Fredumbsa - Girl of the Teabaggers

Sphere: Related Content

Lawsuit proceeds against Cheney security team

 

By Felisa Cardona

A federal judge in Denver has declined to toss out a lawsuit against four U.S. Secret Service agents who arrested a man in Beaver Creek in 2006 after he approached then-Vice President Dick Cheney to criticize the Iraq war.

U.S. District Judge Christine Arguello issued her ruling from the bench this morning and said a jury is going to have to decide the case.

"There are too many disputed issues of material fact to grant summary judgment in this case," Arguello said.

Steven Howards sued the four agents claiming they violated his civil rights after he was arrested for allegedly harassing Cheney in June 2006.

Howards said he simply walked up to Cheney in the Beaver Creek shopping mall, touched him and said his policy in Iraq was "disgusting."

The U.S. Attorney's Office and the Eagle County District Attorney declined to pursue a criminal case against Howards.

The Secret Service agents gave conflicting accounts of the incident in depositions taken by attorneys in the civil case.

But the agents said a number of factors led them to be suspicious of Howards, starting with a cellphone call he made as he spotted Cheney in the Beaver Creek shopping mall.

During the call, Howards said he was going to ask Cheney "how many kids he killed today."

Howards then walked up to Cheney, touched him and made his opposition to the war known.

But the agents say Howards raised their suspicions because he lingered in the mall, was carrying a shopping bag with unknown contents and refused to cooperate when they tried to question him about whether he assaulted Cheney or not.

Howards said he walked away from Cheney, then came back toward the vice president because he was looking for his son, who had accompanied him to the mall.

Judge Arguello said she was concerned about the possibility that Howards' conversation on his cellphone — which is protected under the First Amendment — may have inspired the agents' actions.

http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_12140350

Sphere: Related Content

Convoy carrying 500 wheelchairs coming to Gaza for the newly disabled after major Israeli attacks

 

Brussels / PNN - The European Campaign to Break the Siege on Gaza is launching a new aid convoy.

One of many, this project is for the benefit of residents of the Gaza Strip who are newly traumatized by physical disabilities.

The direct cause is the recent major Israeli attacks that left some 1,400 Palestinians dead and approximately 5,500 injured.

The convoy, consisting of hundreds of trucks, contains five hundred wheelchairs and specialized medical equipment for people with special needs, as well as programs for computers for the newly visually impaired and blind, and for the hearing impaired.

The convoy will be accompanied by dozens of European parliamentarians, justice activists and human rights advocates. At the beginning of next month it will set sail from Italy in the direction of the Egyptian port of Alexandria, and the European embassies in Cairo will coordinate with the relevant authorities to facilitate the passage of the convoy by road from Alexandria to the Rafah crossing.

http://english.pnn.ps/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5028

Sphere: Related Content

Polish reporters claim CIA jail evidence

 

WARSAW, Poland, April 15 (UPI) -- Polish journalists claim they have uncovered new evidence that Poland allegedly leased a military base to the United States for a clandestine CIA prison.

Reporters of Polish Television and the Rzeczpospolita daily said the evidence included documents and witness statements that were part of a Polish judicial investigation to determine whether the alleged CIA prison undermined the country's sovereignty, the EUobserver reported Wednesday.

The journalists said the Polish government in December 2001 reportedly leased a section of the Stare Kiejkuty military base in northwest Poland to the CIA, and assigned 20 secret agents to assist U.S. officials in anti-terrorist activities.

U.S. planes began secret flights to the Szymany airport close to the military base in December 2002 and at least five planes landed in Szymany in 2003.

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2009/04/15/Polish-reporters-claim-CIA-jail-evidence/UPI-24821239818345/

Sphere: Related Content

First Look at the Spacecraft That Will Take Humans to Mars

By Annalee Newitz

Yesterday NASA gave the world a first look at the Orion, a space vessel that will take humans back to the Moon in 2020, and then onward to Mars in the 2030s.

If this saucer shape looks familiar, that's not because this vehicle is based on something hidden in Area 51. Orion is based on the design of the Apollo spaceships that took humans to the Moon back in the 1960s. But Orion can carry 6 astronauts, twice as many as Apollo could.

