Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Activists stage colorful anti-Rio+20 demo in central Rio

With placards, balloons and chain saws, thousands of militants staged a good-natured and colorful protest in central Rio Wednesday against the UN Rio+20 summit on a 'green' economy.

The march drew environmentalists, workers, civil servants, black militants, homosexuals, indigenous peoples and feminists on the day world leaders kicked off the UN summit on sustainable development.

Organizers said 50,000 people turned up but police estimate the crowd at no more than 20,000.

The protesters came to denounce, among other things, Amazon rainforest deforestation, the plight of indigenous peoples, poor salary conditions of public employees and capitalist attempts to hijack the 'green economy'.

The event was organized by 200 civil society groups attending the 'People's Summit' being held as a counterpoint to the official Rio+20 summit that runs through Friday.

'Rio+20 represents a retreat and a bid to turn nature into a commodity,' said Ana Elisa Bacellar, a 34-year-old civil servant sporting fitted with a clown's nose and handcuffs.

There was a huge Brazilian flag and an effigy of Brazilian President Dilma Rouseff with hands up.

A performance by the NGO The Spoon Revolution showed a woman dressed as planet Earth being flogged by a big landownwer shouting 'more meat for the United States' while his employee, wearing a blood-stained apron reading 'Mac Killer' and 'Murder King' chases a dummy cow with an ax.

'We are fighting to change consumption habits and against big food companies,' said Mariana Terra, a 23-year-old history student who planned the show.

Greenpeace activists shouted: 'Who does not jump is a ruralist,' in a direct criticism of the pro-agribusiness bloc that pushed for reform of Brazil's forest code.

Rousseff last month vetoed parts of the new forest code that environmentalists said would have increased deforestation in the Amazon.

The new code maintains a requirement to protect 80 percent of the forest in rural areas of the Amazon and 35 percent of the sertao, or arid hinterland of northeastern Brazil.

But it eases restrictions for small landowners who face difficulties in recovering illegally cleared land.

Also demonstrating were some native Guatemalans who are in Rio along with some 1,600 other indigenous peoples from around the world attending the People's Summit.

'We are here to defend the natural resources and the territories of our people, threatened by mining interests and hydro-electrical,' said a 40-year-old Guatemalan woman wearing a colorful skirt.

Activists from Brazil's black and gay communities also marched to demand a radical transformation of the world economy while a group of South Koreans railed against nuclear energy.

'We want world leaders present here to promote sustainable development and poverty eradication and cut nuclear weapons,' said Nam Boo Won, an official representing 21 South Korean environmentalist groups.

Also parading was a gyrating samba queen in golden sequins, escorted by a life-sized bread tank with a garden inside to underline the realistic possibility of eradicating hunger and extreme poverty by redirecting military spending.



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Commercial Space Travel May Bring Science Benefits, Advocates Say

Launching NASA astronauts to the International Space Station aboard commercial spaceships may have its risks, but the payoffs from lower-cost flights to the orbiting outpost, and expanded scientific use of the microgravity environment, are expected to be considerable, industry officials told lawmakers today (June 20).

William Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for NASA's Human Exploration Operations Directorate, testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation Subcommittee on Science and Space this morning (June 20) to discuss the risks and opportunities associated with the burgeoning commercial spaceflight industry.

By supporting the development of new private spaceships, NASA will be able to purchase flights to and from the space station with reduced cost and oversight.

'These two things are allowing NASA to focus its talents on the bigger goals: the utilization of the International Space Station and developing the next generation of hardware and skills that will allow us to extend human presence in the solar system beyond low-Earth orbit,' Gerstenmaier said.

NASA is currently relying on Russian rockets and capsules to ferry American astronauts to and from the orbiting complex, but the agency is hoping to begin flights on homegrown commercial vehicles by 2017. [Now Boarding: The Top 10 Private Spaceships]

Gerstenmaier stressed that as these spacecraft undergo rigorous testing, there may be setbacks, and it is important for the government to understand the setbacks and not clamp down on the industry in ways that will stifle progress and innovation.

'We need to anticipate and not overreact to these problems,' Gerstenmaier said. 'These problems will occur and should not be viewed as a major failure.'

The hearing included comments from Pamela Melroy, senior technical adviser in the Office of Commercial Space Transportation at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Gerald Dillingham, director of civil aviation issues at the U.S. Government Accountability Office, Michael Gold, director of D.C. operations and business growth at Bigelow Aerospace, and Michael Lopez-Alegria, president of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation.

Several of the representatives spoke about the anticipated benefits of commercial spaceflight, which include being able to use the International Space Station to its full research potential, while also providing a platform for private companies to perform research and development in microgravity.

Scientific experiments, such as vaccine development, already occur aboard the space station, but having more cost-effective means of reaching low-Earth orbit could revolutionize certain industries, such as pharmaceuticals and materials science.

'That's just scratching the surface,' Gold said. 'We have to develop regular, robust and reliable access to space to bring that to fruition.'

Once commercial vehicles are available, NASA intends to add another astronaut to the space station's typical six-person crew. This means purchasing four seats per flight, at an anticipated rate of two flights a year, Gerstenmaier said.

'We're still off investigating what makes sense,' he said. 'It'll be on the order of about two flights per year with four confirmed seats on those flights, but we're looking at how we can use those seats effectively.'

Today's hearing comes after NASA and the FAA announced earlier this week that they had signed an agreement to establish licensing standards for commercial missions to the International Space Station.

Follow Denise Chow on Twitter @denisechow or SPACE.com @Spacedotcom. We're also on Facebook and Google+.

Copyright 2012 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Rio 20 years later: Pollution up, forests down

WASHINGTON (AP) - Since world leaders last gathered in Rio de Janeiro to talk about the state of the Earth, temperatures have climbed and disasters have mounted. As diplomats discuss climate, sustainability and biodiversity, here is Earth by the numbers since 1992:

TEMPERATURES: The average annual global temperature has increased 0.58 degrees Fahrenheit (0.32 degrees Celsius) since 1992 based on 10-year running averages, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Every year since 1992 has been warmer than the year of the original Rio conference.

POLLUTION: Global levels of the chief heat-trapping gas, carbon dioxide, climbed 10 percent from nearly 358 parts per million in April 1992 to 394 ppm this past April, NOAA said.

DISASTERS: Since 1992, natural disasters have affected 4.4 billion people worldwide, killed 1.3 million people, and cost $2 trillion in damages, according to the United Nations. Earthquakes, storms, extreme temperatures and floods were the biggest killers.

