Petrobras plans to turn science fiction into reality to extract oil from the vast pre-salt oil fields discovered off the south east coast of Brazil.
The plan is to construct ‘cities’ more than 2,000 metres under water, containing machines, giant pieces of equipment and robots that could inspect the systems being used to extract millions of barrels of oil. Many operations would be fully automated while others would be controlled by humans at a distance.
“Our target is that we won’t need platforms in ten years from now,” said Carlos Tadeu Fraga, executive manager of the Petrobras Research Centre.
Petrobras already owns virtual reality laboratories where engineers can inspect 3D images of oil fields. But now they want to take a further technological leap by installing floating rig equipment on the sea bed.
The machinery under the sea would be capable of separating oil, gas, water and sand, compressing substances and generating enough energy to keep the operation functioning.
Petrobras will take the first step in turning its plans into reality when it installs machines to separate water and oil in the Marlim oil field in the Campos Basin.
It is having to ambitious to extract the huge reserves in the pre-salt fields, which lie below layers of sand, rock and salt as well as water .
The Argentine Air Force has created a commission to record and investigate reports of unidentified flying objects (UFO) in the South American country’s airspace, a spokesman told AFP Wednesday.
The Commission for the Investigation of Airspace Phenomenon “is in the process of being formed,” said Captain Mariano Mohaupt.
Officials said the air force already holds records of reported UFO sighting, but the interdisciplinary commission — involving meteorologists, air traffic controllers and civilian pilots alongside military authorities — would formalize the data keeping.
Other South American countries including neighboring Brazil and Uruguay and have previously moved to record alleged UFO sightings.
Argentine authorities urged military and civilian pilots as well as air traffic controllers to report their experiences and, if possible, to send any documenting evidence.
As airport security becomes more of a concern during the holiday travel season, travelers will be seeing delays of all sorts. But an hour-long delay for Lafayette Regional Airport users Tuesday morning was of a nature most fowl.
The airport was briefly shut down as authorities investigated a suspicious package that turned out to contain a frozen chicken and a head lamp, said Lt. Craig Stansbury, spokesman for the Lafayette Parish Sheriff’s Office.
Police were called to the airport around 10:48 a.m. Tuesday after a TSA employee saw the package run through the screening process.
According to Stansbury, the outline of the wires from the head-mounted mining light overlapped another image, that of the chicken, during the screening.
The combination made for an odd and not readily identifiable image, so the employee notified other security personnel.
The terminal was evacuated while the package was examined.
Stansbury said bomb dogs and other resources were used to make sure the package did not contain anything dangerous.
The wires coming from the lamp made the chicken look particularly suspicious, he said.
According to authorities, the chicken was reportedly stuffed with crawfish as well,
The all-clear was given around 11:45 a.m., and airport operations resumed as usual.
The Air Force has released thousands of top secret papers about UFOs.
More than 2000 pages of material dating back to the 1950s documents files of correspondence on apparent sightings from 1952 to 2009.
Communications about sightings began in 1952 when they were described as UFOs – unidentified flying objects. Later they were called UAS – unidentified aerial sightings.
The files contain reports by sightings of private individuals and military personnel; investigations by Defence and other departments and agencies into the reports; newspaper clippings on UFOs and letters from individuals who claim to be in touch with alien beings and craft.
The redacted files include communications about New Zealand’s most famous UFO footage – filmed 32 years ago – of mysterious lights near the Kaikoura Coast filmed by a TVNZ camera crew.
“It sort of hovered along the treeline, then darted sharply up and to the left,” Lloyd McFadden said.
Papers show that investigators believe a squid boat, atmospheric conditions and a possible meteor could have been behind the lights.
But UFO sighting researcher Suzanne Hansen said the lights were obviously not Venus, a squid boat or muttonbirds flying south.
“It is obviously something else we can’t explain,” Hansen told ONE News.
“We don’t know what it is, but it is certainly something that is unidentified and non-conventional.”
