Aid efforts hampered after Pakistan flooding

Thousands of people have been left homeless.Save the Children are already operating in the region and are distributing plastic sheeting, household supplies and hygiene kits.Thousands of homes and roads were destroyed, and at least 45 bridges across the north-west were damaged.

Floods stir anger at Pakistan government response

Islamist charities, some with suspected ties to militants, stepped in on Monday to provide aid for Pakistanis hit by the worst flooding in memory, piling pressure on a government criticised for its response to the disaster that has so far killed more than 1,000 people.

Officials said it was too early to estimate the damage the floods had caused to the economy, but the rains had so far spared the main agricultural heartland in the Punjab.

"The entire infrastructure we built in the last 50 years has been destroyed." Adnan Khan, spokesman for the provincial Disaster Management Authority in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.

The disaster management authority said tents and hygiene kits had been delivered. Helicopters and boats have been dispatched.

But analysts say the government really lacks the resources to take on a disaster of this scale, leaving the military in charge.

Pakistan floods - as it happened

There are reports of outbreaks of cholera among the survivors of monsoon flooding in north west Pakistan, as the death toll rises and rescue workers struggle to reach 27,000 stranded people

Russia declares emergency as wildfires kill 34

Russia declared a state of emergency in seven regions on Monday after wildfires killed at least 34 people and left thousands homeless in the worst heatwave since records began 130 years ago.Fires raging across European Russia have destroyed homes, forests and fields, already scorched for weeks by an unprecedented heatwave.

Drought in some regions of Russia, one of the world's biggest wheat exporters, has sent global prices soaring to 22-month highs and driven thousands of farmers to the brink of bankruptcy.

Israel to co-operate with UN probe into Gaza flotilla

Mountain View physician invents device for clearing up dangerous blood clots

Trellis Peripheral Infusion System removes large clots in veins using balloons and blood thinners that are injected to only the clot area. Standard removal procedures for such clots, which involves injecting blood thinning medication throughout a patient's body, have proved risky and ineffective in the past. But Trellis' method makes it safer and quicker.

New Solar Energy Conversion Process Could Double Solar Efficiency of Solar Cells

A new process that simultaneously combines the light and heat of solar radiation to generate electricity could offer more than double the efficiency of existing solar cell technology, say the Stanford engineers who discovered it and proved that it works. The process, called "photon enhanced thermionic emission," or PETE, could reduce the costs of solar energy production enough for it to compete with oil as an energy source.And the materials needed to build a device to make the process work are cheap and easily available, meaning the power that comes from it will be affordable.

A reading list to help understand Wikileaks’ ‘War Logs’

In a 2008 Q&A with Harpers, the Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid explained that the roots of Pakistan’s covert support for the Taliban solidified when the U.S. focused on hunting down Al Qaeda after Sept. 11, leaving the Taliban free to develop in Pakistan. Now, the New Yorker’s Steve Coll saysPakistan’s military believes that Islamic militias could be “useful proxies to ward off a perceived existential threat from India.”

Afghanistan is an unwinnable war, and our leaders know it

The war in Afghanistan was lost long before President Obama came to power, because of an iron law of human conflict: most people hate foreigners coming to their country and trying to force them to change their way of life.

There has to be a shared purpose between the population and foreign armies for an invasion to triumph, such as existed during the liberation of Europe in the Second World War. All the Allies had to do was to fight the German armies. The inhabitants of the continent were sick of the Nazis, even in Germany, and practically everybody rooted for a swift Allied victory.

This is not the case even among the Afghan soldiers who fight alongside us at the moment. The soldier who killed several of our troops before joining the Taliban is far more typical of these young men's true feelings than their impressive turnout for Hamid Karzai's inauguration ceremony.

There is the notion, particularly strong in California, home of the US weapons industry,

that superior weapons make the lessons of history irrelevant. This fallacy is wrapped up

in the belief that, in the end, it is our values which win wars, our assistance to agriculture, education, healthcare, and so on. But winning "hearts and minds" is the policy of

mixing killing and maiming with healing, and it doesn't work.

Every enemy killed in a foreign country increases the number of enemies exponentially. In Afghanistan, the parents, the in-laws, the relatives of the dead, turn against the West. They may not take up arms and they may not join the Taliban, but they will certainly not oppose anybody who wants to kill the men who killed their loved ones.

ACLU: Bill aimed at toppling Citizens United decision would ‘compromise free speech’

The purpose of the DISCLOSE Act is to require groups to declare who paid for political advertising, including the naming of donors who've given as little as $600, according to the ACLU.

"Demanding disclosure for such a small amount of money violates Americans’ right to privacy, and will have a chilling effect on free speech in our elections," the rights group declared in a July 1 post. "Regulation like this can become a serious problem for supporters of controversial issues where anonymity is not just a matter of preference or convenience. The harassment and attacks on members of the civil rights movement show that anonymity can in fact be a matter personal safety."

They add that the DISCLOSE Act contains exceptions for large, mainstream groups with more than 500,000 members, which would not have to provide some details when buying political advertising. The ACLU contends such exceptions pose a threat to smaller, more controversial groups, which may see their right to political speech run over by the disclosure requirements.

Chrysler steps on the gas and puts EVs, hybrids on hold

Chrysler Group has scaled back its ambitious plans for hybrids and electric vehicles and instead is placing its green bets on internal combustion engines that use Fiat technology.

Sparks Fly over Electric Car Funding

"Until we significantly alter how we produce electricity in our nation," Kathryn Clay, director of research at the industry group Auto Alliance said in Senate hearings on the bill, "including upstream emissions in the vehicle greenhouse gas standards will mean that electric vehicles will rate only marginally better than conventional internal combustion engines and comparatively worse than the conventional hybrids we have on the road today."

$80 Oil: Blessing in Disguise

Oil in the current $75-$85 a barrel range is high enough to encourage conservation, while stimulating more exploration in riskier places.

THOSE EMERGENCY BLUES

asystole is just a very slow bradycardia

Three Million Dollars I Will Never See

Another float in the Parade of the Blindingly Obvious:

A 3 year, 3 million dollar study into how nurses and other health care providers can reduce the time they spend on administrative tasks or retrieving medical supplies , so they can spend more time with their patients is underway in Saskatchewan.

Um, how about 1) hiring staff to perform administrative tasks, because paying me $42 an hour for data entry is probably not a good use of resources, and 2) moving supplies to where I actually do my work and ensuring the supply carts are well-organized and stocked.
Can I have my $3 million now?

Hat Tip Galloping Beaver

Sewer studies based on leaky science

Chemicals flushing into sewer systems have been in the news for years. A group of water-management scientists claim that some of these studies may be making exaggerated claims, producing dramatic variation in concentration estimates or not detecting substances because of fundamental flaws in sampling protocols.