FORESTS: Since 1990, the world's primary forest areas have decreased about 740 million acres (300 million hectares), according to the United Nations. That's an area larger than Argentina.



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Germany might miss electric car target, official says

Germany will miss its target of one million electric cars on its roads by 2020 without more incentives, the country's coordinator on electric transport policy warned on Wednesday.

'I've already said that without additional incentives we will reach more of a figure of half a million,' Henning Kagermann, who oversees Germany's electric mobility strategy, told reporters.

Germany set a target in 2008 of having one million electric cars on its roads in 2020 and said it wanted to be a pilot market in the field.

Under the plan, it has given itself until 2014 to prepare the market, with mass production of electric cars due to kick in from 2017.

But Transport Minister Peter Ramsauer called at the same press conference for 'optimistic realism' and spoke of 'making Germany the number one (market) for the electric car' rather than re-stating the one-million target.

The head of the powerful Federation of German Industry (VDA), Matthias Wissmann, has said that by 2014, German manufacturers will be able to offer 15 different models of electric vehicles.

But he insisted on the need to improve the vehicles' batteries to provide electric cars with more autonomy outside heavily built-up areas.

The government offers tax incentives to electric car drivers but campaigners say much more must be done to encourage people to switch from petrol or diesel to electric vehicles.



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World leaders open Rio summit on 'green' economy

World leaders kicked off a three-day summit on environment and poverty in Rio de Janeiro on Wednesday to a warning from UN chief Ban Ki-moon that 'time is not on our side' for fixing a mounting list of problems.

Ban formally opened the Rio+20 summit on sustainable development which brings together 191 UN members, including 86 presidents and heads of government.

The high-profile event comes 20 years after Rio's first Earth Summit when nations vowed to roll back climate change, desertification and species loss.

The summit was launched to a three-minute movie, 'State of the Planet: Welcome to the Anthropocene' that gave a visual trip through the dramatic changes in the environment since the Industrial Revolution.

The Anthropocene is the name given by many scientists for a new era in Earth's history. It derives from Greek words to indicate the era of humans.

Summit participants then heard a moving appeal by Brittany Trilford, a 17-year-old student from New Zealand, challenging leaders to lay the foundation for a more sustainable world.

'I stand here with fire in my heart. I'm confused and angry at the state of the world. We are here to solve the problems that we have caused as a collective, to ensure that we have a future,' Trilford, winner of the 'Date with History' youth video speech contest, said.

'I am here to fight for my future... I would like to end by asking you to consider why you are here and what you can do here. I would like you to ask yourselves: Are you here to save face? Or are you here to save us?'

A total of 191 speakers are expected to take the floor until Friday when the summit leaders are to give their seal of approval to a 53-page draft document agreed on by their negotiators Tuesday.

The draft outlines measures for tackling the planet's many environmental ills and lifting billions out of poverty through policies that nurture rather than squander natural resources.

In his remarks, the UN secretary general praised Brazil, the summit host, for securing a deal on the summit's final draft statement.

'I am pleased that negotiations have reached a successful conclusion... We are now in sight of a historic agreement,' the UN chief said.

'The world is watching to see if words will translate into action as we know they must. Rio+20 is not an end but a beginning. It's time for all of us to think globally and long term, beginning here now in Rio, for time is not on our side,' he said.

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, who was elected president of the conference, said she had no doubt 'that we will be up to the challenges that the global situation imposes on us.'

As the summit got under way, eight multilateral development banks announced that they would set aside $175 billion to finance sustainable transport systems over the next decade.

The pledge was made jointly by the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, African Development Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, CAF-Development Bank of Latin America, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, European Investment Bank and Islamic Development Bank.

Transport is one of the fastest-growing source of greenhouse gases, driven especially by urban growth in giant emerging economies.

Around a billion people are likely to move to cities over the next 20 years, which means traffic congestion, air pollution and road accidents will become major urban challenges.

Some of the most contentious issues discussed at the conference were proposed measures to promote a green economy and the 'Sustainable Development Goals' that are set to replace the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals after they expire in 2015.

Connie Hedegaard, the European Union commissioner for climate change, said Europe had pushed for a more ambitious text.

'I think that many Europeans, including the ministers, the presidency, the commission, fought for more ambition, fought for more commitments, more deadlines,' she told AFP. 'We do not get everything we want, but we secure progress.

Environmentalist groups were scathing in their criticism of the draft.

'We were offered a common vision of inaction and destruction,' Daniel Mittler, political director of Greenpeace International, told AFP.

'There's absolutely nothing there for people and the planet,' he added.

The leaders, including French President Francois Hollande, South African President Jacob Zuma, Prime Ministers Manmohan Singh of India and Wen Jiabao of China, will hear a message from astronauts in the International Space Station on Wednesday.

But US President Barack Obama, British Prime Minister David Cameron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel will be absent.



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How New 'Mood Ring' Glasses Let You See Emotions

Evolution has tailored the human eye for detecting red, green, blue and yellow in a person's skin, which reveals areas where that person's blood is oxygenated, deoxygenated, pooled below the surface or drained. We subconsciously read these skin color cues to perceive each other's emotions and states of health. Rosy cheeks can suggest good health, for example, while a yellowish hue hints at fear.

Now, researchers have created new glasses, called O2Amps, which they say amplify the wearer's perception of blood physiology, augmenting millions of years of eye evolution.

'Our eyes have been optimized to sense spectral changes in skin color,' said Mark Changizi, an evolutionary anthropologist and director of human cognition at 2AI Labs in Boise, Idaho. 'It turns out you can do even better, because other parts of the spectrum that we perceive in skin are just noise (they don't provide useful information). If you get rid of the noise, you're amplifying the signal.' [Red-Green & Blue-Yellow: The Stunning Colors You Can't See]

Based on Changizi's color perception research, he and his colleagues have designed three versions of O2Amps, which are currently being sold to medical distributors and will hit wider markets in 2013.

Each of the three designs filters light in a different way, for a specific purpose: 'Vein-finders' increase visibility of red, oxygenated blood by heightening the contrast with green, deoxygenated blood, in order to help nurses and clinicians quickly locate patient's veins. 'Hemo-finders' exaggerate the color difference between blue-toned skin regions where blood is pooled and yellowish regions drained of blood, giving people a 'zombie appearance,' Changizi said. Those are intended for use by paramedics and other emergency personnel.

