Eideard

At the dawn of the millennium, Prof. Dr. Ferdinand Piëch, who is today Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Volkswagen AG, set his sights on creating a practical everyday use production car with a fuel consumption of 1.0 liter per 100 km (235 mpg). In 2002 a prototype VW 1-Litre was unveiled, which was followed in 2009 by the second-generation model, dubbed the L1, which boasted a combined diesel fuel consumption figure of 1.38-liter/100 km (170 mpg). As impressive as that figure is, the company has now managed to squeeze a combined fuel consumption of just 0.9-liter/100 km (261 mpg) with its third-generation VW 1-Litre prototype – the XL1…

With the hybrid system engaged the prototype XL1 accelerates from 0-62 mph (0-100 km/h) in 11.9 seconds and has an electronically limited top speed of 100 mph (160 km/h)…In electric only mode the TDI is decoupled from the drivetrain by disengaging a clutch, and it is shut down. Meanwhile, the clutch on the gearbox side remains closed, so the DSG is fully engaged with the electric motor. Using what is known as “pulse starting”, VW says the restarting of the TDI while driving is very smooth. The electric motor’s rotor is sped up and quickly coupled to the engine clutch, which accelerates the TDI to the required speed and starts it.

Under certain conditions the load shared between the TDI engine and the electric motor can be shifted so that the turbodiesel is operating at its optimum efficiency level. Additionally, the gears of the automatically shifting 7-speed DSG are also always selected with the aim of minimizing energy usage with the engine controller taking into account parameters such as the accelerator pedal position and engine load, as well as the energy supply and mix of kinetic and electrical energy at any given time…

Viewed from above, the car is widest at the front and narrows towards the rear for an improved aerodynamic profile, which VW says resembles the aerodynamic lines of a dolphin. The dolphin-like looks continue to the side profile with the roofline tracing an arc from the A-pillars to the rear.

To prevent air turbulence the rear wheels are fully covered and the air flows have also been optimized by small spoilers in front of and behind the wheels, while the door mirrors have been replaced with digital cameras that send images to two displays inside the vehicle…

When the L1 was unveiled in 2009, Volkswagen indicated it would be entering production in 2013. We’ll be interested to see if this updated model is on track for that date or whether the company hopes to bring the XL1 into production before then.

Latest rumors say late 2012 for consumer purchases. And – yes – it will be expensive. Those goodies in materials and special shapes don’t come cheap. What is significant is there is little that is extraordinarily expensive or off-the-wall engineering. A great deal is off-the-shelf from VW’s production plants. We’re getting to where with proper scale, this can become affordable.

RTFA. Lots of dynamite photos.

Oil is thicker than water

In August last year, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak was not happy with Saudi Arabia. He complained that the Saudis appeared to be funding an opposition candidate, Anwar Ibrahim, in upcoming elections.

What’s more, the Malaysian authorities suspected two senior Saudi princes of involvement. The Saudis launched an investigation, and uncovered something very different — and more alarming.

A secret report seen by CNN concludes: “There is no evidence any Saudi official ever supported Anwar Ibrahim” and “claims of support from the Saudi royals named in the initial report [names redacted] were found to be without basis.” But the investigation found that hundreds of millions of dollars of Saudi money had been funneled to leading Islamist politicians and political activists overseas. It also found that al Qaeda and the Taliban were still able to use Saudi Arabia for fund-raising, despite numerous measures to choke off those sources of cash.

According to a Saudi source who is not authorized to speak publically, “People close to the senior leadership of the Taliban live in Saudi Arabia and send money back” [to the Taliban].

Today he estimates the money reaching al Qaeda is “in the region of tens of thousands of dollars possibly hundreds of thousands…”

The problem facing Saudi authorities is huge, the source told CNN. “Eighty-six percent of all Islamic charities are based in Saudi Arabia” making “monitoring all their activities difficult.” The problem was compounded by several other factors, he said. Saudi Arabia “has the world’s fourth largest migrant workforce, 7 million legal workers, 3 million illegal.”

