Singer James Blunt ‘stopped World War 3′

Singer James Blunt has told the BBC how he refused an order to attack Russian troops when he was a British soldier in Kosovo.

Blunt said he was willing to risk a court martial by rejecting the order from a US General.

But he was backed by British General Sir Mike Jackson, who told him “I’m not going to have my soldiers be responsible for starting World War 3″.

Blunt was ordered to seize an airfield – but the Russians had got there first.

In an interview with BBC Radio 5Live, to be broadcast later on Sunday, he said: “I was given the direct command to overpower the 200 or so Russians who were there.

“I was the lead officer with my troop of men behind us … The soldiers directly behind me were from the Parachute Regiment, so they’re obviously game for the fight.

“The direct command [that] came in from General Wesley Clark was to overpower them. Various words were used that seemed unusual to us. Words such as ‘destroy’ came down the radio.” …

“Fortunately, up on the radio came General Mike Jackson, whose exact words at the time were, ‘I’m not going to have my soldiers be responsible for starting World War 3′, and told us why don’t we sugar off down the road, you know, encircle the airfield instead.

“And after a couple of days the Russians there said ‘hang on we have no food and no water. Can we share the airfield with you?’.”

If Gen Jackson had not blocked the order from Gen Clark, who as NATO Supreme Commander Europe was his superior officer, Blunt said he would still have declined to follow it, even at the risk of a court martial. ….

via BBC News – Singer James Blunt ‘stopped World War 3′.

Interesting story. I’ve heard independent thought is encouraged in the modern army. That can cut both ways, of course.  Good thing things went the way they did. General Clark “currently serves as the co-chairman of Growth Energy, an ethanol lobbying group”.

Bereavement ‘raises risk of dangerous heart changes’

Recently-bereaved people have heart rhythm changes which may make some of them more vulnerable to heath problems, say researchers.

The University of Sydney study, released at a US heart conference, monitored the hearts of 78 bereaved spouses and parents.

They beat faster on average than unaffected volunteers, with more common periods of very rapid heart rates.

A UK specialist recommended check-ups for those with-existing heart problems.

It is known that the trauma of bereavement can mean an increased risk of heart attacks and strokes in the months immediately following the death of a close relative.

The Australian team asked people whose relative had died in hospital two weeks earlier to wear heart monitors 24 hours a day to try to reveal any underlying changes which might be contributing to this.

…They found that the average heart rate following bereavement was 75 beats per minute, compared to 70.7 in unaffected volunteers.

However, this was accompanied by twice the normal number of periods where the heartbeat accelerated to higher than normal levels, called tachycardia.

This alone does not cause serious heart problems – rapid heartbeats can be a normal by-product of stress and anxiety.

Lead researcher Dr Thomas Buckley said that it might, however, be enough to trigger an attack in someone with pre-existing heart disease. … The study found that, six months after bereavement, heart rhythms had returned to normal.

… wherever possible, the bereaved should try to take moderate exercise and seek out social support.  …

via BBC News – Bereavement ‘raises risk of dangerous heart changes’.

1,000mph Bloodhound car will need superwheel

The British Bloodhound car will need “bullet-proof wheels” when it tries to break the land speed record in 2012.

The 97kg aluminium discs that will act as its wheels will have to resist being blasted by a stream of grit thrown up from underneath the vehicle as it races across a dry lake bed at over 1,000mph.

Researchers are trying to identify the best alloy for the task.

This has resulted in them firing pieces of grit at samples of metal using a gas gun at Cambridge University.

It is a critical investigation. The discs will be spinning faster than any wheel in automotive history; at top speed, the wheels will turn at about 10,200rpm, or 170 complete turns each second.

This will produce stresses at the rim that could be as high as 150 megapascals (about 1.5 tonnes per square centimetre), says Dr Glenn Miles, from Lockheed Martin UK, who is leading this research.

“Surface damage to the wheels is inevitable because they will be in contact with the floor of the lake bed,” he told BBC News.

“But what we don’t want to see is that any cracks generated at the surface then flow through and into the wheel. If a crack travels into the wheel, we may see large-scale catastrophic failure or plastic collapse of the wheel, and that’s something we’ve got to avoid at all costs.”

To claim the land speed record, Bloodhound will have to better the mark of 763mph (1,228km/h) set by the Thrust SuperSonic Car in 1997. …

via BBC News – 1,000mph Bloodhound car will need superwheel.

West cannot defeat al-Qaeda, says UK forces chief

The West can only contain not defeat militant groups such as al-Qaeda, the head of the UK’s armed forces has said.

General Sir David Richards, a former Nato commander in Afghanistan, said Islamist militancy would pose a threat to the UK for at least 30 years.

But he told the Sunday Telegraph newspaper a clear-cut victory over militants was not achievable.