The third kind, 'health-monitors,' enhance the wearer's perception of contrasts between red and green and between yellow and blue skin. These glasses will be used by doctors, who cite skin color when making about 15 percent of their diagnoses, but they'll also enable people in general to more easily detect health and emotional cues in those around them, by 'enhancing the natural health-sense we evolved,' Changizi, author of 'The Vision Revolution' (BenBella Books, 2009), told Life's Little Mysteries.

'If you're angry, you get red. When you're showing weakness, the opposite is true - your blood becomes deoxygenated and your skin appears greener,' he said. 'Yellow is associated with fear because the blood gets pulled out of your extremities and flows into your organs. The opposite of being yellow with fear is being blue, which your skin exhibits when you're sedate. These are the kinds of things that are being signaled with these color signals. And whereas muscular facial expression signals can be faked, it's harder to fake actually being red in the face with anger, or feeling weak.'

Expect to see these 'mood-ring' sunglasses in stores sometime next year. 'We're in conversations with Maui Jim, Luxottica (which owns Oakley) and other companies,' Changizi said. 'Color enhancement is something these companies are already interested in. Well, color vision evolved among primates to help us understand emotions and signals in skin. Now that we know what color vision is for, we can design eyewear specifically for it.'

Follow Natalie Wolchover on Twitter @nattyover. Follow Life's Little Mysteries on Twitter @llmysteries. We're also on Facebook & Google+.

Copyright 2012 Lifes Little Mysteries, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Killings of environmentalists appear to be on rise

BANGKOK (AP) - The eulogies called Chut Wutty one of the few remaining activists in Cambodia brave enough to fight massive illegal deforestation by the powerful. The environmental watchdog was shot by a military policeman in April as he probed logging operations in one of the country's last great forests.

Nisio Gomes was the chief of a Brazilian tribe struggling to protect its land from ranchers. Masked men gunned him down in November; his body, quickly dragged into a pickup, has not been seen since.

Around the world, sticking up for the environment can be deadly, and it appears to be getting deadlier.

People who track killings of environmental activists say the numbers have risen dramatically in the last three years. Improved reporting may be one reason, they caution, but they also believe the rising death toll is a consequence of intensifying battles over dwindling supplies of natural resources, particularly in Latin America and Asia.

Killings have occurred in at least 34 countries, from Brazil to Egypt, and in both developing and developed nations, according to an Associated Press review of data and interviews.

A report released Tuesday by the London-based Global Witness said more than 700 people - more than one a week - died in the decade ending 2011 'defending their human rights or the rights of others related to the environment, specifically land and forests.' They were killed, the environmental investigation group says, during protests or investigations into mining, logging, intensive agriculture, hydropower dams, urban development and wildlife poaching.

The death toll reached 96 in 2010 and 106 last year, said the report, which was released as world leaders gathered in Rio de Janeiro for a conference on sustainable development. The report's annual totals for the six prior years range from 37 in 2004 to 64 in 2008.

More than three-quarters of the killings Global Witness tallied were in three South American countries: Brazil, Colombia and Peru. Another 50 deaths occurred in the Philippines. All have bloody land-rights struggles between indigenous groups and powerful industries.

Global Witness' figures are much higher that those that Bill Kovarik, a communications professor at Virginia's Radford University, has been compiling since 1996. He focuses on slayings of environmental leaders and does not include deaths in protests that are counted in the Global Witness report. But Kovarik, too, has noticed a substantial jump: from eight in 2009 to 11 in 2010 and 28 last year.

'For many years intolerant regimes like Russia and China and military dictatorships tolerated environmental activists. That was the one thing you could do safely, until some crossed into the political area,' Kovarik said. 'Now, environmentalism has become a dangerous form of activism, and that is relatively new.'

Both Kovarik and Global Witness believe even more killings have gone unreported, especially in relatively closed societies in countries such as Myanmar, Laos and China. Global Witness said there is an 'alarming lack of systematic information on killing in many countries and no specialized monitoring at the international level.'

The dead last year included Rev. Fausto Tentorio, an Italian Catholic priest who fought against mining companies to protect the ancestral lands of the Manobo tribe in the southern Philippines. Affectionately known as 'Father Pops,' he was buried in a coffin made from a favorite mahogany tree he had planted.

In Thailand, where at least 20 environmental activists have been killed over the past decade, seven hired gunmen were paid $10,000 to kill Thongnak Sawekchinda, a veteran campaigner against polluting, coal-fired factories in his province near Bangkok. Powerful figures believed to have ordered the slaying are yet to be apprehended.

In developing countries, bolder and more numerous activists have come into sharper conflict with governments and their cronies or local and foreign companies, some with low environmental and ethical standards. These are moving in to 'industrialize' areas where rights of the local people are traditional rather than clearly defined by modern laws.

'It is a well-known paradox that many of the world's poorest countries are home to the resources that drive the global economy. Now, as the race to secure access to these resources intensifies, it is poor people and activists who increasingly find themselves in the firing line,' Global Witness said.

Julian Newman of the London-based Environmental Investigation Agency said the killings will only get worse because one of the key flashpoints - land ownership - ignites powerful passions.

'To people protecting their lands, their forests, it's very personal, and they suffer when confronted with influential forces who have protection, be it the police in Indonesia or thugs in China,' Newman said.

Targeted assassinations, disappearances followed by confirmed deaths, deaths in custody and during clashes with security forces are being reported. The killers are often soldiers, police or private security guards acting on behalf of businesses or governments. Credible investigations are rare; convictions more so.

'It's so easy to get someone killed in some of these countries. Decapitate the leader of the movement and then buy off everyone else - that's standard operating procedure,' says Phil Robertson, Asia deputy director of Human Rights Watch.

The countries where environmental killings are most common share similarities: a powerful few, with strong links to officialdom, and many poor and disenfranchised dependent on land or forests for livelihoods, coupled with strong activist movements which are more likely to report the violence.

Environmental groups say it is time to build a comprehensive database of such violence and mount unified campaigns.

'In Asia there has been a rise for some years but this has been off the radar of international NGOs until recently,' says Pokpong Lawansiri, Asia head for the Dublin-based Front Line Defenders. 'Political rights activists usually have international connections but environmental ones are often teachers, community leaders and villagers, so they have little profile.'

Robertson called for 'a waves-to-the-beach strategy. It can be small and irregular but it always has to keep coming.'

