At this point in the legal process, all that’s needed is a judge’s signature. CNN was in court Friday to witness the process, which takes seconds. It’s called the “rocket docket.” On some days the court hears up to 1,000 cases. “It is a legal, procedural response to an overwhelming number of filings that unfortunately is necessary,” Judge Hugh Starnes told CNN…

Casey McNeer couldn’t even speak her name when the judge called her case. Her face red from crying, she wiped away tears as she told the judge her story. “My husband passed away and the debt just kept getting higher and higher,” she said.

“[My bank] told me my best option was to refinance, but they wouldn’t do it,” she said.

Nice human interest story, well-written. Just one paragraph deals with another side of this reality:

Sixty percent of the cases handled here involve homeowners who were speculators and out-of-towners. They don’t bother showing up for the court hearing, so the process is quick, and many are handled in seconds.

These are the people who precipitated most of this disaster. These are the people who supported and sustained sleazy storefront “mortgage brokers” who have about as much business doing home loans as Dick Cheney would have teaching business ethics.

Jack Straw’s Blackburn office has been infiltrated by Nigerian IT fraudsters who sent requests for money to hundreds of his contacts.

The emails claimed Mr Straw had lost his wallet while he was on charity work in Africa and needed 3,500 US dollars to get home. They were sent to constituents, Ministry of Justice officials, Labour members and council bosses – and triggered an urgent response involving the Richmond Terrace office and officials in London…

The Justice Minister said: “I started getting phone calls from various constituents asking if I was really in Nigeria needing 3,000 dollars.

“We are checking all that and I am assured there’s no evidence that confidentiality of constituents was affected.”

The Blackburn MP…set up the National Hi-Tech Crime Unit to crack down on internet hackers when he was Home Secretary in 2001.

Confidentiality of constituents is fine. How about gullibiliy of Straw’s office staff? Or Straw, himself? He certainly has a track record of unquestioning obedience to Blair and Bush.

Daylife/AFP/Getty Images – passed by military censors

A French appeals court has overturned terrorist conspiracy convictions of five former inmates of the Guantánamo prison camp who were tried and convicted in 2007, after they had been returned to France.

The court ruled that testimony gathered by French intelligence officials in interrogations at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, violated rules for permissible evidence and that there was no other proof of wrongdoing.

None of the men, captured in Afghanistan in 2001 and 2002, is currently in jail, having been given time off for time already served.

But the case is likely to be seen as a precedent as more inmates are released from Guantánamo Bay, which President Barack Obama has vowed to shut down. Various European countries have expressed willingness in principle to take some of the inmates, depending on their potential for dangerous behavior and whether the United States also accepts some of them. Some European countries prefer that the European Union come up with a unified position, so Washington cannot play one country against another while trying to negotiate placements.

Governments, politicians and coppers can’t serve as both judge and jury. Not in civilized times.

The excuse always offered is “these aren’t civilized times – our enemies aren’t civilized”. That didn’t cut it for Goebbels. It doesn’t work for Cheney and the few remaining apologists for Bush League lawlessness. If we are to be civil and just, then, first of all, we must live up to our own standards.

She was 92.

A federal judge has sentenced three former Atlanta Police officers to prison terms in connection with a botched drug raid that left a 92-year-old woman dead.

Jason Smith, Gregg Junnier and Arthur Tesler pled guilty to a charge of conspiracy to violate civil rights resulting in death.

U.S. District Judge Julie Carnes sentenced Smith to 10 years in prison, 3 years probation and a $100 fine.

Judge Carnes sentenced Junnier to 6 years in prison, 3 years probation and a $100 fine.

Judge Carnes sentenced Tesler to 5 years in prison and 3 years of supervised release.

The judge also ordered all three men to split the funeral costs of nearly $8200 for Kathryn Johnston, who was killed by police gunfire in the November 2006 raid….

Judge Carnes was … very critical of the Atlanta Police Department and indicated the shooting was due in part to pressure on police officers to make drug arrests.

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For background, please read the excellent piece by the AJC from a couple days ago:

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Kenneth Hughes was at work early Monday when detectives asked him to come to Dallas police headquarters and answer some questions: Did he and his wife and daughter have trouble getting along? Were there problems within the family?

Hughes, 57, says that he told them no. Afterward he learned what the questions were about. Officers were arresting his wife of 33 years and their daughter, who they said had tried to hire someone to kill him.

Tammie Lafawne Lewis, 31, and her mother, Shirley Bilbrey Hughes, 56, were booked into the Dallas County Jail about 10 a.m. Each is being held in lieu of $100,000 bail and faces charges of solicitation to commit capital murder. Police say they planned to collect on Kenneth Hughes’ life insurance policy…

Hughes said he got along well with his wife, who looks after infants at a child-care center.

