Australia’s energy grid could run entirely on renewables such as wind and solar power within 10 years, according to a report endorsed by the International Energy Agency (IAEA).
Only technologies that are proven and commercially available are referred to in the report, according to the ABC.
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(0)320 people have been arrested by Italian police in dawn raids across Italy.
“This was a huge operation involving some 3,000 carabinieri [police],” reports the BBC’s Duncan Kennedy. People were arrested “on suspicion of crimes including murder, money laundering and belonging to a criminal organisation.”
There have also been associated arrests in the US.
(0)Dislikes(0)Egyptian Nobel Peace Prize winner Mohamed ElBaradei is challenging Hosni Mubarak, who has ruled Egypt for nearly three decades.
“The decisive moment was my return to Cairo in February. I really only wanted to visit my country again and spend a few weeks at my house here near the pyramids. But then, 1,500 people were standing there at the airport,” says ElBaradei in an interview with Speigel Online. “It was a cross-section of our society: students, business people, workers and surprisingly many women, including Egyptian women with head scarves and veiled faces. Some called out: “This country must be changed, please help us make that happen!” Others held signs reading: “ElBaradei for President!” It electrified me.”
(0)Dislikes(0)If we are indeed completely in thrall to the selfish gene, why not throw all constraint to the winds and just be selfish – individually and collectively, in our politics, social arrangements, financial and economic dealings? writes Karen Armstrong in her review of Absence of Mind by Marilynne Robinson.
We saw during the 20th century (not to mention the first decade of the 21st) what can happen when the “me-first” mentality is given free rein. But this was also the century of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Nelson Mandela, who revealed the potential for altruism in humanity.
(0)Dislikes(0)An air traffic controller at Male’ International Airport was found dead at 4:00am this morning after apparently hanging himself from the control tower.
The man, identified by newspaper Haveeru as 26 year-old Ismail Mohamed Didi, was discovered after airport workers received no response from the tower’s phone.
The case was reported to police around 5:00am. Sub-Inspector Ahmed Shiyam confirmed the body was found hanging from the tower but said it was too early to confirm whether the death was a suicide.
“His body was first taken to Hulhumale’ hospital and now he is in Indira Gandi Memorial Hospital (IGMH),” he said. “We are investigating the case.”
Spokesperson for the Maldives Airports Company (MACL) Rahmathulla Ashraf told Haveeru that the company could only comment once the police investigation was concluded.
“We are also waiting for the findings of the investigation,” he said.
Rahmathulla claimed the incident did not disrupt the operations of the control tower.
A source familiar with the victim said Didi was a junior air traffic controller who performed his job well.
The source said Didi had been an air traffic controller for 6-7 years and had recently worked at Kaadedhoo airport in Huvadhu atoll.
“He went up the control tower around 3:00am, a quiet time when there is no air traffic,” said the source.
“People at the airport received no response from the tower, so they went up to check and found him hanging there.”
(0)Dislikes(0)There are “important clues in the sediments [that reveal] why the 2004 Sumatran earthquake generated a deadly tsunami and the adjacent 2005 earthquake did not,” says seismologist Arthur Frankel in a report on the Science website.
Those clues could indeed help to predict “whether great earthquakes in other subduction zones will produce large tsunamis,” he says.
The paper provides “strong evidence” that sedimentary layers can “have a major influence on the behavior of [earthquakes] tsunamis,” agrees marine geophysicist Jian Lin.
(0)Dislikes(0)The Dhivehi Rayyithunge Party (DRP), Peoples Alliance party (PA), Dhivehi Qaumee Party (DQP) and Jumhoory Party (JP) last night held a joint rally to deliver what they promised yesterday would be “a shocking message” to the government.
DRP leader Ahmed Thasmeen Ali told the assembled crowd that this was the first step of the opposition to change the administration.
“The government has recently on different occasions attempted to smear [the name of] independent institutions and commissions of the state,” said Thasmeen. “The government fist attempted to influence and smear the Civil Service Commission (CSC) first, then the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC), now parliament and the judiciary as well.”
Thasmeen accused the government of attempting to retain power by “misusing” the armed forces.
“The government has attempted to threaten and hold the media captive,” he alleged, “and has been trying to influence the state media.”
PA leader Abdulla Yameen, who along with JP leader Gasim Ibrahim was recently released from house arrest by the Supreme Court following allegations of corruption and treason against the two high-profile businessmen, said the government had “sold everything the country owns except the national flag located in Jumhoory Maidhaan.”
“Recently we have witnessed the government trying to assassinate opposition leaders and hold the constitution in contempt,” Yameen alleged. “The president has threatened the opposition leaders and people of the country.”
Yamin said the Supreme Court’s ruling “proves the independence and fairness of the judiciary.”
Gasim meanwhile apologized to the people for his work bringing the ruling Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) to administration.
“Without the sacrifices made by the JP and DQP, this government would not have been able to win the last presidential election. Every Maldivian will understand that,” said Gasim. “I thought President Nasheed would be a sincere man, but it turned out that it was all sour poison.”
