Eideard

Italian-built Falaj2 Stealth patrol boats on order for Emirates Navy

The United Arab Emirates navy is thought to have opened fire on a small patrol vessel from Saudi Arabia after a dispute over water boundaries. According to one report, two Saudi sailors were injured in the alleged bombardment.

The Saudi vessel was forced to surrender, and its sailors were delivered into custody in Abu Dhabi for several days, before being released and handed over to the Saudi embassy earlier this week.

The clash happened in disputed waters between the coasts of Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and the peninsula on which the gas-rich state of Qatar sits…

The seabed is rich with oil deposits, while the Dolphin pipeline project to carry natural gas direct from Qatar to Abu Dhabi has provoked irritation in the Saudi authorities. Nevertheless, direct conflict between the two countries’ armed forces is highly unusual.

The Gulf is one of the most heavily armed regions in the world. The Saudi government has been building up its army and air force for years in response to what it sees as a regional threat from Iran…

But now the UAE, despite its small size, is the fourth largest purchaser of weaponry on the international market in the world.

Western governments are exasperated that the two countries are unable to co-operate because of a series of long-running border disputes, largely influenced by oil reserves…

Is there anything to do with oil profits and the greedy bastards controlling most of it – that doesn’t provoke militarism and war?

The arrest of a top Taliban commander in Pakistan highlights the militant nexus in Karachi, where crime bankrolls violence and the teeming metropolis offers the perfect hiding place.

Karachi, home to 16 million people, has two sea ports which are a gateway to the world and transit hub for NATO supplies heading to the war effort in neighbouring Afghanistan.

For decades Karachi has been connected with the criminal underworld and since the September 11, 2001 attacks, with extreme Islamist networks too…

While officials refuse to confirm details of how, when and where Taliban number two Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar was arrested, American media reported that US and Pakistani spies captured him in Karachi.

“The arrest of a top Afghan Taliban commander proves the premise that some Afghan Taliban are present in Pakistan,” said security analyst Hasan Askari.

“Karachi has become the most attractive hideout for militants because it is a massive city and there are all kinds of ethnic and linguistic groups, where Pakistani and Afghan Taliban can disappear,” he added.

Around 2.5 million Pashtuns from the northwest are estimated to live in Karachi, a migration that began in the 1950s but accelerates with each successive offensive against Pakistani Islamists in the region…

This also serves to illustrate the steady turnaround in Pakistan’s commitment to a fight for democracy and modernity in their own land – since the departure of Musharraf and his Bush League lackeys.

CO₂ capture facility sprawls alongside cooling tower at Mountaineer plant

Poking out of the ground near the smokestacks of the Mountaineer power plant here are two wells that look much like those that draw natural gas to the surface. But these are about to do something new: inject a power plant’s carbon dioxide into the earth.

A behemoth built in 1980, long before global warming stirred broad concern, Mountaineer is poised to become the world’s first coal-fired power plant to capture and bury some of the carbon dioxide it churns out. The hope is that the gas will stay deep underground for millennia rather than entering the atmosphere as a heat-trapping pollutant.

The experiment, which the company says could begin in the next few days, is riveting the world’s coal-fired electricity sector, which is under growing pressure to develop technology to capture and store carbon dioxide. Visitors from as far as China and India, which are struggling with their own coal-related pollution, have been trooping through the plant.

The United States still depends on coal-fired plants, many of them built decades ago, to meet half of its electricity needs. Some industry experts argue that retrofitting them could prove far more feasible than building brand new, cleaner ones.

Yet the economic viability of the Mountaineer plant’s new technology, known as carbon capture and sequestration, remains uncertain…

And as with any new technology, even the engineers are unsure how well it will work: will all of the carbon dioxide stay put?

Should be interesting as all get-out. Of course, regardless of results, diehard coal investors will claim it worked. The Earth-religion segment of environmentalist activists will claim it didn’t.

I’m waiting for solid data, analysis that is peer-reviewed – preferably by universities without subsidies from coal companies.

Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

In the high-stakes game of climate change, the United States and other countries are betting on the idea that technology can make dirty coal cleaner.

For years if not decades, U.S. efforts to develop big coal-fired power plants that push CO2 emissions into the ground instead of spewing them into the atmosphere have stalled. The situation has gotten so bad that green-tech experts refer to this period of technological development as the “valley of death” for carbon capture and storage technology, or CCS…

“If we’re going to be able to add carbon capture and storage to our toolbox of ways to address climate change, the time to demonstrate it is right now — or yesterday, maybe,” said Sarah Forbes, a senior associate at the World Resources Institute. “CO2 emissions are continuing to rise, and we’re seeing impacts of climate change…”

And President Obama last month announced a $1 billion revamp of the country’s flagship CCS research project, a near-zero-emissions coal-fired power plant in Illinois called FutureGen. It’s urgent that both efforts succeed, Forbes said…

About half of U.S. power comes from coal, and the process of burning coal for electricity accounts for about 80 percent of the country’s CO2 emissions from electricity, according to the Energy Information Administration.