The complete Air Force investigation into the mystery is just one of the files among letters, theories, reports and drawings about UFOs.
The papers have been held by Archives New Zealand, which was set to make them available in February this year after requests from the public. They were originally supposed to be held until 2080.
The Defence Force said it needed to remove personal identification from the files in order to comply with the Privacy Act, and has now done that, deleting all names of military personnel.
Much of the 12 volumes contains correspondence of a fairly outlandish nature but there is also a 1961 sighting from a respected Air Force officer who insists he saw a mysterious cigar-shaped object, with what appeared to be a cockpit and undercarriage – a sighting that baffled him and his superiors.
Hansen, who has been investigating UFOs for more than 35 years, has been campaigning for the documents’ release after witnessing numerous “sightings” in her life. She said the move is a step toward openness on the topic.
Hansen said her first sighting was when she was eight and it was also observed by hundreds of people in South Auckland and down through Waikato.
She said the most striking sighting for her was in 1995, and this was also witnessed by a senior air traffic controller at Hamilton Airport. There were a number of sightings of “this unusual light and object” in that time period, she said.
Hansen has not yet seen the Defence files but hopes they will reveal more information on major sightings around New Zealand, especially Air Force reports from pilots and military sightings that have occurred.
She said the body of evidence worldwide from aviation, pilots, the military, astronauts and scientists confirm the reality of this phenomenon.
“It is sufficient to make us realise there is something going on that the public needs to look into more deeply and we need to try to understand,” said Hansen.
Defence does not share the view that we are visited from outer space, or covertly by aircraft or machines of potentially unfriendly nations.
But as far as believers are concerned, the truth about whether this country has been visited by aliens is still out there.
Cui Jie, 62, has been fishing for drowned bodies in Beijing’s waters for 10 years. But he feels his profession has been brought into disrepute by profiteers.
“Unlike them, I do it mostly for the public good,” said Cui, criticizing the fishermen in Jingzhou, Hubei Province who charged 12,000 yuan (US$2,000) for each body they found after three college students drowned while trying to rescue kids on October 24, 2009.
“The case was very bad publicity as they made profits from martyrs,” Cui told the Global Times.
In a famous photo taken in connection with the case, Wang Shouhai, 72, looked like he was negotiating over prices while hauling a half-sunk body from the Yangtze River. Wang insists the award-winning photo misrepresents him.
Recently, the validity of this photo was questioned, throwing light on the hidden yet burgeoning business in China’s dangerous waters.
Chen Bo, Wang’s boss and head of a “gangster-backed” salvaging company, got a 15-day detention and was fined 1,000 yuan for blackmailing teachers and students who begged him for help. After realizing the students had sacrificed themselves to save others, he returned 36,300 yuan. But he still does business in the Baotahe area, where rapids and currents continue taking people’s lives.
Everybody involved has his own version of the story, according to a thorough inves-tigation by the Golden Lens Award organizing committee, which awarded top prize for the photo in August. But what’s the truth?
Public service?
Cui started doing the job after he opened a diving club in 1994. He also collaborated with well-known film directors on underwater construction and rescue.
As a medical graduate, he is not afraid of touching water-logged corpses. “It’s just like handling a chair and at night I can hardly see it anyway,” he said.
Earning about 5,000 yuan for each body, he said the body-hunt is more of a public welfare undertaking than profit-driven business.
The price can be discussed by both sides, and it depends on how much the family can afford, he said. “We will definitely get the body out once we arrive at the site,” Cui said, after handling 17 corpses in the last two months in Beijing’s waters.
Compared with greedy fellow workers, he said he was self-disciplined. “I know how far to go and when to stop,” he said, mentioning that he hasn’t been paid for lugging a female suicide jumper’s body on August 20, as the police had promised him.
“I didn’t care that much because I had to help them out to keep things under control when a big crowd gathered there,” Cui said. It was also not a good time to ask the girl’s relatives because they were grieving in shock.