Many of them use unregulated Islamic Hawala money transfer banks where a deposit in one country can immediately be picked up in another with no paper trail to trace it. The Hawala networks were identified by the U.S. Treasury Department last year as a significant channel for funding the Taliban and other insurgent groups…

With friends like this, etc.. The Saudi royal family are vendors. We are customers for their oil. Not even clients.

So, please, don’t pay too much attention to high-sounding declarations of comradeship in the War on Terror. Or whatever it’s called this week.

Skull Valley sheep kill 1968

A Utah military facility that tests chemical and biological weapons was locked down “to resolve a serious concern,” and authorities were working to reopen the base, officials said Thursday. All base personnel were safe and working, and no evacuation was needed, said spokeswoman, Bonnie Robinson. She would not say why the base was locked down…

About 1,500 employees and contractors are stationed at the base.

Dugway commander Col. William E. King IV said earlier authorities were “working as quickly and as thoroughly as possible to resolve a serious concern within the Test Area” but he didn’t elaborate.

“As you know measures like these (lockdown of our gates) are not taken lightly. No one is in immediate danger but these steps are required.”

The proving ground covers 798,214 acres and is located in the Great Salt Lake Desert, around 85 miles southwest of Salt Lake City.

Also a historic center for the development and testing of chemical and biological weapons.

Dugway has been a test site for weaponized anthrax as recently as 1998.

Ian Allison when he played for Arsenal

Boreham Wood FC have been praised for their immaculate sportsmanship after allowing an opposing team to score against them during a league match.

The Blue Square South team were playing away to Havant on Saturday when with nine minutes left the home side kicked the ball off the field so Boreham Wood’s injured player Sam Pearce could receive treatment.

The Wood’s Mario Noto received the ball from the resulting throw-in and kicked it back to the opposing goalkeeper from around the halfway line. But there was a problem: Noto made contact a little too well, and his ‘pass-back’ flew straight into the goal.

The strike had levelled the scores, so Boreham Wood manager Ian Allinson – a former Arsenal star – decided that for justice to be done he must order his men to let the opposition score unopposed from the kick-off.

Wes Fogden was the lucky Havant player who was able to walk the ball upfield and kick it into the net as Boreham Wood’s players stood by.

Havant finished 2-1 winners thanks to what their manager Shaun Gale called “a great gesture”, and Boreham Wood’s boss had no regrets about his decision.

“I’d rather lose the correct way,” said Allinson, whose honourable actions have been hailed throughout the world of football.

Bravo!

Thanks, honorarynewfie

Jaziri at his family home in Tunisia after being deported from Canada
Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

U.S. border authorities have arrested a controversial Muslim cleric who was deported from Canada to Tunisia three years ago and was caught earlier this month trying to sneak into California inside the trunk of a BMW, according to court documents.

Said Jaziri, the former Imam of a Muslim congregation in Montreal, was hidden inside a car driven by a San Diego-area man who was pulled over by U.S. Border Patrol agents near an Indian casino east of San Diego. Jaziri allegedly paid a Tijuana-based smuggling group $5,000 to get him across the border near Tecate, saying he wanted to be taken to a “safe place anywhere in the U.S.”

The arrest marks the unexpected resurfacing of the 43-year-old cleric, whose protracted legal battle to avoid deportation drew headlines in Canada. A Tunisian immigrant, Jaziri was deported for failing to disclose a criminal conviction in France while applying for refugee status in the mid-1990s.

But Jaziri’s supporters said he was targeted for his fundamentalist views: Jaziri backed Sharia law for Canadian Muslims and led protests over the publication of the prophet Muhammad cartoons in a Danish newspaper in 2006.

Jaziri is being held as a material witness in the criminal case against the BMW’s driver, Kenneth Robert Lawler, who has been charged with immigrant smuggling. He is at the San Luis Detention Facility near Yuma, Ariz., according to his attorney, Wayne Charles Mayer. His bond has been set at $25,000…

According to the court documents, a Mexican foot guide led Jaziri and a Mexican immigrant over the fence near Tecate and he trekked overnight through the rugged back country, to a road where drivers frequently pick up immigrants for smuggling runs into San Diego.

