Samudra Baru Tengah Membelah Afrika

Para geolog yang melakukan penelitian di wilayah Afar, Etiopia, mengatakan bahwa 10 juta tahun lagi samudra baru akan terbentuk. Samudra itu akan memecah Afrika menjadi dua bagian.

Proses terbentuknya samudra baru sebenarnya telah dimulai dari tahun 2005 lalu. Saat itu, retakan sepanjang 60 kilometer terbentuk di Etiopia. Dalam jangka waktu 10 hari saja retakan sudah melebar hingga 8 meter. Perkembangan retakan ini cukup mengejutkan karena secara teori, dalam kondisi normal, retakan selebar itu baru bisa tercapai dalam 230 tahun.

Retakan tersebut disebabkan oleh dorongan batuan lunak dan panas dari perut bumi. Menurut para ilmuwan, adanya dorongan dari dalam menyebabkan permukaan bumi retak. Dalam kurun waktu 5 tahun belakangan diketahui bahwa retakan terus melebar.

Sejauh ini, erupsi yang terjadi di bawah tanah masih terus berlangsung. Akibatnya, pada akhirnya wilayah Etiopia dan Somalia akan terpisah dari Benua Afrika. Ketika dua wilayah terpisah, akan terbentuk selat yang kemudian berkembang menjadi laut dan pada akhirnya samudra.

"Hasil retakan akan memisah semakin jauh. Bagian selatan Etiopia dan Somalia akan terpisah, menciptakan pulau baru. Dan, kita akan memiliki Afrika kecil dan pulau besar lainnya yang terapung di Samudra Hindia," kata James Hammond, seismolog Universitas Bristol yang meneliti Afar.

Dr Tim Wright dari Universitas Oxford di Inggris mengatakan, "Ini hal yang sangat luar biasa." Sebelumnya, ketika menemukannya pada tahun 2005, ia mengatakan, "Retakan ini akan terhubung dengan Laut Merah sehingga bisa terisi air dan membentuk samudra."

Bakal Kehidupan Ditemukan di Meteorit

Asam amino yang selama ini disebut sebagai senyawa bakal kehidupan ditemukan di batu meteor (meteorit) yang jatuh di Sudan. Padahal, saat menembus atmosfer Bumi, meteor sudah terpanaskan dalam suhu ribuan derajat celsius. Temuan ini penting karena menunjukkan daya tahan senyawa tersebut terkait dengan pembentukan kehidupan di muka Bumi.

Asam amino sebetulnya sudah sering ditemukan di meteor yang kaya akan karbon. Namun, biasanya asam amino terbentuk dalam kondisi sejuk. Untuk pertama kalinya, para astronom NASA menemukan asam amino pada meteor yang sudah terpanaskan pada suhu 1.100 derajat celsius. "Suhu setinggi itu harusnya membunuh semua organik yang ada," kata Daniel Glavin, ahli astrobiologi dari Gooddard Space Flight Center, NASA.

Selama ini pembentukan asam amino di asteroid terjadi pada saat temperatur yang lebih sejuk. "Meteor ini menunjukkan ada cara lain yang melibatkan reaksi gas ketika asteroid yang sangat panas mulai mendingin," ujar Glavin. Temuan ini juga memberikan informasi tambahan bagi teori bahwa awal mula kehidupan di Bumi berasal dari asteroid.

Penemuan ini, menurut Glavin, merupakan hal yang penting karena mereka bisa mengetahui bahan-bahan kimia di luar angkasa yang berhubungan dengan asal mula Bumi. "Meteor bisa menyediakan asam amino pada awal Bumi terbentuk, juga pada planet-planet lain di dalam tata surya, termasuk Mars," jelas Glavin.

Meteorit yang ditemukan di Sudan berasal dari asteroid sebesar 4 meter yang masuk ke orbit Bumi pada tahun 2008.

Dugaan Ada Laut di Pluto Makin Kuat

Sebuah model di komputer memunculkan kemungkinan adanya kolam air di bawah lapisan es Pluto yang tebal. Para ilmuwan menduga Pluto punya inti berupa batu yang memiliki materi radioaktif. Secara perlahan, inti tersebut rusak, melepaskan panas yang bisa mencairkan es sekaligus mempertahankan bentuk cair itu.

"Mengingat ukuran dan komposisi Pluto, 100 bagian per 1 miliar potasium radioaktif bisa mempertahankan air 60-105 mil pada kedalaman 120 mil," kata Guillaume Robuchon, ilmuwan keplanetan dari University of California di Santa Cruz, Amerika Serikat.

Simulasi tersebut, seperti ditulis oleh Robuchon pada sinopses penelitian yang dipresentasikan minggu lalu di konferensi American Geophysical Union, memberikan petunjuk kalau Pluto saat ini memiliki laut.

Dugaan ini mungkin akan terbukti sekitar 5 tahun mendatang. Saat itu, wahana antariksa New Horizon milik NASA akan tiba di Pluto sebagai bagian dari perjalanan 10 tahun ke sana. New Horizon adalah pesawat antariksa tanpa awak yang dikirim ke Pluto. Saat ini, New Horizon sudah menempuh jarak 3 miliar mil.

Para ilmuwan juga akan melihat kutub di Pluto untuk mengetahui bentuk bagian dalam Pluto.

Ditemukan, Sungai Purba di Kalimantan!

Sebuah sungai purba ditemukan di perairan Matasiri, Kalimantan Selatan. Sungai tersebut ditemukan tim peneliti Lembaga Ilmu Pengetahuan Ilndonesia (LIPI) dan Dirjen Pendidikan Tinggi Indonesia (Dikti) dalam ekspedisi di wilayah tersebut menggunakan Kapal Riset Baruna Jaya VIII, 4 November - 1 Desember 2010.

Sungai itu kemungkinan masih berhubungan dengan Sungai Barito.

-- M Hasanuddin

M. Hasanudin M.T., salah satu peneliti LIPI yang terlibat dalam ekspedisi ini mengatakan, keberadaan sungai purba itu bisa dilihat di dasar laut perairan Matasiri. Ada bentukan seperti parit menunjukkan daerah tersebut pernah menjadi bagian dari aliran sungai.

"Sungai itu kemungkinan masih berhubungan dengan Sungai Barito," Hasanuddin.

Hasanudin menambahkan, alur sungai purba tersebut masih bisa dijumpai dalam wilayah yang cukup jauh. "Selama kita menelusuri wilayah sejauh 30 mil dari pantai, alur sungai tersebut masih bisa dijumpai. Kami juga menemukan bahwa lebar sungai tersebut hampir sama dengan lebar Sungai Barito," papar Hasanudin.

Penemuan sungai purba ini bisa menguatkan pendapat, bahwa Laut Jawa dahulu pernah menjadi daratan. Menurut pendapat yang salah satunya didukung oleh Stephen Oppenheimer yang baru saja menerbitkan buku "Eden in the East", Laut Jawa bersama Laut Cina Selatan dan Asia Tenggara adalah bagian dari wilayah yang disebut Sundaland.

Namun demikian, Hasanudin mengatakan, hasil penelitian ini belum cukup dijadikan bukti untuk membenarkan temuan itu.

"Masih perlu penelitian lebih lanjut," ujarnya.

Hasanuddin hanya mengatakan, hasil penelitian ini akan terlebih dahulu memperkaya wawasan di bidang arkeologi dan geologi kelautan.

PT DI Sukses Merancang Pesawat Baru N219

Sejak tahun 2006, PT Dirgantara Indonesia (PT DI) telah berupaya mengembangkan pesawat model baru N219. Pesawat turboprop dengan 19 penumpang tersebut ditargetkan bisa melayani kebutuhan penerbangan perintis untuk menghubungkan wilayah-wilayah terpencil.

Untuk mengembangkannya, PT DI bekerja sama dengan Badan Pengkajian dan Penerapan Teknologi (BPPT) dalam mengembangkan model uji aerodinamika. Sementara itu, uji aerodinamikanya sendiri dilakukan pada tahun 2008.

Hari ini, Selasa (28/12/2010), hasil uji dinamika yang dilakukan BPPT di Laboratorium Aero Gasdinamika dan Getaran, Serpong, diserahkan kepada PTDI, menandai tuntasnya uji tersebut. Hasil uji menunjukkan kemampuan pesawat untuk lepas landas dan mendarat serta stabilitasnya.

Andi Alisjahbana, Direktur Aerostruktur PT DI mengatakan, "Sejauh ini kita telah melakukan uji aerodinamika yang meliputi 139 polar." Polar berkaitan dengan kestabilan posisi pesawat dalam kondisi tertentu sesuai dengan komando yang diberikan kepadanya.

