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The U.S. music industry’s leading trade organizations collectively slammed Twitter and its CEO Jack Dorsey for not taking down copyrighted material fast enough in a letter to Congress ahead of Thursday’s (Mar 25) hearing on disinformation on social media platforms. Dorsey, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg spoke during the hearing.The letter called out Twitter’s “failure to meet the most basic standards of responsible moderation with respect to other illegal activity — specifically, the rampant theft of creative works on its platform,” as the groups asked the Subcommittee on Communications and Technology and the Subcommittee on Consumer...

A multi-disciplinary team of scientists has a new theory for why all human civilization abruptly ended on the banks of the Dead Sea some 3,700 years ago. According to analyzed archaeological evidence, the disaster of biblical proportions can be explained by a massive explosion, similar to one recorded over 100 years ago in Russia. […] As reported in Science News, at the recently concluded Denver-based ASOR Annual Meeting, director of scientific analysis at Jordan’s Tall el-Hammam Excavation Project Phillip J. Silvia presented a paper, “The 3.7kaBP Middle Ghor Event: Catastrophic Termination of a Bronze Age Civilization” during a session on...

The 3,750 cherry blossom trees that line the Tidal Basin and surrounding national parks in Washington, D.C., survived winter blizzards and will again bloom during the peak tourist season, according to the National Park Service. Agency horticulturalist Rob Defeo says only four or five trees were destroyed and that crews are working seven days a week to prepare for the annual Cherry Blossom Festival, which runs from March 27 to April 11. The damage is nothing we haven't seen in 90-plus years," he said. "I guarantee you, by the time the festival comes around, you won't even know there was...

A major tidal energy project is being planned for waters off the coast of Northern Ireland and Scotland. ScottishPower has identified sites off the Antrim Coast, Pentland Firth and the Sound of Islay to test sea turbines which could power thousands of homes. They have been working on the Lanstrom device, which is said to be one of the world's most advanced tidal turbine. The sites would host up to 60 of the turbines, 20 at each site, generating power for up to 40,000 homes. The company is expected to apply for planning permission next year. The device, similar to...

Sloshing back and forth in constant rhythm, the ocean's tides are a predictable source of renewable energy. Hoping to tap into this, the world's largest tidal turbine is set to start generating electricity this month. The installation of the SeaGen marine current generator was completed this past May in Strangford Lough, a large inlet on the coast of Northern Ireland. The system, designed and built by Marine Current Turbines Ltd., has two rotors that each span 16 meters (52 feet) in diameter. "The technology is very analogous to wind, except we are doing everything underwater," said Peter Fraenkel, the company's...

Tidal Power Options in SF Bay Being Explored PG&E, San Francisco and Golden Gate Energy have combined efforts to pursue tidal energy. San Francisco, California Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) signed an agreement with the City and County of San Francisco (CCSF) and the Golden Gate Energy Company to conduct a comprehensive study to assess the possibilities for harnessing the tides in San Francisco Bay. In addition to being clean and renewable, tidal power offers the advantage of being highly predictable and reliable. PG&E is committing to provide up to $1.5 million to fund research by third-party experts, dovetailing...

Port Moresby [New Guinea] - Thousands of villagers fled their homes in the Pacific nation of Papua New Guinea after a volcanic eruption triggered a tidal wave that flattened homes and sowed panic among residents, reports said on Tuesday. No casualties were reported, but ocean surges destroyed four houses and a boat after a volcano on Ritter Island exploded into life at the weekend spewing ash and smoke over islands off eastern Morobe province, The National newspaper said.

Turbines are being submerged in the East River to generate electricity from rapid tidal currents. Working from barges and tugboats off New York City's Roosevelt Island, engineers are battling northeasters and this month's heavy spring tides to install the first major tidal-power project in the United States. The project involves a set of six submerged turbines that are designed to capture energy from the East River's tidal currents. The three-bladed turbines, which are five meters in diameter and resemble wind turbines, are made by Verdant Power of Arlington, VA. Thanks to lessons learned by wind turbine designers, tidal power is...

