While the U.S. embargo that took effect in 1961 stopped the flow of new cars, and most parts, a few Cubans now manage to bring in replacement parts when friends or family visit from the U.S

When Martin Viera's Chevrolet rolled out of the dealer's lot, Harry Truman was president of the United States, gasoline cost 27 cents a gallon and a 24-year-old lefty named Tommy Lasorda was pitching for Almendares in the Cuban winter baseball league.

That world is long gone, but the Chevy's still running on the streets of Havana — part of a fleet of classic cars that have become an icon of tourism in the socialist nation.

For decades, the cars slowly decayed. But officials in recent years have eased state control over the economy by allowing limited self-employment. So those lucky enough to have a pre-revolutionary car can earn money legally by ferrying tourists — or Cubans celebrating weddings — along Havana's waterfront Malecon boulevard.

That's allowed many to paint and polish their aging vehicles.

Viera's 1951 Chevrolet and Osmani Rodriguez's 1954 Ford are now part of Havana's tourist draw.

Rodriguez, who has three daughters, said the opening to self-employment "was a great benefit for me. I bought an apartment to live in and really it improved my standard of living a lot."

The cars may gleam on the outside, but they're often battered, rolling monuments to ingenuity within. People like Yoandri Failu fabricate parts in crude workshops. Many scavenge parts, particularly engines, from Soviet-era cars and trucks.

While the U.S. embargo that took effect in 1961 stopped the flow of new cars, and most parts, a few Cubans now manage to bring in replacement parts when friends or family visit from the U.S.

Cuba's old cars finally get facelift

[readon1 url="http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/lifestyle/slideshow/2014/10/20/new-gloss-on-cuba-classic-cars/?intcmp=related#slide=1"]Source:latino.foxnews.com[/readon1]

Almost anywhere else, we would have been happy to see so many bright, twinkling stars filling the sky. But here on the porch of Catatumbo Camp in northwest Venezuela, the mood was nearly as dark as the sprawling lake before us. We didn’t want stars. We wanted towering clouds – the kind that produce the massive lightning storms that have made this remote corner of Venezuela famous.

Known in Spanish as the relámpago de Catatumbo, this unique meteorological phenomenon features the most consistent lightning of any place on Earth, with flashes illuminating the sky nearly half the year.

Lightning over Lake Maracaibo. (Alan Highton)

A group of British travellers and I had come to witness the sight with Alan Highton, a 50-year-old Barbadian expat and tour guide. For some 20 years, he has been bringing tourists, scientists and documentary makers to this spot where the Catatumbo River flows into Lake Maracaibo. The lightning storms are incredible, he said.

“It's such an intense experience of raw nature that the only thing you can equate it with is a trip to see migrating monarch butterflies arriving in their millions in central Mexico,” he said, “or the aurora borealis – the northern lights – although Catatumbo is probably more reliable.”

Although the lightning wasn’t proving to be terribly reliable tonight, Highton was optimistic about our chances of seeing it during our visit.

We hoped he was right, since getting here wasn’t easy. We began our journey from the Andean city of Merida with a 150km road trip to the fishing port of Puerto Concha. Then came a 40-minute boat trip up the Caño Concha River, through the tropical forests and swampland of Ciénagas de Juan Manuel National Park. On the way, we marvelled at big-billed toucans, bright green iguanas, curious capuchins and red howler monkeys, and spent the last two hours speeding across the glassy vastness of Lake Maracaibo to Highton’s house on stilts, the rather grandly named Catatumbo Camp.

Life around Lake Maracaibo. (Alan Highton)

Here, a thin strip of sand, scrub and palm trees separates the southern shore of Lake Maracaibo from Ologa Lagoon, where 30 or so brightly painted corrugated tin houses make up the small fishing village of Ologa. Built on stilts, some of the rudimentary houses are topped by satellite dishes, but the scene still somehow feels timeless. In fact, it was the stilt houses in the mouth of Lake Maracaibo that Florentine explorer Amerigo Vespucci described in 1499 as a “Little Venice”, giving rise to the name Venezuela.

Catatumbo's status as the electrical storm capital of the world was officially acknowledged in January 2014, when Guinness World Records recognized it as the site of “the Highest Concentration of Lightning in the World”. Kifuka, a village in the Democratic Republic of Congo, last held the record; but while Kifuka produces an impressive 158 lightning bolts per square kilometre every year, Catatumbo blows that away with 250 bolts per square kilometre and a staggering 1.6 million bolts annually. Most experts estimate that lightning strikes over Catatumbo roughly 140 to 160 nights a year, with flashes often visible seven to 10 hours per night.

