Watch Giuliani: Brown is Ca.'s past, Whitman its future

Giuliani: Brown is Ca.'s past, Whitman its future
AP – California Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman, left, with former New York City mayor and


LOS ANGELES – Locked in a fight for centrist voters, Meg Whitman turned to fellow Republican moderate Rudy Giuliani on Sunday to help make her case that she will heal California's economy and transform Sacramento by slashing government spending and lowering taxes.
Giuliani, the former New York City mayor and 2008 Republican presidential candidate, told cheering Whitman supporters in a Los Angeles hotel that electing Democrat Jerry Brown would be a step backward in a state with a double-digit unemployment and a financial crisis in state government. He depicted Brown as a vestige of failed Democratic policies who hadn't earned a return trip.
"You want to go back to those eight years?" Giuliani asked the invited audience, referring to Brown's years as governor from 1975 to 1983. He praised Whitman's business credentials — she's a former chief executive at eBay — and called her "the right person at the right time for the kinds of challenges that California faces."
The value of endorsements is often questioned, but Whitman is hoping that Giuliani's celebrity and his record in New York — he is known for his leadership after the World Trade Center attacks and helping steer the city out of the recession of the early 1990s — will resonate with California voters.
"Rudy Giuliani is very popular in California, because he turned around New York City. And the question I get every day on the campaign trail is, 'Can California be fixed?'" Whitman said.
Questioned by a reporter about a recorded voicemail message in which an unidentified Brown aide refers to her as a "whore" because of her attempt to curry favor with a law enforcement union, Whitman said she considers the word a slur but didn't call for Brown to personally apologize.
Later, she said she wanted the campaign to concentrate on issues voters care about. "They want to know what I am going to do about jobs," she said.
Giuliani took a beating in the 2008 presidential race, but he was an early leader in the California primary. He remains is a fixture on the Republican campaign circuit, and he is making stops this week on behalf of candidates in several Western states.
Recent polls show Whitman and Brown in a tight race. The outcome of statewide races are often determined by independents, and Whitman is at a disadvantage because Republicans account for only about one in three voters in California.
coppied by http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101011/ap_on_el_gu/us_california_governor_whitman;_ylt=AlKreez1MUGA3.fzHxtiXhis0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTFlN3VuajIzBHBvcwM4MgRzZWMDYWNjb3JkaW9uX3BvbGl0aWNzBHNsawNnaXVsaWFuaWJyb3c-

Flood diseaster in hangu and its surronding

Watches this enjoy Flood diseaster in hangu and its surronding
Pakistan's recent flood disaster remains an open page before the world. But the damage suffered by the northwestern town of Hangu in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province hasn't found sufficient coverage in any major English daily or international media.

Host to the terror-affected internally displaced people (IDPs) from its neighboring tribal area of Orakzai Agency, Hangu was hit hard by nearly ten days of continual rain, starting at the end of July 2010. A total of 250 to 300 ml of rain was recorded in Hangu and the Orakzai Agency, leaving 18 people dead and about two dozen wounded, besides heavy damage to property.

The most serious toll on life by the flood waters was recorded in the more southern and western villages of Chamba Gulo, Zargairi, Kotki, Hayatabad, and Naryab. A total of 12 minors (under 13 years) died in these villages, six of them being crushed to death under collapsed roofs in houses in Zargari. At least 40 houses either collapsed or were seriously damaged in Zargari village.

Hangu city remained safe from damage to life; however, damage to property was widespread. Houses and shops were flooded and food items spoiled in a number of places. The northwestern locality of Gulshan Colony was almost entirely washed away by the floods as its location directly at the foothills made it the prime target of ravaging flood currents rushing down the hill slopes. Hardly any house escaped damage in this colony, some of them being entirely washed away.

Refugees in Hangu often pay the most in any crisis, and the flood disaster was no exception. The Afghan refugee camp in Kata Kanrhi hills saw ravaging flood currents in the stream that flows all along the camp's length in the hills marking the northern border of the town. Some 60 houses of clay and thatch were washed away by the flood in this stream-sided community of Afghan refugees. Besides this, the IDPs camp at Togh Sarai (southwest of Hangu) was also seriously affected by the flood waters, which damaged at least 100 tents in the camp, sheltering as many families of Orakzai IDPs.

Other damage to infrastructure and animal life was also reported from all around the district. About 10 small bridges collapsed in Hangu town. Toward the south in Tal, the main bridge at Mamo Banda was closed for transport after it developed cracks in its pillars due to the heavy rain and subsequent flood. But the worst damage was seen in the collapse of the famous Jawzara Bridge that was built in 1996 with an expenditure of 9.6 million rupees. Traffic was also suspended across the main Hangu-Kurrum bridge at Chapri Patak as the bridge developed cracks during the rain. In addition, livestock was killed in some places due to the collapse of roofs/barns.