“She’s the best-natured woman you’d ever see,” he said. “She gets along with everybody. We very seldom ever argue…”

For years, Hughes has worked as a dispatcher for a waste company. He has a $200,000 life insurance policy and $200,000 more in accident insurance, he said. “She knew I had it,” he said of his wife. “We have to renew it once a year.”

Like everyone who finds out they’ve been living next door to an axe murderer, lots of folks simply can’t believe it’s true. Yup.

Daylife/Reuters Pictures

The British government again refused to publish records of cabinet discussions on the legality of invading Iraq in 2003, despite a tribunal ruling in January that it should release them.

Justice Secretary Jack Straw used a ministerial veto to block the request made under the Freedom of Information Act, saying the release of the records would “in my judgment risk serious damage to Cabinet government.”

“The decision to take military action has been examined with a fine-tooth comb; we have been held to account for it in this House and elsewhere,” Straw said in a statement to Parliament. “But the duty to advance that interest further cannot supplant the public interest in maintaining the integrity of our system of government.”

Publication of the documents could have embarrassed Prime Minister Gordon Brown, whose predecessor Tony Blair was accused by critics of glossing over lawyers’ initial reservations about launching the invasion that overthrew Saddam Hussein…

The case is likely to raise questions about the government’s commitment to open administration and the strength of a Freedom of Information Act that came into effect in 2005.

The Information Commissioner ruled in February 2008 that the government should release the Iraq cabinet documents. The government appealed, but a tribunal which decides on requests for documents under freedom of information laws said it was in the public interest to release them.

The truth will set you free. Unless you’re a lying criminal git!

Daylife/Reuters Pictures

With her bouquet of roses and fluffy white dress, Han Xincheng looked the epitome of the glamorous modern Chinese bride. But, although her parents had been pressing her to marry, the photographs were not what they might have expected: she is gazing adoringly at another woman, surrounded by onlookers.

The series of “wedding pictures” staged by lesbians and gay men in the heart of Beijing might not raise eyebrows any longer in most western countries, but they are evidence that attitudes are finally changing in a country where gay sex was illegal until 1997 and homosexuality classified as a mental illness until four years later.

There is still no legal protection against discrimination in China and few role models: no mainstream figures are openly gay. Yet now parts of China’s gay population are calling for the right to wed – and meeting with some sympathy.

“Many reactions were quite positive and some people even came up to give us their blessing,” said Han, though she acknowledges that overall the public reaction was negative…

Gay men and lesbians say there is less overt hostility than in the west and certainly less physical harassment. Li’s Yinghe’s research in cities suggests about 91% of people are happy to work with gay colleagues – a higher rate than in US surveys – and that 30% back gay marriage.

She argues that Chinese culture has historically been more tolerant than others: “We don’t have religions which are absolutely against homosexuality, for example. But the pressure to marry is huge – far greater than in the west.”

Han, 27, thinks her parents know she is a lesbian. “But my mum told me I must have experience of marriage, no matter how long it lasts. I don’t think she hopes to change my sexuality, she just thinks my life will be more stable,” said the media professional.

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Daylife/Getty Images

President Barack Obama told Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso today that the United States wants to strengthen ties with Japan, a country Obama described as the cornerstone of U.S. security policy in East Asia and a major U.S. economic partner.

Aso, who is struggling to stay in power, was the first foreign leader to visit the Obama White House, and the U.S. president called the prestigious invitation “a testimony to the strong partnership between the United States and Japan.”

“The friendship between the United States and Japan is extraordinarily important to our country,” Obama told reporters. “We think that we have an opportunity to work together, not only on issues related to the Pacific Rim but throughout the world.”

The Japanese leader, sitting next to Obama in the Oval Office before their private meeting, said the world’s first and second largest economies “will have to work together hand in hand” to solve the “very critical, vital” issues of the world.

Aso, of late, has faced single-digit approval ratings, appeals from his own party to resign and the worst Japanese recession in 50 years.

His selection as the first foreign leader to meet with Obama, however, shows the new U.S. administration is interested less in giving Aso a boost than in sending a message — to Tokyo and to the world — that Japan, a sometimes-neglected ally, remains an important partner in addressing global economic and security crises.

Japan trails only China as the largest foreign holder of U.S. Treasury bonds, holdings that help finance the ever-growing U.S. budget deficit.

We can also learn from the laggard strategy Japan adopted to deal with corrupt banking elements in their deflationary economy. It didn’t work and it took serious and unpopular measures to correct course.