The Orion, along with the Ares rocket, will replace the Space Shuttle when it goes out of commission next year. According to Reuters:

NASA plans to first take several trips to the moon, a journey of just three days. Each visit will last six months while astronauts set up a campsite and practice the things they want to do on Mars. "That's really the goal — to put humans on Mars, and going to the moon is our testing ground in order to do it," [NASA's Don] Pearson explained.

A lot of work has to be done before the Mars mission, however. That mission would take 3 years round trip, and will probably require a much more robust version of the Orion.

NASA brought a test version of the Orion out to the National Mall in Washington, DC, yesterday, after it had undergone a series of tests in the water - researchers are testing to see how it holds up after a water landing.

http://io9.com/5191660/first-look-at-the-spacecraft-that-will-take-humans-to-mars

Sphere: Related Content

The Colbert Patch

This image provided by NASA shows the patch for the treadmill used for exercising in space named after Colbert. NASA announced Tuesday April 14, 2009 that it won't name a room in the international space station after the comedian. Instead, it has named a treadmill after him. NASA, itself an acronym (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), often names things so they spell out something fun. And that's what they did with the Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill.

 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090415/ap_en_tv/nasa_colbert

Sphere: Related Content

PHIL OCHS - Here's to the State of Richard Nixon (1971)

Sphere: Related Content

Why Are Army Recruiters Killing Themselves?

By MARK THOMPSON

When Army Staff Sergeant Amanda Henderson ran into Staff Sergeant Larry Flores in their Texas recruiting station last August, she was shocked by the dark circles under his eyes and his ragged appearance. "Are you O.K.?" she asked the normally squared-away soldier. "Sergeant Henderson, I am just really tired," he replied. "I had such a bad, long week, it was ridiculous." The previous Saturday, Flores' commanders had berated him for poor performance. He had worked every day since from 6:30 a.m. to 10 p.m., trying to persuade the youth of Nacogdoches to wear Army green. "But I'm O.K.," he told her.

No, he wasn't. Later that night, Flores hanged himself in his garage with an extension cord. Henderson and her husband Patrick, both Army recruiters, were stunned. "I'll never forget sitting there at Sergeant Flores' memorial service with my husband and seeing his wife crying," Amanda recalls. "I remember looking over at Patrick and going, 'Why did he do this to her? Why did he do this to his children?' " Patrick didn't say anything, and Amanda now says Flores' suicide "triggered" something in her husband. Six weeks later, Patrick hanged himself with a dog chain in their backyard shed. (See pictures of suicide in recruiters' ranks.)

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are now the longest waged by an all-volunteer force in U.S. history. Even as soldiers rotate back into the field for multiple and extended tours, the Army requires a constant supply of new recruits. But the patriotic fervor that led so many to sign up after 9/11 is now eight years past. That leaves recruiters with perhaps the toughest, if not the most dangerous, job in the Army. Last year alone, the number of recruiters who killed themselves was triple the overall Army rate. Like posttraumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury, recruiter suicides are a hidden cost of the nation's wars.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1889152,00.html

Sphere: Related Content

It's Bill Parker's Time to Walk Off the Stage of History

By LIONEL ROLFE

Los Angeles is debating whether its new police administration building in downtown should bear the name of William Parker, the police chief from the '50s whose name has adorned the old building at 150 N. Los Angeles St. for more than half a century.

One former police chief, Bernard Parks, asked to preserve Parker's name on the new building going up a couple of blocks or so away. A conservative black man who joined the department in the '60s, he rose through the ranks, like Tom Bradley, except Bradley became one of the city's great mayors. Over issues of corruption, a successor replaced Parks.

The man who replaced Parks, William Bratton, came to Los Angeles from back east, and was obviously a different sort of cat. Bratton, a white man, thinks Parker's name should not be used on the new building. He doesn't want to perpetuate the memory of those unpleasant times.

 

Parker was maybe the city's most famous and infamous police chief. A lot of his image came from the famed television cop serial, Dragnet.

Parker was an unabashed racist, a fact I learned personally when I was a student at Los Angeles City College in the '60s. I frequented the Xanadu, a coffeehouse on Melrose Avenue on the south side of the campus next to the Lithuanian Cultural Center. Folks like Jack Nicholson and Dorothy Parker came by. Something unthinkable was occurring at the Xanadu in those days. The black and white intellectuals of the period were hanging out together against a background that included some of the greatest blues musicians casually playing for their own pleasure. Political activists mixed with the writers and musicians and actors there and inevitably it attracted Parker's concern. It was becoming a central point for people going south to register blacks to vote as well as a hang for folks whose primary goal in life was to play chess.

