Interesting thoughts from No africom:

In terms of security, [Michael Battle, the US ambassador to the AU] confirmed America’s dedication to working with the AU and the US Africa Command (AFRICOM) to militarise the continent’s coastlines. While he claimed that the goals of this mission include responding to increased maritime piracy and breaking cartels that traffic illegally in drugs and humans, he made it clear that the primary military objective is to protect US oil interests in the Gulf of Guinea, suppress local resistance movements like MEND in Nigeria, and secure a favourable climate for returns on investment for American corporations. When pressed, Battle justified his call for militarisation by invoking the vague and poorly substantiated spectre of ‘terrorism’.

The owner did not find it amusing at all.

A mum has received an apology from police after officers swooped on her Bradford home, wrongly suspecting she had turned her garage into a cannabis farm.

The officers, who had obtained a search warrant, went away empty-handed after finding nothing more sinister than an electric heater to keep Pam Hardcastle’s two pet guinea pigs warm.

Police forced entry and brought in a helicopter, yet they found only pigs.

Tempting, but I’ll skip the puns. Their search warrant was from evidence of melting snow on the roof. Heat has become a sure sign, as I have mentioned before, of something nefarious. The British obviously are not expected to use heat to keep themselves warm, at least not enough to melt snow.

Drug growers might be tempted to take a lesson and try adopting their own pigs as a precaution (couldn’t resist) and so the security race continues. When police see a sudden up-tick in guinea pig orders, they might bring cause for another warrant. The good news is that they now might think to question a local pet shop or vet before calling in air-support.

The bands used to study penguins have been proven to significantly harm the birds.

…the results of a ten-year study of free-ranging king penguins provide convincing evidence that banding is harmful. Banded birds had a markedly lower survival rate, with every major life-history trait affected, and they were more affected by climate variation than birds without bands. As well as raising doubts over marine ecosystem data based on banding, this work has implications for the ethics of animal tagging.

In other words the study data on penguins with bands on their wings is biased by the effects the bands themselves are having on survivability.

One of our major findings is that responses of flipper-banded penguins to climate variability (that is, changes in sea surface temperature and in the Southern Oscillation index) differ from those of non-banded birds.

Some scientists had argued that bands had no impact or that birds would adapt to the bands over time. Instead it now is known that they can not fly as well, they mate less successfully, forage longer and die sooner. The only time they fared the same was when “conditions were so good that penguins might have been able to compensate from the disadvantage of having a flipper-band”. How was a study performed on non-banded penguins to notice the difference? Embedded tags were used instead of bands.

ornithologists have been calling for an end to banding for over a decade

Thus, a solution to risk already existed but the problem had to be proven irrefutably.

How does this band make my wing look?
Photo by Benoît Gineste

Chinese authorities have been leaking photos to the press for at least a month about their Stealth Fighter program, called Chengdu “Black Belt” J20 or Black Eagle. The latest news is that they are ready now to officially announce its completion. They even say that it can fly.

Hu Jintao today confirmed that China had carried out its first test flight of a stealth fighter jet, the US defence secretary has said.

Robert Gates, who is in Beijing for talks intended to improve military ties between the countries, said the Chinese president had told him the jet’s trial had not been arranged to coincide with his visit.

The Stealth Fighter in Broad Daylight

The development of the plane has surprised the intelligence communities.

Reports suggest China’s progress in developing a rival to the US F-22 stealth fighter has been faster than expected, although it is thought it will take years before the plane is in service.

The Chinese call it their “fifth generation” plane, but they suspiciously skipped right past the “fourth generation”. The MiG 21 was a “second generation” (and sometimes a “third generation”), for reference. This new plane would have to include Chinese-made advanced radar and other sensors, avionics and powerful engines to be a real fifth generation like the American F-22 Raptor. Even the Russians only have achieved fourth generation in the SU T-50 (a fifth generation aircraft but not yet running fifth generation engines). When India purchased the Russian engines they enlisted help from the French but the Chinese are embargoed from getting the same assistance.

Has China been making great progress, or have they found a way to cheat time and overcome poor quality?

We have managed to get a set of spy photos, which used thermal imaging to reveal suspicious internals of the 75 ft by 45 ft J20.

Increasing the detail appears to show an elaborate mechanical system with only a thin shell. The plane apparently is propelled by pulleys and wheels in the forward section with a large human-powered tread in the aft section. You can make out about a half-dozen people hiding in the fuselage.

Insider information suggests it may still take time for the Chinese to squeeze a MiG-25 inside this shell in order to have photographs of flight time to leak.

Ok, but seriously, maybe this actually is just a public statement that Russians have started collaborating more on the SU T-50 (announced about this time last year); they are working together with China to get past the fourth generation hump.