Selain itu, berdasarkan uji aerodinamika, diperoleh kesimpulan bahwa pesawat bisa lepas landas dan mendarat (take off dan landing) pada landasan yang pendek. "Landasan yang dibutuhkan untuk take off dan landing hanya 600 meter," kata Andi.

Menurut Andi, kemampuan tersebut sangat dibutuhkan untuk pesawat perintis. "Banyak daerah terpencil di Indonesia yang tak memiliki lahan luas. Seperti pulau-pulau kecil, di sana tidak mungkin membangun bandara besar," lanjut Andi.

Model yang digunakan dalam uji aerodinamika memiliki perbandingan ukuran 1:6,3. Uji aerodinamika sendiri dilakukan dalam terowongan angin sirkuit tertutup. Hasil uji juga mengungkapkan stabilitas matra longitudinal dan lateral pesawat.

Rancangan pesawat masih harus menjalani uji lainnya. Beberapa di antaranya adalah ditching test, uji statik pesawat, uji mesin produksi, dan akhirnya uji coba terbang. Ditargetkan, pesawat sudah bisa diluncurkan dua tahun mendatang.

Earth project aims to 'simulate everything'

It could be one of the most ambitious computer projects ever conceived.

An international group of scientists are aiming to create a simulator that can replicate everything happening on Earth - from global weather patterns and the spread of diseases to international financial transactions or congestion on Milton Keynes' roads.

Nicknamed the Living Earth Simulator (LES), the project aims to advance the scientific understanding of what is taking place on the planet, encapsulating the human actions that shape societies and the environmental forces that define the physical world.

"Many problems we have today - including social and economic instabilities, wars, disease spreading - are related to human behaviour, but there is apparently a serious lack of understanding regarding how society and the economy work," says Dr Helbing, of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, who chairs the FuturICT project which aims to create the simulator.

Knowledge collider

Thanks to projects such as the Large Hadron Collider, the particle accelerator built by Cern, scientists know more about the early universe than they do about our own planet, claims Dr Helbing.

What is needed is a knowledge accelerator, to collide different branches of knowledge, he says.

"Revealing the hidden laws and processes underlying societies constitutes the most pressing scientific grand challenge of our century."

The result would be the LES. It would be able to predict the spread of infectious diseases, such as Swine Flu, identify methods for tackling climate change or even spot the inklings of an impending financial crisis, he says.

Is it possible to build a social science equivalent to the Large Hadron Collider?

But how would such colossal system work?

For a start it would need to be populated by data - lots of it - covering the entire gamut of activity on the planet, says Dr Helbing.

It would also be powered by an assembly of yet-to-be-built supercomputers capable of carrying out number-crunching on a mammoth scale.

Although the hardware has not yet been built, much of the data is already being generated, he says.

For example, the Planetary Skin project, led by US space agency Nasa, will see the creation of a vast sensor network collecting climate data from air, land, sea and space.

In addition, Dr Helbing and his team have already identified more than 70 online data sources they believe can be used including Wikipedia, Google Maps and the UK government's data repository Data.gov.uk.

Drowning in data

Integrating such real-time data feeds with millions of other sources of data - from financial markets and medical records to social media - would ultimately power the simulator, says Dr Helbing.

The next step is create a framework to turn that morass of data in to models that accurately replicate what is taken place on Earth today.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

We don't take any action on the information we have”

End Quote Pete Warden OpenHeatMaps

That will only be possible by bringing together social scientists and computer scientists and engineers to establish the rules that will define how the LES operates.

Such work cannot be left to traditional social science researchers, where typically years of work produces limited volumes of data, argues Dr Helbing.

Nor is it something that could have been achieved before - the technology needed to run the LES will only become available in the coming decade, he adds.

Human behaviour

For example, while the LES will need to be able to assimilate vast oceans of data it will simultaneously have to understand what that data means.

That becomes possible as so-called semantic web technologies mature, says Dr Helbing.

Today, a database chock-full of air pollution data would look much the same to a computer as a database of global banking transactions - essentially just a lot of numbers.

But semantic web technology will encode a description of data alongside the data itself, enabling computers to understand the data in context.

What's more, our approach to aggregating data stresses the need to strip out any of that information that relates directly to an individual, says Dr Helbing.

The Living Earth Simulator aims to predict how diseases spread

That will enable the LES to incorporate vast amounts of data relating to human activity, without compromising people's privacy, he argues.

Once an approach to carrying out large-scale social and economic data is agreed upon, it will be necessary to build supercomputer centres needed to crunch that data and produce the simulation of the Earth, says Dr Helbing.

Generating the computational power to deal with the amount of data needed to populate the LES represents a significant challenge, but it's far from being a showstopper.

If you look at the data-processing capacity of Google, it's clear that the LES won't be held back by processing capacity, says Pete Warden, founder of the OpenHeatMap project and a specialist on data analysis.

While Google is somewhat secretive about the amount of data it can process, in May 2010 it was believed to use in the region of 39,000 servers to process an exabyte of data per month - that's enough data to fill 2 billion CDs every month.

Reality mining

If you accept that only a fraction of the "several hundred exabytes of data being produced worldwide every year… would be useful for a world simulation, the bottleneck won't be the processing capacity," says Mr Warden.

"Getting access to the data will be much more of a challenge, as will figuring out something useful to do with it," he adds.

Simply having lots of data isn't enough to build a credible simulation of the planet, argues Warden. "Economics and sociology have consistently failed to produce theories with strong predictive powers over the last century, despite lots of data gathering. I'm sceptical that larger data sets will mark a big change," he says.

"It's not that we don't know enough about a lot of the problems the world faces, from climate change to extreme poverty, it's that we don't take any action on the information we do have," he argues.

Regardless of the challenges the project faces, the greater danger is not attempting to use the computer tools we have now - and will have in future - to improve our understanding of global socio-economic trends, says Dr Helbing.

"Over the past years, it has for example become obvious that we need better indicators than the gross national product to judge societal development and well-being," he argues.

At it's heart, the LES is about working towards better methods to measure the state of society, he says, which would account for health, education and environmental issues. "And last but not least, happiness."

Microsoft warns on IE browser bug

Microsoft has issued a warning about a serious vulnerability in all versions of its Internet Explorer (IE) browser.

If exploited by a booby-trapped webpage the bug would allow attackers to take control of an unprotected computer.

Code to exploit the bug has already been published though Microsoft said it had no evidence it was currently being used by hi-tech criminals.

A workaround for the bug has been produced while Microsoft works on a permanent fix.

Code injection

The bug revolves around the way that IE manages a computer's memory when processing Cascading Style Sheets - a widely used technology that defines the look and feel of pages on a website.

Hi-tech criminals have long known that they can exploit IE's memory management to inject their own malicious code into the stream of instructions a computer processes as a browser is being used. In this way the criminals can get their own code running and hijack a PC.

Microsoft has produced updates that improves memory management but security researchers discovered that these protection systems are not used when some older parts of Windows are called upon.

In a statement Microsoft said it was "investigating" the bug and working on a permanent fix. In the meantime it recommended those concerned use a protection system known as the Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit.

Installing and applying the toolkit may require Windows XP users to update the version of the operating system they are using. But even if they do that some of the protection it bestows on Windows 7 and Vista users will not be available.

"We're currently unaware of any attacks trying to use the claimed vulnerability or of customer impact," said Dave Forstrom, the director of Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing group, in a statement.

"As vulnerabilities go, this kind is the most serious as it allows remote execution of code," said Rik Ferguson, senior security analyst at Trend Micro, "This means the attacker can run programs, such as malware, directly on the victim's computer."

He added: "It is highly reminiscent of a vulnerability at the same time two years ago which prompted several national governments to warn against using IE and to switch to an alternative browser."

New solar fuel machine 'mimics plant life'

A prototype solar device has been unveiled which mimics plant life, turning the Sun's energy into fuel.

The machine uses the Sun's rays and a metal oxide called ceria to break down carbon dioxide or water into fuels which can be stored and transported.

Conventional photovoltaic panels must use the electricity they generate in situ, and cannot deliver power at night.

Details are published in the journal Science.

The prototype, which was devised by researchers in the US and Switzerland, uses a quartz window and cavity to concentrate sunlight into a cylinder lined with cerium oxide, also known as ceria.

Ceria has a natural propensity to exhale oxygen as it heats up and inhale it as it cools down.

If as in the prototype, carbon dioxide and/or water are pumped into the vessel, the ceria will rapidly strip the oxygen from them as it cools, creating hydrogen and/or carbon monoxide.

Hydrogen produced could be used to fuel hydrogen fuel cells in cars, for example, while a combination of hydrogen and carbon monoxide can be used to create "syngas" for fuel.

