Are US Marines Expendable?

Deploying US Marines in uninhabited desolate terrain in Afghanistan to secure an area where oil pipelines get built may be considered crucial to the national security of the United States.

After all, oil is vital to keep our cars running, our airplanes flying, our homes heated and our tanks, ships, helicopters and other military vehicles operating. But what remains inexcusable are plans to bivouac more than 3,000 US Marines in a single compound in hostile territory.

Is Petronas on the right track?

Many nations blessed with rich resources have enjoyed economic booms, but many have also been cursed by it. So what is Malaysia’s standing among the world matrix of oil-producing nations, and how well are we managing our oil revenue?

Cyclone knocks out power to 55,000

Helicopters are checking the condition of power lines in north Queensland as 55,000 homes and businesses remain without power, Ergon Energy says.

Cyclone Ului caused extensive damage to power infrastructure when it crossed the coast near Airlie Beach in the Whitsundays early today, packing winds of 200km/h and washing a dozen boats onto the rocks.

Ports still closed in wake of cyclone Ului

Coal terminals in north Queensland remain closed after ex-Tropical Cyclone Ului dumped more than 350 millimetres of rain on the region.

North Queensland Bulk Ports staff are inspecting the Dalrymple Bay terminal, south of Mackay, and the Abbot Point terminal near Bowen, south of Townsville, but no major damage has been reported.

Gas The Next Fuel To Fire Australia's Boom

KARRATHA, Australia -- First gold, then coal and iron ore. Now, a new bonanza is about to be unleashed from beneath Down Under: Australia's got gas.

Projects being ramped up to tap huge undersea fields off the country's northwest could quadruple Australia's exports of liquefied natural gas in the next few years and turn it into what the country's resources minister has called an "energy superpower."

In rural north-central Pa., hope for more jobs from natural gas

COUDERSPORT — The economy in rural north-central Pennsylvania has ebbed and flowed with the region's natural resources.

Lumber once made people rich in a part of the state so desolate it's been nicknamed "God's Country." A little further west, the oil boom that began more than 150 years ago brought some prosperity.

Now a rush on natural gas stored deep underground in the sprawling Marcellus Shale formation has brought hope of more jobs that could help the economy in a region with some of the highest unemployment rates in Pennsylvania.

Oil India, Indian Oil Said to Have Made Gulfsands Rejected Bid

(Bloomberg) -- Oil India Ltd. and Indian Oil Corp. jointly made the bid for Gulfsands Petroleum Plc that the U.K. company with assets in Syria and the Gulf of Mexico rejected last week, three people familiar with the matter said.

The unsolicited approach was “wholly inadequate,” Gulfsands said March 19, without giving details. The bid was at 350 pence a share, the Financial Times reported yesterday, or 10 percent above the March 19 closing price. That would value the London-based company at about 400 million pounds ($601 million), the newspaper said. The offer may be increased, it said.

Kuwait to conduct 'oil lake' treatment forum

KUWAIT: A scientific forum is to be held here between March 22 and 25 on reviewing the latest techniques in treating and containing Kuwait's 'oil lakes' and rehabilitating war-ravaged environments generally. The forthcoming event was announced on Friday by Khalid Al-Mudhaf, the head of Kuwait's Central Committee on War-Damaged Environment Rehabilitation Projects, who revealed that the event will be held under the sponsorship of Minister of Oil and of Information Sheikh Ahmad Abdullah Al-Sabah.

How green are railways?

There is a general view that railways are green whilst all other modes of engine powered travel are not. This is a strange view. Trains need diesel or electric engines to pull them, which in their turn generate emissions including CO2. If we wish to see how much more efficient railways are than cars, buses, coaches, ships, planes and other powered transport, we need to do a proper audit. The figures which result show it all depends. It all depends how the electricity was generated and hwo the double inefficiency of the power station and the electric engine works out. It all depends how new or old the train is, how efficient it is and how many people are on it.

Australian cities need radical changes

AUSTRALIA circa 2050: population 35 million, climate change-induced rising sea levels have flooded the Gold Coast region, apartment blocks are used to grow food and people commute in monorail pods above the sea.