It was a deadly combination as far as Parker was concerned.

In addition, the Los Angeles Free Press, or "Freep" as it was called, which had a significant impact on the circulation of the Los Angeles Times, was born out of discussions at the Xanadu. The "Freep" came to be the nation's first underground newspapers in the '60s, responsible for the creation of the so-called counterculture that spread across the nation.

Parker's contribution to all this was to make it impossible to walk out the front door of the Xanadu together with a person of the other color, and certainly not of the opposite sex. Parker's goons would be waiting to throw the Xanadu's patrons up against a wall or the radio car's fenders, or take them downtown to the "glass house," as Parker Center was known then.

 

http://www.tothecenter.com/news.php?readmore=9481

Sphere: Related Content

ADC Welcomes Obama Administration Decision on Immigration Reform

 

ADC Welcomes Obama Administration Decision on Immigration Reform WASHINGTON, DC | April 15, 2009| www.adc.org  | The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) welcomes the decision by the Obama Administration to address the current flaws in our immigration system.  News reports this past week indicated that President Obama will publicly address his plans for immigration reform in May.  Immigration reform affects all immigrant communities, and ADC is proud to be working with a broad range of coalition partners to ensure that fair reform is a reality.  ADC believes that reform should be comprehensive, promote economic opportunity, and provide for long term relief to the benefit of everyone involved.  The reform package must address the nearly 12 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States.  ADC believes that reform should create a registration system that will create a pathway for legal residency for these individuals, fix the immigration enforcement system; including provisions that put a stop to workplace and home raids, and reinstate our commitment to promoting family unity.  It would also be beneficial for the Government to assist programs that teach immigrants English and basic civics.  This should be a priority for the benefit of our national and economic interests. ADC National Executive Director Kareem Shora said, "Any immigration reform package must include the end of the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS). This mandatory registration program forced tens of thousands of Muslims and Arabs to register with local immigration offices and resulted in the discriminatory application of our nation's civil immigration laws based purely on national origin and religion," said Shora, "It is time to return fairness and equal applications of the law to our nation's immigration system."  Recently ADC, in partnership with the Penn State Dickinson School of Law Center for Immigrants' Rights, released a comprehensive report on NSEERS, including key-recommendations to the Obama Administration.  The report, "NSEERS: The Consequences of America's efforts to Secure Its Borders," is the most comprehensive review of NSEERS to-date and can be read here: http://www.adc.org/PDF/nseerspaper.pdf.  To read more about ADC's work on immigration reform please see ADC Legal Advisor Abed Ayoub's recent Op Ed here:  http://www.arabamericannews.com/news/index.php?mod=article&cat=OtherOpinions&article=2100 ### NOTE TO EDITORS: The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), which is non sectarian and non partisan, is the largest Arab-American civil rights organization in the United States. It was founded in 1980, by former Senator James Abourezk to protect the civil rights of people of Arab descent in the United States and to promote the cultural heritage of the Arabs. ADC has 38 chapters nationwide, including chapters in every major city in the country, and members in all 50 states. The ADC Research Institute (ADC-RI), which was founded in 1981, is a Section 501(c)(3) educational organization that sponsors a wide range of programs on behalf of Arab Americans and of importance to all Americans. ADC-RI programs include research studies, seminars, conferences and publications that document and analyze the discrimination faced by Arab Americans in the workplace, schools, media, and governmental agencies and institutions. ADC-RI also celebrates the rich cultural heritage of the Arabs. ____________________________________ Contact: Yousef Munayyer American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee | www.adc.org

Sphere: Related Content

The Impersonator

Like Bernie Madoff, Marc Dreier bilked unsuspecting investors out of many millions of dollars. But Dreier did it with flair.

By Robert Kolker

Dreier after being released on bail, in December.   (Photo: Newscom)

There was a time when Marc Dreier thought he could talk his way out of anything. But by last fall, even he was scrambling. Whenever the stylish, hyperaggressive 58-year-old white-collar litigator turned around, clients and colleagues at Dreier LLP, the marquee Park Avenue firm he'd built from almost nothing to 250 lawyers in just five years, were asking questions—about back rent, unpaid loans, depleted client escrow funds, documents of uncertain provenance. What Dreier needed to make these questions go away, he knew, was money. About $40 million, for starters.

