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Union made, vegan friendly

‘Discarding is wrong because it represents a waste of precious marine resources,’ said Joe Borg, European Commissioner for Fisheries and Maritime Affairs. ‘Therefore, it makes no ecological, economic or ethical sense. The sooner we bring this wasteful practice to an end, the better for fish stocks, the marine environment and the fishing industry.’

The new proposals involve the adoption of a progressive fishery-by-fishery discard ban and the setting of standards for maximum acceptable by-catch.
The incentive is thus for fishers to take from the sea only what can be marketed. The debate on achieving these aims will continue till the end of 2007 and the first proposed measures could be tabled in 2008.

"711 000 Australian homes are within the projected possible range of 6 metre sea level rise this century. In our region, up to 450 million people will be made vulnerable by just a one metre rise. This is a recipe for enormous misery, migration and social chaos."

"The world’s best scientific minds are warning of catastrophic losses of species and treasured wild places. The extinction of the Pygmy Possum or the death of the World Heritage Great Barrier Reef or loss of the Snowy Mountains snow cover involves profound personal costs, a deep and difficult sense of grief, regret and even guilt.
"Future generations will be greatly aggrieved by this Howardian age of consumptive indifference."

"Malcolm Turnbull’s claim that the IPCC report was nothing new is an admission that his government’s decade of inaction was despite knowledge of these massive threats to our nation’s environmental and economic security.

"Now he is flying around the world with a$200 million off-the-shelf plan to save rainforests. He is currently appealing in the Federal Court to overturn a ruling saving Tasmania’s 10,000 hectare Wielangta forest from logging and burning. And in the Senate, his government is blocking.

Greens Senator Christine Milne’s Climate Change bill and call for an inquiry into sea level rises. He is a sham." Senator Brown said.

The Boeing demonstrator uses a Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) fuel cell/lithium-ion battery hybrid system to power an electric motor, which is coupled to a conventional propeller. The fuel cell provides all power for the cruise phase of flight. During takeoff and climb, the flight segment that requires the most power, the system draws on lightweight lithium-ion batteries.

Flight tests, which will take place in Spain, will demonstrate for the first time that a manned airplane can maintain a straight level flight with fuel cells as the only power source.

"While Boeing does not envision that fuel cells will provide primary power for future commercial passenger airplanes, demonstrations like this help pave the way for potentially using this technology in small manned and unmanned air vehicles," Escarti said. "It also gives us hands-on experience to complement other fuel-cell studies being carried out throughout the company."

BR&TE, part of the Boeing Phantom Works advanced R&D unit, has worked closely with its colleagues in Boeing Commercial Airplanes, its Spanish partners, and with companies in Austria, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the U.S. to design and assemble the experimental airplane.

The PEM fuel-cell system used on the flight demonstrator, for instance, was designed and built by the UK-based firm Intelligent Energy. The demonstrator aircraft is a Dimona motor glider, built by Diamond Aircraft Industries of Austria, which also performed major structural modifications to the aircraft.

The Madrid-based avionics group Aerlyper performed airframe modifications, as well as the mounting and wiring of all components; SAFT France designed and assembled the auxiliary batteries and the backup battery; Air Liquide Spain performed the detailed design and assembly of the onboard fuel system and the refueling station; the Electronic Engineering Division of the Polytechnic University of Madrid (School of Industrial Engineering) collaborated in the design and construction of the power management and distribution box; post-integration bench testing is being conducted in a facility that belongs to the Polytechnic University of Madrid (INSIA); and SENASA (Spain) will provide a test pilot and facilities for flight tests.

Plant to produce 1400 litres a second: The pilot plant will not produce fresh water but once it has been completed and successfully tested it will pave the way for the construction of the biggest desalination plant in the southern hemisphere. The completed plant will provide two-thirds of its desalinated water to BHP’s Olympic Dam, while the remainder will be pumped to Upper Spencer Gulf and some Eyre Peninsula residents. It will produce more than 1400 litres of water a second once completed.

Plant to be built within two months, trialled for 13: BHP expects the plant to be built within two months. Its chief operating officer of base metals, Roger Higgins, who is accompanying Premier Mike Rann during his weeklong tour of Chile, on 2 April 2007 said the system would be trialled for about 13 months. Pre-filtration equipment – which needs to be tested as it is the only component of any desalination plant that needs to be customised – will now be built by BHP on the Santos jetty at Port Bonython.

Will ease pressure off Murray: Premier Mike Rann said the plant – three times the size of the desalination plant he toured on 2 April 2007 – would help reduce the amount of water being taken from the ailing River Murray.

The Advertiser, 3/4/2007, p.6