In another city, Australians live on floating island pods with apartments both below and above sea level, the population has shifted from land to the sea because of the sky-rocketing value of disappearing arable land. Climate change has also forced many Australians to move inland and create new cities in the outback, relying on solar power to exist in the inhospitable interior.

These are just a few urban scenarios by some of Australia's leading architects shortlisted for "Ideas for Australian Cities 2050-plus" to be staged at this year's Venice Architecture Biennale.

Sea view

But as well as being a potential cause of devastation, Rayner believes the ocean could also provide a solution to climate change and an impending peak-oil situation. ’The UK doesn’t have many resources left to exploit in terms of hydropower from rivers; it’s not a great place for solar; and there are lots of issues with onshore wind,’ he said. ’The decision to adopt offshore wind to hitting that target is a pretty sound one. But if you think about the scale of these things, each one is as big as the London Eye, so there are some big engineering challenges to delivering that.’

Transition Bloomington helps neighborhoods re-imagine themselves

Imagine that you're driving a car across the vast spaces of an enormous desert, and your gas tank is exactly half empty. This is the perfect time to consider your options for continuing onward or finding shelter; you wouldn't want to wait until the tank is nearly empty. Power and Cooling Capacity Management for Data Centers Learn more, download free white paper. Deploying High-Density Zones in a Low-Density Data Center Learn more, download free white paper. Selecting an Industry-Standard Metric for Data Center Efficiency Learn more, download free white paper. Preventing Data Corruption in the Event of an Extended Power Outage Learn more, download free white paper. Guidance for calculation of efficiency (PUE) in real data centers Learn more, download free white paper. Implementing Energy Efficient Data Centers Learn more, download free white paper. Cooling Strategies for Ultra-High Density Racks and Blade Servers Learn more, download free white paper.

This is the situation the world faces with peak oil: half of all the world's petroleum reserves have been used up. The U.S. Department of Energy's 2005 Hirsch Report noted that peak oil will pose enormous challenges to our economy and lifestyle, and that mitigation efforts will be necessary to ease the transition to a world characterized by scarce oil.

Stewart L. Udall, 90, Conservationist in Kennedy and Johnson Cabinets, Dies

Stewart L. Udall, an ardent conservationist and a son of the West, who as interior secretary in the 1960s presided over vast increases in national park holdings and the public domain, died on Saturday at his home in Santa Fe, N.M. The last surviving member of the original Kennedy cabinet, he was 90.

Renewed Support for an Everglades Land Deal, but Cost Is Still in Question

MIAMI — Gov. Charlie Crist reaffirmed his commitment this week to the $536 million purchase of 73,000 acres of land from United States Sugar, declaring that it would heal both the Everglades and the coastal estuaries that are vital to Florida’s tourist economy.

But with its original plan to borrow money for the deal being questioned by internal auditors, the state water district responsible for the acquisition has begun to explore alternatives that could require severe cuts to restoration projects already in motion — and the sale of a reservoir — or a renegotiated, smaller purchase.

California Tribe Hopes to Woo Salmon Home

SAN FRANCISCO — On Friday night, more than two dozen Native Americans embarked from here on a spiritual mission to New Zealand, where they will ask their fish to come home to California.

The unusual journey centers on an apology, to be relayed to the fish on the banks of the Rakaia River through a ceremonial dance that tribal leaders say has not been performed in more than 60 years.

Life below the melting Himalayan glaciers

In a land steeped in Buddhist tradition, the people of the Tibetan Plateau look at the effects of climate change through a different prism than is currently being used in America. Whereas in America, climate and energy legislation is being held hostage until lawmakers can figure out a way to preserve our materialistic culture, in Tibet, the idea that nothing will get better until we get rid of our materialistic culture permeates.

Reports of inaccuracies surrounding the melting of Himalayan glaciers by 2035 in an IPCC report on climate change caused an uproar in the ranks of the opposition to energy reform in the United States where, within certain ranks, the entire field of climate science was relegated to junk status; but the realities of climate change look quite different on the physical plane than they do in the cognitive one.

Top climate officials urge progress at Mexico summit

CANCUN, Mexico (AFP) – The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has listened to and learned from recent criticism, but the threat of global warming is real and must be tackled, the group's head said Saturday.