It is this harnessing of ceria's properties in the solar reactor which represents the major breakthrough, say the inventors of the device. They also say the metal is readily available, being the most abundant of the "rare-earth" metals.

Methane can be produced using the same machine, they say.

Refinements needed

The prototype is grossly inefficient, the fuel created harnessing only between 0.7% and 0.8% of the solar energy taken into the vessel.

Most of the energy is lost through heat loss through the reactor's wall or through the re-radiation of sunlight back through the device's aperture.

But the researchers are confident that efficiency rates of up to 19% can be achieved through better insulation and smaller apertures. Such efficiency rates, they say, could make for a viable commercial device.

"The chemistry of the material is really well suited to this process," says Professor Sossina Haile of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). "This is the first demonstration of doing the full shebang, running it under (light) photons in a reactor."

She says the reactor could be used to create transportation fuels or be adopted in large-scale energy plants, where solar-sourced power could be available throughout the day and night.

However, she admits the fate of this and other devices in development is tied to whether states adopt a low-carbon policy.

"It's very much tied to policy. If we had a carbon policy, something like this would move forward a lot more quickly," she told the BBC.

It has been suggested that the device mimics plants, which also use carbon dioxide, water and sunlight to create energy as part of the process of photosynthesis. But Professor Haile thinks the analogy is over-simplistic.

"Yes, the reactor takes in sunlight, we take in carbon dioxide and water and we produce a chemical compound, so in the most generic sense there are these similarities, but I think that's pretty much where the analogy ends."

The PS10 solar tower plant near Seville, Spain. Mirrors concentrate the sun's power on to a central tower, driving a steam turbine

Daniel Davies, chief technology officer at the British photovoltaic company Solar Century, said the research was "very exciting".

"I guess the question is where you locate it - would you put your solar collector on a roof or would it be better off as a big industrial concern in the Sahara and then shipping the liquid fuel?" he said.

Solar technology is moving forward apace but the overriding challenges remain ones of efficiency, economy and storage.

New-generation "solar tower" plants have been built in Spain and the United States which use an array of mirrors to concentrate sunlight onto tower-mounted receivers which drive steam turbines.

A new Spanish project will use molten salts to store heat from the Sun for up to 15 hours, so that the plant could potentially operate through the night.

Ka-Sat net-dedicated spacecraft lifts off

The second European satellite dedicated to delivering broadband internet connections has launched successfully.

The six-tonne Ka-Sat lifted off atop a Proton rocket from Baikonur in Kazakhstan at 0351 local time on Monday (2151 GMT on Sunday).

The flight to orbit lasted nine hours and 12 minutes.

The Eutelsat-operated spacecraft will concentrate its services on the estimated tens of millions of European homes in so-called "not-spots".

These are places where consumers cannot get a decent terrestrial connection.

The spacecraft follows the Hylas-1 platform into orbit. This satellite, operated by Avanti Communications of London, was launched just last month.

Ka-Sat, however, is considerably bigger, and has a notional capacity to serve up to two million households compared with Hylas's 300,000.

Nevertheless, such is the scale of the under-served market in Europe that both platforms should be very profitable ventures, the two companies believe.

"As many as 30 million households in Europe are not served at all or get high mediocrity of service," said Eutelsat CEO Michel de Rosen.

"These could be people in the countryside or in the mountains, sometimes not very far from large cities. Ka-Sat is an answer to that problem," he told BBC News.

Paris-based Eutelsat is one of the world's big three Fixed Satellite Services (FSS) companies, and transmits thousands of TV channels across its fleet of spacecraft.

It already provides some internet capability on its existing platforms, but Ka-Sat is its first broadband-dedicated endeavour.

High throughput

Ka-Sat will sit about 36,000km above the equator at nine degrees East.

Ka-Sat was prepared in the UK

Its communications payload, structure and propulsion system were prepared by EADS Astrium at its UK facilities in Stevenage and Portsmouth.

Final testing of the spacecraft took place at Astrium's factory in Toulouse, France, before shipment to Baikonur.

Ka-Sat has a total throughput of some 70Gbps.

This will be channelled via 82 spot beams on to different market areas stretching from North Africa to southern Scandinavia. A very small segment of the Middle East will also be reached.

Eutelsat has signed about 70 deals with distributors across the satellite's "footprint", and more would be signed over the next year, said Mr de Rosen.

"It takes normally a few weeks for a satellite to become operational after launch," he explained.

"In this case, it is more likely to be a few months. Expect Ka-Sat to be operational in the second half of the second quarter of 2011."

The satellite will need to undertake some firings of its own propulsion system to circularise its final orbit. Ground controllers will also need a period of time to check out and commission all onboard systems.

Previous failure

Ka-Sat's Proton rocket was under the spotlight for this flight.

The Russian vehicle had failed on its previous outing, dumping three Glonass satellite-navigation spacecraft in the Pacific Ocean.

An inquiry found the Proton's new Block DM-03 upper-stage had been over-fuelled, making it too heavy to achieve its required performance.

International Launch Services (ILS), which runs the commercial operations of the Proton vehicle, used a different upper-stage for the Ka-Sat mission.

This Breeze M stage has a good recent record.

It was the eighth and last ILS-organised Proton mission of 2010.

No police in Mexico town after last officer kidnapped

The Mexican border town of Guadalupe has been left with no police force after the last officer was kidnapped.

Erika Gandara's house was set on fire by unidentified gunmen before she was abducted last week, according to the state prosecutor's office.

All her colleagues had resigned or were killed in the region's drug war.

More than 30,000 people have died in drug-related violence since 2006 when the President announced a crackdown on the cartels.

Ms Gandara, 28, had patrolled the town of 9,000 inhabitants on her own since June.

"Nobody wants to go into policing here, and the budget just isn't there anyway," she told AFP news agency earlier this year.

Guadalupe is about 5km (3 miles) away from the US border and 60km (40 miles) from Ciudad Juarez, the centre of drug smuggling operations into the United States.

It is also close to the hamlet of Praxedis Guadalupe Guerreror, where a 20-year-old college student got the job of police chief in October because no one else applied.

The Mexican government has sent soldiers to patrol Guadalupe and to investigate the kidnapping of Ms Gandara.

Ivory Coast: Africa trio give Laurent Gbagbo ultimatum

West African heads of state have ended their Ivory Coast mission to persuade Laurent Gbagbo to cede power after the disputed presidential election.

Mr Gbagbo is refusing to make way for Alassane Ouattara, internationally recognised as the president-elect.

The delegation has said that if he does not relinquish power, he could be forced out by military intervention.

An Ivorian TV station loyal to Mr Gbagbo has attacked anyone criticising his decision to stay in office.

It indicated that African nationals from neighbouring countries working in Ivory Coast might be at risk if the threats of military action continued.

Earlier, a United Nations peacekeeper was wounded in the arm with a machete when his convoy was attacked by a crowd in a Gbagbo stronghold.

A UN statement said that one of three vehicles in the convoy was set alight in the incident in a western area of Abidjan.

The UN, which has a force of more than 9,500 in Ivory Coast, has been accused by Mr Gbagbo of interfering in Ivorian affairs - and asked to leave the country.

The UN has refused his call and called for power to be handed to Mr Ouattara.

'All went well'

A statement by one of the three West African leaders, Cape Verde President Pedro Pires, said their visit had ended and they would travel to Nigeria to report to Ecowas Chairman Goodluck Jonathan.

The three West African presidents - Mr Pires, Boni Yayi of Benin and Sierra Leone's Ernest Bai Koroma - had arrived in Abidjan during the morning in what was seen as a final chance to urge Mr Gbagbo to step down peacefully.

After the meeting, Benin's President, Boni Yayi, said "all went well".

Continue reading the main story

Analysis

Kwasi Anning Analyst, Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre

---

Ivory Coast is different from Liberia and Sierra Leone. It is a functioning wealthy country with a strong army, so a force will meet some credible resistance.

Furthermore, it doesn't look as if Ecowas is capable of putting a credible force on the ground: Nigeria is heading towards elections and may not want to put in troops for that long a time; Ghana has elections in 2012 and Senegal has its own problems with dynastic succession. So the key countries that would have to contribute may not have the political stomach and the temerity.

I would have thought an emphasis on sanctions, bank accounts, no-fly zones, seizure of properties - total isolation on the continent - would have been a first step.

But it looks as if there has been a hastiness to demonstrate that "we can deal with Gbagbo" - and in doing so Ecowas, the African Union and the United Nations have actually closed too many doors that limit their options for engagement and manoeuvre.