'Without that constant level of concern and anger, things won't change. Governments and companies play for time and for most of the victims and their families time is not on their side,' he said.



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Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Diplomats agree on "weak" text for Rio+20 summit

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - Diplomats from over 190 countries agreed on a draft text on green global development on Tuesday to be approved this week at a summit in Rio de Janeiro, but environmentalists complained the agreement was too weak.

The summit, known as Rio+20, was supposed to hammer out aspirational, rather than mandatory sustainable development goals across core areas like food security, water and energy, but the draft text agreed upon by diplomats failed to define those goals or give clear timetables toward setting them.

It is 'telling that nobody in that room adopting the text was happy. That's how weak it is,' the European Union's climate commissioner Connie Hedegaard said on social network Twitter.

The text 'has too much 'take note' and 'reaffirm' and too little 'decide' and 'commit'. (The) big task now for U.N. nations to follow up' on this, she added.

Expectations were low for the summit because politicians' attention is more focused on the euro zone crisis, a presidential election in the United States and turmoil in the Middle East than on the environment.

The first Rio Earth summit in 1992 paved the way for a global treaty on biodiversity, and the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gases, which is due to expire this year. The Rio+20 moniker is a nod to the 1992 summit.

Heads of state and ministers, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, French President Francois Hollande and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, will meet with diplomats representing other nations from Wednesday for three days to discuss the text and possibly make some changes to its wording.

Observers do not expect major amendments.

U.S. special envoy for climate change, Todd Stern, told reporters on Tuesday he did not expect the document to change much after heads of state meet to discuss it.

'We don't have anything that we are expecting to try to drive into the document that is not there yet,' he said.

'OVER BEFORE IT'S STARTED'

Environmental groups criticized the text, saying it omitted or watered down important proposals and challenged heads of state to act urgently to respond to climate change.

'This summit could be over before it's started. World leaders arriving tonight must start afresh. Rio+20 should be a turning point,' said Oxfam spokesman Stephen Hale.

'There's no sign of that here. Almost a billion hungry people deserve better.'

The draft text omitted a clause calling for governments to phase out fossil fuel subsidies, which have nearly tripled since 2009, despite a pledge by G20 countries to eliminate them.

Phasing out fossil fuel subsidies by 2020 would reduce annual global energy demand by 5 percent and carbon dioxide emissions by nearly 6 percent, according to the International Energy Agency.

Oil producing countries, including Venezuela and Canada, blocked inclusion of the clause, despite a huge social media push on Monday to include phase-out language in the text, with over 100,000 tweets on Twitter with the hashtag

Dead man walking: Nokia brings 41-megapixel 808 PureView Symbian phone to U.S.

date-us-symbian' >

Nokia on Tuesday announced that its "unique" 808 PureView smartphone will soon launch in the United States. Nokia's new smartphone is indeed unique in a number of ways: it's the first Nokia phone to use a 41-megapixel "PureView" camera that oversamples pixels and combines up to seven pixels at a time to create one "PurePixel," which the company says helps to eliminate noise. The device is also unique because it is powered by the Symbian operating system, which is currently in the midst of a long, drawn-out walk down the green mile, having been replaced by Windows Phone. Nokia 808 PureView preorders will be available from Amazon starting next week, and the device will cost $699 with no service contract. The smartphone will operate on both AT&T and T-Mobile in the U.S., though data speeds will be limited to 2G on T-Mobile's network.

Read

Diplomats agree on "weak" text for Rio+20 green summit

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - Diplomats from over 190 countries agreed on a draft text on green global development on Tuesday to be approved this week at a summit in Rio de Janeiro, but environmentalists said the agreement was too weak.

The summit, known as Rio+20 because it comes 20 years after the first Rio environmental summit, is aimed at providing clarity on proposed 'sustainable development goals,' a loose tripod of economic, environmental and social objectives that proponents believe could help guide global development.

But the text agreed to by diplomats early on Tuesday failed to define those goals, promising only more rounds of talks to clarify them in the near future. They did specify exactly when.

It is 'telling that nobody in that room adopting the text was happy. That's how weak it is,' the European Union's climate commissioner Connie Hedegaard said on social network Twitter.

The text 'has too much 'take note' and 'reaffirm' and too little 'decide' and 'commit'. (The) big task now for U.N. nations to follow up' on this, she added.

Expectations were low for the summit because politicians' attention is more focused on the euro zone crisis, a presidential election in the United States and turmoil in the Middle East than on the environment.

The first Rio Earth summit in 1992 paved the way to a global treaty on biodiversity, and the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gases, which is due to expire this year.

Heads of state including Russian President Vladimir Putin and French President Francois Hollande, and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will meet with diplomats representing other nations from Wednesday for three days to discuss the text and possibly make some changes to its wording.

Observers do not expect major amendments.

Environmental groups criticized the text, saying it omitted or watered down important proposals and challenged heads of state to act urgently to respond to climate change.

'This summit could be over before it's started. World leaders arriving tonight must start afresh. Rio+20 should be a turning point,' said Oxfam spokesman Stephen Hale.

'There's no sign of that here. Almost a billion hungry people deserve better.'

Others were slightly more optimistic.

'The outcome document does not have the ambition needed to save the planet or the poor but it has not taken us backwards, particularly given our initial fears that Rio+20 might be Rio-40,' representing a retreat from current initiatives, said Meena Raman of the Third World Network NGO.

Separately, in a meeting of big-city mayors at an old fortress in Rio, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and colleagues from around the world sought to show how cities, can make progress even if a multi-national agreement isn't possible.

Cities are responsible for up to three-quarters of global greenhouse gases.

Measures already underway in major cities, the mayors said, are on track to reduce their combined emission of greenhouse gases by 248 million tons by 2020, an amount equal to the current annual emissions of Mexico and Canada together.

The measures, the mayors said, include everything from better waste management to more efficient lighting, and would include biofuel and electric-powered municipal transport.

Noting the sluggish pace of the multi-national negotiations, Bloomberg said cities 'aren't arguing with each other. We're going out there and making progress.'

As chairman of the C40, as the mayors group is known, Bloomberg led the day-long discussions and toured a local slum with Rio Mayor Eduardo Paes.