• Charles van Commenee sets high standards for GB athletes
• Dwain Chambers, Jessica Ennis and Phillips Idowu tipped for medals

Charles van Commenee is confident that the Great Britain team will return from next weekend's World Indoor Championships in Doha with at least five medals, though he would not say what he expects them to be.

The UK Athletics head coach expects Dwain Chambers, Jessica Ennis, Phillips Idowu, Jenny Meadows and the men's 4x400 metres relay team to be on the podium in Doha.

Van Commenee has already seen an injury-hit squad unexpectedly deliver two gold, two silver and two bronze medals at last summer's World Championships in Berlin, but the Dutchman, recruited specifically to build up a squad that can win medals when London stages the 2012 Olympics, insists that commitment remains his top priority, which is why he sees Doha, the European championships in the summer and next year's world championships as stepping stones to the London Games.

"Athletes have three-year plans and we have quite a few who are preparing for London and Doha doesn't fit in their plans," Van Commenee said. "I am not looking here at the team result, it is not relevant. I am looking at individual progress between Berlin and Doha. We will have five strong medal contenders and we always have a few who knock on the door.

"It is not really important how many medals we win. I want to see if Jenny Meadows [800m] can handle pressure and deal with expectations, if a newcomer like Vicky Hubbard [high jump] will stand up or break. I am very interested in how Greg Rutherford does or Chris Tomlinson [both long jump].

"Normally we win between one and five medals and have only exceeded this once. But the medal tally at these championships is not a reflection of the state of the sport, I am interested in how every individual performs towards the Olympic Games in London.

"I won't have the same perspective at the European championships and will be looking for medals, but it doesn't tell us anything about how strong we are globally and ultimately that is what counts. I understand we need targets and outdoors is probably more interesting because every athlete is aiming to do well in Barcelona.

"But it is all about London. We aim at London although on the way we need to win medals as well."

Looking ahead to 2012, Van Commenee is well aware of the additional pressure that will be on the likes of Ennis, who won heptathlon gold in Berlin in convincing fashion. "Of course I will be speaking to her about her role," he added. "There must be unique dynamics and very few athletes have ever experienced having the role of being the favourite in their home Olympics. Certainly that will require a special approach and special attention because that might be something that is in the way.

"Usually, it is the opponents in the way but this might be something special you have to prepare for."

Ennis has already been touted as one of the "faces" of the London Games and could be under the same sort of pressure Cathy Freeman endured before winning her 400m gold in Sydney 10 years ago.

Van Commenee's preparations for the squad could even include advice from Freeman herself on how to cope with the inevitable expectations.

"It may be good to have a word to Cathy Freeman," said Van Commenee, who is also examining the possibility of fetching in psychologists to steady the nerves of his squad.

Van Commenee is also firmly committed to establishing a pre-Games preparation camp abroad, although his opinion differs from that expressed recently by Sebastian Coe, who believes staying at home is the best option.

"That is his view, I don't agree with that," said Van Commenee, who plans on holding camp in Portugal. "My Australian colleague who was in charge at the Sydney Games had some advice for me which I have taken to heart. One of the things was 'Don't prepare at home.'

"I am not running away from the pressure. You have to embrace the pressure but you also want to be in a quiet environment where you have a guarantee of good weather and don't have your cousin chasing you for tickets."

Environmental campaigner Paul Watson has lost one of his boats in a confrontation but is determined to save the oceans from 'the greed of man'

Friday, 10.30pm, 61 degress South 120 West. Captain Paul Watson is on the bridge of the Steve Irwin, steaming due west at 17 knots in heavy seas past the ice floes of Wilkes Land in northern Antarctica.

Roughly 100 miles ahead of the former Scottish Environment Protection Agency patrol boat, now painted black and flying the jolly roger, is the bulk of the Japanese whaling fleet – mother ship, four harpoon hunter vessels and a security patrol boat – with a licence to kill 935 minke, 50 fin and 50 humpback whales in the next few weeks. Behind the Irwin, near the French Antarctic base of Dumont d'Urville, is the Bob Barker, Watson's second ship. It in turn is being pursued by a second Japanese security ship. Meanwhile, at the bottom of the Southern Ocean is the Ady Gil, the third ship in Captain Watson's anti-whaling navy. The $2.5m space-age catamaran-style, biofuel-powered, ocean-going speedboat sank on Friday morning after being hit by the Shonan Maru 2, one of the Japanese whalers.