Meteorologists have yet to definitively explain why Catatumbo produces the most persistent electrical storms on the planet, but the most widely accepted theory is that trade winds from the Caribbean blow warm air over brackish Lake Maracaibo before hitting cool air from the Andes. Trapped on three sides by high mountains, this warm, moist air forms huge clouds that then discharge electricity in powerful cloud-to-cloud storms.

Highton said NASA satellite images have recorded two storm epicentres contributing to the lightning: one over the Catatumbo River that generally starts around dusk, and another – even bigger – over the southwestern shore of Lake Maracaibo that starts later in the evening and produces the bright, blue-white lightning bolts that strike close to Highton’s Catatumbo Camp.

Sometimes, the bolts strike too close. In November 2012, the lightning rod on Highton's house took a direct hit. “There was a big bang and a flash and my guests got a shock, but nobody got hurt,” he said.
Venezuelan environmentalist Erik Quiroga believes the storms could help repair the damaged ozone layer and is campaigning for the entire ecosystem that produces the storms to be recognized as a Unesco World Heritage site.

“This is my own hypothesis,” Quiroga wrote to me, “based on the fact that this is a cycle of nocturnal cloud-to-cloud electrical storms, and it is possible that part of the ozone generated could reach the lower part of the ozone layer.”

So far, no scientific studies have backed up his claim, but British physicist and TV presenter professor Brian Cox, who came here in 2010 to film scenes for his BBC documentary series Wonders of the Universe, has said that he holds similar beliefs.

In Ologa the next evening, conditions looked promising for a storm. After a late-afternoon swim in Lake Maracaibo to cool off from the sweltering heat, we got our first glimpse of towering clouds amid the glow of the setting sun.

Highton explained that the cloud columns we were seeing can reach 8 to 10km high and are classic formations associated with lightning

Under a deep red sky. (Alan Highton)

With cold Polar beers in hand, we watched as the first yellow sparks erupted within the darkening clouds. We didn’t hear thunder – the lightning was too far away in the Catatumbo River Delta – but we counted the lightening arcs between the clouds until the flashes became too frequent and we could no longer keep track. This was one intense storm.

The indigenous Bari from the western mountains of the Sierra de Perijá, located about 150 km away on the Colombian border, have witnessed these nightly electrical storms for hundreds of years. The Bari believe the lightning is created by the spirits of ancient ancestors who take the form of celestial fireflies.

As my companions and I sat in the sand trying to capture photos of the bolts, the notion of glowing fireflies in the sky added a magical touch to the scene.

The storm soon reached the beach. As torrential rain began to fall, we retreated inside Highton’s house, watching in awe as the stroboscopic light show silhouetted the palm trees and stilt houses along the lake’s edge. The lightning flashes were bright enough to turn night into day – at least momentarily.
Booming thunder signalled that the bolts were getting closer. The downpour intensified and strong gusts blew over tables and chairs on the porch. I asked Highton if we should worry about lightning striking the house.

The lightning rod on the roof would take the hit, he assured me. And with a wry smile, he added, “I've yet to lose a tourist.”

Wired on adrenaline, we stayed up into the early morning hours, wide-eyed and soaking in the electrifying spectacle until the lightning flashes began to wane. Having now enjoyed the full Catatumbo experience, I could see why serious storm chasers were so keen to visit.

Nature’s Most Electrifying Lightning Show

[readon1 url="http://www.bbc.com/travel/feature/20140912-in-venezuela-natures-most-electrifying-lightning-show/1"]Source:www.bbc.com[/readon1]

What’s 324m tall, 125m across, weighs over 10,000 tons, has 1,665 steps, sparkles with 20,000 light bulbs every night on the hour and has 2.5 million rivets to hold it all together? The Eiffel Tower, of course. The tallest edifice ever raised by man at the time (it maintained the world record until 1929 when New York’s Chrysler building topped it), by 2002 it had reached the 200 millionth visitor mark and today welcomes 7 million visitors per year. For its 125th anniversary this year, its entire first floor has been modernized with a spectacular transparent glass floor and railing, which offers visitors a plunging view of the ground below and the opportunity to walk above the void at 57 meters up. The facilities of the Eiffel Tower’s first floor have also been totally transformed to better host visitors: a new pavilion housing a welcome center, services (information point, boutique, restaurant) and an exhibition on the Eiffel Tower revealing the history and secrets of Paris’ most famous monument. The tower’s first floor is also now accessible to people with disabilities.