Border Patrol agents, alerted by fire fighters who saw the immigrants get in the trunk, pulled the car over near the Golden Acorn Casino, about 50 miles east of San Diego. He told agents that his journey to the border had been a long one. He took a flight from Africa to Europe, then to Central America and Chetumal, Mexico, on the Mexico-Belize border, where he took a bus to Tijuana.

Guess he took his bankbook with him when he was deported from Canada.

Coppers playing with the catapult

In a brazen attempt reminiscent of a medieval siege, Mexican smugglers tried to use a hefty catapult to hurl drugs north over the U.S. Border.

The Mexican military seized 45 pounds of marijuana, a sports utility vehicle and a metal-framed catapult just south of the Arizona border near the small town of Naco last Friday, following a tip-off from the U.S. Border Patrol.

Surveillance video taken by National Guard troops deployed to support the Border Patrol caught a group of men apparently attempting to pull down a metal beam and load or test the catapult, which was powered by powerful elastic and mounted on a trailer close to the metal border fence.

“It looks like a medieval catapult that was used back in the day,” Tucson sector Border Patrol spokesman David Jimarez told Reuters…

The U.S. Border Patrol seize hundreds of tons of marijuana and other drugs each year, smuggled over or under the line using a variety of means, including trucks, clandestine tunnels, horseback and even micro-light aircraft — although the catapult was new, Jimarez said.

“I have not seen anything like that in my time before as a Border Patrol agent … although we are trained to handle any kind of a threat that comes over that border,” he added.

See? Everyone learns something from watching the Discovery Channel.

Doing the excess-profits polka with Meg Whitman
Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

New Jersey has no legal obligation and does not intend to return $271 million in federal aid earmarked for a canceled tunnel project, says a spokesman for Governor Chris Christie.

The U.S. Federal Transit Administration had set a deadline of Tuesday night for the state to make the payment and Christie has repeatedly said New Jersey should be under no obligation to pay the money back…

The commuter rail tunnel under the Hudson River between New Jersey and Manhattan would have been America’s largest public works project. Christie canceled the project in October, citing billions of dollars in projected cost overruns that would be borne by the state.

The tunnel, which would have linked New Jersey and midtown Manhattan, became a lightning rod in the run-up to the November 2010 election, pitting those calling for more federal infrastructure spending against those who said such projects cost too much…

Christie…is a rising star in the Republican party and is often mentioned as a potential presidential candidate. If elected we will all be issued buggy whips to assist in transportation.

Each year, federal inspectors find illegal levels of antibiotics in hundreds of older dairy cows bound for the slaughterhouse. Concerned that those antibiotics might also be contaminating the milk Americans drink, the Food and Drug Administration intended to begin tests this month on the milk from farms that had repeatedly sold cows tainted by drug residue.

But the testing plan met with fierce protest from the dairy industry, which said that it could force farmers to needlessly dump millions of gallons of milk while they waited for test results. Industry officials and state regulators said the testing program was poorly conceived and could lead to costly recalls that could be avoided with a better plan for testing.

In response, the F.D.A. postponed the testing, and now the two sides are sparring over how much danger the antibiotics pose and the best way to ensure that the drugs do not end up in the milk supply.

“What has been served up, up to this point, by Food and Drug has been potentially very damaging to innocent dairy farmers,” said John J. Wilson, a senior vice president for Dairy Farmers of America, the nation’s largest dairy cooperative. He said that that the nation’s milk was safe and that there was little reason to think that the slaughterhouse findings would be replicated in tests of the milk supply.

But food safety advocates said that the F.D.A.’s preliminary findings raised issues about the possible overuse of antibiotics in livestock, which many fear could undermine the effectiveness of drugs to combat human illnesses.

“Consumers certainly don’t want to be taking small amounts of drugs every time they drink milk,” said Caroline Smith DeWaal, food safety director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, an advocacy group. “They want products that are appropriately managed to ensure those drug residues aren’t there, and the dairy farmer is the one who can control that.”