On Tuesday, December 2, Dreier boarded a private jet and flew to Toronto. When he landed, a driver brought him to the financial district and pulled up to the stout, glass-encased Xerox Tower. Dreier climbed out of the car and walked into the building. He was expensively dressed, but short and perma-tanned, with a thatch of gray hair swept over a sizable bald spot. He rode the elevator to the third-floor offices of the $100 billion Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan, one of the largest retirement funds in Canada. Dreier had arranged a meeting with one of the plan's in-house lawyers, Michael Padfield, ostensibly to discuss business opportunities. But Dreier had other motives, and the meeting lasted only briefly. Before saying good-bye, Dreier asked for a place to wait until his plane was ready. He was sure to take Padfield's business card.

Dreier dropped his things in a conference room, then went to the lobby, where he paced for an hour and eyed the entrance, until he spotted Howard Steinberg, an executive with a $34 billion New York hedge fund named Fortress. Steinberg and Dreier had never met, but they had been in touch earlier, when Steinberg had been trying to confirm the authenticity of some documents Dreier had sent him, promissory notes said to be worth $44.7 million that Dreier was offering to sell to Steinberg. When Dreier had told Steinberg the notes were guaranteed by the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan, Steinberg had asked to meet with someone from the fund personally. Dreier told Steinberg he'd arrange a meeting with Michael Padfield.

Dreier worked Padfield's business card into Steinberg's hand. Upstairs in the conference room, Dreier showed Steinberg some papers signed in Padfield's name. But the meeting didn't go as planned; Steinberg sensed something was off, and Dreier ended the meeting abruptly and went straight for the elevator. When he was gone, Steinberg approached the receptionist and asked her a simple question.

"Was that Michael Padfield?"

"No," said the receptionist, "it wasn't."

http://nymag.com/news/features/55863/

Sphere: Related Content

10 Greatest Imposters in History

Victor Lustig: the Man who sold the Eiffel Tower

Known as "the man who sold the Eiffel Tower", Victor Lustig was one of the most talented confidence tricksters who ever lived. Born in 1890 in Bohemia, Czechoslovakia, he was a glib and charming conman, fluent in multiple languages. He established himself by working scams on the ocean liners steaming between Paris and New York City. Lustig's first con involved a "money-printing machine". He would demonstrate the capability of the small box to clients, all the while lamenting that it took the device six hours to copy a $100 bill. The client, sensing huge profits, would buy the machines for a high price, usually over $30,000. Over the next twelve hours, the machine would produce two more $100 bills. After that, it produced only blank paper, as its supply of $100 bills became exhausted. By the time the clients realized that they had been scammed, Lustig was long gone.

In 1925, Lustig's master con began when he was reading a newspaper: an article discussed the problems the city was having maintaining the Eiffel Tower. So he adopted the persona of a government official, and sent six scrap metal dealers an invitation to discuss a possible business deal. Lustig told the group that the upkeep on the Eiffel Tower was so outrageous that the city could not maintain it any longer, and wanted to sell it for scrap. So he sold the Eiffel Tower to one of the scrap metal dealers and took a train to Vienna with the suitcase full of cash. The buyer was too humiliated to complain to the police.

Later, Lustig convinced gangster Al Capone to invest $40,000 in a stock deal. Lustig kept Capone's money in a safe deposit box for two months, then returned it to him, claiming that the deal had fallen through. Impressed with Lustig's integrity, Capone gave him $5,000. It was, of course, all that Lustig was after.

On 1907, Lustig arrived to the United States and conducted a number of scams, but eventually his luck ran out: he was arrested for counterfeiting and sent to Alcatraz prison. On March 9, 1947, he contracted pneumonia and died two days later.

Frank Abagnale: catch me if you can

The movie "Catch Me If You Can" is loosely based on Frank Abagnale's exploits, as he collected over $2,5 million in 26 countries. Born in 1948, his first con was writing checks on his own overdrawn account. Then he printed out his own, almost perfect copies of checks. He also collected over US$40,000 by printing his account number on blank bank deposit slips and added them to the stack of real blank slips in the bank.

Then, for a period of two years, Abagnale masqueraded as Pan Am pilot "Frank Williams", to get free rides around the world by dead heading on scheduled airline flights. Later, he impersonated a pediatrician for 11 months in a Georgia hospital under the name "Frank Williams". He also forged a Harvard University Law diploma, passed the bar exam of Louisiana and got a job at the office of the State Attorney General of Louisiana.