The Eiffel Tower was the result of the vision and technical genius of engineer, Gustave Eiffel. After studies in chemistry, Eiffel embarked on a career in metallurgy, then worked for a builder of steam machines and railway equipment before starting his own company in 1867. He was responsible for the Maria Pia bridge over the River Douro in Portugal, the Garabit Viaduct in central France, Budapest station in Hungary, the metal framework of the Bon Marché department store in Paris, the cupola of the Observatory of Nice and even the internal structure of the Statue of Liberty, but his crowning achievement was the construction of the Eiffel Tower, created in time for the opening of the 1889 World’s Fair, exactly one century after the French Revolution.

Big bridges inspired the tower’s design. Two years in the making, 50 engineers and designers produced 5,300 drawings, over 100 workers built more than 18,000 different parts in a workshop just outside of Paris and another 132 assembled them on-site. Foundation work began in 1887, with the workers using only shovels, and rubble was removed by horse-drawn carts and steam locomotives. The deepest foundations extended just 15 meters underground, and the four feet of the tower, standing in a square, were set into each of these foundation ditches.

In assembling the first floor, the most difficult aspect was to position the truss frames at a slanting angle to meet the horizontal beams. The engineers resorted to using hydraulic jacks to move each foot and mounted a unique scaffolding system, on top of which lay boxes of sand that emptied to regulate the slant of the truss frames. The tower was erected like an oversized Meccano with extreme precision, and subsequently inaugurated in 1889, amazingly without any fatal accidents during construction.

As with all major architectural projects, the construction of the Grand Iron Lady on the Champs de Mars esplanade was the subject of heated debate and the target of violent protests. The brainchild of Eiffel, recognized as a builder of iron structures and an inventor ahead of his time, whose project proposal was selected from among 106 other contenders, the entrepreneur was not one to be easily swayed, sticking to his guns while detractors were calling him a machine-maker who was bringing dishonor and ugliness to the city.

But Eiffel chose to follow his convictions. Paris at the turn of the 20th century marked an age of new revolutionary inventions that have forever changed our lives, a time when millions flocked to the city of light to see the latest in industrial, scientific, technological, architectural and artistic achievements from around the globe, attending the world fairs that showcased structures such as the Grand Palais, developments such as the Paris metro, the telephone, escalator, electrical lighting and talking films, and a period when aviation was literally taking off. The belle époque was characterized by relative peacefulness and booming trade, a period in constant evolution. Everyone was building bigger, higher, faster, better and the Eiffel Tower was to be his contribution to the capital.

But why is it that a structure initially built to last for 20 years is still around today? Why is it that all visitors to Paris have the Eiffel Tower on their must-see lists and that it maintains the record as the world’s most visited entrance-paying monument? What has contributed to its enduring success? Visitors are left speechless by its colossality, the immensity of the effort that went into its construction and the splendor of the result, much like the Pyramids, the Leaning Tower of Pisa or the Acropolis.

Eiffel showed that a piece of modern engineering could also incorporate an aesthetic design, that strength and beauty weren’t mutually exclusive. He wrote: “Do people think that because we are engineers, beauty plays no part in what we build, that if we aim for the solid and lasting, that we don’t at the same time do our utmost to achieve elegance? The first principle of architectural aesthetics is that the essential lines of a monument should be determined by it fitting perfectly into a setting.”

By the 1920s, the Eiffel Tower represented progress and modernity, and its image became inseparably associated with Paris. The fate of the monument and the city became inextricably intertwined. Today, it is the beacon of Paris that shines its light across the world, a temple to which poets, painters, singers, choreographers, actors, filmmakers, photographers, heads of state and royalty pay homage: Rajiv Gandhi, Dwight Eisenhower, Hu Jintao, Queen Sirikit of Thailand, Marc Chagall, Nicolas de Staël, Jean Cocteau, Le Corbusier, Edith Piaf, Luc Besson, Ron Howard, Jackie Chan and Michael Jackson. It is an inspiration for people from all walks of life, including aviators, ice skaters, mountain bikers, bungee jumpers, golfers, firemen, tightrope artists, parachutists, orchestras, singers and even the Pope, on which they performed sporting, religious and artistic feats and stunts.