Gasim also said that he did not wish to run for the presidency anymore.
“But when the government is trying to sell the assets of the nation, I cannot wait patiently,” he said.
DQP leader Dr Hassan Saeed, who represented Gasim in court, was not present at the rally but Deputy leader of DQP Dr Ahmed Jameel spoke on behalf of the party.
The crowd dispersed peacefully following the rally, making the event rather more more muted than the ‘Red Notice’ protests DRP recently led against rising electricity prices. Police presence was light and the absence of MNDF personnel suggested the government had revised its predictions of clashes following the conclusion of the World Cup.
(0)Dislikes(0)Parliament has amended the Local Council Elections bill to allow Maldivians to vote in elections from anywhere in the country, rather than just their own islands.
The bill was originally returned to parliament by President Mohamed Nasheed, who commented that the bill would deny many citizens the right to vote.
The bill formerly required citizens to vote from their home islands, making voting a logistical challenge for the over 100,000 residents in the capital Male’. Workers at resorts far from their home islands would also have been disadvantaged by the previous bill.
The new system approved by parliament will nonetheless present a considerable logistical challenge for the Elections Commission.
(0)Dislikes(0)Ahmed Faseeh is the Maldivian guitarist better known as ‘Fasy’. He kicked off his musical career in Malaysia while studying for an IT degree, a week after his arrival in Kuala Lumpur. He was soon performing with many famous Malaysian musicians, including Paul Ponnudorai, Amir Yussof, Rafique Rashid, and Purple Haze, and has since returned to help build the budding Maldivian music scene.
Minivan News: What were the earliest musical experiences that influenced you?
Fasy: I was four or five years old when I was introduced to music. As a young teenager, things like Michael Jackson’s Thriller, and other video tapes that people brought into the country had a big effect on me. They were just amazing. But before that I was already into music because Dad used to perform. He was in a band.They were originally known as Shooting Stars and then a few members changed and it became TT Bum Blues.
That band started in the late 60s and I was born in 1973. By 1978 the band was no longer playing. Dad used to play a lot of vinyl recordings at home, like Grease.
We started a band at school when I was in Grade 6, but before that I was in the school choir. My first instrument was the tambourine, but I got the chance to be in the band because I danced like Michael Jackson. My first performance was at a youth concert held at Olympus which went on for about seven nights. One night, our band was performing and I did breakdancing. It wasn’t a Michael Jackson act then, just a breakdancing routine.
As school went on, I stayed with the same band, and when the rhythm guitar player left I got to play the guitar. I was about thirteen. Dad had given me an acoustic guitar which I used to practise at home. After I starting with the band I just kept on playing.
Minivan News: What were major musical influences then?
Fasy: It started with the Beatles, but when I began playing with the band it was the time of the Scorpions and Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, those sort of people. They were the main influences.
Minivan News: You went off to Malaysia in 1996 to do an Information Technology course in Kuala Lumpur, and soon after you arrived you met musicians there like Viji, Tony Warren, Bala, Paul Ponnudorai, Amir Yusuf, Rafique Rashid, and the band Purple Haze.
Fasy: Yes, they were all well-known artists in Malaysia, working in bands. I was regularly performing with Viji. A week after I arrived in KL, I went to the pub and there was Viji playing with a drum machine and another guitar player and I went up to him during a break and said I played guitar and he invited me to come back for a jam session on Sunday when the pub was closed. And from that time on, we played together regularly until the end of 2006.
Minivan News: You completed your course in 2000 and then set up a production studio called DigitalTones with Rekha Raveenderan and your production debut album Sangkeertanam sold 50,000 copies. What happened then?
Fasy: The company produced another album in 2001, the first Tamil Hip-Hop album, Nil Gavvanee by Boomerangx. That was another hit and it followed through to India as well and created a revolution in Indian music. Which was amazing to see.
Minivan News: Why do you think Malaysia was the place where that sort of thing happened. What is it about Malaysia?
Fasy: I think it’s the mix of cultures – Chinese, Indian and Malay. And the openness they have there between the cultures. I mean we worked together with everyone, and when all cultures get together its exciting. Malaysia is a unique place.
Minivan News: You have a mixture of computer skills, production and performance abilities. How has that shaped your artistic career?
Fasy: It’s true, they’ve all had a part to play in my music, but the biggest influence has been Viji. He knows the best songs of the 60s. The music then was so alive, so real and so true. I learnt most through Viji. A couple of blues tracks that we did were just incredible… a guitar player should have to learn these things, because there is so much technique, feeling and meaning in those things.
With the digital stuff… to be honest the computer degree didn’t help that much with my music, but I can use a computer for music production. The skills came in handy when I needed to network studios and computer systems, installing different drivers and programs and hardware.