Eventually he was caught in France in 1969 when an Air France attendant recognized his face from a wanted poster. When the French police apprehended him, 12 of the countries in which he had committed fraud wanted to extradite him. After a two day trial, he first served prison time in Perpignan's House of Arrest in France; a one-year sentence that was reduced by the presiding judge at his trial to six months. His stay in Perpignan left him fearful of spending more time in another version of the prison. He was then extradited to Sweden where he was treated fairly well under Swedish law. During trial for forgery, his defense attorney almost had his case dismissed by arguing that he had "created" the fake checks and not forged them, but his charges were instead reduced to swindling and fraud. He served six months in a Malmö prison, only to learn at the end of it he would be tried next in Italy. Later, a Swedish judge asked a U.S. State Department official to revoke his passport. Without a valid passport Swedish authorities were forced to deport him to the U.S. He was sentenced to 12 years in a federal prison for multiple counts of forgery.

Charles Ponzi: created the Ponzi Scheme

One of the greatest swindlers in American history, Charles Ponzi created the famous "Ponzi scheme," a scam that pays early investors returns from the investments of later investors. He promised clients a 50% profit within 45 days, or 100% profit within 90 days, by buying discounted postal reply coupons in other countries and redeeming them at face value in the United States as a form of arbitrage. By the time he was making $250,000 a day in 1920, federal agents arrested him, after The Post started a series of articles that asked hard questions about the operation of Ponzi's money machine. He was sent to prison for years; on 1934 Ponzi was released, sent to Italy, and eventually Brazil, where spent the last years of his life in poverty, working occasionally as a translator. He had a stroke in 1948, and died in a charity hospital in Rio de Janeiro on 1949.

Christopher Rocancourt: the french "Rockefeller"

An imposter and con artist who scammed affluent people by masquerading as a French member of the Rockefeller family, Christopher Rocancourt pulled his first big con in Paris, faking the deed to a property he didn't own, then "selling" it for USD $1.4 million. Making his way to the United States, Rocancourt pretended to be a movie producer, ex-boxing champion or venture capitalist. He dropped names like "his mother" Sophia Loren or "his uncles" Oscar de la Renta and Dino De Laurentiis and was associated with various celebrities. He married Playboy model Pia Reyes; they had a son, Zeus. He lived for a time with Mickey Rourke and apparently convinced actor Jean-Claude Van Damme to produce his next movie.

One of his trademarks was to always have a stunningly beautiful woman on his arm. Beside being married to Pia Reyes, according to the press, he lived with playboy model Rhonda Rydell for six months. She did not know Rocancourt was married, and said he had told her he was French nobility, the son of a countess. In March 2002 he was extradited to New York and pleaded to charges of theft, grand larceny, smuggling, bribery, perjury and fraud against 19 victims. He was fined $9 million, was ordered to pay $1.2 million in restitution and sentenced to five years in prison. In Switzerland, the police have connected him with a jewel theft and barred him from the country until 2016. He once estimated to Dateline that his various schemes/ventures netted him at least $40 million (USD), but this cannot be confirmed.

Gregor MacGregor: drew investors to "Poyais", a fictional country

A Scottish soldier, adventurer and colonizer who fought in the South American struggle for independence, Gregor MacGregorwas also one of the most famous con artists of all time as he, upon his return to England in 1820, claimed to be cazique of "Poyais", a fictional Central American country that MacGregor had invented which, with his help, drew investors and eventually colonists. Not only did Gregor MacGregor gain the trust and hard-earned pounds of his eager would-be colonists, he also created a guidebook detailing the geography and abundant natural resources of his island off the coast of Honduras. By the time his 250 investors had sailed to the vacant patch of water where their island should have been, MacGregor was already rounding up his next group of colonists, this time from France. Undeterred by the eventual deaths of 200 of his first settlers, MacGregor went through the trouble of drafting a Poyois constitution naming himself as head of the republic. Even after his trial and conviction for fraud, this magnificent man continued selling non-existent land and stock to European nobility.

http://www.oddee.com/item_96600.aspx

Sphere: Related Content

Why workers need the Employee Free Choice Act

by David Bacon

Unions are good for workers. Today, median weekly pay for union members is $886, compared to $691 for nonunion workers. Moving cargo on the Oakland waterfront pays three times what stocking shelves does at Wal-Mart because longshore workers have had a union contract since 1934.

