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After debuting the Chevrolet Spark EV in 2012, the tiny electric tyke most known for a snazzy Lime color option went on sale four just three years, from 2013 to 2016. In that time, GM sold roughly 7,400 units, mostly in states with zero emissions vehicle mandates like California, Oregon, and Maryland. The grudging, compliance car aspect, old battery chemistry, tiny sales total explain why EV-Resource reports that GM has discontinued Spark EV battery packs. According to some Chevrolet parts departments the outlet contacted, the order system showed the hatchback's battery pack as unavailable as of April 7. An automaker...

IRONSIDES is an authoritative/recursive DNS server pair that is provably invulnerable to many of the problems that plague other servers. It achieves this property through the use of formal methods in its design, in particular the language Ada and the SPARK formal methods tool set. Code validated in this way is provably exception-free, contains no data flow errors, and terminates only in the ways that its programmers explicitly say that it can. These are very desirable properties from a computer security perspective. IRONSIDES is not a complete implementation of DNS. In particular, it does not support zone transfers or all...

DETROIT (AP) -- General Motors is giving its Chevrolet Spark a jolt of electricity. An all-electric version of the mini-car will debut this week at the Los Angeles Auto Show. It goes on sale this summer in California, Oregon, Canada and South Korea, where it's made. Other markets will follow. Unlike the Chevrolet Volt sedan, which can run in all-electric mode but also has a backup gas engine, the Spark EV is a pure electric. GM won't say how far the car will go on a charge, but says it will be a top performer among the small number of...

PARIS (AFP) – Scientists unveiled fossils from west Africa Thursday that push back the dawn of multicellular life on Earth by at least 1.5 billion years. Just how complex the newly discovered organisms are is sure to be hotly debated. But there can be no doubt that the creatures unearthed from the hills of Gabon, visible to the naked eye, have upended standard evolutionary timelines. "The cursor on the origin of complex multicellular life is no longer 600 million years ago, as has long been maintained, but more like 2.1 billion years," said Abderrazak El Albani, a researcher at the...

Cash Fails the Grade Deborah Lambert, April 19, 2010 If you think a couple of hundred bucks might motivate young students to hit the books, you might be in for a big surprise. It appears that “Spark,” a much-touted program in the New York City public school system that paid as much as $500 a year to fourth and seventh graders who aced math and reading exams, did nothing to boost students’ standardized test scores, according to the New York Post....

Unless US auto-maker General Motors can get a grip on its debts even its radical new car won't be able to save it. GM's new Mini-style car, the fuel-efficient Chevrolet Spark As oil creeps back above the $50-a-barrel mark, what better time for GM to unveil its compact Mini-style car, the fuel-efficient Chevrolet Spark? At this weekend's New York International Auto Show, it may be Project Puma, GM's tie-up with Segway, that is the focus of media attention but the Spark will be the cream of the crop – a stylish, chic and small car, the exact opposite of the...

WASHINGTON -- California lawmakers are questioning whether an auditing company in which San Francisco investor Richard Blum, the husband of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, has a major financial stake is rejecting Medicare claims at California rehabilitation hospitals to reap millions of dollars in profits at the expense of patient care. The company, PRG-Schultz International, has a contract with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the overseer of the Medicare program, to check payments in California for mistakes. Its only pay is a bounty of up to 30 percent on the overcharges it identifies. The California Hospital Association first raised concerns...

Volunteers Spark Warmth at Burn Center Troops deployed to Afghanistan give there off time to help local burn victims. By Sgt. Victoria Willoughby 345th Mobile Public Affairs FORWARD OPERATING BASE SALERNO, Afghanistan, Jan. 16, 2007 -- An all too familiar call echoed through the Forward Operating Base Salerno burn clinic and medical staff and hospital volunteers scrambled to receive two young Afghan sisters badly burned in a heater explosion at their home. "A heater in their home had a malfunction and it exploded, burning all four of the children and burning down the entire house. Two of the children...

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - Saudi Arabia's king warned Saturday that all of the Middle East is threatened by escalating conflicts around the region, from spiraling sectarian violence in Iraq to rising tensions in Lebanon to fighting among Palestinians. "Our Arab region is surrounded by dangers," King Abdullah said at the opening of a summit for leaders of the oil-rich Arab nations around the Persian Gulf. "It is like a keg of gunpowder waiting for a spark to explode." Palestinian factions are fighting each other, and Iraq is slipping into "the darkness of strife and mad struggle," a danger that also...

Straw's veil comments spark anger Mr Straw says covering faces makes good community relations difficult Jack Straw, the ex-foreign secretary, has angered Muslim groups by suggesting women who wear veils can make relations between communities more difficult. The Blackburn MP says the veil is a "visible statement of separation and of difference" and he asks women visiting his surgery to consider removing it. The Islamic Human Rights Commission said the Commons leader's request was selective discrimination. But the Muslim Council of Britain said it understood Mr Straw's discomfort. Muslims make up about a quarter of the population of Blackburn, and...

