Nataline Sarkisyan's Parents Come Fact-to-Face With Former CIGNA Executive Wendell Potter

Commentary

If justice must come from the deaths of 1,000,000 people, then justice has come too late.

Insurance should be a safety net, not a game of profit. I'm sorry Nataline, for my failure to not help you in time. All of America should have stood with you. I'm sorry.

Michael Moore: "Continual and Historic Failure of the Democratic Party"

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Commentary

I love what you do Mr. Moore. You will always be at the forefront of the fight against injustice.

If we could see a dozen more people that emulated your shadow, our world might be the dream you wish for it; that we all wish for.

Please stand strong. You are integral to our Back bone. We will have trouble marching forward if we cannot stand upright.

Review 5 Seasons of T.V's Lost in 8:15 seconds

Source


Good review to have, when the show starts on 2/2/10.

A Bachelor’s Effort to Understand Love

Piotr Redlinski for The New York Times

John Bowe, a freelance journalist, lives alone in a West Village studio apartment furnished with a desk and bed frame he built himself and decorated with souvenirs from his travels, like the Javanese carvings that hang above the windows.

By JULIE SCELFO

Published: January 27, 2010

IT was on the island of Saipan, in a remote part of the Pacific Rim, that John Bowe, then a 42-year-old writer researching a book on modern-day slavery, fell madly in love for the first time in his adult life.

The romance, which began three years ago, could have resulted in an engagement and maybe even marriage. Instead, it was the latest in a series of fraught relationships, all of which seemed destined to end in failure.

Mr. Bowe, a perpetual bachelor, had been in love twice before — in high school and as a graduate student — but it had been so long and this new feeling was so profound that it shook him to the core. Rather than making him happy, he said, it confused him.

“This facet of experience most people center their lives around came as this alien, funny, unanticipated shock to me,” he said last week, pounding garlic and spices with a mortar and pestle in the kitchen of his West Village studio apartment. He was certain that he was in love, he said, but felt confounded by how to deal with a relationship that “came with so many complications, and a lot of fear, and a lot of pressure.”

Part of the problem, he said, was the distance involved — Saipan is a two-day trip from New York — and the fact that the woman shared custody of her two sons with their father and couldn’t leave the island.

So tormented was Mr. Bowe by his inability to make the relationship work that he set out on a two-year quest to find out why. Not through conventional means, like psychotherapy, but by researching other people’s romantic experiences.

The result is “Us: Americans Talk About Love,” a new collection of first-person accounts of why love succeeds or fails, published by Faber & Faber. No aspect of lust, greed, need or devotion is ignored: The book includes tales of obsession and confusion (from a 17-year-old girl in San Antonio, Tex., who can’t get over an ex-boyfriend and a drug-addled 30-year-old living with his mother in Arizona while following his ex on Facebook); finding bliss (as a 44-year-old lesbian eventually did in Minneapolis, after more than a decade of marriage to a born-again Christian); and acceptance (from a 76-year-old widower in Manhattan who says he dated more than 300 women after his wife died, without ever finding anyone to take her place).

It is as compelling as literary fiction, and the Los Angeles Times Magazine called it a “profound, touching work.” But it also functions as a kind of self-help manual, forcing readers to examine their own longings, failings and assumptions about love.

On the surface, there is little to suggest that Mr. Bowe, who came to New York from Minneapolis in his early 20s “to be a famous musician or filmmaker,” isn’t the last great catch.

On a recent afternoon, he was well groomed and neatly dressed in a pressed oxford and jeans, his bright studio equally tidy: an assortment of cookware carefully arrayed on a kitchen wall, records and files stacked neatly under his bed. In the cotton-candy-colored bathroom, there was none of the hair or dust one might expect to see in a bachelor pad. And nearly every wall of his apartment was decorated with paintings of flowers, a collection he has spent more than two decades amassing.

“When I was a little punk rocker on a motorcycle when I was 18, I went to thrift stores, and I just noticed how many amateur paintings there are out there of either flowers or Jesus. I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool to collect all the different ones?’ ” he said. “I realized I didn’t want 100 visages of Jesus staring down at me.”

Mr. Bowe’s domestication extends to cooking: even though it was the middle of the day, he had already begun preparing dinner — a pork dish with a homemade spice mix inspired by a jar of crushed sweet peppers brought back from a recent trip to Portugal. Offering his guest some mint tea, he reached into a cupboard and pulled out a bag full of dried mint leaves that he grew over the summer at a friend’s house in Dutchess County.

His résumé would impress any woman with a soft spot for social issues: After graduating from film school at Columbia University and co-writing the movie “Basquiat,” he traveled the world for a decade, working as a cowboy in Argentina and as a bargeman on the Amazon River. Along the way, he wrote a series of magazine articles on modern-day slavery — one of which won a Hillman prize for fostering social and economic justice — and later published a book called “Nobodies: Modern American Slave Labor and the Dark Side of the New Global Economy.”