"Not hit. Deliberately rammed," corrects Watson, at 59 still the world's least compromising and most romantic environmentalist. On a satellite link he says: "The Gil was almost stationary in the water. [The Shonan Maru 2] changed course abruptly and steered straight into it. One crewman broke two ribs. It was a miracle that no one was killed."

I had travelled with Watson and the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society from Scotland to the Faroe islands in 1999. Watson was even then a notorious figure, not unlike Captain Nemo, the Jules Verne character who roamed the depths of the sea in his submarine, the Nautilus.

"Nemo understood that it did not matter what humans thought, because humanity was the problem. His duty was to save life in the sea from the greed of mankind. I understand that philosophy and I have lived it every day of my adult life," he said.

Back in 1999, his crew of young volunteers were disciplined and clearly in awe of their captain, who accepted no "consensus shit", "abided no drugs" or "friggin' in the riggin'", and who forbade meat-eating aboard his ship. Few had been on a boat before, but everyone had complete confidence in his skills as a mariner and his respect for, and command of, international maritime law. They also expected and hoped for peaceful confrontation and seemed prepared to go to whatever lengths Watson asked of them.

We hunted whalers night and day for a week, but found none. Instead we were buzzed by the Danish air force, boarded by customs officers and ordered by the police to keep away from the islands. When I eventually asked to be put ashore to talk to the Faroese, Watson willingly provided an inflatable and dropped me at midnight on a beach. I was arrested and then imprisoned for illegal entry within minutes. Sea Shepherd clearly has the power to scare communities by doing nothing at all.

Last week Watson was full of praise for the 77 people from 16 countries, including Japan, who are crewing his three ships this year. In 30 years of harassing industrial fishers, he has taken 4,000 volunteers to Antarctica, the Pacific and the Atlantic to try to stop whaling, sealing and illegal fishing. Few have returned anything other than inspired and committed.

The sinking of the Gil was just the latest skirmish in what has become an annual battle between the volunteers for the California-based Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, which Captain Watson founded after leaving Greenpeace in the 1970s, and the Japanese Institute of Cetacean Research, a scientific research body that has effectively become the Japanese government's whalers.

For the last nine years these two small navies have clashed dramatically in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary, an area of 50 million square kilometres (19 million square miles) in which the International Whaling Commission (IWC) has banned all types of commercial whaling.

One year the whaling fleet was chased 3,000km (1,850 miles) through icebergs; another, two Sea Shepherd volunteers were captured and tied to the railings of a Japanese ship after they had been invited on board; three years ago the Japanese allegedly shot at Watson; there have been water cannon battles, and last year the Japanese escalated the war by throwing concussion grenades on the Sea Shepherd boats. Sea Shepherd responded by throwing bottles filled with non-toxic but foul-smelling butyric acid on the Japanese. Each year the accusations have flown and the language has become more colourful: "We are obsessed with stopping the cetacean Death Star, that vicious, cruel killing machine and her fleet of boats armed with explosive harpoons," says Watson.

But what precisely happened last week is still not clear. It has been the subject of official protests by both vessels, and will be investigated by the Australian and Japanese governments, and possibly one or more courts. From videos released by both Watson and the Japanese in the last 48 hours, it appears that the Shonan Maru 2 bore down on the Gil with its water cannon blasting and issuing warnings from its loudspeaker that it had "authority to repel". No one disputes that it then sliced through the bow of the Gil, scattering its crew of six.

The Japanese accuse Sea Shepherd of being "hostile eco-terrorists". "The Sea Shepherd extremism is becoming more violent. Their actions are nothing but felonious behaviour. Aiming directly to the Nisshin Maru crew, the activists have repeatedly fired illegal high-powered laser devices that can produce blindness when irradiated to the naked eye and have fired projectiles containing butyric acid, a substance highly hazardous to the human body including skin and eyes," said a spokesman for the institute.