Additionally, it was because of its scientific contributions that the tower was able to increase its life span. Eiffel always had in mind that it would be an observatory and laboratory dedicated to science. And so from 1889 onward, it became a station for meteorological and astronomical observation, physics experiments, a strategic observation post and a communications base for signaling, housing equipment like barometers, wind gauges, lightning conductors, a wind tunnel and a giant antenna for the earliest radio broadcasts. It was also the site of the first wireless telegraph link and played an important role in the launch of French television.

One of the most impressive feats of the tower are the lifts that run up and down it, a great technical achievement for the era, as this was the first time engineers had tackled such constraints of height and elevator loads. Some lifts from the early days even continue to be used today. The greatest challenge, however, was wind resistance – that’s why the four enormous feet that taper up to the peak, the tower’s curved shape and numerous empty spaces within the structure, leaving fewer surfaces exposed to the natural elements that would adversely affect its stability. And so the tower continues to be the sentinel of Paris, proving over and again its capacity to stand the test of time.

[readon1 url="http://www.forbes.com/sites/yjeanmundelsalle/2014/10/19/the-eiffel-tower-celebrates-its-125th-anniversary-with-an-entirely-renovated-first-floor/"]Source:www.forbes.com[/readon1]

Cuba stands ready to cooperate with the United States in the battle against Ebola, former leader Fidel Castro said in an article published Saturday.

Cuba is sending about 460 doctors and nurses to West Africa to help fight Ebola, an effort that was praised on Friday by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.

The U.S. is sending hundreds of soldiers to set up clinics and train health care workers and it also has sent officials from the Centers for Disease Control to help in training.

"With pleasure we will cooperate with U.S. personnel in that task," the 88-year-old ex-leader wrote in the Communist Party daily Granma. He said it would not be to seek peace between two countries long at odds, but "for the peace of the world."

Castro did not say what form cooperation might take.

He also noted that Havana plays host on Monday to a meeting of leaders from the ALBA alliance of leftist Latin American nations that is meant to raise more support for the fight against Ebola.

He said such medical cooperation is "the greatest example of solidarity that a human being can offer."

Jorge Perez, the head of Cuba's top tropical medicine institute, told The Associated Press on Friday that Cuba is ready to send still more doctors if there is enough funding and infrastructure to support them.

"There are countries that have resources and can send money, but there are also those who can send human resources. It's not just doctors. We also need nurses, technicians," he said.

In Washington on Friday, Kerry mentioned Cuba as one of the "nations large and small stepping up in impressive ways to make a contribution on the front lines."

Perez said that despite the United States' chilly 55-year relationship with Cuba's communist government, Kerry's words were "an important gesture."

The Amazon rain forest covers almost two-thirds of Peru and the country’s Forestry Inspection Service estimates nearly one million cubic meters, or more than 35 million cubic feet, of illegal wood were cut and exported in the last five years.

That’s $374 million worth of tropical hardwoods exported to the U.S., Europe and China. CCTV America’s Dan Collyns reports.

In Peru’s Amazon, timber is big business. By the time it becomes wood flooring in Europe or a bedroom cabinet in the United States, there’s little trace of where it came from.

Loggers are only permitted to cut down certain trees within a certain area, but most can get the paperwork needed to make illegal logging appear legal.

Trees logged illegally outside the concession areas are often from national parks or indigenous reserves and are laundered for export.

Tracing the origin of that timber is difficult. Loreto, Peru’s largest Amazon region, counts on a dozen forestry inspectors to check that those who are given logging concessions stick to the law.

“The quantity of illegal wood can’t be calculated,” explained forest inspector William Arellano. “It arrives with the paperwork but we know that mafias sell the documents about the origin and volume of timber. That’s why it’s so important that we verify it on ground.”

During a major sting operation between March 2014-May 2014, Peruvian custom officials, with the help of the world customs organization and INTERPOL, seized enough illegal wood to fill six olympic-sized swimming pools.

In 2012, the World Bank estimated 80 percent of Peru’s timber exports were made up of illegally-cut wood.

Dan Collyns

[readon1 url="http://www.cctv-america.com/2014/10/18/perus-amazon-sees-increased-illegal-logging"]Source:www.cctv-america.com[/readon1]

The U.S. government on Friday extended for 18 months the Temporary Protected Status enjoyed by more than 83,000 Honduran migrants and some 4,200 people from Nicaragua.

Hondurans and Nicaraguans currently enrolled in TPS have until Dec. 15 to apply for renewal, which takes effect in January.

TPS, established to aid migrants from countries afflicted by natural disasters or civil war, allows beneficiaries to remain in the United States and obtain work permits.