Amidst all this destruction, no emergency rescue operation was launched, or even attempted, by the government authorities. Those who survived the flood owe their lives to self-help and the efforts of their community. The government hospitals and private medical centers in Hangu city did well in treating the wounded and the sick (usually having diarrhea and fever). Currently, official damage assessments are underway in Hangu and no one knows when the relief aid will arrive for the unfortunate victims of flood in this otherwise beautiful town.
Coppied by http://article.wn.com/view/2010/08/15/Flood_Disaster_in_Hangu_and_its_Surroundings/

We are saw this make progress on its space rock catalog

Enjoy the wish make progress on its space rock catalogish


NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, is busy surveying the landscape of the infrared sky, building up a catalog of cosmic specimens -- everything from distant galaxies to "failed" stars, called brown dwarfs.

Closer to home, the mission is picking out an impressive collection of asteroids and comets, some known and some never seen before. Most of these hang out in the Main Belt between Mars and Jupiter, but a small number are near-Earth objects -- asteroids and comets with orbits that pass within about 48 million kilometers (30 million miles) of Earth's orbit. By studying a small sample of near-Earth objects, WISE will learn more about the population as a whole. How do their sizes differ, and how many objects are dark versus light?

"We are taking a census of a small sample of near-Earth objects to get a better idea of how they vary," said Amy Mainzer, the principal investigator of NEOWISE, a program to catalog asteroids seen with WISE.

So far, the mission has observed more than 60,000 asteroids, both Main Belt and near-Earth objects. Most were known before, but more than 11,000 are new.

"Our data pipeline is bursting with asteroids," said WISE Principal Investigator Ned Wright of UCLA. "We are discovering about a hundred a day, mostly in the Main Belt."

About 190 near-Earth asteroids have been observed to date, of which more than 50 are new discoveries. All asteroid observations are reported to the NASA-funded International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center, a clearinghouse for data on all solar system bodies at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Mass.

"It's a really exciting time for asteroid science," said Tim Spahr, who directs the Minor Planet Center. "WISE is another tool to add to our tool belt of instruments to discover and study the asteroid population."

A network of ground-based telescopes follows up and confirms the WISE finds, including the NASA-funded University of Arizona Spacewatch and Catalina Sky Survey projects, both near Tucson, Ariz., and the NASA-funded Magdalena Ridge Observatory near Socorro, N.M.

Some of the near-Earth asteroids detected so far are visibly dark, but it's too early to say what percentage. The team needs time to properly analyze and calibrate the data. When results are ready, they will be published in a peer-reviewed journal. WISE has not found an asteroid yet that would be too dark for detection by visible-light telescopes on the ground.

"We're beginning the process of sorting through all the objects we're finding so we can learn more about their properties," said Mainzer. "How many are big or small, or light versus dark?"

WISE will also study Trojans, asteroids that run along with Jupiter in its orbit around the sun and travel in two packs -- one in front of and one behind the gas giant. It has seen more than 800, and by the end of the mission, should have observed about half of all 4,500 known Trojans. The results will address dueling theories about how the outer planets evolved.

With its infrared vision, WISE is good at many aspects of asteroid watching. First, infrared light gives a better estimate of an asteroid's size. Imagine a light, shiny rock lying next to a bigger, dark one in the sunshine. From far away, the rocks might look about the same size. That's because they reflect about the same amount of visible sunlight. But, if you pointed an infrared camera at them, you could tell the dark one is bigger. Infrared light is related to the heat radiated from the rock itself, which, in turn, is related to its size.

A second benefit of infrared is the ability to see darker asteroids. Some asteroids are blacker than coal and barely reflect any visible light. WISE can see their infrared glow. The mission isn't necessarily hunting down dark asteroids in hiding, but collecting a sample of all different types. Like a geologist collecting everything from pumice to quartz, WISE is capturing the diversity of cosmic rocks in our solar neighborhood.

In the end, WISE will provide rough size and composition profiles for hundreds of near-Earth objects, about 100 to 200 of which will be new.

WISE has also bagged about a dozen new comets to date. The icy cousins to asteroids are easy for the telescope to spot because, as the comets are warmed by the sun, gas and dust particles blow off and glow with infrared light. Many of the comets found by WISE so far are so-called long-period comets, meaning they spend billions of years circling the sun in the frigid hinterlands of our solar system, before they are shuttled into the inner, warmer parts. Others are termed short-period comets -- they spend most of their lives hanging around the space near Jupiter, occasionally veering into the space closer to the terrestrial planets. WISE's measurements of these snowy dirtballs will allow scientists to study their size, composition and density. Measurements of the comets' orbits will help explain what kicks these objects out of their original, more distant orbits and in toward the sun.

WISE will complete one-and-a-half scans of the sky in October of this year. Visit http://wise.astro.ucla.edu to see selected WISE images released so far.

JPL manages WISE for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The principal investigator, Edward Wright, is at UCLA. The mission was competitively selected under NASA's Explorers Program managed by the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. The science instrument was built by the Space Dynamics Laboratory, Logan, Utah, and the spacecraft was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo. Science operations and data processing take place at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. More information is online at

Coppied by http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-176