But a Laurent Gbagbo adviser, Abdon Bayeto, later told the BBC that "the message he [Mr Gbagbo] had for them was to tell them that he was democratically elected, recognised by our constitution".

The three presidents then went to see Mr Ouattara who is in a hotel with his shadow government protected by around 800 UN peacekeepers.

"Outtara won and we insist that Outtara becomes the president of this country and that is the position taken by the West African leaders," Sierra Leone's Information Minister Ibrahim Ben Kargbo told the BBC.

The hotel is also surrounded by troops loyal to Laurent Gbagbo who says he is not worried by threats to remove him by force and claims he is the victim of a plot involving France and the US.

Refugees escape

Mr Ouattara's victory in the 28 November election was overturned by the Constitutional Council, a body headed by an ally of Mr Gbagbo, citing claims that results were rigged in the north.

Since the election, the UN has said at least 173 people have died in violence, and scores of others have been tortured.

The threat of escalating violence has prompted almost 20,000 people to flee Ivory Coast for neighbouring Liberia.

The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) says 15,120 people from villages in western Ivory Coast are known to have crossed the border and another 4,000 arrivals have been reported.

Most of the refugees are said to be women and children and almost two thirds under the age of 18.

The atmosphere in Abidjan is tense, says the BBC's John James, with everyone fearing a military intervention in the coming weeks.

Ivorians had hoped these elections would close the chapter on the country's most difficult 10 years, but instead they have opened up a new period of instability, he adds.

Jos bombing: Politicians 'fuel Nigeria unrest'

Nigerian faith leaders have accused politicians of fuelling a recent upsurge in sectarian violence in which 80 people have died.

In a joint news conference, Muslim and Christian leaders said politicians were using religion to whip up trouble around the city of Jos.

Bombs exploded in several areas of Jos on Christmas Eve, and Christian and Muslim youths clashed two days later.

Nigerians are due to hold national and local elections in April.

Local politicians are frequently accused of trying to exploit communal tensions for their gain.

At Tuesday's news conference, Christian Association of Nigeria head Ayo Oritsejafor, and Nigerian Muslims' spiritual leader Sultan Mohammadu Sa'ad Abubakar made a joint statement criticising politicians.

Mr Oritsejafor said some politicians "know the weaknesses of the people".

"They know how to manipulate their beliefs and they know the... parts of the country where people react very easily," he said.

"Some of them are creating these kind of problems to make Nigeria ungovernable."

Islamist claims

The sultan accused politicians of a "failure of leadership".

"If the government in that area is... purposeful enough... they will find answers to these problems," he said.

Officials from Nigeria's emergency management agency (Nema) said at least 80 people had died and more than 190 had been injured in the recent outbreak of violence around Jos.

A radical Islamist sect reportedly said they carried out the Christmas Eve bombings.

Continue reading the main story

Jos Violence

• Deadly riots in 2001, 2008 and 2010
• City divided into Christian and Muslim areas
• Hausa-speaking Muslims living in Jos for decades still classified as settlers
• Settlers find it difficult to stand for election
• Communities divided along political party lines

• Jos violence: Q&A

A website apparently belonging to the Boko Haram group, which staged an uprising in the city of north-eastern city of Maiduguri in 2008, said it launched the attacks to "start avenging the atrocities committed against Muslims".

But police chief Abdulrahman Akano cast doubt on the claims, saying it was not Boko Haram's usual method.

"Anybody can post anything on the internet," he told the AFP news agency.

Boko Haram members who took part in the 2008 uprising were armed mostly with sticks and home-made rifles.

Security forces put down the uprising and killed about 800 people, including the group's leader.

Sultan Mohammadu also played down the Boko Haram link and called on all Nigerians "not to succumb to the moves and practices of the few destructive elements that really don't want peace in this country".

The city of Jos lies in Nigeria's volatile Middle Belt - between the mainly Muslim north and largely Christian south.

Jos has been blighted by sectarian violence over the past decade, with deadly riots in 2001, 2008 and this year.

The clashes usually pit Muslims against Christians, but analysts say the underlying issues are political and economic.

Neanderthals cooked and ate vegetables

Neanderthals cooked and ate plants and vegetables, a new study of Neanderthal remains reveals.

Researchers in the US have found grains of cooked plant material in their teeth.

The study is the first to confirm that the Neanderthal diet was not confined to meat and was more sophisticated than previously thought.

The research has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The popular image of Neanderthals as great meat eaters is one that has up until now been backed by some circumstantial evidence. Chemical analysis of their bones suggested they ate little or no vegetables.

This perceived reliance on meat had been put forward by some as one of the reasons these humans become extinct as large animals such as mammoths declined due to an Ice Age.

But a new analysis of Neanderthal remains from across the world has found direct evidence that contradicts the chemical studies. Researchers found fossilised grains of vegetable material in their teeth and some of it was cooked.

Although pollen grains have been found before on Neanderthal sites and some in hearths, it is only now there is clear evidence that plant food was actually eaten by these people.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

We have found pollen grains in Neanderthal sites before but you never know whether they were eating the plant or sleeping on them or what”

End Quote Professor Alison Brooks George Washington University

Professor Alison Brooks, from George Washington University, told BBC News: "We have found pollen grains in Neanderthal sites before but you never know whether they were eating the plant or sleeping on them or what.

"But here we have a case where a little bit of the plant is in the mouth so we know that the Neanderthals were consuming the food."

More like us

One question raised by the study is why the chemical studies on Neanderthal bones have been wide of the mark. According to Professor Brooks, the tests were measuring proteins levels, which the researchers assumed came from meat.

"We've tended to assume that if you have a very high value for protein in the diet that must come from meat. But... it's possible that some of the protein in their diet was coming from plants," she said.

This study is the latest to suggest that, far from being brutish savages, Neanderthals were more like us than we previously thought.

Wikileaks Simpan Data Rahasia soal UFO

Julian Assange, pendiri Wikileaks, menjalani sesi wawancara dengan publik lewat situs The Guardian pada hari Jumat (3/12/2010). Dalam sesi tanya jawab singkat itu, Assange membicarakan tentang visi dan tindakan Wikileaks ke depan dan ancaman pada dirinya.

Seorang pewawancara menanyakan dalam sesi tanya jawab tersebut tentang ada-tidaknya data mengenai UFO atau kehidupan di luar bumi. Assange menjawab dengan menyatakan bahwa Wikileaks memiliki data yang belum pernah dirilis terkait dengan unidentifying flying object (UFO). Ia mengatakan, "Banyak yang meng-email kami mengenai UFO."

"Bagaimanapun, dokumen-dokumen itu belum mampu memenuhi dua aturan dari publikasi kami," kata Assange. Aturan publikasi mencakup keaslian dari dokumen tersebut dan dokumen tidak ditulis sendiri oleh pengirim.

"Namun, perlu dicatat bahwa pada bagian Cable Gate yang belum dipublikasikan, benar terdapat referensi mengenai UFO," lanjut Assange. Data Wikileaks ini mungkin saja melengkapi temuan terbaru NASA tentang adanya bakteri arsenik sehingga mampu dijadikan petunjuk adanya kehidupan di luar Bumi.

Sebelumnya, Wikileaks membuat berang Pemerintah AS karena membocorkan 251.187 memo diplomatik dari berbagai kedutaan besar AS di seluruh dunia. Akankah dokumen tentang UFO ini dibocorkan pula?

Indonesia Ganyang Malaysia 5-1

Indonesia mengawali perjuangannya di arena Piala AFF dengan hasil yang memuaskan. Pada laga perdana penyisihan Grup A turnamen antarnegara di Asia Tenggara tersebut, Rabu (1/12/2010) di Stadion Gelora Bung Karno, Senayan, Jakarta, pasukan "Merah Putih" mengganyang Malaysia dengan kemenangan 5-1.

Kemenangan mencolok atas negeri "Upin-Ipin" tersebut membuat Indonesia memimpin klasemen sementara Grup A. Firman Utina dan kawan-kawan mengungguli Thailand dan Laos, yang membuntutinya, setelah kedua tim bermain imbang 2-2. Adapun Malaysia kini menghuni dasar klasemen alias menjadi juru kunci.

Selanjutnya, Indonesia akan bertemu Laos dalam laga kedua penyisihan grup. Sementara itu, Thailand menghadapi Malaysia. Duel tersebut akan berlangsung di Gelora Bung Karno pada Minggu (5/12/2010).

Kesuksesan Indonesia ini juga menjadi panggung aksi bagi dua pemain naturalisasi, Christian "El Loco" Gonzales dan Irfan Haarys Bachdim. Pasalnya, dua pemain tersebut masing-masing menyumbang satu gol untuk melengkapi pesta gol pasukan besutan Alfred Riedl.

