Taiwanese activists dispute solar costs

Qualcomm to build $1 billion panel plant in Taiwan
Taipei | Mon Jan 3, 2011 2:51am EST Taipei (Reuters) - U.S.-based Qualcomm Inc will invest nearly $1 billion in Taiwan this year to build a display plant to tap growing demand for new portable devices including electronics reading devices. Taiwan's economics ministry said in a statement on Monday that Qualcomm had decided to build the new factory in Hsinchu, northern Taiwan. It did not say when the plant would be built. The plant would use power-saving Mirasol technology to produce smaller si...

AIG gets alternative proposal for Taiwan unit
Taipei (Reuters) - American International Group's (AIG.N) protracted sale of its Taiwan unit took another twist on Tuesday when a local firm proposed jointly running the unit with the bailed-out insurer instead of a sale that AIG has been pushing for. AIG has been trying to sell the unit, Nan Shan Life, since October 2009 as it looks to pay back the U.S. government for its Bailout. It drew four bidders in a first round in December, with reports putting the offers at up to as high as $3 billion....

AIG gets alternative proposal for Taiwan unit
By Faith Hung Taipei | Tue Jan 4, 2011 1:16am EST Taipei (Reuters) - American International Group's (AIG.N) protracted sale of its Taiwan unit took another twist on Tuesday when a local firm proposed jointly running the unit with the bailed-out insurer instead of a sale that AIG has been pushing for. AIG has been trying to sell the unit, Nan Shan Life, since October 2009 as it looks to pay back the U.S. government for its Bailout. It drew four bidders in a first round in December, with report...

WikiLeaks trove of secret Taiwan cables may derail Chinese visit to Washington
As preparations go forward for the formal state visit of Hu Jintao of the People’s Republic of China to Washington, D.C. later this month, a large cache of secret U.S. State Department memos could upset the Chinese leader’s travel plans. Wikileaks has previously disclosed it has obtained 3,456 memorandums and other documents generated at the United States defacto Embassy in Taipei, the American Institute in Taiwan.  Over a thousand of the State Department cables are marked ̵...

Naked Bodies and a New Messiah: Green Groups Try to Sex Up Climate Change
The amount of Greenhouse Gases in the atmosphere keeps going up and up, but public interest in Climate Change is sinking. Environmentalists are trying to come up with new ways to make the issue sexy. But shock tactics can backfire all too easily. Climate change used to make headlines. But these days the issue appears to have largely fallen off the radar. ...

Chasing the dragon. Straight into Hell.
A group of Evangelical decry the Environmental Movement as “The Cult of the Green Dragon”: “Around the world, Environmentalism has become a radical movement,” Christian Talk Show radio host Janet Parshall said in a promotional video for the series. “Something we call the ‘Green Dragon.’ And it is deadly. Deadly to human prosperity, deadly to human life, deadly to human freedom. And deadly to the gospel of Jesus Christ.” But when Murfreesboro enviro...

Norman Lear: If He's an Entertainer, I'm an Astronaut
I might have been six years old when I first learned how integral the bumble bee was to the human food chain. The Huffington Post article yesterday about the American bee population plummeting and the disastrous effect this is likely to have on those of us who eat scared the food I had digested up to that moment out of me. Then I remembered someone who eats far more than me and is certainly far more informed on such matters as the calamitous loss of bees and other pollinating insects, not to m...

Pierre Sprey on Book TV: Tonight at 9
Joshua Green Iott Uber Alles! Dec 31, 2010 To Environmentalists, “clean coal” is an insulting oxymoron. But for now, the only way…...

The Tea Party and Foreign Policy
Tea Partiers say their movement is a response to the way government power, and government Debt, grew under both Bush and Obama. But if they looked seriously at the reasons for that growth under Bush, they would see that much of what they’re upset about is the Military and Homeland Security spending justified by his expansive “War on Terror.” Anyone genuinely worried about debt can’t ignore the fact that defense constitutes a majority of federal Discretionary Spending. And anyone de

An Unexpected Limit to Climate Sensitivity
I’ve been investigating the implications of the canonical climate equation illustrated in Figure 1. I find it much easier to understand an equation describing the real world if I can draw a picture of it, so I made Figure 1 below. Be clear that Figure 1 is not representing my equation. It is representing the central climate equation of mainstream Climate Science (see e.g. Kiehl ). Let us accept, for the purpose of this discussion, that the canonical equation shown at the bottom left of Fig...

Detroit's Central United Methodist Church honors 200 years of activism
Across is a stained-glass window that depicts a beardless Jesus in opposition to Nuclear War, Racial Discrimination and other social ills. They're symbols of the church's commitment to fighting for justice that has made it a nexus for political and social causes across metro Detroit that stretches back to the early 19th Century. The church spent 2010 marking its 200th anniversary as one of the two oldest Protestant congregations in Michigan, originally...

Activists to Branstad: Keep current voting rights rule
A coalition of about 20 Activist groups asked Gov.-elect Terry Branstad on Monday not to follow through on a pledge to rescind an Executive Order that automatically restores Voting Rights to ex-convicts. The groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa and the Iowa Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church, sent a letter to Branstad expressing support for a statewide policy adopted in 2005. That's when Democratic Gov. Tom Vilsack issued a blanket order restoring voting r...

Reform Party of NJ Defends New Jersey Network
Press Release sent to [email protected]: Reform Party of NJ Defends New Jersey Network (Long Branch, NJ, 12/29/2010): Jacob Zychick, the chairman of the recently formed Reform Party of New Jersey, has come to the defense of the New Jersey Network, the statewide news agency whose sustainability has been questioned by Trenton leadership. At a meeting of Reform Party Activists in Long Branch on December 28th, Zychick voiced his support for NJN, touting it as the state’s primary media watch...

