Free Republic

The United Kingdom’s experiment with electric police vehicles has seemingly ended in failure after the cars have been revealed to be practically useless for crucial law enforcement activities. As the U.K. Daily Mail reported, hundreds of the vehicles have been purchased across the country by different police forces. The total cost of the green vehicles is almost £1.5 million — nearly $2 million in American currency. While electric cars have their merits, the technology simply isn’t there for the vehicles to serve as regular parts of police fleets. Despite this, U.K. police forces have fielded over 400 of the green...

OSLO (Reuters) – A $6 cardboard box that uses solar power to cook food, sterilize water and could help 3 billion poor people cut greenhouse gases, has won a $75,000 prize for ideas to fight global warming. The "Kyoto Box," named after the United Nations' Kyoto Protocol that seeks to cut emissions of greenhouse gases, is aimed at billions of people who use firewood to cook. Costing 5 euros ($6.60) to make, it can also make it easier to boil polluted water. "We're saving lives and saving trees," the Kyoto Box's developer Jon Boehmer, a Norwegian based in Kenya, said...

(IsraelNN.com) Israel’s defense industry continues to develop innovative technologies in the fields of unmanned surveillance and anti-missile protection. Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) is unveiling several new technologies, eagerly sought and purchased by Western armies. The latest IAI innovation is a solar-powered UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle), which it will unveil at an aeronautics show Friday. The UAV runs off solar power and stores the power to continue to operate during night-time operations as well. IAI has also developed a system called Computerized Fluid Dynamics (CFD) that helps determine the aerodynamics of a plane or UAV. British Need Israeli UAVs Globes reported...

GENEVA (AFP) - A Swiss-made catamaran has become the first solar-powered boat to cross the Atlantic after reaching the French Caribbean island of Martinique, the boat's owners said. Sun21 reached Martinique's Le Marin harbour at 3:00 pm (1900 GMT) on Friday, 63 days after leaving the Spanish port of Chipiona near Cadiz, the Transatlantic21 partnership said on its website. The 14 metre (46 feet) boat largely followed the historic route sailed by explorer Christopher Columbus on the first known maritime crossing of the Atlantic in the 15th century, making its last stopover in the Canary Islands. The catamaran covered the...

WASHINGTON — The Air Force is eyeing a seldom-used region of the Earth's atmosphere called "near space" for communications and intelligence-gathering with one of the oldest types of aircraft — balloons.

Ananova: Solar-powered Indian man says he doesn't need foodAn Indian man who claims not to have eaten solid food since 1995 says he gets all of the energy he needs from the sun.Hira Ratan Manek, 65, from Calicut in Kerala, says he has conquered hunger by absorbing solar energy through his eyes.He believes people can induce changes in their bodies by gazing at the sun every day during the first hour of sunrise or last hour of sunset while standing barefoot on the ground.He said: "After a few days of practice, you will feel the energy entering the body through...