(Page 2 of 2)

Ask him about his work as a journalist and he holds forth like a modern-day Marxist, railing against injustice and criticizing the mainstream news media for focusing on the ruling class instead of “regular people.”

“I don’t like experts and authorities, and I don’t like writing about stuff in the normal way they consider news,” he said, explaining his belief that “noncelebrities” and “nonexperts” do a far better job of illuminating the human condition.

“Even thinking you’re the most enlightened, objective person in the world, you could never anticipate” all the points of view you get from ordinary people, he said. “And they end up being smarter than you could ever be.”

Despite his profound feeling for the problems of complete strangers, Mr. Bowe doesn’t seem to have as much awareness when it comes to the difficulties in his own life.

After repeated prodding, he recounted his romantic history, beginning with a high school relationship in which he and a girlfriend broke up and got back together “1,500 times.” During one of the separations, he said, he set her up with one of his best friends, which turned out to be an inspired pairing. (The two were still together when he went off to college.) Later, he said, he fell for a “deeply funny” film school classmate who was smart and creative. But during the year and a half they dated, they discovered that they were “awful at resolving problems.”

In his 30s — when he alternated between “long stretches of being alone” and “one-night stands or lame affairs,” he said — he was focused almost entirely on his career: “I wanted to put writing first, so I could earn a living doing it. I wanted to make sure I could do what I wanted to do.”

Once he fell in love with the woman in Saipan, though, he spent two years traveling back and forth while they hatched a plan for her move to New York. Eventually, it became clear that the plan was unrealistic. “You know that idea that true love conquers all?” he said. “It can conquer a hell of a lot, but it can’t conquer everything.”

As to why his previous relationships didn’t work out, either, he volunteered: “I can be oblivious. I don’t think I’m ever mean or whatever. But I think I can just be thoughtless sometimes. You can’t ever be thoughtful enough.”

What would the women he’s dated say?

“There’s the impotency problem,” he deadpanned. “That’s a joke.”

Pouring mint tea into two glasses, he explained that while he has no regrets about his past, he still wants nothing more than to fall in love and start a family. “At a certain point, one wants it all to stop, and just to settle down and be boring and normal,” he said. “And that’s absolutely who I’ve become now. I will be the happiest person on this planet when I have kids. I do think it’s a bummer to be playing around with your kids in your 50s as opposed to in your 30s, but that’s the way the cookie crumbled.”

Later, in one of several late-night phone calls when Mr. Bowe seemed less guarded, he speculated about his chances of finding love at this point in his life. “I think it’s a very arrogant gamble I made in a way,” he said. “I’ll have time to set up a career that fulfills my spiritual goals and then have time for a relationship afterwards. If I’m right, then I’m the coolest guy in the world. If I’m wrong, I’m a loser.”

Over the years, he admitted, friends have accused him of being afraid of intimacy. “But pretty much all of those friends wanted to be artists or filmmakers or writers, and none of them are,” he said.

“The goal was always to avoid being that surly alcoholic guy who didn’t live up to his dreams and blamed the wife and kids for that,” he added. “So, you make your calculations, you roll the dice and you hope you’re right that there’s time after you make it to then join the human race and have a normal emotional life.”

Source

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Commentary

He's at a point that we all have to look at and ponder on. He made a decision, very logically, that his career would come first and his relationships and family life would come second. He didn't want to place the blame of a faulty career or financial hardships, on his family.

The problem is, now there are less families to be had, and fewer good women to pick from; most chosen already.

That's why this story gives me more faith on my choice, to do as much as I can financially, but to be constantly on the look out for the one. If I find her, to marry her and start that family.

Will I be financially secure, owning a home, and having a steady job? Probably not. But from most of the successful marriages I have read about, they weren't either. They were simply in love and they worked hard together to make it work. The struggles became the glue and the journey to safety, their love written for all eternity.


I'm sorry if my decision seems extreme, but I'm very much a family man. Why should I sacrifice the best years of my life for financial gain when I could be doing that with the embrace of a partner by my side, enjoying the journey?

Tribute to Howard Zinn on Democracy Now!, January 28, 2010

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Commentary

Do not ask change from your President, your congress, or your friends. First as change of yourself and through your strength make it come about. In time, with enough determination and with the valiant help of others, your dreams will become reality.

I think that was the purpose of Howard Zinn's activism; to enlighten and awake us. I always expected voting to be the change I need. Now I know my dreams of a better future will have to come from the strength inside myself, generously given by God. That through God's immensely generous nurturing and betterment of me, I will have to be the force to change the establishment, one step at a time.

For the longest time i expected my politicians to do so, and now it seems I can only count on myself and the help of my like minded peers.

A big thanks goes out to another of our 21st century Heroes, Michael Moore, who found this video and hosted it on his channel. Thank you Mr. Moore, for everything you have done.