SAN DIEGO The state's Democratic leadership rallied behind gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides on Monday, seeking to spark a campaign that has struggled to connect with voters in his attempt to unseat Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Both candidates had full schedules on the traditional Labor Day start to the fall campaign, with Angelides speaking to union members and Schwarzenegger rallying campaign workers. The governor also made an appearance at one of Southern California's most iconic hot spots Muscle Beach in Venice. Angelides followed a more typical path for the holiday weekend, addressing labor rallies in Los Angeles, San Bernardino and San Diego...

Anti-terror raids could spark riots, says police chief By Ben Leapman, Home Affairs Correspondent (Filed: 25/06/2006) Anti-terror raids could spark rioting unless police maintain a strong relationship with the Muslim community, according to a senior officer. James Hart, who retired on Friday as Commissioner for the City of London Police, compared today's situation with the tensions that led to the Brixton and Broadwater Farm riots in the 1980s - both sparked by bungled police operations. James Hart: 'We have seen all this before' This month's botched terror raid in Forest Gate, east London, in which a suspect was shot and...

NEW YORK - The creators of "Sesame Street" are releasing a new line of videos Tuesday targeted for children as young as six months, outraging some child-development experts who feel no form of TV or video is suitable for kids under 2. The DVDs — part of a series called "Sesame Beginnings" — are intended to be watched by parents along with their small children. Sesame Workshop developed the shows with help of experts from Zero to Three, a well-regarded nonprofit advocacy group. Despite that prestigious partnership, the project has drawn fire from other experts who note that the American...

This week’s tensions over immigration reform literally caught fire in the East Valley on Thursday when students raised a Mexican flag over Apache Junction High School — and then other students yanked it down and burned it. “I know (they) shouldn’t have burned the Mexican flag,” said Jacob Stewart, a 16-year-old sophomore. “I heard it was raised above the American flag and that just irked me.” He said the turbulence was tied to the newsmaking debates in the state Legislature and in Congress, where ideas from offering illegal immigrants a chance at citizenship to making them felons are being considered....

House takes up leak reviewThursday, November 10, 2005 8:01 PM PST WASHINGTON (AP) - The House Intelligence Committee will look into a possible leak of classified information about secret CIA prisons but will not reopen its 2003 inquiry into prewar intelligence on Iraq. As calls for intelligence-related reviews grow on Capitol Hill, Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., said Thursday his committee will study several specific leaks of classified information, including a Nov. 2 Washington Post story that discussed the existence of secret CIA prisons overseas. The story said the ‘‘black sites'' were in eight countries, including democracies in Eastern Europe. Hoekstra...

CANBERRA (Reuters) - Rising world temperatures could cause a significant increase in disease across Asia and Pacific Island nations, leading to conflict and leaving hundreds of millions of people displaced, a new report said on Thursday. Global warming by the year 2100 could also lead to more droughts, floods and typhoons, and increase the incidence of malaria, dengue fever and cholera, the report into the health impact of rising temperatures found. Compiled by the Australian Medical Association (AMA) and the Australian Conservation Foundation, the country's leading medical and environment groups, the study predicts average temperatures will rise by between 1...

Raids in Britain spark hunt for US strand of 'three-way web' By David Rennie in Washington (Filed: 06/08/2004) Security officials were hunting terrorist cells in the United States yesterday following indications that an al-Qa'eda computer expert arrested in Pakistan last month had been in contact with individuals in America in the past few months. US officials said there appeared to be a three-way connection between operatives in Pakistan, the United States and Britain. Mohammad Naeem Noor Khan A senior US official told the New York Times that this week's British arrests were "part of this web that emanates from Pakistan",...

Solar storm 'could spark catastrophe' Scientists are warning a "perfect space storm" that occurred 144 years ago could happen again at any time with catastrophic consequences. Newly uncovered scientific data has shown the true extent of history's most massive electromagnetic storm which blew up on the first two days of September 1859. Like "the perfect storm" at sea which inspired a blockbuster movie, it was the result of a number of titanic events coming together. But in this case the centre of the storm was the sun, not the ocean. A combination of sunspots and solar flares produced an explosive...

It was a string of events, not one by itself, that prompted conservatives to launch the recall petition drive that has brought a historic election on the fate of Democratic Gov. Gray Davis to California, political analysts say. But some of those events ---- among them, the rolling blackouts of 2001, Davis' negative campaign tactics of 2002 and his aggressive fund raising ---- were outweighed by what analysts say was the single biggest factor: the state budget crisis. "The budget crisis wasn't the straw that broke the camel's back, it was more like a 100-pound sack of cement," said Ted...

  The Gnostic Mytho-Logos The Gnostic Idea or Notion was not informed by a philosophical world-view or procedure; rather, the Gnostic vision of the world was based upon the intuition of a radical and seemingly irreparable rupture between the realm of experience (pathos) and the realm of true Being, i.e., existence in its positive, creative, or authentic aspect. The problem faced by the Gnostics was how to explain such a radical, pre-philosophical intuition. This intuition is 'pre-philosophical' because the brute experience of existing in a world that is alien to humankind's aspirations may submit itself to a variety of interpretations; and the attempt at an interpretation may take on...