Current TPS beneficiaries from Honduras and Nicaragua who now have work permits will receive new documents that are valid until July 5, 2016.

The U.S. government made TPS available to people from Honduras and Nicaragua after those countries suffered thousands of deaths and massive damage from Hurricane Mitch in 1998.

The benefit has been extended 12 times since then.

[readon1 url="http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/news/2014/10/17/us-extends-immigration-benefit-for-hondurans-nicaraguans/"]Source:latino.foxnews.com[/readon1]

A popular theme park in California is under fire for a Halloween installation that some allege is culturally insensitive to Latinos.

Knott's Berry Farm’s “Day of the Dead Scare Zone” is being called sacrilegious and inappropriate and a Change.org petition already has close to 800 signatures to force the park to take down the attraction.

The campaign against the Knotts Berry Farm Scare Zone was started Hesperia, California, resident Armando Cruz Velasco, who is angered that the park is using a traditional holiday like the Day of the Dead – or “Día de los Muertos” in Spanish – to market what he sees as just another Halloween haunted house.

“This sacred holiday—although trivialized in media and mainstream—is important to the Latino community,” Cruz Velasco said in a statement sent to Fox News Latino. “Would Knott's get away with taking another sacred cultural holiday and creating a Scare Zone with it? I think not. So why are we letting them appropriate Día de los Muertos, year after year after year?”

Knott's Berry Farm did not respond to Fox News Latino’s calls for comment.

The Change.org petition has drawn a number of supporters from Southern California’s Latino community who are similarly angered at the theme park.

“Dia de los Muertos is a day of remembrance, a tribute to loved ones who have [passed] would you go out and party the day ... of your mother or father’s death?” Luis Ray of Los Angeles said. “It is a day of respect for the dead, and has significance in our culture. Why not go out and party on Memorial Day? How about 9/11? It’s a day of remembrance and respect for the dead.”

This is not the first time that marketers and companies have faced a backlash for using Day of the Dead iconography.

The holiday originated in Mexico but has spread across the globe and is meant to honor deceased family members. Families build private altars called ofrendas to honor the dead, offering them sugar skulls, marigolds, their favorite foods and beverages and visiting graves with those items as gifts.

Disney drew the ire of angry Latinos when it tried to trademark “Dia de los Muertos” with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office last year and quickly announced it was withdrawing its trademark request.

"What were they thinking?" Genevieve Barrios Southgate, director of community programs at Bowers Museum in Santa Ana, told the Orange County Register.

"Disney obviously responded to public pressure," she said. "I guess that's what happens when you don't have culturally sensitive people as your advisers."

In 2011, Universal Studios Hollywood also added a “La Llorona: Villa de Almas Perdidas” to their popular Halloween Horror Nights and recruited Mexican actor and “Y Tu Mamá También” star Diego Luna as a creative consultant to design the new maze.

La Llorona, or "the weeping woman," is a mythical figure attached to the Day of the Dead in popular culture.

Some people were angered that the Latino figures they grew up with would be used as fodder for ghoulish mazes and haunted houses.

“La Llorona is a macabre figure. It wouldn’t occur to me to dress up as this character. She isn’t a woman I can respect or relate to in modern day,” said Yolanda S. Walther-Meade, a San Diego Film Festival host. “Women really do murder their children. What about a Mexican soccer player? That’s a more positive example of a Latino figure to dress as for Halloween. Even a Day of the Dead skeleton would be at least a little educational and not so offensive.

"The Latino culture has so much more to offer than only these scary folkloric characters,” she said.

The New Halloween Treat: Latino Costumes

The cruise ship carrying a Texas health-care worker who “may have” handled lab specimens from Dallas Ebola victim Thomas Eric Duncan is headed back to the United States after Mexican authorities failed to grant permission for the ship to dock off the coast of Cozumel, according to a Carnival spokeswoman.

The Carnival Magic had been waiting off the Mexican coast since Friday morning for its scheduled port visit. Mexican authorities still hadn’t given clearance by noon, so the ship continued to its home port of Galveston, Tex., where it was due back on Sunday, according to Carnival.

The health worker, a lab supervisor who has not been named, has shown no symptoms of the disease but remains on board and in voluntary isolation, according to Carnival. “We greatly regret that this situation, which was completely beyond our control, precluded the ship from making its scheduled visit to Cozumel and the resulting disappointment it has caused our guests,” read a statement from Carnival.

The Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital employee and a partner boarded the ship Oct. 12 in Galveston before the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated the requirement for active monitoring, the U.S. State Department said in a statement. Although the worker is healthy, the U.S. government had said it was working with the cruise line to get the ship back to America “out of an abundance of caution.”

The employee did not come into direct contact with Duncan, the first Ebola patient diagnosed in the United States. However, she may have been exposed to his clinical specimens, the State Department said.

Carnival said it would provide $200 credits to guests aboard the ship and 50 percent discounts on a future cruise.

The news comes amid growing concerns after two nurses who cared for Duncan tested positive for Ebola.

Amber Vinson was diagnosed with Ebola earlier this week — a day after she flew with a fever on a Frontier Airlines flight from Cleveland back to Dallas. Since then, the CDC has contacted the 132 passengers who flew with her. However, officials said Thursday she may have shown symptoms as many as four days before they initially indicated. Now the CDC says it is busy tracking all passengers who were on her first flight to Ohio last week.

The Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital employee and a partner boarded the ship Oct. 12 in Galveston before the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated the requirement for active monitoring, the U.S. State Department said in a statement. Although the worker is healthy, the U.S. government had said it was working with the cruise line to get the ship back to America “out of an abundance of caution.”

The employee did not come into direct contact with Duncan, the first Ebola patient diagnosed in the United States. However, she may have been exposed to his clinical specimens, the State Department said.

Carnival said it would provide $200 credits to guests aboard the ship and 50 percent discounts on a future cruise.

The news comes amid growing concerns after two nurses who cared for Duncan tested positive for Ebola.

Amber Vinson was diagnosed with Ebola earlier this week — a day after she flew with a fever on a Frontier Airlines flight from Cleveland back to Dallas. Since then, the CDC has contacted the 132 passengers who flew with her. However, officials said Thursday she may have shown symptoms as many as four days before they initially indicated. Now the CDC says it is busy tracking all passengers who were on her first flight to Ohio last week.

Belizean news reports stated that the cruise ship Carnival Magic was offshore after the government of Belize learned that a U.S. hospital worker on board may have been exposed to Ebola and that the Belize Coast Guard was deployed to prevent the ship from going into port. The government of Belize assured its citizens that the health-care professional “never set foot in Belize.”

A Carnival spokeswoman, however, said the ship made its scheduled visit to Belize Thursday. “Passengers were free to disembark there for the day other than the guest and her traveling companion who are in voluntary isolation,” she said.

In its own statement Thursday, the the Belize government said it “was contacted today by officers of the U.S. Government and made aware of a cruise ship passenger considered of very low risk for Ebola…. Nonetheless, out of an abundance of caution, the Government of Belize decided not to facilitate a U.S. request for assistance in evacuating the passenger through the Phillip Goldson International Airport.”

While the Carnival Magic didn’t dock in Mexico, some passengers aboard are still trying to enjoy their vacations, as shown by tweets from Eric Lupher, a reporter with Denver ABC affiliate KMGH who is also aboard the ship:

Correction: An earlier version of this story quoted reports from Belize that the ship had been denied entry to the port. Carnival said that the vessel has already made its stop in Belize, and all passengers except the worker and spouse were free to disembark.

[readon1 url="http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/10/17/cruise-ship-carrying-texas-ebola-nurse-refused-entry-in-belize/"]Source:www.washingtonpost.com[/readon1]

An American defence company claims it is on the verge of launching a new atomic age with a truck-sized fusion reactor that could be tested in less than a year. Lockheed Martin expects to unveil a prototype of its compact fusion reactor (CFR) by 2020.

A decade from now it could be powering warships and in 20 years providing a source of virtually limitless clean energy around the world. Unlike conventional nuclear fission that relies on splitting atoms, fusion harnesses the same forces that drive the sun.

Super-hot atomic nuclei are fused together to release huge amounts of energy, while avoiding harmful radioactive waste. Although the dream of fusion power has been pursued for decades, it has so far failed to live up to its promise. The Lockheed team, which has been quietly working on the project for about four years, says the secret of its success was to stay small.

Team leader Dr Tom McGuire said: "Instead of something the size of a building, we have something the size of a large truck. "Small is the reason we can do this quickly. If something's small, you can build up momentum; you can develop it fast. It doesn't take five years to design it, it takes three months. We can design it, build it, test it, under a year."

The CFR is being developed at Lockheed Martin's secretive Skunk Works facility in California, which created the U2 and Blackbird spy planes. A decision to "go public" about the project was taken because of pending patents and the need to find industry and government partners to take the technology forward.