Chief of Staff Draws Fire From Left as Obama Falters

By PETER WALLSTEN

WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama's liberal backers have a long list of grievances. The Guantanamo Bay prison is still open. Health care hasn't been transformed. And Wall Street banks are still paying huge bonuses.

But they are directing their anger less at Mr. Obama than at the man who works down the hall from him. Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, they say, is the prime obstacle to the changes they thought Mr. Obama's election would bring.

The friction was laid bare in August when Mr. Emanuel showed up at a weekly strategy session featuring liberal groups and White House aides. Some attendees said they were planning to air ads attacking conservative Democrats who were balking at Mr. Obama's health-care overhaul.

"F—ing retarded," Mr. Emanuel scolded the group, according to several participants. He warned them not to alienate lawmakers whose votes would be needed on health care and other top legislative items.

The antipathy reflects deep dissatisfaction on the Democratic left with Mr. Obama's first year in office, and represents a fracturing of the relationship between the president and the political base that mobilized to elect him. A little more than one year ago, Mr. Obama's victory led some to predict an era of Democratic dominance.

The anger on the left shows that Mr. Obama is caught in an internal battle over both the course of his administration and the Democratic Party.

Many in the party, particularly in the wake of the loss last week of a Massachusetts Senate seat, contend that the White House should chart a centrist approach focusing on the economy. They point to polls showing Mr. Obama's approval rating among independent voters has dropped by nearly 20 percentage points since early last year.

The left has gotten some of what it wanted: a ban on torture, an expansion of children's health insurance and an equal-pay law for women. But liberal activists say those and other measures add up to far less than what they expected.

Cenk Uygur, a liberal talk-radio host, calls Mr. Emanuel "Barack Obama's Dick Cheney." One group has run ads against Mr. Emanuel in his hometown of Chicago. And Jane Hamsher, a prominent liberal blogger, is going after Mr. Emanuel's service—10 years ago—on the board of housing-finance giant Freddie Mac.

For the president, Mr. Emanuel is a useful foil, playing a role akin to that of James Baker, who absorbed attacks from unhappy conservatives while chief of staff to Ronald Reagan. Mr. Emanuel is a centrist cut from the Bill Clinton mold, and his presence is useful as the president tries to cut deals with centrists and conservatives.

The unrest among liberals comes at a perilous political time. Party strategists worry that anger on the left could depress turnout in this year's midterm elections and cost the party congressional seats and state governorships. The most recent Wall Street Journal/NBC survey found 55% of Republicans "very interested" in the November elections, compared with 38% of Democrats.

The tension between Mr. Emanuel and liberals has spurred speculation that he might leave the White House, perhaps to run for office again, something he denies.

After the party's Massachusetts loss, criticism of the chief of staff—not only from activists, but from members of Congress—has increased.

In recent days, the White House turned to two other top advisers, Valerie Jarrett and David Axelrod, to discuss on network television how the Massachusetts defeat will affect the president's agenda.

There have been reports of tension between Mr. Emanuel and Ms. Jarrett, who is more ideologically in tune with the liberal base and close with the Obama family, but several people who have worked with the two say they get along fine.

Matthew Rothschild, editor of the Progressive, an antiwar magazine, wrote this month that Mr. Emanuel has "delivered defeat" for Mr. Obama and should be fired.

The president, he wrote, "needs a chief of staff with the wisdom to help point him down a bold, progressive path."

Mr. Emanuel responds with a reference to the party's base: "They like the president, and that's all that counts."

Allies say the chief of staff's strategy is purely realistic, that compromise is required in order to pass legislation. Mr. Emanuel's defenders note that Mr. Obama campaigned as a pragmatist who would value bipartisanship over ideology.

On health care, Mr. Emanuel negotiated with Republicans, pharmaceutical and health-insurance companies.

He also supported Congress dropping liberal ideas that didn't have enough support, in particular the "public option," a provision in which the government would provide health insurance for a large swath of the population. "Rahm's approach, like the president, is not ideological. It's practical," says Bruce Reed, chief executive of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council and a frequent recipient of Mr. Emanuel's phone calls. "The administration's strategy has been to pass health-care reform, not die trying."

John Podesta, president of the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank with close ties to the White House, says he hears the griping about Mr. Emanuel's health-care strategy all the time, even in his own organization. "He's a pretty skilled practitioner of what it takes to get something done on Capitol Hill," he says. "But by moving in that direction, they've paid a big price on the public side, and the bill is unpopular and misunderstood."

"It's better if everyone on the outside is mad at the chief of staff than mad at the president," adds Mr. Podesta, a chief of staff to President Clinton.

While a number of Mr. Emanuel's predecessors, including Messrs. Baker and Podesta, were considered skilled gatekeepers for their bosses, Mr. Emanuel's résumé is somewhat unique: previous White House experience, a short spell as an investment banker, six years in the House as a representative from Illinois, responsibility for setting national campaign strategy for House races and a reputation as a brass-knuckled enforcer.