Extorting families
Though Cui’s been fishing out bodies for years, he disapproves of the job. After running short of professional divers, the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau has farmed out the hunt to diving clubs since 2004.
“It’s like a pile of garbage they throw on the street for us to take care of. Although we were hired to clean it up, new garbage coming from the sewers continues to pollute the environment,” he told the Global Times, blaming the authorities for neglecting their duties.
He recalled one summer day in 2006, when the body of 26-year-old Chen Mansheng was left missing in the moat for 24 hours near south Beijing’s Longtan Lake after he drowned, because his brother couldn’t pay the 20,000 yuan asked by divers from a notorious club.
Police said the price has been decided by the club and it was a very difficult job to search under flowing water within a large area. The diving equipment used was expensive.
But according to Cui, “The diving club was shamelessly extorting money, because they thought they were doing business. They even believed charities should pay for it if the family couldn’t.”
He said that the government should take back the business, since the black market was getting messier.
Corpses for cash
Zhang Feng, a deputy of the Beijing Municipal People’s Congress, proposed the salvage business return to the public sector this July, and called for market regulation.
“Driven by huge profits, some unqualified companies or individuals have gone too far. They have no professional ethics, take advantage of helpless families and drive up prices,” Zhang said.
But there is still social stigma and discrimination against the divers, as they are often stigmatized by the general public for not rescuing those in mortal danger and making money from the dead.
Cui said they shouldn’t be blamed. In fact, drowning is very quick, occurring in only 2 or 3 minutes in freshwater and 6-8 minutes in saltwater.
“Their job is to find the ‘objects’ that could disrupt social order, cause public panic and pollute natural waters. Saving life is not their concern,” Zhang said.
Ma, who refused to give his full name, is a 33-year-old diving coach from Kunming, in Southwest China’s Yunnan Province. He said he had participated in hunting for bodies for several times, as part of professional underwater assistance requested by the local government. “I didn’t charge a penny, it was totally voluntarily,” he said. They also helped with rescue operations in reservoirs and rivers.
Ma said most victims were swimmers who drowned in reservoirs, rivers and lakes. Some died in sinking cars after accidents.
Commenting on the profiteers, he said. “Those people have no ethics.” They have no valid business license, international diving certification and authentication, he added.
Hunting for an important corpse, such as a head of a company, could cost up to 250,000 yuan. The number of equipment used in the hunt also added to the price tag.
“Normally firemen are sent to join in the rescue work but they are not capable of doing the job underwater,” he said.
“If these convicted criminals continue doing business, it only shows the local government is corrupt,” Ma commented on the Jingzhou case.
Trapped students?
Meanwhile, some suspected the Jingzhou case was even dirtier. An unnamed Jingzou resident claimed in a post on tianya.cn that the fishermen colluded with the drowned kids, trapped the college students and made money from their bodies.
Zhang Yi, who took the photos, said the speculation was “completely nonsense” and he refused to give more comments.
He said the public attention has seriously affected his life. As the fishermen threatened to kill him, he left his hometown and found a job in nearby Hunan Province.
“The situation hasn’t changed,” Zhang told Guangzhou Daily, “Just days ago parents waited for their children’s body to surface in the same river stretch for three days because they couldn’t pay 12,000 yuan.”
He questioned the problem resulted from ill-functioned governmental departments. “I think every life is equal, why are heroes free of charge but ordinary kids should pay?”
He called for rules to be established on body salvaging to put an end to the huge profits and subsequent chain of interests.
Incorporating body-hunters
Zhou Yu, director of The Other Shore, a documentary on corpse-fishers in the Yellow River, who captured fishermen for body-hunt for a month, told the Global Times the government should take charge of this industry and make regulations.
“This is a gray zone that lacks supervision from any related departments,” Zhou said, “The best way is for the government to take charge and establish a special department to deal with corpse-fishing.”