(Additional reporting by Paulo Prada; editing by Todd Eastham)



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Monday, June 18, 2012

Samsung eyes enterprise with SAFE-branded Galaxy S III



Samsung on Monday announced that its upcoming Galaxy S III will be the company's first SAFE (Samsung Approved for Business)-branded smartphone. The new branding indicates that a Samsung device includes a host of features that optimize it for use in a business environment. Among the enterprise-focused features mentioned by Samsung in its announcements are on-device AES-256 bit encryption, enhanced Microsoft Exchange support and integrated support for various Virtual Private Network (VPN) and Mobile Device Management (MDM) solutions. "It's now safe to say that the 'Next Big Thing in Enterprise' is here with the near-term availability of SAFE-branded Galaxy S III devices at five U.S. carriers," said Samsung Mobile's VP of enterprise sales, Tim Wagner. "The highly desirable, SAFE-branded and QA-tested Galaxy S III smartphone systematically defragments Android to provide a consistent level of IT compliance for individuals who demand the very best in both their personal and professional lives." The Galaxy S III will launch on Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and U.S. Cellular by July. Samsung's full press release follows below.

Samsung Makes Android SAFET for Enterprises,
Offers Trade-In Program to Upgrade to the Galaxy S III


Samsung is the First to Launch a Quality Assured, Enterprise-Compliant Android Smartphone

DALLAS - June 18, 2012 - With the AndroidTM operating system projected to be the No. 1 platform for enterprise smartphones by 2013[1], Samsung Telecommunications America, LLC (Samsung Mobile) is simplifying enterprise adoption with the introduction of SAFE (Samsung Approved for Enterprise) and the first SAFE-branded smartphone in the United States, the Galaxy S® III, which will be available at AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless and US Cellular by July. To aid prosumers and corporations in accessing the most innovative smartphone on the market, Samsung is also introducing SAFE2SWITCH, a trade-up program that offers competitive pricing for qualifying smartphones for both individuals and enterprise customers.


SAFE - Optimized for the Enterprise

SAFE provides a comprehensive approach to making Android devices secure and manageable by systematically meeting the rapidly evolving needs of IT and the growing number of businesses allowing employees to "bring your own device" (BYOD) to work. Samsung created SAFE as a way to defragment the Android OS across multiple versions from Gingerbread to Ice Cream Sandwich at U.S. carriers. Out of the box, the SAFE-branded Galaxy S III supports a full suite of enterprise-ready features and capabilities with support for 338 IT Policies.[2] This includes on-device AES-256 bit encryption, enhanced support for Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync and support for industry-leading Virtual Private Network (VPN) and Mobile Device Management (MDM) solutions.

Over the last 12 months, Samsung has surpassed its next nearest handset and smartphone competitors to become No. 1 globally[3] and now has its sights set on the enterprise. Working closely with enterprise customers and industry-leading solutions providers, Samsung developed a thorough quality assurance program. This program begins with MDM and VPN solutions providers using Samsung's software development kit to deeply integrate their solution on the SAFE device. Once the development effort is completed, Samsung and the solution provider then thoroughly test and verify the device's support for the MDM and/or VPN software. This collaboration, coupled with the testing process, creates solutions that are optimized for SAFE devices and enterprise use including adoption within regulated industries such as healthcare, financial services and government.

"It's now safe to say that the 'Next Big Thing in Enterprise' is here with the near-term availability of SAFE-branded Galaxy S III devices at five U.S. carriers," said Tim Wagner, Vice President and General Manager of Enterprise Sales at Samsung Mobile. "The highly desirable, SAFE-branded and QA-tested Galaxy S III smartphone systematically defragments Android to provide a consistent level of IT compliance for individuals who demand the very best in both their personal and professional lives."

Galaxy S III - Powerful, Collaborative, Secure

The Galaxy S III offers secure features and capabilities that may be used in a wide range of business situations to improve efficiency and productivity.

  • AllShare Play - Group Cast: Securely share PowerPoint presentations and PDFs with business partners also using Galaxy S III devices
  • Share Shot: Quickly and easily compile and share photos with colleagues and contacts
  • S Beam One Touch Sharing (NFC and Wi-Fi Direct): Quickly exchange contact and meeting information or company documents by simply tapping phones together. S Beam can also be controlled via an MDM solution.
  • Intelligent Display and Motion: Focus on the job at hand with intuitive features like Direct Call and Smart Stay
  • HD Super AMOLEDTM Display: Review detailed plans or blueprints with brilliant 4.8" HD Super AMOLED display on second-generation rugged Corning® Gorilla® Glass
  • Samsung TecTiles: NFC programmable tags and mobile application transform how businesses, both large and small, engage their customers
SAFE2SWITCH Prosumer / Enterprise Trade-In Program

With the launch of the SAFE-branded Galaxy S III, Samsung is announcing the availability of a trade-up program called SAFE2SWITCH which simplifies the transition to Samsung SAFE devices from Samsung or other manufacturers' smartphones. Both prosumers and corporate customers alike can take advantage of this program which offers very competitive trade-in values in real-time from their existing smartphone or Internet-connected device. For more details, visit www.samsungsafe2switch.com.

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CEOs pledge sustainability, urge 'green revolution'

Business leaders gathered at a Rio+20 conference Monday pledged sustainable policies and joined a call for world leaders to usher in 'a green industrial revolution' to save the planet.

Two days before a UN summit on sustainable development opens here, 1,200 CEOs wrapped up a four-day meeting with more than 150 voluntary commitments to greater energy efficiency, reforestation and a lower carbon footprint and other green policies.

Forty-five chief executives vowed to make water security a strategic priority and called for decisive action by governments.

'Problems related to water availability, quality and sanitation are undermining development in many regions of the world -- exacting an enormous human cost while also undermining critical life-giving ecosystems,' they said.

Signatories include chiefs of global companies such as Pepsico, Coca Cola, Nestle, Saint-Gobain, Royal Dutch Shell, Akzo Nobel, Bayer, Heineken and Pernod Ricard.

Roughly 800 million people around the world lack access to safe drinking water, and 2.5 billion lack basic sanitation, according to the United Nations.

The UN Global Compact, the sponsor of the business forum, said it tallied more than 150 'time-bound, measurable commitments' on which companies are required to report annually.

The commitments centered on the forum's six core themes: energy and climate, water and ecosystems, agriculture and food, social development, urbanization and cities, economy and financing.

US chemicals giant Dupont pledged $10 billion to research and development and announced plans to launch 4,000 new products by late 2020 to produce more food, enhance nutrition and curb food waste.