Meskipun akhirnya bisa pesta gol, kubu Indonesia sempat berada dalam ketegangan dan kekhawatiran. Saat pertandingan memasuki menit ke-18, Malaysia mengoyak jala Markus Horison lewat tendangan keras Norshahrul Idlan bin Talaha dari dalam kotak penalti. Pemain ini memanfaatkan kelengahan lini belakang Indonesia dalam mengantisipasi umpan silang dari sayap kiri. Oleh sebab itu, Idlan tak terkawal dan dengan mudah mencetak gol.

Namun, keunggulan Malaysia tersebut hanya bertahan tiga menit. Serangan yang dibangun dari sayap kiri berbuah gol bunuh diri karena bola umpan silang ke mulut gawang justru membentur kaki pemain belakang Malaysia, dan menggetarkan jala gawang yang dikawal Mohd Sharbinee Allawes Bin Ramli.

Gol tersebut memantik semangat pasukan Indonesia sehingga serangan yang dilakukan kian gencar. Alhasil, pada menit ke-33, Gonzales dapat giliran mengambil bagian dalam pesta kemenangan atas negeri jiran tersebut. Striker dengan julukan "El Loco" ini membuktikan kapasitasnya sebagai peraih tiga kali top scorer liga Indonesia karena dengan ketenangannya, dia menceploskan bola ke sisi kanan gawang, tanpa bisa dijangkau kiper. Skor 2-1 bertahan sampai jeda.

Memasuki paruh kedua, Indonesia tak menurunkan tempo permainan. Memegang kendali permainan, pasukan "Garuda" terus mengancam pertahanan Malaysia, sampai tercipta gol ketiga pada menit ke-52, lewat tendangan Muhammad Ridwan, yang lebih dulu melakukan kerja sama satu-dua dengan Ahmad Bustomi.

Pada menit ke-75, Arif Suyono menambah keunggulan Indonesia menjadi 4-1. Masuk sebagai pemain pengganti (gantikan M Ridwan), Arif tak butuh waktu lama untuk menyumbang gol karena dia hanya perlu tiga menit berada di dalam lapangan pertandingan sebelum mengoyak jala Malaysia.

Memasuki injury time, giliran Bachdim yang melengkapi pesta gol Indonesia. Pemain Persema Malang yang tampil cukup dominan sepanjang pertandingan ini memaksimalkan umpan silang dari sayap kiri, lewat sambaran ke mulut gawang yang tidak terkawal lagi. Skor akhir 5-1.

North Korea 'likely to attack again'

South Korea's intelligence chief is reported to have said that North Korea is very likely to attack again, a week after an artillery strike on a South Korean island.

The revelation came hours after officials said Seoul was planning more military exercises with the US.

On 23 November North Korea shelled the island of Yeonpyeong, killing at least four South Koreans.

The disputed border area has been the scene of numerous clashes in the past.

Won Sei-hoon, director of South Korea's National Intelligence Service, told a parliamentary committee behind closed doors that the recent attacks came amid "internal complaints" about Pyongyang's third generation succession and worsening economic situation, according to a ruling party official.

"There is a high possibility that the North will make another attack," South Korea's Yonhap news agency quoted him as saying, adding that the government was trying to burnish the credentials of the designated leader who was still very young and untested, and also win new concessions from the international community.

South Korea is building up defences on Yeonpyeong island, but some senior officials have told the BBC they hope Mr Won is wrong and the worst of the current crisis is over.

"There will be ongoing measures as you said to beef up our forces including the stationing of new weapons, upgrading our marines on Yeonpyeong island but I think on this particular crisis we are reaching the apex and we will see a gradual de-escalation," said Chung Min Lee, ambassador for international security affairs.

The BBC's Chris Hogg in Seoul says the South Koreans are anxious to avoid the impression that bad behaviour by the North will be rewarded with talks or offers of aid.

Naval exercises

Continue reading the main story

North Korea: Timeline 2010

26 March: South Korean warship, Cheonan, sinks, killing 46 sailors

20 May: Panel says a North Korean torpedo sank the ship; Pyongyang denies involvement

July-September: South Korea and US hold military exercises; US places more sanctions on Pyongyang

29 September: North holds rare party congress seen as part of father-to-son succession move

29 October: Troops from North and South Korea exchange fire across the land border

12 November: North Korea shows US scientist new - undeclared - uranium enrichment facility

23 November: North shells island of Yeonpyeong, killing at least four South Koreans

• US-South Korea alliance under strain
• Yeonpyong: An island abandoned
• Brief history of the Korean War

A South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff officer said that Seoul and Washington were planning new military drills off South Korea's west coast.

The officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, said talks were focused on whether these would take place this month or next.

Separately, South Korea is planning what it calls routine week-long naval live-fire exercises from 29 sites around the country.

These are due to start next week and continue for several weeks.

China, however, has expressed its anger at the joint US-South Korean military exercises - which were planned before North Korea's shelling of Yeonpyong island last week.

Beijing has also been pressing for a resumption of the six-nation talks on ending North Korea's nuclear programme.

The US has said these talks cannot resume until North Korea apologises for its torpedoing of a South Korean warship in March, and stops further nuclear enrichment plants from operating.

The six-party talks, involving the two Koreas, the US, China, Japan and Russia, have been stalled since April 2009.

Analysts say diplomacy has been further complicated by the recent release of diplomatic cables by the whistle-blowing website Wikileaks.

'Trillions' of Earths orbit red stars in older galaxies

Red sky at night: The view from a planet in our galaxy (left) but planets in older galaxies (right) are bathed in a rosy glow from the many red stars in the night sky (artist's impression)

Continue reading the main story

Related stories

• Stars system like 'snooker game'
• Dark energy flattens the Universe

Astronomers say the Universe may contain three times the number of stars as is currently thought.

Their assessment is based on new observations showing other galaxies may have very different structures to our Milky Way galaxy.

The researchers tell the journal Nature that more stars probably means many more planets as well - perhaps "trillions" of Earth-like worlds.

The Yale University-led study used the Keck telescope in Hawaii.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

There are possibly trillions of Earths orbiting these stars”

End Quote Professor Pieter Van Dokkum Yale University

It found that galaxies older than ours contain 20 times more red dwarf stars than more recent ones.

Red dwarfs are smaller and dimmer than our own Sun; it is only recently that telescopes have been powerful enough to detect them.

According to Yale's Professor Pieter van Dokkum, who led the research, the discovery also increases the estimate for the number of planets in the Universe and therefore greatly increases the likelihood of life existing elsewhere in the cosmos.

"There are possibly trillions of Earths orbiting these stars," he said. "Red dwarfs are typically more than 10 billion years old and so have been around long enough for complex life to evolve on planets around them. It's one reason why people are interested in this type of star."

Two-thirds of the observable Universe consists of spiral galaxies (L) like our own Milky Way. The remainder is made up of older elliptical galaxies (R)

The findings also help to account for what astronomers describe as the "missing mass" in the Universe.

The movement of galaxies suggests there is more material in the cosmos than can be observed, so scientists have suggested that some is invisible, referring to it as "dark matter".

Dr Marek Kukula of the Royal Observatory Greenwich (ROG), UK, said: "the discovery of more stars in the Universe means that we might not need quite as much dark matter as we thought to explain how the Universe looks and behaves.

"It also tells us something about how the very first galaxies must have formed from the gas left over from the Big Bang."

And the ROG's Dr Robert Massey added: "Finding red dwarfs in other galaxies is quite something and shows how far we've come with the latest generation of large telescopes.

"If these stars are more common in elliptical galaxies than in our own, it's also consistent with the idea that they have a larger number of older stars than us. The lifespan of red dwarfs is many times longer than that of stars like our Sun."

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has few places to hide

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange had a reputation for being suspicious and paranoid even before everyone was out to get him.

Everyone, in this case, is the US - where government lawyers are hoping to prosecute on espionage charges - and the European Union, where he is wanted for questioning in connection with a Swedish rape investigation.

As of Tuesday, Mr Assange has also been liable to arrest in any of the 188 member countries of Interpol - from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe - and to be extradited from there to Sweden.

Last seen in London, he is widely assumed to be in the UK now, though remaining continuously on the move.

If he appeared in public, British police would be obliged to arrest him under a European Arrest Warrant issued by the Swedish authorities - though it's not clear that anyone is going to go out of their way to find him.

"If there is no indication that the accused is in a particular region, you won't expect a police force to investigate," said a spokesman for the UK's Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA).

So, supposing Mr Assange is still in the UK, and he lies low, he may be able to avoid arrest. In spring, however, his six-month visa will run out, creating additional problems for him.