Actually, some local governments have considered establishing a regulatory department, but most of them dropped the idea after looking at the potential difficulties with personnel and financing.
“This problem involves many departments and is also difficult to deal with, so, it is impossible for us to launch an organization to regulate it,” Guan Haobo, the director of Fishing Department of Zhengzhou Bureau of Aquatic Products, told the Beijing News.
Guang suggested the fishermen establish a non-government organization (NGO) to regu-late themselves .
“It’s a good idea to establish such a NGO, as it can encourage fishermen to take part in the hunt, and also set standard prices for the hunt,” Guan said.
Meanwhile, some corpse-fishers expressed their willingness to become public servants.
“I wish the government could hire and pay us a suitable monthly salary,” a fisherman in Hubei Province, told the Global Times.
Besides, the government can help shoulder the equipment for hunt, such as hooks, ropes and travel expenses.
If this happens, he swore, “We won’t charge a penny from the relatives of the dead.”
Chen Tao, a lawyer in Beijing, told the Global Times that it’s time for the government to regulate the market and fix a price for the body-hunt industry.
“After all, there is a demand from the public,” he said.
Yet officials from police stations and the bureau of aquatic products admitted that local fishermen are skillful at corpse-fishing, and they always turned to them for help when the water situation is complicated, according to the Nanjing-based newspaper Modern Express.
“The fishermen are more familiar with the waters and skillful at swimming, so we are relieved to let them hunt bodies,” an anonymous official told the newspaper.
Besieged by criminal inquiries and Congressional investigators, how could the world’s most controversial private security company drum up new business? By battling pirates on the high seas, of course.
In late 2008, Blackwater Worldwide, already under fire because of accusations of abuses by its security guards in Iraq and Afghanistan, reconfigured a 183-foot oceanographic research vessel into a pirate-hunting ship for hire and then began looking for business from shipping companies seeking protection from Somali pirates. The company’s chief executive officer, Erik Prince, was planning a trip to Djibouti for a promotional event in March 2009, and Blackwater was hoping that the American Embassy there would help out, according to a secret State Department cable.
But with the Obama administration just weeks old, American diplomats in Djibouti faced a problem. They are supposed to be advocates for American businesses, but this was Blackwater, a company that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton had proposed banning from war zones when she was a presidential candidate.
The embassy “would appreciate Department’s guidance on the appropriate level of engagement with Blackwater,” wrote James C. Swan, the American ambassador in Djibouti, in a cable sent on Feb. 12, 2009. Blackwater’s plans to enter the anti-piracy business have been previously reported, but not the American government’s concern about the endeavor.
According to that cable, Blackwater had outfitted its United States-flagged ship with .50-caliber machine guns and a small, unarmed drone aircraft. The ship, named the McArthur, would carry a crew of 33 to patrol the Gulf of Aden for 30 days before returning to Djibouti to resupply.
And the company had already determined its rules of engagement. “Blackwater does not intend to take any pirates into custody, but will use lethal force against pirates if necessary,” the cable said.
At the time, the company was still awaiting approvals from Blackwater lawyers for its planned operations, since Blackwater had informed the embassy there was “no precedent for a paramilitary operation in a purely commercial environment.”
Lawsuits filed later by crew members on the McArthur made life on the ship sound little improved from the days of Blackbeard.
One former crew member said, according to legal documents, that the ship’s captain, who had been drinking during a port call in Jordan, ordered him “placed in irons” (handcuffed to a towel rack) after he was accused of giving an unauthorized interview to his hometown newspaper in Minnesota. The captain, according to the lawsuit, also threatened to place the sailor in a straitjacket. Another crew member, who is black, claimed in court documents that he was repeatedly subjected to racial epithets.
In the end, Blackwater Maritime Security Services found no treasure in the pirate-chasing business, never attracting any clients. And the Obama administration chose not to sever the American government’s relationship with the North Carolina-based firm, which has collected more than $1 billion in security contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001. Blackwater renamed itself Xe Services, and earlier this year the company won a $100 million contract from the Central Intelligence Agency to protect the spy agency’s bases in Afghanistan.