Uganda Court Rules Media Cannot 'Out' Gay Ugandans
Source: AP Uganda's High Court has ruled that the media should not publish the names and photos of gay Ugandans following a vitriolic campaign in the east African country which urged citizens to hang those featured. Justice Kibuuka Musoke on Monday ordered Uganda's Rolling Stone magazine to pay $650 in damages and court costs for each of the three Activists who sued the magazine. Musoke also ordered a permanent injunction preventing the magazine from publishing any further names of men or women ...

Uganda court rules media cannot 'out' gay Ugandans...
KAMPALA, Uganda – Uganda's High Court has ruled that the media should not publish the names and photos of gay Ugandans following a vitriolic campaign in the east African country which urged citizens to hang those featured. Justice Kibuuka Musoke on Monday ordered Uganda's Rolling Stone magazine to pay $650 in damages and court costs for each of the three Activists who sued the magazine. Musoke also ordered a permanent injunction preventing the magazine from publishing any further names of ...

Uganda court rules media cannot 'out' gay Ugandans
KAMPALA, Uganda - Uganda's High Court has ruled that the media should not publish the names and photos of gay Ugandans following a vitriolic campaign in the east African country which urged citizens to hang those featured. Justice Kibuuka Musoke on Monday ordered Uganda's Rolling Stone magazine to pay $650 in damages and court costs for each of the three Activists who sued the magazine. Musoke also ordered a permanent injunction preventing the magazine from publishing any further names of ...

Elsewhere In The Ist-a-verse: Happy New Year!
James Calder Shanghaiist finds it a little hard to believe that CBS mistook Taipei for Hong Kong. Chicagoist was in year-end recap mode, naming Mayor Daley’s decision not to run for another term the most important news story of the year. Bostonist saw Boston's 2009 Green Line crash get resolved, legally speaking, 18 months later as crash text dummy Aiden Quinn pleaded guilty to causing the whole mess. We were also focused on saying goodbye to 2010, and adapting to snow. In other snow new...

Whose fault is it when animals die because its cold outside?
When I was a little kid, I wanted to be a zoologist “when I grew up”.  Then, somewhere around second grade or so, I wanted to be a paleo-zoologist, when I became interested in Pleistocene megafauna after a field trip to the Natural History Museum in Cleveland.  I remain fascinated by the giant ungulates, sabertoothed whatevers, and massive beasts that once roamed North America, in particular.  Something about them captures my imagination, especially regarding their dis...

Rogers agrees to buy German electronics maker
Rogers Corp., which makes circuit materials, cushioning and sealing, lighting systems and other products, said Monday it signed an agreement to acquire German electronics manufacturer Curamik Electronics GmbH for about $154.1 million. Rogers said the deal would allow the company to grow by targeting three strategic markets: Sustainable Energy, the Internet and Mass Transit. Curamik develops products used in such devices as industrial motor drives, wind and Solar Energy converters and hybrid elec...

Maynards Guide to Global Warming
Discussion about Global Warming has degenerated into a (ahem!) heated exchange of dogma. We’re getting blasted with Junk Science and fragmentary truths. As a public service, I’ll try to lay out the basic situation. Be warned that what you’ll see here deviates from the “conservative” party line. But, if it makes you feel any better, “liberals” will likewise find these comments disagreeable. I’m just setting down the data as I understand it, and let ...

Wind industry outlines priorities for this year
The wind industry is calling on lawmakers to pass this year a “long-term energy plan” that includes tax incentives for Wind Energy and a Renewable Electricity standard. The American Wind Energy Association, the wind industry’s national trade group, said Friday that it has managed to get by in 2010 without a “long-term U.S. policies toward Renewable Energy.” But the group warned that the policies are needed. The Third Quarter of this year was the worst since 2007 for the wind

Colo. utility looks at tapping mines' methane gas
A Glenwood Springs-based utility is considering buying power generated by Methane gas that's now vented from western Colorado Coal Mines into the atmosphere. Del Worley of Holy Cross Energy tells the Daily Sentinel in Grand Junction that a developer is looking at working with the West Elk and Elk Creek Coal Mines on capturing the gas. He says the developer has experience with the process at mines in the East and Europe. Environmentalists have said gas freed during Coal Mining should be collected...

In 24 states, don't call your old computer 'trash'
MONTPELIER, Vt. — Get a new flat-screen TV for Christmas and wondering what to do with the old console? Finally replacing that Turntable with an MP3 player? Just upgrading your Mac? Whatever it is, you’d better check your state’s books before heading to the landfill. As the new year begins, Vermont is joining New York, Pennsylvania and South Carolina in instituting laws banning electronic waste from landfills, bringing to 24 the number of states with similar measures, according...

EPA crackdown on mountaintop removal named among environmental issues to watch in 2011
The Obama Administration’s move to Crack Down on mountaintop removal Coal Mining has been listed in the Vermont Law School’s annual collection of environmental issues to watch in 2011. You can read the entire Environment Watch List 2011 here, and you’ll see it also includes congressional failure to enact comprehensive Climate Change Legislation. Regarding mountaintop removal, the list produced by top-ranked environmental law program in the country, said: Regulators, politicia...

Celluloid Doublethink
From George Orwell’s 1984, written over sixty years ago: ‘What are the stars?’ said O’Brien indifferently. ‘They are bits of fire a few kilometres away. We could reach them if we wanted to. Or we could blot them out. The earth is the centre of the universe. The sun and the stars go round it.’ Winston made another convulsive movement. This time he did not say anything. O’Brien continued as though answering a spoken objection: ‘For certain purposes, of course,