Steven Thorpe

Recently completed to host the 2009 Goodwill Games, the stadium will be able to supply all the juice for its 3,300 lights and two jumbotrons, or local residents when the lights and screens are off.

Continue reading – http://news.discovery.com/tech/the-sunshine-coliseum.html

LONDON (AFP) – A Taiwanese whisky beat a trio of top Scottish blends in a connoisseurs’ blind taste test organised to mark Scotland’s annual Burn’s Night festivities, The Times reported on Monday.

The Taiwan-distilled Kavalan brand, described as a “Far Eastern incomer,” came top in a test against three Scottish and one English whisky in a historic hostelry in Leith, north of Edinburgh, said the paper.

“Oh. My. God,” author and whisky connoisseur Charles MacLean told the paper when the unexpected result was confirmed.

Continue reading – http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100125/wl_uk_afp/britainscotlandtaiwandrinkalcoholoffbeat_20100125125204

Too bad they couldn’t bring the title home for her this year.

A few key sentences from this article -

• Governments and utilities worldwide are likely to spend $200 billion on so-called smart grid initiatives by 2015, a development that promises greater energy efficiency on a global scale, but that is only a small step towards what could be done to use energy more efficiently.
• Right now, only a fifth of the energy we actually burn or otherwise generate for electricity is actually used.
• A smarter grid is the basic building block for such initiatives as electric and hybrid cars, and utility executives like Jim Rogers, CEO of Duke Energy, consider increasing efficiency a source of energy in and of itself.
• Bringing a full smart grid online in the United States alone is a $1 to $2 trillion proposition over the next couple of decades, according to research by Jackson Associates, and it will save $48 billion for the 200 largest U.S. utilities.
• Take, for instance, the Bush tax cuts of the early 2000s. That legislation cost $2.48 trillion from 2001-2010—enough to have already modernized our electric grid by now, if we’d chosen to invest it that way.
• Closer to our own time, the government will spend more money bailing out banks, AIG, General Motors and Chrysler than the entire world will spend on smart grid technology that could lay the groundwork for future growth and help mitigate the effects of global warming.

Read the full article here – http://www.portfolio.com/views/blogs/daily-brief/2009/12/29/smart-grid-spending-on-the-rise-but-not-enough/

This handout photo provided by the South Korean Blue House shows an illustration of nuclear power plants to be built by a South Korea-led consortium in Sila, 330 kilometres (204 miles) west of the United Arab Emirates capital. The consortium won a 20-billion-USD contract to build four nuclear power plants in the Middle East country.

(AFP/Pool/Blue House)

NEW YORK (AFP) – Wall Street prepares to close out 2009 on an upbeat note with the market holding hefty gains from a stunning comeback following a disastrous start to the year.

The stock market enters the final week of trading at its highs for the year on the heels of a stunning nine-month rally that lifted the main indexes from their lowest levels in over a decade.

The final four trading days of the year in the upcoming holiday-shortened week are expected to see light activity and a favorable mood, with the market enjoying a so-called Santa Claus rally.

In the holiday week ending Thursday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 1.85 percent to 10,520.10, its best level in nearly 15 months.

The tech-rich Nasdaq composite meanwhile rallied 3.35 percent to 2285.69 and the broad Standard & Poor’s 500 index advanced 2.18 percent to 1,126.48.

Fred Dickson, market strategist at DA Davidson & Co., said the mood on Wall Street should remain positive through the coming week.

“Trading activity should pick up next week as investors make last minute portfolio changes like tax-loss sales and portfolio rebalancing,” he said.

“We still expect to see the minor Santa Claus rally continue through New Year’s Eve.”

Continue reading – http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20091225/bs_afp/stocksusweekly_20091225174912