RTFA for the details. Poisonally, I trust the Dairy Farmers association as far as I can throw them uphill into a heavy wind. Maybe because everyone I hang out with in the cattle business are beef growers not milk growers. But, the evidence has been pretty clear that virtually all the instances of BSE getting into the mainstream originated with dairy farms.

And – the FDA is just beginning to get up on their hind legs and starting to fight for consumers. In past administrations, Democrat and Republican, the profit-takers have been the regulators as far as best practices were concerned. Things have only begun to change in the past two years. Yes – there’s that word the KoolAid Party hates, again.

The US treasury expects to net $312.2m on Monday when it sells the rest of its stake in Citigroup. The government holds 465.1m warrants in Citi that entitle it to purchase common shares in the banking group. The warrants, which it is auctioning, represent the remaining part of the US government’s $45bn investment in Citi during the financial crisis.

Taxpayers are expected to end up with a $12.3bn profit on the bailout, made under the troubled asset relief programme (TARP). The treasury sold its 34% stake of common shares of Citi last year.

“As we exit our investments in private companies and recover taxpayer dollars, it’s clear that the cost of the Tarp programme will be a fraction of what many had once feared during the depths of the crisis,” said Tim Massad, the treasury’s acting assistant secretary for financial stability.

The Tarp bailout is proving to be less expensive to taxpayers than first feared. The US government made $13.5bn selling its stake in General Motors. Last week the government chose four Wall Street banks to sell its stake in American Insurance Group (AIG), recipient of $180bn in bailout funds. The sale could be the largest in US history. AIG has already paid back significant chunks of the debt…

In his latest quarterly report, Neil Barofsky said “on the financial side, Tarp’s outlook has never been better. Not only did Tarp funds help head off a catastrophic financial collapse, but estimates of Tarp’s ultimate direct financial cost to the taxpayer have fallen substantially,” from $341bn in August 2009 to $25bn in November 2010.

Save a copy of this post for the next time your friendly neighborhood Tea Party nutball starts raving and ranting about how the socialist policies of the bailout were bankrupting the United States.

Of course, you’ll have to point out 14 more sources for the information on repayment and the resulting profits. There isn’t anyone in the KoolAid Party who knows what actually is happening in the world of commerce.

U.S. police arrested 17 people and broke up a gun running network that sought to funnel more than 700 firearms including high-powered Kalashnikov rifles to Mexico drug cartels.

The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, or ATF, said police arrested 17 suspects in a multi-agency operation across the Phoenix valley on Tuesday. Three other suspects remained at large.

The operation…dismantled a network buying weapons for Mexico’s powerful Sinaloa Cartel, investigators said. “We strongly believe we took down the entire organization from top to bottom that operated out of the Phoenix area,” said William Newell, special agent in charge of the ATF’s Phoenix field division…

Arizona straddles a lucrative and heavily trafficked smuggling corridor. Organized criminal networks haul drugs and illegal immigrants north, and spirit guns and cash profits south to Mexico.

The 53-count indictment alleged that from September 2009 to December last year the defendants conspired to purchase hundreds of guns, including Kalashnikov rifles, a weapon of choice for cartel enforcers in Mexico.

It’s the weapon of choice for military-style operations worldwide.

Criminal indictments handed down in the case charged defendants with crimes including conspiracy to obtain a firearm for drug trafficking offense, and making false statements in connection with the acquisition of firearms.

A conviction for conspiracy carries a maximum penalty of up to 20 years in prison, while making a false statement, five years…

The gun bust comes a day after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with Mexican Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa in Mexico, and restated the United States’ support for Calderon’s drive to crush the cartels.

Clinton acknowledged the role the vast U.S. demand for illegal drugs and the flow of U.S. weapons south across the border to drug smugglers were major contributors to the violence.

Acknowledged, eh? Well, that accomplishes a lot doesn’t it.

Paranoid nutballs and their NRA allies may whine all the way to the next Tuscon-style crime scene; but, the traffic in weapons needs to be as thoroughly regulated as public safety demands. It doesn’t matter if the motivation is sport or safety – though the number of murdered spouses is daunting – fear of what follows is why we get to vote. Someone writes a lousy regulation, throw the bum out.