From his early days in Washington, Mr. Emanuel, who is 50 years old, was more interested in legislative and political victories than ideological warfare, say friends and critics alike. He saw himself as a "New Democrat," identifying with party centrists who were embroiled in an ideological struggle with liberals. As a senior adviser in the Clinton White House, Mr. Emanuel supported the president's tactic of "triangulation," in which Mr. Clinton joined forces with Republicans to push an overhaul of welfare, crime and illegal-immigration policies.

After winning a House seat in 2002, he was chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and was credited with delivering the majority for his party in the 2006 elections. His strategy was to recruit conservative Democrats to run in Republican-leaning districts.

Within weeks of taking up his White House post, Mr. Emanuel was shuttling between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to resolve disagreements over the $787 billion economic-stimulus package. The legislation angered Republicans, but also irked the left, which regarded the package as too small and complained that Mr. Emanuel was intent on negotiating with the party's more conservative members.

Activists and former campaign staff members watched with dismay as Mr. Emanuel and his team pursued a traditional Washington style of Capitol Hill negotiations and deal making. Activists on the left had hoped the administration would use Mr. Obama's grass-roots campaign network, Organizing for America, and its email list with 13 million names to pressure lawmakers into adopting a more left-leaning agenda, such as pushing for universal health-care coverage.

House aides describe Mr. Emanuel's role in legislative negotiations as more involved than any chief of staff in recent times. During tense House votes on the stimulus package, climate-change legislation and health care, Mr. Emanuel barraged skittish members with phone calls and BlackBerry messages. In one case, he tracked down a Democratic member in the showers at the House gym to make sure he was an aye vote, says one congressional aide.

By the spring, civil libertarians and others were pushing the White House to roll back Bush-era antiterrorism policies on matters ranging from Guantanamo Bay to torture. In meetings of senior advisers, Mr. Emanuel was often the loudest voice questioning the wisdom of such changes, according to a participant in the discussions. His concern wasn't so much the substance of the policy, but the political consequences, this person says.

On May 19, civil-liberties advocates joined Mr. Obama, Mr. Emanuel and other aides for a meeting at the White House. They aired their frustrations with the president's policies. The president listened and asked questions.

Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, who attended the meeting, says he had grown suspicious of Mr. Emanuel, who as a congressman had a largely pro-ACLU voting record. Mr. Romero says he noticed a shift when Mr. Emanuel became "consigliere at the White House," where he focuses "less on the policy outcomes and more on maintaining a Democratic agenda that will keep the party in power."

In the Clinton White House, Mr. Emanuel saw the pharmaceutical industry kill the administration's health agenda. Avoiding that outcome was his goal last year. He and other White House aides assured industry officials that the legislation wouldn't include price controls, and that the administration wouldn't pursue allowing the importation of cheaper drugs from Canada and Europe if the health plan passed.

The discussions with PhRMA, the drug industry's main lobby group, and other business groups angered many liberals, who felt Mr. Emanuel ceded too much ground. They also opposed the White House's decision to pursue support from Maine Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe.

Mr. Emanuel gave early indication that he was flexible on the public option, telling The Wall Street Journal last July that the door was open to alternative ideas to "keep the private insurers honest." That prompted a mass email from liberal group MoveOn.org, which said that "Emanuel's remarks will only embolden conservative opponents of reform" and that he was backing "disastrous half-measures."

"Everyone seems to be waiting around for the Chicago street brawler Rahm, because the one that showed up in the White House has little apparent fight in him," says Markos Moulitsas, publisher of the liberal blog Daily Kos. "Sure, he's quick to attack progressives when they criticize Obama or put legislative pressure on him from the left, but he's far too quick and happy to accommodate the Democratic Party's corporatist wing."

Mr. Emanuel's "retarded" outburst in August heightened the belief among some liberal leaders that the chief of staff was tough only on the left, especially when the health-care debate turned into a conflagration during a series of town-hall meetings.

The weekly strategy sessions where he made the remark, called the Common Purpose Project, are by invitation only, and participants are sworn to secrecy. Activists say it's a one-way conversation, with the White House presenting its views and asking liberals to refrain from public criticism. Ms. Hamsher, publisher of the Fire Dog Lake blog, calls the gatherings the "veal pen."

One liberal group, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, founded by ex-MoveOn staff member Adam Green, spent $20,000 to briefly air a television ad featuring a former constituent in Mr. Emanuel's House district. "A lot of us back home hope Rahm Emanuel is fighting for people like us as White House chief of staff," said the man in the ad. "But if he sides with insurance companies and undermines the public option, well, he won't have many fans in Chicago."

Rep. Anthony Weiner, a New York Democrat and one of the House's more liberal members, recalls telling Mr. Emanuel the White House needed to apply more pressure to secure passage of the public option. Mr. Emanuel's response, Mr. Weiner says, was always the same: He was open to any idea that could gain a majority vote.

