News Topic - Singapore

Rice to push North Korea on verifying mechanism
SINGAPORE (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will push North Korea's foreign minister hard in their first ever meeting on Wednesday to prove the North's disarmament efforts are serious, U.S. officials said.
Reuters  –  Jul 23, 2008 03:33 AM [GMT]  ¦  comment?
found in Top Stories

Survivors of cyclone still in need
SINGAPORE — Survivors of Myanmar’s Cyclone Nargis face a “second emergency” unless relief efforts receive an influx of $1 billion in aid over the next three years, according to the first full assessment of the disaster, released Monday.The joint report b...
The Register-Guard  –  Jul 22, 2008 4:59 PM [GMT]  ¦  comment?
found in Local: Oregon: Eugene

Saharan sun could power European supergrid
Vast farms of solar panels in the Sahara desert could provide clean electricity for the whole of Europe, according to EU scientists working on a plan to pool the region's renewable energy. Harnessing the power of the desert sun is at the centre of ambitious scheme to build a €45bn (£35.7bn) European supergrid that would allow countries across the continent to share electricity from abundant green sources such as wind energy in the UK and Denmark and geothermal energy from Iceland and Italy. The idea is gaining growing political support in Europe with both Gordon Brown and Nicholas Sarkozy recently giving backing to the north African solar plan. Speaking today at the Euroscience Open Forum in Barcelona, Arnulf Jaeger-Walden of the European commission's Institute for Energy, said it would require the capture of just 0.3% of the light falling on the Sahara and Middle Eastern deserts to provide all of Europe's energy needs. In addition, because the sunlight in this area is more intense, solar photovoltaic (PV) panels in northern Africa could generate up to three times the electricity compared with similar panels in northern Europe. Jaeger-Walden explained how electricity produced in solar farms in Africa, each containing power plants generating around 50-200MW of power, could be fed thousands of miles across European countries by using high-voltage direct current transmission lines instead of the traditional alternating current lines. Energy losses on DC lines are far lower than AC ones where transmission of energy over long distances is uneconomic. "If you look at solar radiation, then the Mediterranean region is a very favourable one," said Jaeger-Walden. He said that the proposed grid was a way to balance out the intermittencies of renewable energy: "If you can connect the grid to hydro power, you've got that as a backup battery, and in addition there's wind. It's not a single source that's providing the energy but a combination of the different renewable energies." Conveniently the potential to generate solar energy, either from photovoltaic cells, or by using it to heat water, is at its highest exactly when there is peak demand. "Between 11am and 1pm - there are a lot of cooking activities going on, people are going home, air conditioners are used," he said. The idea of developing solar farms in the Mediterranean region and north Africa was given a boost recently by French president Nicholas Sarkozy earlier this month when he highlighted solar farms in north Africa as a key part of the work of his newly-formed Mediterranean Union. Depending on the size of the grid, building the necessary high voltage lines across Europe could cost up to €1bn a year every year till 2050 but Jaeger-Walden pointed out that the figure was small when compared to a recent prediction by the International Energy Agency that the world needs to invest more than $45tr (£22.5tr) in energy systems over the next 30 years. Much of the cost would come in developing the public grid networks of connecting countries in the southern Mediterranean, which do not currently have the spare capacity to carry the electricity that the north African solar farms could generate. "Even if high voltage cables between North Africa and Italy would be built or the existing cable between Morocco and Spain would be used, the infrastructure of the transfer countries such as Italy, Spain, Greece and Turkey also needs a major restructuring," said Jaeger-Walden. Scientists working on the project admit that it would take many years and huge investment to generate enough solar energy from north Africa to power Europe but envisage that by 2050 it could produce 100 GW, more than the the combined electricity output from all sources in the UK, with an investment of around €450bn. Doug Parr, Greenpeace UK's chief scientist, welcomed the proposals. "Assuming it's cost-effective, a large scale renewable energy grid is just the kind of innovation we need if we're going to beat climate change. Europe needs to become a zero-carbon society as soon as possible, and that will only happen with bold new ideas like this one. Tinkering with 20th-century technologies like coal and nuclear simply isn't going to get us there." Jaeger-Walden also believes that scaling up solar PV by having large solar farms could help bring its cost down for consumers. "The biggest PV system at the moment is installed in Leipzig and the price of the installation is €3.25 per watt. If we could realise that in the Mediterranean, for example in southern Italy, this would correspond to electricity prices in the range of 15 cents per KWh, something below what the average consumer is paying." The vision for the renewable energy grid comes as the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) published its strategic energy technology plan, highlighting solar PV as one of eight technologies that need to be championed for the short to medium term future. "It recognises something extraordinary - if we don't put together resources and findings across Europe and we let go the several sectors of energy, we will never reach these targets. We need a coordination of research applied to different fields," said Giovanni de Santi, director of the JRC, also speaking in Barcelona. The JRC plan includes fuel cells and hydrogen, clean coal, second-generation biofuels, nuclear fusion, wind, nuclear fission and smart grids. De Santi said it was designed to help Europe to meet its commitments to reduce overall energy consumption by 20% by 2020 while reducing CO2 emissions by 20% in the same time and increasing to 20% the proportion of energy generated from renewable sources. High-voltage transmission lines First developed in the 1930s, High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) transmission lines are seen as the most efficient way to move electricity over long without incurring the losses experienced in normal AC power lines. HVDC cables can carry more power for the same thickness of cable compared with AC lines but are only suited to long-distance transmission because they require expensive devices called static inverters to convert the electricity, usually generated as AC, into DC. Modern HVDC cables can keep energy losses down to around 3% per 1,000km. Another advantage of HVDC is that it can be used as a link to transfer electricity between different countries that might use AC systems at differing frequencies. Alternatively, the HVDC cables could be used to synchronise the AC currents produced by renewable energy sources such as wind turbine farms.Related StoriesNetbytes: Girl Power blogger takes Singapore by stormAnother view: Roboticist Noel Sharkey on Wall-EDas Wikipedia - online resource goes into printNaomi Alderman: Why Microsoft makes us want to scream 'Exterminate!'BSkyB and Universal to launch digital music service
The Guardian  –  Jul 22, 2008 3:50 PM [GMT]  ¦  comment?
found in Technology