Yesterday lawyers working on behalf of Sea Shepherd lodged papers in a Dutch court accusing the Japanese of "piracy and violence". They in turn dismissed his statements as lies and accused Sea Shepherd of pollution and using bows and arrows.

But the private war has become more public and visible thanks to the internet, and the "whale wars" now threaten diplomatic relations between Australia and New Zealand and Japan. Both antipodean countries are officially embarrassed by the incidents taking place, but have a public overwhelmingly on Watson's side.

This year the Japanese fleet's position was relayed to Sea Shepherd not unofficially by the Australian navy, as it has been in the past, but first by small boats near Tasmania, and then by outraged holidaymakers aboard the cruise ship Orion, which happened on the whaling fleet as it was refuelling.

Watson is adamant that he is no terrorist. "In 31 years harassing and confronting whalers, sealers and illegal fishers, we have never injured a single person, never been convicted of a felony, or been sued. Sea Shepherd does not condone, nor do we practise, violence," he says. "We agree with the assessment by Martin Luther King that violence cannot be committed against a non-sentient object. Sea Shepherd sometimes damages equipment used for illegal activities, but we have an unblemished record."

"We think [the Japanese] are re-enacting the Second World War," said Watson yesterday. "They see themselves as against the West and that no one will tell them what to do."

But he freely admits damaging property. In a lifetime of confrontations beginning with Canadian sealers, he has used "prop foulers" to sabotage ships, boarded whaling vessels, and sunk several in Iceland and Norway.

"We're not a protest organisation. We intervene against illegal activities, and as far as we're concerned Japanese whalers are poachers. The oceans are being pillaged and we are the only organisation out on the high seas trying to do something about it," he says.

He told me he acted by a martial code culled from the methods of ancient eastern and modern western warfare, and that he expected to die for his cause. He quoted films, read widely, wrote poetry and books, laughed a lot.

Watson claims to have co-founded both Greenpeace and Greenpeace International in the early 1970s (something that Greenpeace disputes), but proved far too much for them. "He was a great warrior brother, yet in terms of the Greenpeace gestalt he seemed possessed by too powerful a drive, too unrelenting a desire to push himself front and centre, shouldering everyone else aside," said his friend Robert Hunter, who died four years ago.

He sailed with Greenpeace many times, and skippered one of its boats in 1972. But he severed all links with the organisation in 1977, after being expelled from the Greenpeace board.

What he wrote in his autobiography 16 years ago holds just as true today, he says: "There are many people who say that what we do is futile, that there is no way to stop the rising tide of human-spawned destruction. There are many who condemn my crew and I for taking the law into our own hands and for taking on the barons of corporate profit. There are some who would like to see us jailed or even dead, so blinded are they to the conceit and folly of their own anthropomorphism.

"I don't care. I do what I do because it is the right thing to do. I am a warrior and it is the way of the warrior to fight superior odds."

A life of protests

In 1969 Paul Watson protested against Russian nuclear testing with the Don't Make a Wave committee, which later evolved into Greenpeace. He then tried to disrupt nuclear tests in the Pacific.

Seals

Watson has opposed the Canadian seal hunt since 1983. He blocked the port at St John's in Newfoundland, and brought the hunt to a near standstill. The hunt was later banned for 10 years after he took Brigitte Bardot to pose with a baby seal on the ice.

Whaling

Watson has outraged the governments of Japan, Iceland, Norway and Denmark by sinking or ramming whaling ships. He has chased the Japanese whaling fleets in Antarctica for nine years, claiming to have prevented the deaths of thousands of whales.

Fishing

Since 2000 Watson's ships have patrolled the Galápagos and Cocos Islands to try to stop illegal fishing, causing consternation among fishing fleets and governments.

• Initial CAS ruling goes against seven Americans
• Chryste Gains among group of Sydney medallists

The United States women's relay teams from the Sydney Olympics have lost a preliminary Court of Arbitration for Sport ruling in their battle to win back the medals stripped from them following Marion Jones' doping offences.

Jones helped the US claim gold in the 4x400metres relay and bronze in the 4x100 nine years ago but has since been stripped of all her medals, including two individual sprint golds, after admitting taking banned substances.