US technology titan Microsoft vowed to achieve net zero emissions for its data centers, software development centers, software development labs, offices and employee air travel by boosting energy efficiency and buying renewable energy.

Global clothing retailer H&M said it would upgrade to 100 percent sustainable cotton -- organic or recycled -- in its cotton garments while US sporstwear giant Nike set a target of zero discharge of hazardous chemicals across its entire supply chain by 2020.

And South Africa's state-owned utility Eskom and US Duke Energy pledged to assist the development of an electrification roadmap to ensure 500 million people across Africa and developing countries have access to energy by 2025.

The Global Compact, which rejects charges by critics that it is a mere marketing tool for big business, said the commitments will serve as a testing ground.

Meanwhile, former British premier Tony Blair, in a speech screened at the Rio+20 conference, joined other statesmen and corporate chiefs in appealing to world leaders to usher in a 'green industrial revolution'.

'By the end of the decade, the low carbon market could triple in value to over US$2 trillion,' said the signatories of an open letter published on the eve of the G20 and Rio+20 summits.

The letter called for a coordinated policy shift to save the world economy and the climate.

'At a time when government and business leaders everywhere are calling for strategies that deliver growth, we have an historic opportunity before us to lead the world out of recession and into a more stable, sustainable future,' the signatories said.

They backed the launch in Rio of a Clean Revolution campaign, a major initiative by the Climate Group and other public and private sector partners for a 'green growth' push out of global recession.

The Climate Group works with business and governments around the world to promote clean technologies and policies, with the aim of expanding clean technology markets and reducing global greenhouse gas emissions.

The three-day Rio+20 summit, coming 20 years after the first Earth Summit is expected to bring together 130 world leaders for a fresh appraisal of the health of the planet. But US President Barack Obama, British Prime Minister David Cameron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel will be absent.



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UN environment haggle runs into problems ahead of summit

Negotiations on a UN blueprint to fix Earth's damaged environment, eradicate poverty and promote green jobs hit snags on Monday two days ahead of a global summit.

Brazil wants to seal a deal swiftly to ensure that a three-day gathering, aimed at reviving the momentum of the 1992 Earth Summit, is not wrecked by squabbles.

But delegates attending the UN Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio said the 50-page draft was mired in discord.

Disputed issues include text on climate-altering fossil fuels, promoting the green economy and providing funding for poorer countries.

Another is how to strengthen world governance for the environment, an area where national sovereignty is jealously guarded.

A further problem area is 'Sustainable Development Goals' -- SDGs -- that would replace the UN's Millennium Development Goals after these objectives expire in 2015.

'The conditions for an agreement are not there,' said French Ecology and Sustainable Development Minister Nicole Bricq.

'What has been put on the table is not suitable for us,' she said in an interview with AFP. 'The proposed text lacks vision and ambition and there is no outlet for concrete actions.'

She warned: 'We can continue negotiating on until (Friday, the) 22nd.'

German Environment Minister Peter Altmaier said the talks were 'moving in the right direction, but it is just the beginning of the final, not yet critical, stage of the negotiations.'

'We still believe that there is a considerable margin for improvement and we want to use every hour and every minute we have over the next couple of days... to see what we can do to make the conclusions clearer, sharper and more ambitious.'

Around 100 heads of state and government are expected to attend the summit starting Wednesday, although several big hitters -- US President Barack Obama, British Prime Minister David Cameron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel among them -- will be absent.

The meeting is designed to crown a 10-day event, bringing together some 50,000 activists, policymakers and business executives to showcase sustainable development.

Twenty years have elapsed since the first Earth Summit, where the community of nations declared war on poverty and environment ills. They set up three conventions to tackle climate change, desertification and species loss and drew up a bible, Agenda 21, intended to guide their actions.

But on almost every count, the planet is sicker than before.

Scientists warn that emissions of climate-altering fossil-fuel gases are scaling ever-higher peaks, a trend that will stoke worse floods, droughts and storms and imperil small island states with rising seas.

Biodiversity loss, too, is unprecedented in the context of human history, and some biologists fear that a mass extinction is already underway.

The number of people living on $1.25 (one euro) a day fell from 1.9 billion in 1990 to around 1.3 billion in 2008. But in developing countries, nearly one person in two still lives on less than $2 (1.6 euros) per day.

Activists said they were worried that the final document would be gutted of ambition.

'Today I am very concerned and worried because the draft final document of the Rio+20 conference does not give proper attention to climate change,' former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev said through an organization he has set up, the Climate Change Task Force, to combat global warming.

'It looks like there is backsliding on this issue and that is what worries me so much, because without addressing climate change, all of the other problems and tasks that will be set by the final document will not be accomplished and will become meaningless.'

Jim Leape, director general of WWF International, urged Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff to intervene directly.

'The current negotiating text may be called 'the future we need', but it certainly doesn't have the commitments we need. There is still time for leaders to step up, and we need Dilma to lead the way.'



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Women march in Rio to protest 'green economy'

Thousands of women representing social and farm movements marched in central Rio Monday to rail against the 'green economy' advocated by the Rio+20 conference on sustainable development.

Behind a large banner from the international peasant movement Via Campesina proclaiming 'the peoples are against the mercantilization of nature', they marched several miles to the Flamengo park, the venue for the 'People's Summit' organized by civil society groups on the sidelines of the Rio+20 event.

Several hundred men closed off the march to show their solidarity.

Perched atop a truck fitted with loudspeakers, a female activist howled: 'This is a march of urban and rural women against this Rio+20 charade.'

'No to green capitalism! Yes to an economy based on solidarity, yes to people's sovereignty,' she added.

People's Summit militants view the 'green economy' concept touted by organizers of the official Rio+20 gathering as just 'another stage of capitalist accumulation' after the failure of the current model.

World leaders are to gather here from Wednesday to Friday to debate how to steer the planet toward a greener and more sustainable future.

'We are out on the streets to give visibility to our world struggle for an end to violence against women, for peace and demilitarization, access to common goods and economic empowerment for women,' said 36-year-old Celia Alldridge, a member of the march secretariat who described herself as 'half English, half Swiss'.

The marchers comprised women of all walks of life, students, rural and indigenous people, some carrying placards reading 'women are not meant to be slapped on the face or the buttocks.'

Luise Sanuto, an ethnic Tabajara from northeast Brazil, said she faced even greater discrimination as an indigenous person.'

'Indigenous peoples are discriminated against and have been shown disrespect since the arrival of the (Portuguese) colonizers' in 1500.