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A1

Source

TYT State Of The Union Reaction, Democrats And The 60 Vote Lie, Devastating Quotes - Top Economists Slam Obama

TYT State Of The Union Reaction

Democrats And The 60 Vote Lie

Devastating Quotes - Top Economists Slam Obama

Cenk Quoted By WSJ & MSNBC: Rahm = Cheney

Mystery of missing Chinese lawyer Gao Zhisheng

By Michael Bristow BBC News, Beijing

The police say lawyer Gao Zhisheng has gone missing

Concern is mounting for a Chinese lawyer who is believed to be in detention but has not been seen for nearly a year.

Foreign governments have urged Chinese officials to reveal the whereabouts of well-known activist Gao Zhisheng.

Human rights groups say it is unusual that there has been no formal word on why Mr Gao was taken and what condition he is in.

Officials have so far given only cryptic hints as to where he is. A foreign ministry spokesman said he was "where he should be".

The lawyer has long been targeted by the government, which has previously stopped him working, put him on trial and kept him under surveillance.

'Simply evaporated'

Mr Gao disappeared some time in January last year, leading to immediate concern from human rights groups.

He appeared briefly at his family's home in Shaanxi province the following month but was accompanied by people believed to be security officials.

Mr Gao stayed only a short time before leaving and has not been seen since.

The lawyer did manage to telephone his elder brother, Gao Zhiyi, last summer to say he was all right but he added that he was not free and did not say where he was.

Since then, nothing has been heard of him.

I asked the police where my brother was. They said they didn't know Gao Zhisheng's brother

"We don't have any clue about where he is. He's simply evaporated. As his friends, we are very worried about him," said fellow Beijing lawyer, Li Fangping.

Gao Zhisheng, a self-taught lawyer, has not always been at odds with the people who run China. He was once a member of the Chinese Communist Party.

In 2001 he was acclaimed as one of the 10 best lawyers in the country by a publication run by the Ministry of Justice.

But he ran into trouble when he started to defend some of China's most disadvantaged groups, such as supporters of the banned spiritual movement, Falun Gong.

Mr Gao's law practice was closed down in 2005. The government said one problem was that the lawyer had failed to tell officials of a change of address.

The following year he was given a suspended prison sentence for "inciting subversion".

Family escapes

After that, Mr Gao and his family - he is married with two children - were subjected to constant surveillance by the authorities. He was even detained again in September 2007.

He said he was tortured while in detention.

It is impossible for someone to be missing under the tight control of the police Teng Biao

His captors beat him with electric batons, held lit cigarettes close to his eyes and subjected him to psychological abuse over more than 50 days, he said.

"Many horrendous evils were committed that were too shameful to be written down in the chronicles of the governments of the world," he said in an account of the event that emerged after his latest detention.

Mr Gao's wife and children escaped China last year and now live in the United States but the relatives still in China have made efforts to find out where he is.

His brother travelled to Beijing in December and tracked down a policeman who had been involved in the case.

"I asked the police where my brother was. They said they didn't know. They claimed he has been lost and missing since September," Gao Zhiyi told the BBC.

This comment has worried the family and friends of the missing man.

"It is impossible for someone to be missing under the tight control of the police," said Teng Biao, another friend of Gao Zhisheng.

"I imagine that either he is still under police control or something else may have happened."

Human rights criticism

Foreign governments have also kept up the pressure on China to reveal the whereabouts of a man who has become well-known abroad.

"The United States is deeply concerned about Gao Zhisheng's safety and well-being and we have raised our concerns repeatedly in Washington and Beijing," said a spokeswoman for the US embassy in the Chinese capital.

Journalists have raised the issue at the regular press briefings held by the foreign ministry - although the answers given to queries have failed to shed much light on the issue.

Foreign ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu initially said Mr Gao was where he should be. On Tuesday he said he did not know where he was.

All this is irregular, even in a country that often faces criticism for its human rights record.

Nicholas Bequelin, of Human Rights Watch (HRW), said families or work units should be notified if someone is detained.

He said those held by the Chinese state also had the right to receive letters and see a lawyer. But this had not happened in Mr Gao's case.

He added: "Generally when you have this kind of international exposure, the authorities tend to give the appearance of due process. But here that's not the case - there's something amiss."

Source

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Commentary

Human rights will be China's downfall. It's at a point where i don't see change coming in the next 20 years, and that will lead to an unstoppable train of tyranny and sellout to the corporations that will bring the chinese economy to the brink of collapse once rioting starts.

Everyone has their breaking point and China thinks it is unbreakable. It feels that it can manipulate and strong arm all of it's opponents.

History has a few lessons for China foretelling the strength of empires far lost, with more power, that fell. The Chinese will learn the history of the Roman Empire, Fascist Italy, the Soviet Union, and the British Empire. Soon China will be forever remembered as the country that broke in the 21st century when all thought it would fly high and overtake America as the emblem of the world.

America was allowed to become great because it gave it's people a voice. No voice = no greatness. GDP growth is directly related to the freedom of the lowliest citizens of a nation.