The International Olympic Committee took back all the relay medals last April, leading Andrea Anderson, LaTasha Colander Clark, Jearl Miles-Clark, Torri Edwards, Chryste Gaines, Monique Hennagan and Passion Richardson to appeal the decision to the CAS.

The athletes asked the CAS to determine whether the IOC was entitled to disqualify the relay teams more than seven years after the Sydney Games.

According to rule 25.2.2.4 of the Olympic Charter, which was in force in 2000, "no decision taken in the context of the Olympic Games can be challenged after a period of three years from the day of the closing ceremony of such Games".

However, in the CAS's preliminary ruling today, it upheld the IOC's right to make the decision.

"The CAS panel has considered that the three-year rule did not prevent the IOC from withdrawing medals which were awarded at a victory ceremony because the distribution of medals, which occurs immediately after the race, is not in itself a 'decision'," read a CAS statement.

"If the CAS had decided that the three-year rule was applicable in the present case, the IOC decision of 10 April 2008 would have been annulled."

The CAS will now summon the parties to a hearing and proceed to render a decision on the merits of the dispute.

The world sprint champion Victoria Pendleton is unfazed by moves to give both sexes an equal number of events at Games

The next 48 hours could be the moment that Britain's women track cyclists have been waiting for, with the International Olympic Committee set to give female track racers complete parity with their male counterparts at five events each for the London Games. The IOC executive board today began considering what is set to be the most radical and controversial rejig of the cycling programme since the sport went open in 1996 and the outcome should be known tomorrow or Friday.

Cycling's governing body has proposed that to make it identical to the men's programme, the women's track schedule should include four new events. Three are already raced by the men: the keirin motorpaced race, the team sprint – three riders over three laps for men, two and two for women – and the team pursuit, for three riders over three kilometres. The omnium, which is five races over five days for a general classification, would be new for both men and women. The match sprint for men and women would be unchanged.

The individual pursuits for men and women over 4,000m and 3,000m, points races for both sexes and the two-man Madison relay are all likely to be dropped, hence the controversy of the proposed changes. The possible loss of the pursuits has been opposed by current British Olympic champions Bradley Wiggins and Rebecca Romero – pursuit gold medalists in Beijing – and Sir Chris Hoy, who swept the board in the match sprint, team sprint and keirin in China last year.

The American track rider Taylor Phinney, who took over from Britain's Bradley Wiggins as world pursuit champion this year, spearheaded an online petition to save the individual pursuit, and delivered more than 4,400 signatures to the IOC on Monday. A letter of complaint, signed by international track riders – apparently all male – has been sent to the IOC and UCI. Lance Armstrong and Chris Boardman are among the riders who have spoken out.

The pursuit was only included in the Olympic programme at Tokyo in 1960, but supporters of the event point out that there has been a medium-distance endurance event in the Games programme since the modern Olympics began in 1896. They contend that dropping the race is the equivalent of athletics dispensing with the 1500m. A compromise has been proposed which would retain the event.

At first sight the principal British beneficiary of the proposed changes would appear to be Victoria Pendleton, Olympic women's sprint champion and a possible favourite in the keirin and team sprint where she has taken world titles in the past. But after bemoaning the lack of parity in the past, and complaining that she had only one medal chance to three for her male counterparts, Pendleton now feels that the gender question has become bigger than her personal success story.

"This has been the bane of my life," she said recently. "It became very clear to me if you're going to be successful in the media, it helps if you have a story. I didn't have one in Beijing. I went in as world champion and favourite, and won. So I thought, tell you what my story is, it's that it's so unfair that men have more chances to win than women. I didn't rant on about it, but it became the only thing that people wanted to talk to me about."

Dave Brailsford, British Cycling's performance director, has described the changes as "exciting and innovative" and set his coaches to work to devise new programmes before the news was even made public. As well as Pendleton, there should be opportunities for her fellow sprinters Jessica Varnish and Becky James, while the women's team pursuit trio of Wendy Houvenaghel, Lizzie Armitstead and Joanna Rowsell could also have their eyes on London after tomorrow.

Brailsford has called a press conference for tomorrow morning to update on progress on Team Sky, Britain's new cycling team. A Sky spokesman tonight refused to comment on whether the announcement would concern Wiggins, who finished fourth in this year's Tour de France.