The initial design is for a 100 megawatt reactor measuring 10 feet by seven feet that could be loaded on to the back of a large truck. As well as providing clean energy, compact fusion reactors have the potential to revolutionise sea, air and even space travel, it is claimed.

Speaking in a Lockheed Martin video, Dr McGuire said: "Fifty years ago when people were super-excited about nuclear power, we tried to put it in everything, including aeroplanes. There were some big operational issues; it wasn't safe. Fusion is a much safer option - a next generation of aeroplanes that doesn't rely on fuel, that can just stay aloft. Unlimited range, unlimited endurance. That's what nuclear fusion can do for an aeroplane.

"He envisaged compact fusion reactors taking the place of gas turbines in power stations to provide a readily available source of emission-free energy. Dr McGuire added: "The true atomic age can start. Ten years, we have great military vehicles. Twenty years, we have clean power for the world."

Production of the prototype will follow a round of design-build-test cycles, the first of which could be completed in less than a year. Last week the European Commission announced an 850 million euro (£677 million) initiative to develop nuclear fusion as an energy source by 2020.

Key to any form of nuclear fusion is the ability to handle temperatures as high as 100 million centigrade - hotter than the sun's core. Generally this is done using a "magnetic bottle" to confine the hot electrically-charged gas, or plasma. "Our compact fusion concept combines several alternative magnetic confinement approaches, taking the best parts of each, and offers a 90% size reduction over previous concepts," said Dr McGuire.

Using a deuterium-tritium fuel source, the reactor would generate nearly 10 million times more energy than the same quantity of fossil fuels, according to Lockheed Martin. Deuterium is a heavy isotope, or atomic strain, of hydrogen found in the Earth's oceans, while tritium is a radioactive hydrogen isotope derived from lithium.

The company said it hoped future reactors would use a different source of fuel to eliminate radioactive waste completely. Professor Roger Dargaville, head of the MEI Energy Futures Group at the University of Melbourne, Australia, said: "In moving towards a low carbon energy system, necessary to avoid dangerous climate change, it is important to consider all options.

Nuclear energy is low carbon, and will be an important part of the electricity generation fleet in various countries around the world where other low carbon alternatives are not viable. "The potential for the use of fusion reactors over fission is exciting news as the dangerous by-products of fission reactors are a major disadvantage of the technology."

Professor Steve Cowley, head of the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, said: "We're aware of claims of a 'technological breakthrough' in nuclear fusion by the Skunk Works group at Lockheed Martin. We cannot make any informed comment until further details of the performance of this device are revealed.

"We will continue to advance fusion on large scale tokamak devices (such as the European JET project based at Culham, which has achieved 16 megawatts of fusion power) and await further information on the Lockheed Martin project with interest."

[readon1 url="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/10/16/lockheed-martin-unveils-compact-fusion-reactor_n_5997130.html?utm_hp_ref=world&ir=World"]Source:www.huffingtonpost.co.uk[/readon1]

In September, we got insight into the depravity of domestic violence as we watched the video of Ray Rice knocking his fiancé unconscious and dragging her motionless body out of that elevator. We cringed at the police report detailing the phone call made by U.S. District Judge Fuller's wife in which she cried, "He's beating on me. Please help me." The police arrived at the hotel room moments later to find her in tears with visible lacerations on her face. Unfortunately, incidents like these occur in our communities each and every day, and sadly there is rarely video footage or police reports that detail the emotional, physical, and sexual abuse that victims of domestic violence and their children endure. We should be no less appalled and disgusted about these incidents that never make the evening news.

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month, and it's important that we realize that the faces of domestic violence victims are all around us -- it may be a friend, a family member, a neighbor, a co-worker, or the clerk at your local grocery store. These victims may cover their bruises with long sleeves or their emotional scars with forced smiles because they're embarrassed or afraid to come forward. They may have no hope for breaking the cycle and escaping their abuser. The responsibility of raising awareness about domestic violence falls on our shoulders. It is only with our encouragement that victims will have the strength to come out of the shadows and seek help. As a community we must be ready and willing to help. The crisis of domestic violence knows no race, social boundaries, class distinction or age. It affects individuals in every community and its stain on victims and their children is so deep that its consequences cross generations.

According to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, nearly 20 people are victims of physical violence by an intimate partner in the United States each minute. This equates to more than 10 million men and women annually. Combined, these victims lose a total of 8 million days of paid work annually and the violence inflicted on them costs $8.3 billion per year. Nationally, four women are murdered each day by their abusers. We have failed these victims and their families. We can and must do more. We must come together to address the societal factors that tolerate and perpetuate the continuation of domestic violence and eradicate the system that allows perpetrators to hide behind the silence they depend upon.

