Archive - 2009

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Costa Rican President Oscar Arias planted the 5 millionth tree of the year near his office in the capital San Jose, By the end of 2007, Costa Rica has planted nearly 6.5 million trees, which should absorb 111,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year. The goal for 2008 was to plant 7 million trees as part of the newly launched project in order to make the biodiversity nation carbon neutral. Costa Rica constitutionally abolished its army permanently in 1949.

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Brooklyn Bridge painters at work high above the city on December 3, 1915

Construction began in 1869 and completed fourteen years later in 1883.

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The Brooklyn Bridge - the world's first steel suspension bridge - is a beloved landmark and a cultural icon of NYC. It's been celebrated in art, poetry, song, and on film. The mastermind behind the bridge called it "the greatest engineering work of the age… a great work of art."

Spanning the East River, the Brooklyn Bridge connects Manhattan and Brooklyn. It's 5,989 feet (1.825km) in length and soars 119 feet (36.27m) above the river. Its two granite Gothic towers rise 276.5 feet (84.27m) above the water. The roadway platform is hung on steel suspenders strung from four thick cables, each made of 5,296 galvanized steel wires bound together and anchored on both shorelines.

In 1867, one-third of the workers in Brooklyn (then the nation's fourth-largest city) worked in Manhattan. The only way to reach the island was by boat, and the river sometimes froze solid, stranding commuters and isolating both cities. And so, that year, a plan for a massive bridge was approved. It was designed by John A. Roebling, an engineer who'd made a fortune pioneering the manufacture of wire rope made of a new type of metal: steel.  read more »

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It’s nice to see that Spain is living up to its promise to make sure that the younger generation of Spanish women not kill themselves in an attempt to be thin. Five skinny models kicked out of Spain’s Cibeles. One of the rejected models had only reached a ratio of 16, the equivalent of being 5 feet 10 inches tall and weighing less than 110 pounds, said Dr. Susana Monereo, of Madrid Getafe hospital’s endocrinology and nutrition department, who along with two other doctors was in charge of assessing the models.

Spain Launches Movement Against Skinny Fashion Models  read more »

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*update*
October 2, 2019 DUBAI (Reuters) - Dubai continues to service its debt and is ready to take on more if needed, an economic official said on Wednesday, adding that current debt was $124 billion.
June 02, 2016 Dubai plans world's largest solar project

"This came as a big shock" – that Dubai is in debt by 59 billion and might not be able to pay its bills sent a wave of uncertainty rippling through markets just as investors thought the worst of the global financial instability was over. Once, Dubai was "like the new beacon for all the world's money" [HOME, the 2009 documentary]... "Dubai has endless sun, but no solar panels. It is the totem of total modernity that never fails to amaze the world. Nothing seems further removed from nature than Dubai, although nothing depends on nature more than Dubai. Dubai is a sort of culmination of the western model - we haven't understood that we're depleting what nature provides."

2009 Docu- mentary Film: HOME  read more »

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Greenland ice cap melting at triple the rate of just a decade ago

Greenland ice cap is disappearing at the rate of 300 Lake Windermeres a year. More than 273 gigatons of water is now pouring into the oceans annually, raising sea levels by nearly a millimeter every year, satellite imaging has shown. Such is the change in the vast ice sheet that the loss of weight is actually changing its affect on the earth's gravitational pull, the study in Science claims. One gigaton could provide enough water for 17 million people in Britain and is the volume of Lake Windermere, Britain's biggest water mass.

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