The BBC’s Frank Gardner said the comments reflect a “new realism” in UK and US counter-terrorism circles.

Our security correspondent said such an admission five years ago might have been considered outrageous and defeatist.

Gen Richards, 58, took over as chief of the defence staff last month, after a spell as head of the British army. …

In his Sunday Telegraph interview, Gen Richards expressed confidence that al-Qaeda could be contained to such an extent that Britons could lead secure lives. …

via BBC News – West cannot defeat al-Qaeda, says UK forces chief.

Link number two right now after a Google search for “who created al qaeda” says that “the West” is responsible,  not only for creating al-Qaeda during the Soviet-Afghan war and for training the mujahideen to fight the Soviet Union, but also for continuing collaboration. Michel Chossudovsky, an economics professor at the University of Ottawa in Canada who thinks the US will start WWIII by attacking Iran, has this to say:

“Blowback is when an intelligence asset goes against its sponsors.

That viewpoint s incorrect because in the course of the 1990s there’s ample evidence of links between al-Qaeda and the U.S. administration, during the Clinton administration as well as the Bush administration, leading up in fact to 2001. There’s evidence of active collaboration between al-Qaeda paramilitary groups in the Balkans and senior U.S. military advisers.” – link

This conspiracy theory could just be the result of the difficulty for CIA in handling the monster it created.  I suspect the truth is both dirty and complicated, but if Chossudovsky happened to be correct when you boil it all down, the UK forces chief would be saying above that the West can not defeat itself… An amusing inside joke.

World War III would really suck. Let’s not do that.

 

S. African innovation fuels nuclear medicine safely

South Africa has uncovered a new way to power vital nuclear medical technologies without using weapons-grade uranium, which could ease global worries about nuclear arms trafficking.

After voluntarily dismantling its weapons programme, democratic South Africa used the leftover nuclear fuel to produce medical isotopes, which are used by doctors for imaging technology.

South Africa is one of the world’s top three producers of molybdenum-99, better known as moly, used in 80 percent of the 50 million nuclear medical procedures performed globally each year.

Normally, moly is created with the same type of uranium used to make nuclear arms, creating a problem for efforts to corral weapons-grade uranium.

But a new technique designed by the South African Nuclear Energy Corporation (Necsa) allows scientists to create moly using low-enriched uranium, rather than the highly enriched type needed for bombs.

“This is very exciting,” said Mike Sathekge, chief of nuclear medicine at the University of Pretoria. “This is envisaged to have a huge impact.” …

via S.African innovation fuels nuclear medicine safely.

 

14th century King Arthur text to be auctioned

… A 14th century manuscript containing what is believed to be the oldest surviving account of the legends of King Arthur is to be sold for up to £2 million, it was announced today.

The Rochefoucauld Grail, a colourful, illustrated account of the knights of the round table is said to be one of the finest medieval texts in private hands.

It is due to be sold by auction house Sotheby’s in London for a price estimated between £1.5 million and £2 million. …

More than 200 cows would have been needed to produce the vellum sheets for the three hefty volumes of the manuscript, which contains 107 finely painted illustrations.

It was written in Flanders or Artois some time between 1315 and 1323 and probably produced for Guy VII, Baron de Rochefoucauld, head of one of the leading aristocratic families of medieval France.

The manuscript went on to be acquired by 19th century collector Sir Thomas Phillipps and has changed hands twice since.

via The Rochefoucauld Grail: Sotheby’s to auction 14th century King Arthur text | Mail Online.

Scottish rocks record ancient oxygen clues

Oxygen levels on Earth reached a critical threshold to enable the evolution of complex life much earlier than thought, say scientists.

The evidence is found in 1.2-billion-year-old rocks from Scotland.

These rocks retain signatures of bacterial activity known to occur when there is copious atmospheric oxygen.

The microbes’ behaviour is seen 400 million years further back in time than any previous discovery, the researchers tell the journal Nature.

The team is not saying complex life existed 1.2 billion years ago, merely that the conditions would have been right for it to start to take hold. …

via BBC News – Scottish rocks record ancient oxygen clues.

Far side of the Moon

The far side of the Moon is the lunar hemisphere that is permanently turned away from the Earth. The far hemisphere was first photographed by the Soviet Luna 3 probe in 1959, and was first directly observed by human eyes when the Apollo 8 mission orbited the Moon in 1968. The rugged terrain is distinguished by a multitude of crater impacts, as well as relatively few lunar maria. It includes the second largest known impact feature in the Solar System, the South Pole-Aitken basin. The far side has been suggested as a potential location for a large radio telescope, as it would be shielded from possible radio interference from Earth. To date, there has been no ground exploration of the far side of the Moon.

via Far side of the Moon – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.