Tidal Wave Aid Dollars....An Accountability..

At least 6,000 Europeans are still missing - most of them presumed dead - after the Indian Ocean disaster wrecked beach resorts in south-west Thailand.

everal thousand North Americans are still unaccounted for in Thailand and Sri Lanka after the tsunami which killed more than 120,000 people. At least 14 US citizens have been confirmed as dead, state department spokesman Richard Boucher said.

U.S. Vows to Do More to Help Asia Victims By BARRY SCHWEID, AP Diplomatic Writer Secretary of State Colin Powell bristled Tuesday at a United Nations official's suggestion the United States has been "stingy," saying the administration expects to follow its initial $15 million Asian earthquake aid package with billions more dollars. "The United States has given more aid in the last four years than any other nation or combination of nations in the world," Powell said when asked about the comments Monday by Jan Egeland, the U.N. humanitarian aid chief. Initially, the U.S. government pledged $15 million and dispatched...

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

Probe to 'look inside' asteroids By Paul Rincon BBC News Online science staff in Paris, France Studies of asteroids would aid Earth-protection strategies A new space mission concept unveiled at a Paris conference aims to look inside asteroids to reveal how they are made. Deep Interior would use radar to probe the origin and evolution of two near-Earth objects less than 1km across. The mission, which could launch some time later this decade, would also give clues to how the planets evolved. The perceived threat of asteroids colliding with our planet has renewed interest in space missions to understand these...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2003 January 24 Seyfert's Sextet Credit: J. English (U. Manitoba), C. Palma (PSU), et al., NASA Explanation: Known as Seyfert's Sextet, this intriguing group of galaxies lies in the head portion of the split constellation Serpens. The sextet actually contains only four interacting galaxies, though. Near the center of this Hubble Space Telescope picture, the small face-on spiral galaxy lies in the distant background and appears only by...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2002 November 28 The Supermassive Black Holes of NGC 6240 Credit: Optical: R.P.van der Marel & J.Gerssen (STScI), NASA;X-ray: S.Komossa & G.Hasinger (MPE) et al., CXC, NASA Explanation: The Hubble optical image on the left shows NGC 6240 in the throes of a titanic galaxy - galaxy collision 400 million light-years away. As the cosmic catastrophe plays out, the merging galaxies spew forth distorted tidal tails of stars,...

Thursday, 15 August, 2002, 18:18 GMT 19:18 UKJapan faces tidal wave threat Seismic reflection imaging revealed the fault Image © Science Scientists in Japan have discovered a fault in the seabed off the country's coast with the potential to unleash a giant "tsunami" tidal wave. Any tsunami could hit the mainland with only a few minutes' warning Bill McGuire Benfield Greig Hazard Research Centre The newly-detected fault lies off the south-eastern coast of Japan and may have been responsible for the magnitude 8.1 earthquake which struck the country in 1944, they say. Jin-Oh Park and his colleagues at Jamstec, the...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2002 June 22 Io: The Prometheus Plume Credit: Galileo Project, JPL, NASA Explanation: Two sulfurous eruptions are visible on Jupiter's volcanic moon Io in this color composite Galileo image. On the left, over Io's limb, a new bluish plume rises about 86 miles above the surface of a volcanic caldera known as Pillan Patera. In the middle of the image, near the night/day shadow line, the ring shaped...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2002 May 2 Arp 188 and the Tadpole's Tidal Tail Credit: ACS Science & Engineering Team, NASA Explanation: In this stunning vista recorded with the Hubble Space Telescope's new advanced camera, distant galaxies form a dramatic backdrop for disrupted spiral galaxy Arp 188, the Tadpole Galaxy. The cosmic Tadpole is a mere 420 million light-years distant toward the northern constellation Draco. Its eye-catching tail is about 280 thousand...