Home  »  Headline News

On:

“We’re a superpower with a third world grid,” said former energy secretary Bill Richardson in an interview on CNN. Third world countries can’t figure out why Thursday’s power blackout spread so wide and lasted so long. They have blackouts all the time and recover much more quickly. As the world heats up, we’re likely to have more blackouts too, so we need to learn from them.

“Look at their response there in New York,” says radio commentator Joe Taruc in the Philippines. “If it happened here, it would be nothing out of the ordinary.”

“Blackouts are a part of our daily life. I can’t understand why there is such panic in America,” says Turkish vendor Unal Karatas.
read more

On:

It’s now thought that last week’s blackout started in Ohio, but the real question is, why did it spread so far and wide? In 2002, the British company National Grid merged with Niagara Mohawk to create “NiMo,” the 9th largest utility in the U.S., serving 3.3 million people in the New England/New York area. Is this the grid that failed? Author Greg Palast wrote, “?After government regulators slammed Niagara Mohawk?with fines and penalties?the industry leaders got together to swear never to break the regulations again. Their plan was not to follow the rules, but to ELIMINATE the rules. They called it ‘deregulation’?And that’s why, if you’re in the Northeast, you’re reading this by candlelight tonight.”
read more

On:

Seattle could experience a one-two punch. First, an earthquake reaching 9 on the Richter Scale could strike the Pacific Northwest. A quake of this intensity would be enough to pulverize skyscrapers and kill people where they stood. Along with the predicted eruption of Mt. Rainier, this foretells a dire future for the area.
read more

On:

A new study of body lice reveals that humans started wearing clothes 70,000 years ago. And ever since, stores have been trying to sell us winter coats in August?but that may finally be changing.

“I can’t face winter coats in August,” says shopper Rachael Rawson, and most of us feel the same way. Dina ElBoghdady writes in the Washington Post that stores have finally started listening, probably because they haven’t been able to sell any of them during this year’s record heatwave.
read more