Whispers

It would not be safe for him to appear in person at a news conference, but he has shown this week that he can continue to communicate with journalists virtually - via video recorded on a mobile phone or via Skype.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

You ask him a harmless question - and he looks at you as if to ask 'Why do you want to know?'”

End Quote

According to New York Times reporter John F Burns, who interviewed Mr Assange in October, he changes mobile phones "the way other men change shirts", uses cash instead of credit cards and stays either with friends, or in hotels under false names.

When the two men met in a London Ethiopian restaurant, Mr Assange spoke in a whisper, for fear of eavesdropping by Western intelligence agencies.

A journalist who met Mr Assange earlier this year told the BBC his "over-suspicious" behaviour made the meeting unnecessarily awkward.

"You ask him a harmless question - and he looks at you as if to ask 'Why do you want to know?'" the journalist said.

At that point, Mr Assange was not a wanted man. It's only recently that has freedom of movement has been seriously curtailed.

In April he travelled to the National Press Club in Washington to show a video of a US military helicopter killing 12 people in Baghdad in 2007, including two Reuters journalists.

His position became more precarious in July, after Wikileaks made public 77,000 US military documents on the Afghan conflict in July, and even more so after the publication of nearly 400,000 secret papers on the Iraq war in October.

Espionage charge

He was still able to unveil the Iraq documents to the media at a news conference in London, though US officials were already muttering then about a possible espionage prosecution.

A senior Pentagon official told the Associated Press this week that lawyers from the Justice, State and Defense departments were now actively discussing whether or not some kind of charge could be made to stick.

A possible obstacle to a prosecution under the Espionage Act could be the First Amendment to the US Constitution, which guarantees free speech and freedom of the press.

But experts quoted by the Associated Press also raised the possibility of other charges, such as theft of government property, receipt of stolen government property, mishandling of classified documents, or aiding and abetting illegal leaks of documents by government employees.

It has also been suggested that the First Amendment might not prevent Mr Assange being charged under the Espionage Act with wilfully withholding information in defiance of an official demand for its return. Just such a demand was made by the State Department on Saturday, before the latest release of US diplomatic cables.

Rape allegation

After the Afghan document release, Mr Assange travelled to Sweden and applied for residence and a work permit.

The Ecuadorean president has slapped down the idea of offering Mr Assange residence

With its strong traditions of press freedom, the country could have become a safe haven. However, he soon faced allegations of rape and sexual molestation from two Swedish women, which now represent the most immediate threat to his liberty.

He denies any wrongdoing, saying he had consensual sex with both women.

In November a warrant was issued for his arrest, to enable Swedish prosecutors to question him, followed by the European Arrest Warrant. One appeal against the Swedish warrant has failed; a second is pending.

Mr Assange's London lawyer, Mark Stephens, has argued that the European Arrest Warrant is invalid, because his client has not been charged. However, SOCA says no charge is necessary - it is sufficient that the individual is "facing prosecution".

In the midst of these legal proceedings, in October, Sweden rejected his request for residency.

Subsequently, Mr Assange is said to have raised the possibility of taking refuge in Switzerland or Iceland.

'Red notice'

While both are members of Interpol and both have extradition treaties with the US, this does not automatically make them hostile territory for him.

A "red notice" issued by Interpol on Tuesday informing all of its 188 member countries that he is wanted in Sweden does not legally oblige any of them to hand Mr Assange over - though a spokesman said told the BBC that "usually they feel duty bound to do so".

Equally, while a country that has signed an extradition treaty with the US might usually be expected to give him up, it might not if the crime was regarded as a political one.

Ecuador briefly appeared a promising haven earlier this week, when deputy foreign minister Kintto Lucas said he would be welcome to take up residence there - but President Rafael Correa subsequently dismissed the idea.

Another possible destination might in theory have been Australia, as Mr Assange was born there and holds an Australian passport. However, this does not in practice look like a good choice for the Wikileaks founder.

Like Iceland and Switzerland, Australia is also a member of Interpol and has an extradition treaty with the US. In addition, Australia's Attorney General, Robert McClelland, said this week that police were investigating whether the latest round of Wikileaks disclosures had broken Australian law.

Furthermore, a senior Australian official once warned Mr Assange that since he played "outside the rules", he would be dealt with outside the rules - or so he told the New York Times.

Whichever country Mr Assange aims for next, his biggest problem could be getting there.

If he is currently in a European Union member state, he risks arrest as soon as he presents his passport at the border.

Wikileaks: UK allowed US to use cluster bomb 'loophole'

The UK kept quiet about a loophole allowing the US to continue storing cluster bombs on its territory despite an international ban on the weapons, a leaked US diplomatic cable suggests.

A senior Foreign Office official is quoted in the message sent in May 2009.

Dropped from the air or fired from the ground, cluster munitions release small bomblets over a wide area.

Critics say they have a devastating humanitarian impact - most victims are civilians; a third are children.

Britain was among more than 90 countries which signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM) in December 2008. The treaty bans the use of cluster bombs and prohibits signatories from assisting other countries to use, stockpile or transfer them.

The then Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, hailed the treaty as a "major breakthrough".

'Temporary exception'

But the US - along with other major military powers such as Russia, China, India and Pakistan - was not a signatory. And that clearly put the UK in an awkward position with a key ally.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

If any 'authorisations' are contemplated by the secretary of state, they should be subject to strict parliamentary scrutiny”

End Quote Thomas Nash Cluster Munition Coalition

• Nations sign cluster bomb treaty
• Q&A: Cluster bomb treaty

Britain leases the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia to the US, where the Americans have a major base in which cluster bombs are stored. Britain's public stance is that the US military has until 2013 to remove them.

In April this year, the then Minister for International Defence and Security, Baroness Taylor of Bolton, assured Parliament: "I can confirm that the US has identified its cluster munitions on UK territory as exceeding its worldwide operational planning requirements. Therefore, these cluster munitions will be removed from sites in the UK in 2010 and from all UK territories by 2013."

But one of the cables released by the whistle-blowing website, Wikileaks, shows the Foreign Office suggested a loophole to allow the US to keep cluster bombs on British soil should be kept from Parliament.

The cable reveals that the UK offered the Americans "temporary storage exception for specific missions". No details are given, but it is clear that this was something the government was keen to keep quiet.

The cable quotes a senior Foreign Office official as noting: "It would be better for the USG [US government] and HMG [Her Majesty's Government] not to reach final agreement on this temporary agreement understanding until after the CCM ratification process is completed in Parliament, so that they can tell parliamentarians that they have requested the USG to remove its cluster munitions by 2013, without complicating/muddying the debate by having to indicate that this request is open to exceptions."

'Concern'

The cable also reveals that most of the US cluster munitions are being stored on US vessels off Diego Garcia, apparently to circumvent the ban on the weapons remaining on British soil after 2013.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

We reject any allegation that the FCO deliberately misled or failed in our obligation to inform Parliament”

End Quote UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office

It states that the head of the Foreign Office's Security Policy Group, Nicolas Pickard, "reconfirmed that off-shore storage on US ships would still be permitted".

Responding to the leaked cable, Thomas Nash from the campaign group, Cluster Munition Coalition, told the BBC: "The UK has banned cluster bombs entirely and is bound never to assist with use of cluster munitions by any country ever again. Along with 107 other countries, the UK condemned the use of cluster bombs in the final declaration of the first meeting of state parties to the cluster bomb ban in Lao PDR [People's Democratic Republic] last month.

"The cable also raises concern about respect for Parliament and for democratic practices on the part of the UK government. The so-called exceptions in the UK law should never be used and cluster bombs should never be anywhere near Diego Garcia again," he added.

"If any 'authorisations' are contemplated by the secretary of state, they should be subject to strict parliamentary scrutiny."

The Foreign Office responded to the publication of the cable by saying: "We reject any allegation that the FCO deliberately misled or failed in our obligation to inform Parliament."

Snow and ice causes disruption as cold spell continues

Temperatures are set to plunge again overnight after one of the coldest starts to December in more than 20 years has caused chaos across the UK.

Some 4,000 schools have been closed, and Edinburgh and Gatwick airports will be shut until at least Thursday.

Transport secretary Philip Hammond has called for an urgent review of how well the Highways Agency has coped.

The Met Office has issued heavy snow warnings for Scotland and north-east, eastern and south-east England.

Temperatures were at -16C (3F) in the Highlands on Wednesday, and the Forth Road Bridge was closed for the first time since it opened in 1964 but has now reopened.

Avalanche warning

In England, heavy snow warnings are in place for the North East, Yorkshire and Humber, East, and London and the South.