Laser fusion test results raise energy hopes

By Jason Palmer Science and technology reporter, BBC News

The experiment focuses 192 high-power laser beams to a tiny target

A major hurdle to producing fusion energy using lasers has been swept aside, results in a new report show.

The controlled fusion of atoms - creating conditions like those in our Sun - has long been touted as a possible revolutionary energy source.

However, there have been doubts about the use of powerful lasers for fusion energy because the "plasma" they create could interrupt the fusion.

An article in Science showed the plasma is far less of a problem than expected.

The report is based on the first experiments from the National Ignition Facility (Nif) in the US that used all 192 of its laser beams.

Along the way, the experiments smashed the record for the highest energy from a laser - by a factor of 20.

Star power

Construction of the National Ignition Facility began at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 1997, and was formally completed in May 2008.

The goal, as its name implies, is to harness the power of the largest laser ever built to start "ignition" - effectively a carefully controlled thermonuclear explosion.

INERTIAL CONFINEMENT FUSION 192 laser beams are focused through holes in a target container called a hohlraum Inside the hohlraum is a tiny pellet containing an extremely cold, solid mixture of hydrogen isotopes Lasers strike the hohlraum's walls, which in turn radiate X-rays X-rays strip material from the outer shell of the fuel pellet, heating it up to millions of degrees If the compression of the fuel is high enough and uniform enough, nuclear fusion can result Giant laser experiment powers up

It is markedly different from current nuclear power, which operates through splitting atoms - fission - rather than squashing them together in fusion.

Proving that such a lab-based fusion reaction can release more energy than is required to start it - rising above the so-called breakeven point - could herald a new era in large-scale energy production.

In the approach Nif takes, called inertial confinement fusion, the target is a centimetre-scale cylinder of gold called a hohlraum.

It contains a tiny pellet of fuel made from an isotope of hydrogen called deuterium.

During 30 years of the laser fusion debate, one significant potential hurdle to the process has been the "plasma" that the lasers will create in the hohlraum.

The fear has been that the plasma, a roiling soup of charged particles, would interrupt the target's ability to absorb the lasers' energy and funnel it uniformly into the fuel, compressing it and causing ignition.

Siegfried Glenzer, the Nif plasma scientist, led a team to test that theory, smashing records along the way.

"We hit it with 669 kiloJoules - 20 times more than any previous laser facility," Nif's Siegfried Glenzer told BBC News.

That isn't that much total energy; it's about enough to boil a one-litre kettle twice over.

However, the beams delivered their energy in pulses lasting a little more than 10 billionths of a second.

By way of comparison, if that power could be maintained, it would boil the contents of more than 50 Olympic-sized swimming pools in a second.

'Dramatic step'

Crucially, the recent experiments provided proof that the plasma did not reduce the hohlraum's ability to absorb the incident laser light; it absorbed about 95%.

But more than that, Dr Glenzer's team discovered that the plasma can actually be carefully manipulated to increase the uniformity of the compression.

The 130-tonne target chamber is kept under vacuum for the experiments

"For the first time ever in the 50-year journey of laser fusion, these laser-plasma interactions have been shown to be less of a problem than predicted, not more," said Mike Dunne, director of the UK's Central Laser Facility and leader of the European laser fusion effort known as HiPER.

"I can't overstate how dramatic a step that is," he told BBC News. "Many people a year ago were saying the project would be dead by now."

Adding momentum to the ignition quest, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory announced on Wednesday that, since the Science results were first obtained, the pulse energy record had been smashed again.

They now report an energy of one megaJoule on target - 50% higher than the amount reported in Science.

The current calculations show that about 1.2 megaJoules of energy will be enough for ignition, and currently Nif can run as high as 1.8 megaJoules.

Dr Glenzer said that experiments using slightly larger hohlraums with fusion-ready fuel pellets - including a mix of the hydrogen isotopes deuterium as well as tritium - should begin before May, slowly ramping up to the 1.2 megaJoule mark.

"The bottom line is that we can extrapolate those data to the experiments we are planning this year the results show that we will be able to drive the capsule towards ignition," said Dr Glenzer.

Before those experiments can even begin, however, the target chamber must be prepared with shields that can block the copious neutrons that a fusion reaction would produce.

But Dr Glenzer is confident that with everything in place, ignition is on the horizon.

He added, quite simply, "It's going to happen this year."

Source

How Avatar toppled Titanic

By Neil Smith Entertainment reporter, BBC News

Advertisement

Watch a scene from Avatar - courtesy of 20th Century Fox

The original Titanic sank in 1912. Now the blockbuster movie it inspired has also gone down.

This time, though, it was not an iceberg that toppled it, but a 3D film about a blue-skinned alien race defending their planet against human invaders.

Towards the end of the last decade, James Cameron's epic Titanic became the most successful movie ever with global takings of $1.843bn (£1.14bn).