Rice in Singapore for N.Korea talks
Reuters - U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived in Singapore on Tuesday for six-party talks over North Korea's weapons program that China said would push forward the process of denuclearization.
Yahoo!  –  Jul 22, 2008 3:18 PM [GMT]  ¦  comment?
found in Top Stories

Rice set to meet N. Korean envoy in Singapore
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Tuesday that North Korea will hear from her and others this week that it must prove ...
USA Today  –  Jul 22, 2008 2:43 PM [GMT]  ¦  comment?
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Rice set to meet North Korean envoy in Singapore
Associated Press - July 22, 2008 10:13 AM ET SINGAPORE (AP) - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says North Korea will hear from her and others this week that it must prove it is telling the...
WLFI.com  –  Jul 22, 2008 2:13 PM [GMT]  ¦  comment?
found in Local: Indiana: Lafayette

Singapore bail review for ABC reporter
A SINGAPORE court is expected to decide today whether to release veteran ABC reporter Peter Lloyd on bail as he waits to face drugs charges.
News.com.au  –  Jul 22, 2008 2:00 PM [GMT]  ¦  comment?
found in World: Oceania

Foreign ministers meet first time for N.Korea talks
Reuters - Six foreign ministers involved in talks over North Korea's weapons program will meet for the first time in Singapore in a gathering that China said on Tuesday would push forward the process of denuclearization.
Yahoo!  –  Jul 22, 2008 1:22 PM [GMT]  ¦  comment?
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Naomi Alderman: Why Microsoft makes us want to scream 'Exterminate!'
We human beings get nervous if we don't know what's going on. It's the rule for creating scary stories: the unknown is always more frightening than the known. Think of The Turn of the Screw, or M. R. James ghost stories. They're frightening because, even at the end of the story, the reader still doesn't know quite what happened. And the opposite is true too: once something has been explained, the fear is gone. This is why childhood shows like Doctor Who are paradoxically so comforting: at the end of each story, all the scary things that had us cowering behind the sofa are explained and thus made safe. People respond to technology in much the same way. Most of us don't really know what's going on inside the black boxes of our computers, games consoles or mobile phones. We entrust to these devices our data, our entertainment, our ability to communicate, but we don't know how they're doing what they're doing. Which makes us afraid. To reduce that anxiety, we need to be given the impression that we do understand, that we can see inside the black box. We like to see a progress bar, a loading screen, or a transition animation. But when putting these elements in place, developers have to take account of some very peculiar quirks of human perception. Take Windows Vista. In many areas, it outperforms Windows XP, but it doesn't feel that way. In fact, Vista often feels more sluggish. Why? Because the designers at Microsoft haven't addressed the user's perception of Vista's performance. Human beings, it turns out, don't perceive time in a perfectly linear fashion. We perceive that things are progressing more quickly if that apparent progress is smooth, and if it speeds up towards the end. Because the Vista copy progress bar doesn't move smoothly, and slows down toward the end, it's perceived as slower than it really is. Gmail has done better. Its developers have recently included a loading screen with a progress bar. The transition from the login screen to this intermediate screen makes the load-time feel faster, even if it isn't. Of course it's not news that human beings are irrational. The peak-end rule of memory formation, for example, says that when we're evaluating experiences in our memories, our evaluations are based purely on how good, or bad, the experience was at its peak, and how it ended. In a similar fashion, when we evaluate software performance, we don't focus on the average response time; instead we focus on the slowest 10% of response times. It's unfair on developers, but if their products are really slow only 10% of the time, users will perceive them as constantly slow. This is one thing that Apple gets right. When a user clicks an application icon on the iPhone, the phone's graphics unit performs a short transition animation in which the application icons whoosh out of the