In Scotland the warnings apply to Grampian, Strathclyde, Central, Tayside and Fife, and South West, Lothian and Borders.

A Gatwick spokesman said: "Given the latest weather forecasts, Gatwick's runway will remain closed until at least 10am tomorrow [Thursday], which means no flights will depart or arrive during this time. There will also be significant disruption, delays and cancellations."

More than 250,000 Scottish children have had a day off - about 40% of all those of school age - many for the third consecutive day, with a third of councils closing all their schools.

Some local authorities have told parents that schools will remain closed for the rest of the week. In total, more than 1,500 of 2,722 schools were shut.

Continue reading the main story

WEATHER AND TRAVEL INFO

• Get the latest on school closures and travel problems via your local website
• Check if snow is forecast in your area at BBC Weather
• Details of motorway and local road closures and public transport disruption are available at BBC Travel News
• For advice on handling difficult driving conditions, see the Highways Agency website
• For information about severe weather warnings, see the Met Office website
• For information about staying healthy in the cold weather, see the NHS Winter Health website

An avalanche warning was issued in the Cairngorms, near Aviemore, a popular location for skiers.

Police were advising people not to travel unless absolutely necessary - especially in the worst-hit areas of Scotland, Yorkshire, Derbyshire and south-east England.

Supt Chris Moon, of Surrey Police, said the county's conditions were the worst he had ever seen and were likely to deteriorate further.

He added: "I have put out several severe weather warnings in my career, but this one I really must stress."

Police in Kent advised freight traffic not to enter the county unless absolutely necessary as gale force winds are forecast. Some roads in the west and north of the county were impassable due to snow and ice.

'People moving'

Thousands of rail commuters faced severe disruption to their journeys in Scotland and northern England, particularly in the Sheffield area. London and the South East also suffered.

Southeastern trains, which runs out of London Victoria and Charing Cross, is operating an emergency timetable and services will finish early.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

I had a text from the photographer who couldn't get through, the wedding car couldn't get through, so I decided: I can't wear my dress without ruining it, so we'll postpone”

End Quote Tracy Gell Bride-to-be

• Send your comments

There were delays on the East Coast Main Line, with an hourly service between London and Edinburgh, and reduced services between London and both Leeds and Newcastle.

Half of Eurostar's services between London and Brussels on Thursday have been cancelled, as have seven out of 17 services each way between London and Paris.

National Rail Enquiries has set up a hotline for information about snow-related disruption on 08453 017 641, and also has updates at @nationalrailenq on Twitter.

About one third of all rail services were suffering delays or cancellations at Wednesday lunchtime.

Ashwin Kumar, of rail watchdog Passenger Focus, called on train companies to do all they could to make life easier for their customers.

He said: "We need better information systems so that we can cope when disruption does happen."

The Association of Train Operating Companies said rail operators and Network Rail were "doing all they can to keep trains moving and get people to where they need to be".

One of the worst affected areas of England is South Yorkshire, where snowfall of up to 30cm (12in) has brought parts of the county to a standstill.

About 300 schools were shut, bus services suspended in Sheffield, Rotherham, and Doncaster, and there were delays and cancellations on train services between Sheffield and Leeds, as well as flights being halted at Robin Hood Airport in Doncaster.

Hospitals in South Yorkshire asked patients not to attend unless urgent, and they asked off-duty medical staff to make their way into work if possible.

Sheffield City Council cancelled a full council meeting for the first time and the Halifax Courier newspaper did not make it out, also for the first time, because it was stuck at the printers in Sheffield.

The Lincolnshire village of Binbrook has been effectively cut off since Monday. Local shops have begun to run out of supplies.

About 100 motorists will spend the night at South Anston methodist chapel near Sheffield, after being stranded on the A57 since Tuesday evening.

Police say they are increasingly concerned about fell walker Gwenda Merriot, 60, from Wiltshire, who was last seen in Ambleside in the Lake District on Wednesday morning. Heavy snowfall was forecast for the area overnight.

Night journey

Temperatures hit a low of -20C (-4F) in Altnaharra in the Highlands overnight on Tuesday.

The early cold spell has taken everyone by surprise

BBC weather forecaster Tomasz Schafernaker said there was 1m (3ft) of snow across parts of north-east England.

More heavy snow was expected on Wednesday afternoon and evening across southern England from Hampshire to southern Essex and possibly into London.

There could be up to 30cm of snow in southern England by the end of Thursday. There will also be more snow showers in north-east England.

On Thursday night, temperatures of up to -25C (-13F) to -30C (-22F) in some parts of Scotland are forecast.

The disruption on Wednesday included:

• Severe disruption for air passengers at Gatwick Airport where its runways are closed until 1000 GMT on Thursday. Edinburgh Airport is also closed until at least Thursday morning. Guernsey Airport, Robin Hood Airport in Doncaster and Durham Tees Valley Airport were also shut, while other airports were disrupted. Passengers are advised to check with their airline
• Hundreds of school closures in England, including nearly 1,000 full or partial closures in West, North and South Yorkshire, about 330 schools in Essex, about 550 in the South East and Surrey, more than 800 in the East Midlands and 195 across Tyneside, Wearside, County Durham and Northumberland. In Jersey, all the island's schools were closed
• The M8 motorway between Glasgow and Edinburgh was down to one lane in each direction
• In Kent, the M20 is closed eastbound between J11 and J12 due to the tailback of traffic and volume of HGVs wanting to use the Channel Tunnel
• In Derbyshire, one lane was closed on the M1 southbound, with delays between J29, A617 (Chesterfield) and J28, A38 (Alfreton), because of recovery work and a jack-knifed lorry
• In West Yorkshire, one lane was blocked on the M62 in both directions between J23, A640 (Huddersfield) and J26, M606 (Chain Bar), because of snow

In Sheffield, bride-to-be Tracy Gell had to call off her big day because it turned out to be too much of a white wedding.

She told the BBC: "I had a text from the photographer who couldn't get through, the wedding car couldn't get through, so I decided: I can't wear my dress without ruining it, so we'll postpone."

On Tuesday evening many drivers and rail passengers were stuck for hours as the weather worsened.

Tony Scott started his journey home from London to Tonbridge in Kent at 1730 GMT on Tuesday and had still not arrived home 10 hours later.

The AA had attended 11,300 breakdowns across the UK by 1500 GMT on Wednesday, with the busiest areas said to be London, especially the south of the capital, Yorkshire, Kent, north-east England and Aberdeen.

The motoring organisation said there had been a failure to deal with jams on motorways and major roads, and breakdown service Green Flag said local authorities had not spread enough grit on minor roads.

Mr Hammond said: "Decisions about closing the motorway would be decisions for the Highways Agency and enforcement of traffic regulations are of course, a matter for the police," he told the BBC.

"We will work together with all the agencies concerned to look at what has happened, to look at how best, and how most effectively, to tackle the problems that we have seen in order to get the motorways working, to get the railways working, and to get Britain back to normal as quickly as we possibly can."

Halfords said an additional 16,600 sledges were being shipped in to meet increased demands.

Snowfall disrupts northern Europe's airports and roads

Snow has shut Geneva airport, while eight homeless people have died in after the mercury dropped below -20C in Poland

Continue reading the main story

Related stories

• In pictures: Snow blankets Europe
• More chaos as big freeze goes on

Heavy snowfall has caused disruption across northern Europe, closing airports and bringing traffic to a standstill.

In Poland, eight homeless people died as temperatures fell below -20C (-4F).

Airports were closed in the UK, France and Switzerland. Dozens of flights were affected in Germany and Spain.

Prominent figures including Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero faced delays as they headed to Zurich for the Fifa World Cup vote.

In the Russian capital, Moscow, temperatures dropped to -23.6C (-10.5F), the lowest on record for 1 December since 1931.

In Poland it was even colder, with the eastern city of Bialystok registering temperatures of -26C (-14.8F).

Police in the country appealed to the public to get in touch if they found any homeless people living outdoors after eight homeless men were found frozen to death.

Winter warnings

In Britain, thousands of schools were closed and police in the southern county of Surrey described conditions as the worst they had ever seen.

The Met Office has issued heavy snow warnings for much of the eastern side of Britain and some central areas.

Continue reading the main story

• In pictures: Snow blankets Europe

Passengers faced delays of up to an hour on Eurostar services linking London with Paris and Brussels.

One of Britain's busiest airports, Gatwick, was closed, as was Edinburgh airport. Geneva airport in Switzerland and Lyon-Bron airport in southern France were also closed as staff struggled to clear runways of snow.

There were severe flight delays reported in Frankfurt, Munich, Vienna and Prague.