But that record no longer stands thanks to Avatar - also directed by Cameron - which this week stole its crown as the all-time global box office champ, with receipts of $1.859bn (£1.15bn).

It is an astonishing achievement for the 55-year-old Canadian, and one that is unlikely to be repeated in his or our lifetimes.

Yet it is also a triumph for the 20th Century Fox studio and its parent company NewsCorp, the financial backers of this bold, predominantly computer-generated science-fiction saga.

The film is set on a planet populated by blue-skinned aliens

Quite simply, Avatar has been a phenomenon that has captured the cultural zeitgeist in a way few could have predicted.

It did so despite having few star names and generating a mixed reaction from the critics, many of whom slated its plot, dialogue and characterisation.

The film has also drawn fire from the blogosphere, with some pundits attacking it for what they see as its anti-American subtext and environmentalist agenda.

Some have even accused it of being racist in its depiction of a white hero coming to the aid of a persecuted indigenous population - largely portrayed, incidentally, by African-American and native American actors.

No one would claim Avatar is high art, any more than they would consider Titanic a modern masterpiece.

Yet what it does have in its favour is state-of-the-art visual effects that transport the viewer to a spectacularly realised extra-terrestrial world.

That Avatar was Cameron's first feature since Titanic - winner of 11 Oscars in 1998 - was enough by itself to ensure it would be a major release.

Yet it took a combination of canny scheduling, aggressive marketing and an industry-wide drive to revive 3D for its full potential to be realised.

Unchallenged

Had Avatar opened last summer, it would have faced much stiffer competition for audiences and cinema screens.

By launching in December, though, the film has enjoyed a virtually unchallenged month-long run without any significant challenges from other titles.

Fox's rivals may have deliberately refrained from taking it on, mindful of the huge expectation that surrounded this heavily hyped picture.

Unconfirmed reports suggest Fox has spent as much as $150 million (£93 million) promoting a movie some claim cost $300m (£185m) to make.

Hi-tech effects were used to create its eye-popping visuals

Perhaps the key factor in Avatar's success, though, has been the way it has turned the revived interest in the 3D format to its advantage.

Last year, such animated features as Up, Monsters Vs Aliens and Fox's own Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs showed the industry digital 3D projection was a viable proposition.

Avatar has been able to build on their success, capitalising on the higher ticket prices cinema chains have been charging to see it in stereoscope.

Crucial to the film's marketing is that it is an "event" movie that needs to be seen in 3D to be appreciated fully.

It is a message that has clearly taken hold of the UK sector, where audiences have chosen in overwhelming numbers to pay more to see the film than they would otherwise need to.

Invincible

According to entertainment analyst Nielsen EDI, standard "2D" screenings represent just 15% of Avatar's UK takings.

In contrast, 85% have derived from 3D or IMAX 3D screenings.

Such data bodes well for forthcoming 3D titles like Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, Toy Story 3 and Tron: Legacy.

It will also encourage more cinemas to install the digital equipment required to screen films in 3D.

According to the Film Distributors' Association, 15% of UK cinema screens - around 500 in all - are 3D enabled.

However, it expects that figure to rise significantly in the coming months as more high-profile titles are released in the format.

Where does this leave Cameron? Back to being the "king of the world" as he proclaimed himself at the Academy Awards 12 years ago.

Oscar glory may not be lavished so fulsomely on Avatar, though that is unlikely to make much of a dent on his apparent box office invincibility.

Not only that, but he now shares - with Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson and Pirates of the Caribbean helmer Gore Verbinski - the honour of having two films in the all-time box-office Top 10.

Crucially, though, he has the top two. And if you think he is not happy about that fact, you do not know Jim Cameron.

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Commentary

What we learned from Avatar:

1) Good actors, not popular names, make good movies. I loved the main character in Avatar when i saw him in Terminator 4, and I couldn't wait to see his next movie. Look for him to find better roles because he definitely deserves it.

He shows pain and emotions in ways most other actors can only dream of.

Also watch for other actors, with big names, to find less work as Avatar should have showed Hollywood that big names mean nothing unless they can give you outstanding rewards. Only a few big names nowadays can do that, one of them being Will Smith.

2) Mercenaries are not Americans. They made that clear at the start of the movie, if people were listening well. Mercenaries for hire are evil because they are driven by cash. That was made ever so clear in this movie and the war for unobtanium.

3) The world becomes a better place when we work together and not against each other. The Na'vi are nothing if not people who band together well and become a true family. The world community needs to band together similarly and stop fighting with one another over small nuances that are insignificant.

I loved the movie and most who went to watch it did too.

UK warns world about useless 'bomb detectors'

Explosives expert Sidney Alford tests the GT200 'bomb detector' card

By Caroline Hawley and Meirion Jones BBC Newsnight

A UK government ban on the export of "magic wand" bomb detectors to Iraq and Afghanistan becomes effective on 27 January, as the BBC reveals further shocking evidence of the shortcomings of these devices.