ONE AFTERNOON IN THE LATE 1970′s, deep in the labyrinthine interior of a massive Gothic tower in New Haven, an unsuspecting employee of Yale University opened a long-locked room in the Payne Whitney Gymnasium and stumbled upon something shocking and disturbing.
Shocking, because what he found was an enormous cache of nude photographs, thousands and thousands of photographs of young men in front, side and rear poses. Disturbing, because on closer inspection the photos looked like the record of a bizarre body-piercing ritual: sticking out from the spine of each and every body was a row of sharp metal pins.
The employee who found them was mystified. The athletic director at the time, Frank Ryan, a former Cleveland Browns quarterback new to Yale, was mystified. But after making some discreet inquiries, he found out what they were — and took swift action to burn them. He called in a professional, a document-disposal expert, who initiated a two-step torching procedure. First, every single one of the many thousands of photographs was fed into a shredder, and then each of the shreds was fed to the flames, thereby insuring that not a single intact or recognizable image of the nude Yale students — some of whom had gone on to assume positions of importance in government and society — would survive.
It was the Bonfire of the Best and the Brightest, and the assumption was that the last embarrassing reminders of a peculiar practice, which masqueraded as science and now looked like a kind of kinky voodoo ritual, had gone up in smoke. The assumption was wrong. Thousands upon thousands of photos from Yale and other elite schools survive to this day.
Your cellphone can already tell you where to find the nearest Starbucks or the most convenient subway station. But it might soon be smart enough to alert you to a toxic threat during your morning commute or coffee break, thanks to a new plan from the Department of Homeland Security.
The last time we heard about cellphones and terrorism, it was an appeal from the NYPD to shut off cell communication during an attack. Now, Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate want to use cellphones to detect the very threats that might be coordinated using wireless chit-chat. Their new program, called Cell-All, would embed inexpensive, chemical-sniffing microchips into cellular telephones. If a dangerous level of air-based toxin is detected, the phone would issue a warning ring (or vibration) to alert the owner and send a message to a centralized military monitoring station.
And, since the vast majority of Americans carry cellphones wherever they go, the program would use aggregated reports of toxin detection within a small area. If hundreds of cellphones in one location start flooding the alert system, the military knows they’ve got a serious threat to contend with. Detection, transmission and analysis would take around 60 seconds, according to a press release from the Directorate.
Given that terrorist attacks are usually launched in highly populated areas — subways, malls, office buildings — the idea of crowdsourcing the detection of toxic terror threats makes a lot of sense, and using a built-in cellphone app would give the military the ability to detect threats in every corner of the country.
Except that, for now, the program’s manager is describing the initiative as “opt-in.”
“Privacy is as important as technology,” Stephen Dennis said. “After all, for Cell-All to succeed, people must be comfortable enough to turn it on in the first place.”
That’s good news for privacy zealots and conspiracy theorists, but bad news for the program’s potential effectiveness, given that crowdsourced intelligence depends on knowing that there’s a crowd to be sourced in the first place.
The Directorate is already in research-and-development talks with Apple, IG, Qualcomm and Samsung, and anticipate having 40 different cellphone prototypes within a year.
When Robert J. Ekas decided to exercise his right to free speech, he didn’t open his mouth.
He hoisted his middle finger.
His single-digit protests, aimed at Clackamas County sheriff’s deputies last year, resulted in verbal showdowns, traffic tickets and, ultimately, a federal lawsuit.
Giving a police officer the finger may be a rude and ill-advised gesture, but it is not against the law, legal experts say.
“The U.S. Supreme Court has consistently held that speech may not be prohibited simply because some may find it offensive,” said Ira P. Robbins, a law professor from American University in Washington, D.C. “Virtually every time someone is arrested for this, assuming there’s no other criminal behavior … the case is either dismissed before trial or the person is convicted at trial and wins on appeal.”