In France, 12 regions in the frozen east and centre banned the use of lorries, forcing more than 7,000 of them to park overnight.

Thick snow across Germany blocked roads, and caused flight cancellations and school closures. Bild newspaper said it was the coldest start to December for centuries, with some areas reporting temperatures as low as -18C (-0.4F).

Increased demand for gas and electricity saw a rise in prices on Europe's energy markets.

Continue reading the main story

WEATHER AND TRAVEL INFO

• Check the forecast in your area at BBC Weather

"It's insane, there's a lot of panic," one gas market participant was quoted as telling Reuters news agency. "If we have the smallest supply issue it's going to be worrisome."

In northern Italy, where heavy rains have caused severe flooding in some areas this week, the Civil Protection Authority warned more downpours were expected.

Rome's Tiber river came close to overflowing in parts after water levels rose by more than a metre in one day.

In Albania, meanwhile, a state of emergency was declared due to widespread flooding along the Drini River delta north-west of the capital, Tirana.

Laura Tobin on the icy weather conditions across Europe

While the north of the continent shivered, though, it was a different picture in parts of southern Europe, with Cyprus enjoying an unseasonably warm start to December and clocking temperatures close to 30C (86F).

Wikileaks: Russia branded 'mafia state' in recent cable

A senior Spanish prosecutor told the US Embassy in Madrid that Russia, Belarus and Chechnya had become virtual "mafia states", new disclosures of classified material by Wikileaks show.

A cable also questions whether Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is implicated in the Russian mafia.

Another reveals that a powerful Ukrainian businessman told US officials he had ties to Russian organised crime.

The documents are among hundreds being released by the whistle-blower website.

On Wednesday the US online shopping giant Amazon reportedly blocked Wikileaks from its servers - a move welcomed by US officials.

Access to Wikileaks' homepage was sporadic on Wednesday. The website had been using Amazon servers since its Swedish-based servers came under cyber-attack twice earlier this week.

The cables, published by the Guardian newspaper, show that in January 2010, Spanish prosecutor Jose "Pepe" Grinda Gonzales claimed that in Russia, Belarus and Chechnya "one cannot differentiate between the activities of the Government and OC (organised crime) groups".

Judge Grinda led a long investigation into Russian organised crime in Spain, leading to more than 60 arrests.

A cable from the US Embassy in Madrid talks about the "unanswered question" of the extent to which Mr Putin is implicated in the mafia and whether he controls its actions.

Judge Grinda reportedly said that former Russian security agent Alexander Litvinenko thought Russian intelligence controlled organised crime in Russia. Mr Grinda reportedly stated that he believed this thesis was accurate.

In the cable, the judge is reported as saying he has information that certain political parties in Russia operate "hand in hand" with organised crime.

The leaked cables also show that Washington believed Mr Putin was likely to have known about the operation to murder Mr Litvinenko in London in 2006. The Kremlin has denied any involvement.

Wikileaks also released another cable, from the US Embassy in Kiev dated December 2008, which reveals that a Ukrainian businessman with links to the Russia state-run conglomerate Gazprom told the US ambassador he had ties to Russian organised crime.
Continue reading the main story
The Main Leaks So Far

* Fears that terrorists may acquire Pakistani nuclear material
* Several Arab leaders urged attack on Iran over nuclear issue
* US instructs spying on key UN officials
* China's changing relationship with North Korea
* Yemen approved US strikes on militants
* Personal and embarrassing comments on world leaders
* Fears over Pakistan's nuclear programme
* Afghan leader Hamid Karzai freed dangerous detainees

* Wikileaks cables: Key issues

He said he had needed the approval of a gangster called Semyon Mogilevich to get into business.

Mogilevich is believed by European and US law enforcement agencies to be the "boss of bosses" of most Russian Mafia syndicates in the world.

BBC diplomatic correspondent Bridget Kendall says that neither Moscow nor Washington will be happy at being exposed by the latest Wikileaks revelations.

She says the contents of the secret cables will place new strains on their relationship.

In other developments, Interpol has issued a notice asking for information on the whereabouts of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.

Interpol said the Australian was wanted for questioning in Sweden over an alleged sex offence, which he has denied.

On Wednesday the US appointed an anti-terrorism expert to lead efforts to tackle damage caused by the documents' release.

Russell Travers will try to find out how thousands of secret files were taken from government internet files. The White House said he had also been tasked with tightening security inside the US government's computer network.

Wikileaks has so far posted only 505 of the 251,287 messages it says it has obtained. However, all of the messages have been made available to five publications, including the New York Times and the Guardian.

The US has condemned the disclosures as an attack on the world community.

Masih Riset Pasar, Yamaha Tunda Buka Harga Jupiter MX

Motor
Yamaha New Jupiter MX akhirnya
resmi diperkenalkan kepada
masyarakat di Jakarta International
Expo Kemayoran. Meski sudah
dikenalkan resmi, pihak Yamaha
belum memastikan berapa harga
New
Jupiter MX ini.
New Jupiter MX ini akan resmi
dipasarkan kepada masyarakat
pada awal tahun 2011 atau pada
tanggal 1 Januari 2011.
"Karena kami masih melakukan
riset sensitivity atau riset daya tarik
masyarakat, tapi kemungkinan ini
akan lebih mahal sedikit karena
New Jupiter MX ini memiliki
teknologi yang lebih baik," ujar
Presdir PT Yamaha Motor Kencana
Indonesia Dyionisius Beti di Jakarta,
Minggu (28/11/2010).
Sebelumnya New Jupiter MX sudah
mulai dipamerkan beberapa waktu
lalu dalam Jakarta Motorcycle Show
2010.
Yamaha meyakni New Jupiter MX
yang memiliki 2 tipe yakni
AutoClutch dan Full Clutch ini akan
diterima masyarakat, apalagi
melihat penjualan Jupiter MX
selama 5 tahun belakangan ini.
"Dengan tambahan teknologi
dalam New Jupiter MX seperti pada
mesin yang memiliki lima
perputaran lebih cepat atau setara
dengan mesin Yamaha Vixion,
cakram 2 disk dan penambahan
lebar pada ban saya yakin New
Jupiter MX dapat diterima dengan
baik oleh masyarakat," ujarnya.
Pada kesempatan yang sama selain
memperkenalkan produk terbaru
mereka New Jupiter MX, Yamaha
juga mengadakan Final Yamaha
Cup Race di JI Expo Kemayoran.

Indonesia Bisa Alami 8.000 Kali Gempa

Kondisi letak
geografis Indonesia yang berada
pada tiga lempeng yang bergerak
dinamis, mengakibatkan negara
ini sering terjadi gempa bumi dan
dalam setahun bisa mengalami
8.000 kali gempa bumi.
"Indonesia terletak di wilayah ring
of fire pertemuan tiga lempeng
bumi yang bergerak secara
dinamis," ungkap Utusan Khusus
Kepala Unit Kerja Presiden untuk
Pengendalian dan Pengawasan
Pembangunan (UKP4), William
Sabandar, di Makassar, Minggu
(28/11/2010).
Menurutnya, 8.000 gempa bumi
yang terjadi dalam setahun
tersebut memiliki kekuatan di atas
empat skala richter (SR).
Ia mengatakan, pergeseran
lempeng bumi inilah yang
menyebabkan terjadinya gempa
bumi di Indonesia dan juga
disertai dengan gelombang
tsunami seperti yang terjadi di
Aceh, Nias, Mentawai, dan
sejumlah daerah lainnya.
"Selain gempa bumi dengan
kekuatan di atas empat skala
richter, Indonesia juga masih
sering dilanda gempa bumi
dengan kekuatan yang lebih kecil
dengan tingkat intensitas yang
sama," imbuhnya.
"Kondisi geografis yang berada
pada wilayah ring of fire inilah
juga membuat Indonesia
memilikii 128 gunung berapi yang
masih aktif," tambahnya.
Pada bulan lalu, sudah terdapat
sebanyak 22 gunung berapi yang
aktif dan siap meletus kapan saja
serta memuntahkan lahar yang
dapat memicu bencana.
"Gesekan lempeng yang semakin
dinamis telah memicu kembali
aktifnya banyak gunung berapi di
Indonesia, dan bahkan yang telah
tertidur selama ratusan tahun,"
tuturnya.
Hal ini, kata dia, menunjukkan
bahwa masyarakat Indonesia
memang harus semakin
mengakrabkan diri dengan
bencana alam, mengingat kondisi
alam yang menuntutnya seperti
itu.
Hidup akrab dengan bencana ini
harus dimaknai sebagai kesiapan
dan kesiagaan masyarakat
Indonesia menghadapi bencana
yang bisa datang kapan saja.