The restriction is being imposed following a BBC Newsnight investigation which showed that the supposed detectors were incapable of detecting explosives or anything else.

There are concerns that they have failed to stop bomb attacks which have killed hundreds of people.

The British Foreign Office has told the BBC that they will now be urgently warning all governments who may have bought devices such as the ADE651 and GT200 that they are "wholly ineffective" at detecting bombs and explosives.

The ADE651 is made by a company from Somerset called ATSC. The director of the company, Jim McCormick, was arrested at the beginning of this month on suspicion of misrepresentation.

The GT200 is sold by Global Technical in Kent.

Global concerns

Despite advice from the British embassy in Baghdad, the ADE651 is still in use on checkpoints in Iraq, while an investigation ordered by the Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki continues.

I was horrified. They had spent a vast sum of money on a modern equivalent of a hazel twig divining rod Stephen Fry

In the past three days, 58 people have died there in bombings.

In Pakistan, which is not covered by Britain's export ban, rows have broken out after newspapers highlighted the continued use of similar devices at Jinnah International Airport in Islamabad.

Another country not covered by the UK ban is Thailand, where MPs are calling for the withdrawal of 500 GT200 detectors after a number of deaths were blamed on their failure to find explosives.

Tests reveal 'bomb detector' cannot work

Thailand's Deputy Prime Minister Suthep Thaugsuban has tried to reassure MPs that the GT200 is not like the ADE651: "We use a different brand," he said.

The devices are also in use in Mexico, Kenya, Lebanon, Jordan and China.

Analysis

The British government has banned the export to Iraq and Afghanistan of all such devices that claim to be powered by static electricity - like the ADE651 and GT200. The UK Department for Business (BIS) said "tests have shown" that they are "not suitable for bomb detection".

Tests reveal 'bomb detector' cannot work

Newsnight obtained a GT200 that was sold as a bomb detector and discovered that it was almost identical to the ADE651.

It consists of an aerial on a handle connected to a black box into which you are supposed to insert substance detection cards.

The head of Global Technical, Gary Bolton, told Newsnight:

"There are no electronic parts required in the handle."

Explosives expert Sidney Alford took apart the "black box" of the GT200, which is supposed to receive signals from the detection cards.

He was surprised at what he found.

"Speaking as a professional, I would say that is an empty plastic case," he told us.

Mr Alford also took apart a "detection card" and found there was nothing in it other than card and paper.

Gary Bolton from Global Technical told the BBC that the lack of electronic parts "does not mean it does not operate to the specification".

Alternative uses

Mark Cawardine and Stephen Fry pictured with a black rhino in Kenya

The devices have also surfaced in Kenya where comedian and broadcaster Stephen Fry saw them in use by rangers when he was filming for the BBC series, Last Chance to See. Mr Fry told the BBC that he thought it was "cynical, cruel and monstrous" that rangers - who were trying to track down poachers - had been told they could detect ivory at vast distances.

"I was horrified. They had spent a vast sum of money on a modern equivalent of a hazel twig divining rod. There was no possibility that such a thing could work."

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Iranian plane catches fire on landing

Emergency services at the scene of plane's wreckage

A plane carrying pilgrims in Iran has caught fire while landing at Mashhad, in the north-east of the country.

State media said almost 170 people were on board and that at least 46 were injured. There were no reports of fatalities.

The plane, a Russian-built Tupolev 154 owned by Taban Air, suffered serious damage as it landed, losing its undercarriage and a wing.

The rear end of the plane broke up after the passengers were evacuated.

Reza Jafarzadeh, spokesman for Iranian civil aviation, said the plane had left the city of Abadan, in south-west Iran, on Saturday, but bad weather had forced it to land in the central city of Isfahan for the night, according to state television.

After taking off again on Sunday, the captain was forced to make an emergency landing in Mashhad because of a passenger's health problems, he said.

The plane caught fire as it crash landed at Mashhad airport

As it landed in fog at Mashhad airport, the tail of the plane hit the ground and the plane skidded off the runway.

Iranian news networks released pictures of the tail of the plane burning, with smoke billowing from the end of the plane.

There have been a number of accidents involving Iranian aviation over the last few years.

Its civil fleet is made up of old planes in poor condition due to their age and lack of maintenance.

Last July a passenger plane burst into flames while landing in Mashhad, killing 17 passengers.

10 days earlier, a Tupolev plane had caught fire mid-air and crashed in northern Iran, killing all 168 people on board.

That incident was the third deadly crash of a Tupolev 154 in Iran since 2002.

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Commentary

So many planes have had problems over Iranian skies that it has become a graveyard in the sky.

Iran is become more lax with it's planes than is humanly acceptable. Tragedies haven't even woken it up after a team of young sports stars were killed in the summer of 2009. Whatever needs to happen, needs to happen now, for Iranians to fix their ailing planes.

If they don't, look for more of these problems in the years ahead and more needless deaths.