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US regains top spot for fastest supercomputer

An IBM supercomputer developed for US government nuclear simulations and to study climate change and the human genome has been recognized as the world's fastest.

The announcement Monday at the 2012 International Supercomputing Conference in Hamburg, Germany recognized Sequoia, an IBM BlueGene/Q system installed at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

The machine delivered an impressive 16.32 petaflops -- a petaflop equating to a thousand trillion operations -- per second.

Sequoia is primarily for simulations used to ensure the safety and reliability of US nuclear weapons. It also is used for research into astronomy, energy, human genome science and climate change.

Sequoia dethrones Fujitsu's 'K Computer' installed at the RIKEN Advanced Institute for Computational Science (AICS) in Kobe, Japan, which dropped to the number two spot at 10.51 petaflops per second.

A new Mira supercomputer which is also part of the IBM BlueGene/Q series at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois, was third fastest.

The most powerful system in Europe and number four on the List is SuperMUC, an IBM iDataplex system installed at Leibniz Rechenzentrum in Germany.

China, which briefly took the top spot in November 2010, has two systems in the top 10.

The announcement came from the TOP500 list compiled by the University of Mannheim, Germany; the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of Tennessee.



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Sunday, June 17, 2012

Rio+20: Brazilian pitch for summit deal runs into crossfire

Brazil on Sunday pushed a deal for a looming global summit on poverty and the environment, but its draft ran into objections from Europe and criticism from activists, who said it fell dismally short.

The blueprint for Earth's future is to be issued in Rio de Janeiro on Friday after a three-day summit to climax the UN's Conference on Sustainable Development.

Hosting the nine-day mega-event, Brazil on Saturday assumed control of troubled negotiations to agree on the communique.

It declared it wanted to seal a deal by Tuesday, when an expected 116 world leaders start jetting in.

They will be joined by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who has called sustainable development 'my number one priority.'

'The way is pretty much open for a good final agreement. It is a balanced text,' Luiz Alberto Figueiredo, the chief Brazilian delegate, declared on Sunday.

'There will be nothing for the heads of state to debate... We are very optimistic about closing these negotiations as soon as possible.'

But the European Union said the 50-page draft lacked tougher commitments for ending dangerous abuse of the planet's resources and creating a green economy.

'We would like to see goals and targets with concrete timelines and monitoring mechanisms to monitor progress,' said Monica Westeren, spokesman for EU Environment Commissioner Janez Potocnik.

'A lot of work (lies) ahead of us, (but) there is still time to improve the chances of a positive outcome.'

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) said the craving to avoid a bust-up, as happened so traumatically at the 2009 Copenhagen climate summit, could badly dilute the keystone document.

The draft deal 'has been skillfully constructed to avoid controversy and promote consensus, but even if agreed it would not reorient growth towards putting people and planet first,' said Oxfam.

The 50-page compromise text put forward by Brazil has no figures for funding sustainable development, though developing countries are calling for $30 billion a year.

It sketches the objective of 'Sustainable Development Goals' to replace the UN's Millennium Development Goals after they expire in 2015, but defining them will be left to a later conference.

The text is 'pretty acceptable,' Ecuador's minister for heritage, Maria Fernanda Espinosa, told AFP, adding that her country still had a number of concerns.

Asad Rehman of Friends of the Earth said the world was faced with 'a triple planetary crisis -- from climate catastrophe, deepening global inequity and unsustainable consumption driven by a broken economic system.'

'The text is neither ambitious enough nor delivers the required political will needed to fix our broken planet,' he said.

WWF's Lasse Gustavsson said Brazil's draft was larded with fudge, especially its section on energy, 'which could have been written by the oil and gas industry.'

The Rio Conference on Sustainable Development is the 20-year follow-up to the Earth Summit, where UN members launched offensives to roll back climate change, desertification and species loss and work to root out poverty.

But the outlook in 1992 was far different then.

The great meeting took place at a time of post-Cold War euphoria.

Prospects of cuts in defense spending encouraged governments to open up their wallets for the environment and the world's poor.

Today, many western governments are mired in fiscal and budget crises, and key leaders -- including US President Barack Obama, British Prime Minister David Cameron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel -- will be conspicuous in Rio for their absence.



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Green groups worried as Rio+20 pact is diluted

Activists voiced fears on Sunday that a master plan to cure the world's sick environment and end entrenched poverty was being undermined by time pressures at the UN's 'Rio+20' conference.

Brazil on Saturday took over talks to forge a communique on the planet's future which will be issued in Rio de Janeiro on Friday after a three-day summit.

But non-governmental organizations (NGOs) said the craving to avoid a bust-up over issues ranging from the green economy to funding could badly dilute the keystone document.

The draft deal put forward by the summit hosts 'is a more streamlined text, more likely to be agreed, less likely to deliver sustainable development,' said Oxfam.

'It has been skillfully constructed to avoid controversy and promote consensus, but even if agreed it would not-reorient growth towards putting people and planet first.'

Delegates said memories of the 2009 Copenhagen climate summit -- which became a near fiasco when world leaders were presented with a deadlocked document -- were seared in many minds.

Brazil says it is determined to wrap everything up by Tuesday, when an expected 116 heads of state or government are to start jetting in.

The compromise text put forward on Sunday has no figures for funding sustainable development, although developing countries are calling for $30 billion a year.

It sketches the objective of 'Sustainable Development Goals' to replace the UN's Millennium Development Goals after they expire in 2015, but defining them will be left to a later conference.

Asad Rehman of Friends of the Earth said the world was faced with 'a triple planetary crisis -- from climate catastrophe, deepening global inequity and unsustainable consumption driven by a broken economic system.'

'The text is neither ambitious enough nor delivers the required political will needed to fix our broken planet,' he said.

WWF's Lasse Gustavsson said Brazil's draft was larded with fudge, especially its section on energy, 'which could have been written by the oil and gas industry.'

'We see a lopsided victory of weak words over action words -- with the weak words winning out at 514 to 10,' he said.

''Encourage' is used approximately 50 times, while the word 'must' is used three times. Apparently, negotiators really like the word 'support' -- they used it approximately 99 times -- but can't bear to use language like 'we will,' which appears only five times.'

The Rio Conference on Sustainable Development is the 20-year followup to the Earth Summit, where UN members launched offensives to roll back climate change, desertification and species loss and work to root out poverty.