Renewable energy sources like wind and solar — which, together, account for less than 2 percent of U.S. electricity production — won’t be able to ramp up fast enough to replace coal, said Scott Anderson, a senior policy adviser at the Environmental Defense Fund.

“We’re not champions of coal at EDF, but we’re realists,” he said. “Although we see room for a huge expansion of renewable energy and efficiency, in the near term, we don’t think that coal is going away. … We still have a huge existing base of coal plants that will be around, at a minimum, for a number of decades.”

In the United States, many are pinning hopes on FutureGen…The project took a blow in late June, however, when two of its private-sector backers, American Electric Power Co. and Southern Co., withdrew. Because of delays and cost overruns, the project has earned the nickname “NeverGen.”

Meanwhile, other nations are moving ahead. In China, the similarly named GreenGen plant is expected to be completed before FutureGen. Australia has a project called ZeroGen, and several European countries are working on similar technologies.

Some have described the situation as an arms race. The country first to prove that CCS works may be able to export the technology elsewhere.

Obama probably has the best quote on the question: “If we managed to put a man on the moon in 10 years I think we can do the same with coal-based production of electricity.” Or something like that.

Point being – as an ecology activist for decades I think it would be foolish to pass on the energy potential of our great coal deposits because some don’t like the idea of using it – at all. That’s not science. It’s not even ideology. It’s religion.

French soldiers inspect pirate attack boat. Nivose in the background.
Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

The French Navy said they seized 11 pirates Sunday after they apparently mistook a French military vessel for a commercial ship and made a run at it.

Two pirate assault boats approached the Nivose “at great speed,” Capt. Christophe Prazuck said, but a French helicopter intervened before the attackers had time to fire at the French Navy ship.

The helicopter fired warning shots, he said.

The pirates, who had a mother ship as well as the two assault boats, are being held for questioning on the Nivose, Prazuck said. The vessels were carrying AK-47 rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, but the pirates did not fire, he said.

At least they weren’t suicidal.

In the past three weeks, the Nivose has intercepted 24 suspected pirates as part of a European Union anti-piracy operation off the coast of Somalia, which has become a piracy hotspot.

Over the past year, more than 100 suspected pirates have been picked up, Prazuck said. Of that total, 27 have been released, and more than 70 taken to jail in France, handed to authorities in Somalia or taken to Kenya under an EU agreement with the government in Nairobi.

As armed self-defense grows as a tactic, as national and regional military units patrol aggressively – if and when raids land in the backyard of Pirate Central in Somalia – the trade, the threats and dangers it represents, will diminish if not disappear. As it should.

A reward of $2 million each will be paid to informers who help arrest Mexico’s 24 most-wanted drug gang chiefs, the attorney general has said. Correspondents say the most-wanted list is a public challenge to the cartels…

US and Mexican agencies are increasing their co-operation as the gang violence spills over the border, where kidnaps and killings are on the rise. The reward offer comes two days before a trip to Mexico by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and a month before President Barack Obama is due to visit…

The drug gangs have splintered into six main cartels, under pressure from law enforcement action on both sides of the border, according to the attorney general’s office in Mexico.

Some of the men, such as Joaquin Guzman and Ismael Zamabada, allegedly of the Pacific cartel, are also targeted by separate $5m (£3.43m) bounties from the US government.

Make it “Dead or Alive” and I might drag some old hardware from the closet and head South, myself.

The CSIRO and its Chinese partners have officially launched a post-combustion capture (PCC) pilot plant in Beijing that strips carbon dioxide from power station flue gases in an effort to stem climate change.

The project represents another first for the CSIRO PCC program – the first capture of carbon dioxide in China using a PCC pilot plant. It begins the process of applying the technology to Chinese conditions and evaluating its effectiveness.

PCC is a process that uses a liquid to capture carbon dioxide from power station flue gases and is a technology that can potentially reduce carbon dioxide emissions from existing and future coal-fired power stations by more than 85 per cent.

The joint venture is a natural. China is the world’s largest consumer of coal for energy. Australia is the world’s largest exporter of coal.

They have a vested interest in making the process of turning coal into electricity as clean as possible. Increased utilization, increased demand, will be the result.

And the nations leaving political decisions about these questions to sectarian Know-Nothings will get the market share they deserve. Zero.