My first recording was actually done in Maldives on a spool deck, so I knew the analogue recording process before I started using digital. This gave me an understanding of the sort of sound I should get when I used digital. The analogue wave is a bit smaller, which is what we want for a recording. Digital is very wide, and to get the waved narrowed down to a nice audio level, the analogue knowledge was useful.
I did a lot of live concert sound work in Maldives as well. That helped a lot.
Minivan News: On your first album, Starrs, you do everything on it, and the same with the second solo album, Cruising.
Fasy: Yes, I programmed the drums and keyboard.
Minivan News: And then with the A Compilation album, other musicians appeared on some tracks.
Fasy: I took a couple of tracks from a live session in Maldives and another one we recorded in a studio in Malaysia with other musicians. It got to a point where I was finding that programming took me away from the feel of the music and it was turning me off. I would get an inspiration and sitting down to do the programming became so technical and tedious.. so I said to myself “I need to get a band”.
I formed a band in 2004 in Malaysia with a Maldivian bass player and an Indonesian drummer. The drummer had to go because his visa ran out and he was replaced by a Maldivian. There was more changing of bass players and drummers, and finally Ibbe became the drummer and he’s still with me now. Last year we got a UK bassist, Graham Simmonds.
Minivan News: 2006 was the year of FasyLive in Male, out of that you also made a DVD.
Fasy: Initially we weren’t thinking of a DVD. We rehearsed for that concert for a long time in Maldives after returning from Malaysia. There was a lot of anticipation around that concert. It was videoed and when we saw it, we realised it was something we should share with people so we decided to do a DVD. We were heavily involved in the editing. Then we had another concert to release the DVD… any excuse to play. That live broadcast concert was in the big studio at TV Maldives, and a ticket was the DVD. We sold about 400.
Minivan News: Do you find coming back to Maldives artistically inspirational?
Fasy: I love Maldives, I don’t see myself leaving Maldives and going away and forgetting about it. I might go and live in Malaysia for a while but Maldives will always be home for me, and coming back and doing something at home is something I treasure.
Minivan News: Are your songs inspired by what happens here?
Fasy: Lot of my songs are inspired by Maldivian experiences and what we have been going through, especially the 2007 Vengeance album.
Minivan News: In 2008 you did your first Dhivehi album, Silver, which was originally a live concert, and the first time you fused Bodu Beru drums with contemporary rock.
Fasy: Yes, the recording was mixed and mastered in Malaysia by Mohamed Faizal Ghazali at ProDG projects which I’m part of.
Minivan News: What have you been doing in Maldives lately?
Fasy: Organising a concert I’ll be engineering on 16 July – a concert sponsored by ‘Burn’, the drink made by Coca Cola.
Thermal and a Quarter from India will be playing, and Metalasia from Malaysia. From Maldives there’ll be Traphic Jam, a very revolutionary band who started to talk openly about the issues of the last regime and were banned from a lot of venues. They won the BreakOut festival competition last year and their bringing out a new album this month which has got some stuff about the current situation.
They are sort of “the voice of youth”. Also appearing on 16 July are TormentA, who had a recent album, and Sacred Legacy, who have three albums out already.
The second concert will be on 10 December, and I’ll be performing with another band from UK called Steranko.
FasyLive is keeping quiet for a while because we are too busy with BreakOut. FasyLive is still performing, we are due to play at a festival in the UK on 7 August at the Music for Life organised by Jar Music in collaboration with Sudbury council in Suffolk.
Ibbe and I are heavily involved in development of the music industry here in Maldives. There’s never been a proper music industry here, bands just play because they love it. There hasn’t been platforms to take bands through levels of development. Any new band here can find themselves playing at massive festivals, which destroys their discipline and mentality, and makes them hard to manage.
That’s why BreakOut has been set up. It provides stages of development with judges and fans deciding how they proceed. That’s what creates a band. If they are good enough, after a year they can get out of the country to perform, which is essential experience for a good band.
This year we decided to focus on BreakOut and get it running properly. Every year there’s so many people coming in, musicians and industry people. It’s been going now for three years. The first year wasn’t too bad. We paid for all bands going to and fro from UK and elswhere. We went into debt and that continued through 2009. But now we have help and good backing from Wataniya, ‘Rock’ energy drink made by an Australian company, and Coca Cola.
Venues are the main problem. We depend on the Carnival venue. Last year the toilets didn’t have a water pump, so we had to pay for that and fix it. No bulbs, power switches gone. And this year the place is even a bigger mess due to vandalism.
We had a BreakOut competition in Addu in April. The music scene changed there over just three days. At the start, most of the musicians were frightened that their parents would find out what they were doing. But when the parents saw them on TV, it was all OK. The parents were really happy. People started seeing music in a different way. When parents see their kids live on TV it changes their perspective entirely. It all becomes acceptable.
With BreakOut, we provide TV Maldives with original music and they give us TV slots. Our idea is to create enough interest in this festival that people are willing to fly in. We have trouble handling big acts at the moment. Hay Festival is coming over to this year in October – an arts literature and music festival. It attracts a lot of international interest, and important people attend these festivals.
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