Ekas, who represents himself, sued the Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office and three of its employees, seeking corrective action and unspecified damages. Assistant County Counsel Edward S. McGlone III declined comment on the lawsuit.
Ekas, 46, a retired Silicon Valley systems analyst turned mathematician who lives in the Clackamas area, claims the traffic stops were acts of retaliation that violated his First and Fourth Amendment rights. He also wants the court to rule that the Sheriff’s Office fails to discipline employees who “chill citizens’ … free speech rights.”
Ekas gave the finger to a deputy in July 2007 while driving near Clackamas Town Center, according to the lawsuit. With the deputy in pursuit, Ekas said he opened his sunroof and again extended a middle finger. The deputy turned on his flashing lights. Ekas stopped and was cited for an illegal lane change and improper display of license plates. He was acquitted of the charges.
In August 2007, Ekas flipped off another deputy. Ekas again was detained but not issued a citation. He claims he was harassed and intimidated by the deputy and a sergeant who was dispatched after Ekas requested a supervisor be sent to the scene.
Ekas said his actions are a political statement and a protest of police violence.
“They kill unarmed people. That bothers me,” Ekas said of police officers. He cited the deaths of James P. Chasse Jr. and Aaron Campbell at the hands of Portland police and the fatal shooting of Fouad Kaady by Clackamas County officers.
“What I am expressing is the right to dissent. That is to say, ‘Look, the policies that you’ve implemented … the things you’ve done in our community are offensive to me. Here’s my response to that offense,’” Ekas said.
“I did it because I have the right to do it,” Ekas said. “We all have that right, and we all need to test it. Otherwise we’ll lose it.”
Robert Ekas on KATU News
Ekas’s method of expressing himself has a long history.
The ancient Romans called it “digitus impudicus” — the impudent finger.
Police have been known to retaliate with traffic tickets or making arrests for disorderly conduct, but criminal charges are routinely dismissed. Criminal law “generally aims to protect persons, property, or the state from serious harm. But use of the middle finger simply does not raise these concerns in most situations,” Robbins wrote in a law review article, “Digitus Impudicus: The Middle Finger and the Law.”
A Pittsburgh man, David Hackbart, won a $50,000 settlement last year after being cited for disorderly conduct for flipping off an officer. The charge was “retaliatory” and violated his constitutional rights, a federal judge ruled.
The officer’s “response to Hackbart’s exercise of his First Amendment right” was to charge him with a crime, said U.S. District Judge David Cercone.
In West Linn, Police Chief Terry Timeus took a more diplomatic approach.
After a man’s run-ins with police escalated from giving officers the finger to following them on patrol, accusing them of retaliation and shining his headlights on them during traffic stops, Timeus stepped in to try to defuse the situation.
The police chief met with the man and told him the pattern of confrontation and harassment “isn’t going to accomplish anything.”
Reached at his home, the man said he suffers from anxiety and depression and asked not to be identified. He acknowledged his history of confrontation and grievances with police but said he wanted to move on.
“Chief Timeus has made a difference,” the man said, “and I don’t want to jeopardize that.”
The House of Delegates is scheduled to vote Wednesday on a bill that would protect Virginians from attempts by employers or insurance companies to implant microchips in their bodies against their will.
It might also save humanity from the antichrist, some supporters think.
Del. Mark L. Cole (R-Fredericksburg), the bill’s sponsor, said that privacy issues are the chief concern behind his attempt to criminalize the involuntary implantation of microchips. But he also said he shared concerns that the devices could someday be used as the “mark of the beast” described in the Book of Revelation.
“My understanding — I’m not a theologian — but there’s a prophecy in the Bible that says you’ll have to receive a mark, or you can neither buy nor sell things in end times,” Cole said. “Some people think these computer chips might be that mark.”