way before the chosen application is brought up. This gives the impression of quick performance: because we can see that something is happening, the anxiety is reduced. We feel we know what's going on. Apple may not make perfect systems. It has hardware problems, and distribution problems. But there's a reason that people spend a whole day in the queue to get a new iPhone: Apple understands what makes us happy.Related StoriesPaul Lewis on why Bluetooth technology is raising fears about privacyNetbytes: Girl Power blogger takes Singapore by stormAnother view: Roboticist Noel Sharkey on Wall-EDas Wikipedia - online resource goes into printBSkyB and Universal to launch digital music service
The Guardian  –  Jul 22, 2008 1:02 PM [GMT]  ¦  comment?
found in Technology

BSkyB and Universal to launch digital music service
BSkyB is to break into the digital music market with a new business, launched in conjunction with Universal Music, that aims to take on Apple's iTunes in the UK. The new as-yet-unnamed venture, in which BSkyB is the majority shareholder and Universal is an equity partner, aims to launch by the end of the year. The service, which is likely to be Sky branded, will offer a monthly subscription service as a counter to iTunes track-by-track purchasing. The subscription will give users unlimited access to streamed tracks plus a set number of download-to-own songs, initially to Universal Music's catalogue of hundreds of thousands of songs from artists including Amy Winehouse, U2, Kanye West, Duffy, Rihanna, Eminem, Elton John and Abba. Downloaded tracks will work on any device that can play MP3s including iPods and mobile phones. BSkyB, which several years ago registered the brand name Sky Tunes, is in negotiations with other music companies to join the venture and to potentially take equity. Pricing of the subscription packages, and the numbers of tracks that will be made available to download for each tier, will be revealed closer to the time of launch. "We think that there is a considerable un-met and untapped demand in the digital music market," said the BSkyB chief operating officer, Mike Darcey. "There is a desire among consumers to consumer, discover and purchase music online." He added that not all those needs were met by the current legal services and that some offerings were "not well marketed". "We have considerable expertise in customer-focused subscription services, content aggregation, packaging and marketing," he said. "We have strong broadband services and online assets and we have contact with one in three UK households. No one has brought that to bear." The new service will compete against music download stores from companies including 7digital, HMV and, in the near future, Amazon UK. Mark Mulligan, a vice-president at analysts JupiterResearch, said that the service would compete directly against existing subscription offerings from the likes of Napster and eMusic. He added that music companies are keen to see a wider range of distribution services for their music and more competition for iTunes, which accounts for more than 70% of the UK digital music market. "The music industry is still trying to knock Apple down to size," he said. "People are realising that people are not buying digital music in the numbers they should be. The decline in CD buying is greater than the rate people are buying digital music." Mulligan said that BSkyB's announcement was the first of a "second coming" of music subscription services that failed to take off a few years ago. "Sky is trying to be the first music service targeted at families, they have relationships with households, while offerings such as Apple have been more about young, tech-savvy one-to-one relationships." There was a political dimension for Sky, which runs an ISP service, supporting legal music services. "It is very important for the music industry to help find legal solutions," said Darcey. · To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 7239 9857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 7278 2332. · If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication".Related StoriesPaul Lewis on why Bluetooth technology is raising fears about privacyNetbytes: Girl Power blogger takes Singapore by stormAnother view: Roboticist Noel Sharkey on Wall-EDas Wikipedia - online resource goes into printNaomi Alderman: Why Microsoft makes us want to scream 'Exterminate!'
The Guardian  –  Jul 22, 2008 12:57 PM [GMT]  ¦  comment?
found in Technology