In 1936, Congress recognized the value of unions and passed the National Labor Relations Act, setting up a legal system in which private sector, nonfarm workers could join unions and bargain. The preamble declares the law's purpose: "encouraging the practice and procedure of collective bargaining and ... protecting the exercise by workers of full freedom of association, self-organization, and designation of representatives of their own choosing."

Today, however, the law is virtually unable to fulfill its intended function. Rep. George Miller, D-Martinez, has proposed commonsense measures to restore its effectiveness in the Employee Free Choice Act. Employers are mounting a hysterical campaign against it, even calling it "bolshevism," and claiming to be protectors of their workers' rights. We need a reality check about what really happens when workers try to organize.

The Employee Free Choice Act would require employers to repay three times the back pay of a worker fired for organizing a union, with $20,000 fines for willful or repeated violations. It is illegal to fire a worker for union activity, but pro-union workers were fired in 30 percent of union-representation elections in 2007, according to the Center for Economic and Policy Research. There are no fines or penalties on employers for this - just reinstatement and back pay, and employers even get to deduct the unemployment benefits of the fired worker.

The National Labor Relations Act is the only federal law where violators receive no punishment. Workers, knowing they can be fired so easily, are understandably afraid to join unions.

The proposed legislation would therefore bring back the process for forming unions used in the years after the labor act was first passed (and which is used today in Canada). Workers would be able to sign union cards, and employers would have to recognize their union if a majority signed. Today, employers demand secret-ballot elections, and then wage an anti-union campaign that peaks on election day. For instance, according to the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, at Blue Diamond in Sacramento, the company told workers two days before the election that many might lose their jobs if the union won because growers wouldn't bring any more almonds to the plant.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/04/08/EDOU16V8OB.DTL

Sphere: Related Content

Hydrogen in every home

How the Japanese are trying to slash energy use and CO₂ emissions—by installing fuel cells in people's backyards.

 

by Winifred Bird

Yasushi Kawamori shows off his new cogeneration unit.

Photo: Makoto Ishida

Yasushi Kawamori has a power plant in his backyard. Not the kind that belches clouds of CO₂ into the atmosphere, but the kind that's small (about the size of a refrigerator and a suitcase placed side by side), quiet (a faint thumping is just audible) and emits a fraction of the carbon dioxide a coal-fired plant would. The system uses a hydrogen fuel cell to convert natural gas into electricity; heat from the reaction generates hot water for himself, his wife and their two children. It's called a fuel cell cogeneration system, and Kawamori is more than happy to have it in his backyard. "We're making electricity at our own home, and the heat from that electricity gets used, so it's really efficient," he says. "I like that it's cost-effective and good for the environment."

 

The cogeneration system—also called a combined heat and power, or CHP, unit—at the Kawamoris' home is part of a trial underway at Osaka Gas, where Kawamori works. Since 2005, the company has been testing fuel cell systems made by Toshiba and ENEOS; so far, 224 homes are involved. Trials by companies including Panasonic, Ebara Ballard and Toyota are also underway at 3,000 more homes throughout Japan, while Korea, Germany and Denmark are among the other countries experimenting with the technology.

Until recently, hydrogen has been limited to powering systems on NASA's Space Shuttle. Now, fuel cells are at work in cars and, as these experiments show, hydrogen can work on a domestic scale, too. In fact, fuel cell technology could make energy independence for every home a real possibility, a crucial goal given the volatility of oil prices and the accelerating problems caused by climate change.

"Hydrogen is an energy carrier—energy is stored in its chemical bonds," explains John Turner, a principal scientist at the National Renewable Energy Lab's Center for Electric & Hydrogen Technologies & Systems in Golden, Colorado. "We know we can make enough hydrogen to power our society. In the future, hydrogen may be everything." With commercial sales scheduled for this year, and partnerships among gas companies, manufacturers and the government already in place, Japan is at the forefront of global efforts to get hydrogen fuel cells into homes. Last fall, the world's largest "hydrogen town project" kicked off in Maebaru City in southern Japan, with the installation of 150 residential fuel cell systems.

http://www.odemagazine.com/doc/62/japanese-fuel-cell/

Sphere: Related Content

Whiz Comics

Sphere: Related Content