On September 10, I joined my constituents in calling for the resignation of U.S. District Judge Mark Fuller in light of his recent arrest for battery following a domestic dispute with his wife in an Atlanta hotel room. My call was shortly followed by a chorus of calls from the entire Alabama Congressional delegation, including our two Senators, Richard Shelby and Jeff Sessions.

In a recent interview, Judge Fuller and his attorney dismissed our calls as responses to "public pressure and public passions that a federal judge doesn't have to respond to." If Judge Fuller believes that public passions fueled by the domestic violence epidemic aren't worthy of his response, then he never belonged on the federal bench. Domestic violence is a severe crime, worthy of the attention of every public official. In the same interview, his attorney went on to make the following claim: "It got caught up in the Ray Rice and NFL scandals, and it's gotten lumped into a category of domestic violence that I don't think it belongs in." Judge Fuller and his attorney are gravely mistaken. Any act of domestic violence is reprehensible and should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Judge Fuller's high-profile position does not shield his victim from the emotional and physical violence he inflicts upon her and any legal immunity he is granted is a violation of justice. There is no treatment or counseling program that can resurrect what Judge Fuller has compromised as one who sits in the judgment of others.

Congress is the only body that can remove Judge Fuller from the bench should he not resign. My statement released on September 16 expounded upon my initial call for his resignation. In that statement, I affirmed that I would not hesitate to initiate impeachment proceedings if warranted. Today, I maintain that position. I cannot battle violence against women while turning a blind eye to Judge Fuller. Should he not resign prior to Congress' return to Washington on November 12, I will institute impeachment proceedings. This process will be long, and it will be daunting. Even more daunting, however, is the crisis of domestic violence. Even more embarrassing is our society's silence about this preventable epidemic. To all the men and women who are victims of domestic violence, I send a message of love, encouragement, and hope. Together we can make a difference and break the silence.

Rep. Terri Sewell

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The Guatemalan government has reached an agreement with 33 indigenous communities to pay them 122 million euros (around $154 million) for damages from the construction of a hydroelectric power station more than 30 years ago.

The terms of the settlement still to be signed were agreed on Tuesday at a meeting in the presence of the governments Human Rights Ombudsman, according to officials.

“It is a historic pact which comes after a 30-year-long negotiation process related to the damages caused by the construction of the Chixoy hydroelectric power station,” said presidential adviser Miguel Angel Garcia.

Around 2,300 families from the 33 communities were affected in 1978 due to the construction of the power plant in the northern department of Alta Verapaz.

Guatemala’s National Ombudsman, Jorge de Leon Duque, also described the agreement as historic in statements to journalists.

The Coordinator of Communities Affected by the Construction of the Chixoy Hydroelectric Plant, an entity that brought all the victims together, requested compensation of 1.2 billion quetzals (122 million euros or $154 million) which was finally agreed.

In January, the United States included Guatemala in the Consolidated Appropriations Act and conditioned new loans at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and World Bank to make progress in the restitution of the case.

The Chixoy hydroelectric power station, the largest in Guatemala with a production of 300 megawatts providing 18 percent of the country’s total energy demand, was funded by the IDB and other organizations.

The agreement contains measures for “repairing houses, land, sanitation, and the improvement of health” of the 33 communities.

At least 400 farmers were killed by the government and thousands were evicted for refusing to surrender their land for the construction of the hydroelectric plant.

Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has acquired part of a Hawaiian island for $100 million to build a retreat for his family, Forbes magazine has reported.

Zuckerberg bought two adjacent expanses of land on the island of Kauai in the north of the archipelago which include a white sand beach and a former sugar plantation.

The two land purchases cover a total area of 283 hectares (700 acres).

The beach included in the land acquired by Zuckerberg was sold by Jim Pflueger, a former owner of Honda automobile dealerships in the islands.

Last year, Zuckerberg visited Hawaii to look into buying property.

Despite his attempts to maintain a low profile he was photographed dining at a burger bar and the photo made the front page of a local newspaper.

Zuckerberg announced on his Facebook account Tuesday that he and his wife, Priscilla, had donated $25 million to the U.S. government’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to aid the fight against Ebola.

Forbes magazine lists Zuckerberg, 30, as the 11th richest person in the United States with a personal fortune estimated at $32 billion.