But the outlook in 1992 was far different then.

The great meeting took place at a time of post-Cold War euphoria.

Prospects of cuts in defense spending encouraged governments to open up their wallets for the environment and the world's poor.

Today, many western governments are mired in fiscal and budget crises, and key leaders -- including US President Barack Obama, British Prime Minister David Cameron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel -- will be conspicuous in Rio for their absence.



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Saturday, June 16, 2012

Brazil picks up the baton for struggling UN summit

Brazil on Saturday took the helm of talks to forge a global deal on preserving the environment and rooting out poverty ahead of a gathering of world leaders starting in just four days.

Five months of negotiations on a vast document, due to be endorsed at the three-day summit climaxing the UN Conference on Sustainable Development, have failed to break the deadlock on several issues.

The task of coaxing out a deal fell to Brazil, as host of the 'Rio+20' talks, which marks the 20th anniversary of the summit that yielded landmark agreements on climate change, desertification and biodiversity.

To speed things up, the host country came up with a consolidated text expected to be made public later Saturday.

'The Brazilians made the political decision to produce a balanced text. We must go to the heart of the deadlock,' Nikhil Seth, head of the UN Sustainable Development division, told a press briefing Saturday.

Brazilian delegation chief Luiz Alberto Figueiredo said the goal was to wrap everything up by Tuesday, the eve of the summit.

'We have no intention of handing undecided issues to heads of state,' he told reporters on Friday.

Conference sources say a compromise appears in sight on the divisive 'green economy' concept, which would be replaced by the more palatable 'green economy policies.'

Figuereido said Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff might take stock of the issue at the G20 summit of leading rich and emerging powers Monday and Tuesday in Los Cabos, Mexico.

The organisers say they expect around 116 heads of state or government to show up, capping a weeklong gathering of as many as 50,000 activists, business executives and policymakers.

But many political heavy-hitters will not be there. They including US President Barack Obama, British Prime Minister David Cameron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Their absence is ascribed to having to deal with pressing issues, at home including the euro crisis.

But lingering in the background are memories of the traumatic 2009 UN climate summit in Copenhagen.

This event was a near fiasco, for heads of state and government arrived at the meeting expecting to seal a historic deal, only to discover that they had to negotiate a minefield of unresolved issues.

As time ticked by to Copenhagen's close, a couple of dozen leaders cobbled together a last-minute declaration to save face -- a deal derided by greens as a sellout of the environment and by left-leaning Latin American governments as a betrayal of UN democracy.

Problems in Rio include a set of 'Sustainable Development Goals' to succeed the UN's Millennium Development Goals, due to expire in 2015, how to encourage the green economy and mustering funds to promote sustainable development. Poorer countries are calling for 30 billion dollars a year.

Another area of textual friction is over how or whether to reaffirm the 'Rio Principles' set down in the 1992 summit, which say countries have 'common but differentiated responsibilities.'

The phrase is designed to ensure that poor countries do not have to shoulder the same burden as rich countries in fixing Earth's environmental problems.

A panoply of events is unfolding in Rio alongside the political haggling, including a forum of executives discussing the benefits -- and obstacles -- of doing green business.

There is a 'counter-summit' gathering indigenous peoples and eco-militants who are demanding radical change. They say the world's economic model is broken and there is no point tinkering with with it.

Hundreds of side events are showcasing issues touching on the world's many environmental ills, from climate change, deforestation, over-fishing and loss of coral reefs to the problems of slum dwelling and clogged transport systems in fast-growing economies.



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Friday, June 15, 2012

Natives occupy Amazon dam construction site

Around 300 indigenous and green activists occupied Friday the construction site of a huge hydro-electric dam across the Xingu River, a tributary of the Amazon, protest organizers said.

The demonstration at the Belo Monte dam sought to draw attention to the project at the UN Conference on Sustainable Development taking place in Rio de Janeiro, more than 3,500 kilometers (2,200 miles) to the south.

'We call on the world to let our river live,' Antonia Melo, head of the Xingu River Forever Alive Movement, said in a statement.

The protesters said they dug a channel at the construction site using shovels and hoes to symbolically restore the natural flow of the river, while some used their bodies to spell out a message reading 'Pare Belo Monte' (Stop Belo Monte).

The third largest dam in the world, the 11,200-megawatt scheme is one of several hydro projects billed by Brazil as providing clean energy for a fast-growing economy.

Work began a year ago, despite fierce opposition from local people and green activists.

Indigenous groups fear the dam will harm their way of life while environmentalists have warned of deforestation, greenhouse-gas emissions and irreparable damage to the ecosystem.

The Belo Monte is expected to flood an area of 500 square kilometers (200 square miles) along the Xingu and displace 16,000 people, according to the government, although some NGOs put the number at 40,000 displaced.

The UN conference, which opened Wednesday, is set to climax in a summit of an expected 116 leaders, running June 20-22.



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Clumsy Insects Inspire Clever Flying Robot

Most flying robots resemble larger helicopters or aircraft that can't risk hard collisions or catastrophic crashes. But a Swiss robot takes a different approach based on flying insects - it can survive clumsily bumping into walls and learn about its environment based on such bumps.

The idea allows the AirBurr robot to navigate within claustrophobic, cluttered conditions indoors or underground without the added sensors or complicated software 'brains' needed for avoiding collisions. That could lead to faster deployment of robots in search-and-rescue operations in the aftermath of natural disasters, nuclear meltdowns or similarly dangerous scenarios.

'We believe that this new paradigm will bring flying robots out of the laboratory and allow them to tackle unstructured, cluttered environments,' according to Swiss researchers in a 2012 paper for the International Conference on Complex Medical Engineering.

The Swiss researchers at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) have been testing the AirBurr robot - a hovering drone that resembles a computer's electronic innards stuffed inside a bullet-shaped carbon fiber cage. The lightweight, flexible cage allows the robot to protect its rotors and electronic guts, as well as mimic the way that insects survive collisions with windows or walls.

Four carbon-fiber legs tucked inside the robot can also extend to help it get back on its feet after colliding and falling from the air.

The ability to actively bump around unfamiliar environments means that AirBurr could navigate even with the loss of GPS indoors or underground. Having cheap swarms of such robots may prove the path forward for making robots ready for the real world.

This story was provided by InnovationNewsDaily, a sister site to LiveScience. You can follow InnovationNewsDaily on Twitter @News_Innovation, or on Facebook.

Copyright 2012 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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