Man dies after falling into vat of chocolate in US

Authorities say a man has died after falling into a vat of melted chocolate in a New Jersey processing plant.

The Camden County prosecutor's office identified the victim as 29-year-old Vincent Smith II. He was a temporary worker at the Cocoa Services Inc. plant.

The accident happened Wednesday morning as Smith was loading chocolate into a vat where it's melted and mixed before being shipped elsewhere to be made into candy.

Prosecutor's spokesman Jason Laughlin says a co-worker tried to shut off the machine and two others tried to pull Smith out of the 8-foot-deep (2 1/2-meter-deep) vat. He was hit and fatally injured by the agitator that mixes the chocolate.

Cocoa Services hires a second company - Lyons and Sons - to do the mixing.

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Polling body begins vote counting

The General Election Commission conducted on Wednesday a vote count via text message, reaffirming the results of quick counts that gave a majority victory to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and his running mate Boediono.

According to the KPU’s “quick count”, the SBY-Boediono won 60 percent of votes, the Megawati-Prabowo ticket 29.67 percent and the JK-Wiranto 9.62 percent.

The KPU’s results mirrors those that came from several institutions doing quick counts such as Lembaga Survey Indonesia (the Indonesian Survey Institute), Institute of Economic and Social Studies and Development (LP3S) and Indonesian Survey Circle (LSI).

Andi Nurpati, a KPU member handling the KPU’s quick count, stressed that the results showed at the KPU’s voting tabulation site (tnp.kpu.go.id/pilpres200907/sms/static/), which was provided in cooperation with the help from the International Foundation for Electoral System (IFES) and launched late Wednesday evening at the KPU office in Jakarta.

As of Wednesday evening, the polling body gathered only about 4 million votes out of about 40,000 text messages from poll officers spread around the nation.

“The results is only 40,000-something out of about 104,000 poll officers who have already been registered by the KPU,” she said.

“We will continue receiving their text messages and update the Website as we receive them. Currently, there is no deadline on when all the results must be in so just keep on checking periodically.”

However, that the KPU only had 4 million votes from about 40,000 polling stations signals an immensely low voter turn-out as each polling station takes a maximum of 800 voters, which translates to more than 20 million voters, or about 16 million voters missing from the count.

Another KPU member, Abdul Aziz, said the results shown in the vote tabulation was not meant to be a reference because the number shown in the site came from text messages, which may have been inputted incorrectly, while other messages may have not been deemed accurate enough to show in the site.

“We have an internal mechanism to filter these results, but this is still not the most reliable result.

The most reliable result will be the manual counting, which we plan to do gradually beginning on July 22 up to July 24,” he said, adding the manual vote-counting began from the polling stations nationwide soon after the ballotin and continued with a recapitulation starting from subdistrict to provincial level.

As of 9 p.m., the tabulation results from text messages have not changed.

The SBY–Boediono pair received about 2.48 million votes, the Megawati–Prabowo pair 1.2 million votes and the Kalla–Wiranto pair received a little less than 400,000 votes.



KPU’s schedule for the presidential election:

• July 8: Voting Day
• July 9 - July 10: Poll workers (KPPS) count the results from within their respective polling stations.
• July 10 - July 15: Vote-counting at the district level nationwide.
• July 16 – July 18: Vote-counting by the local general election committee at the regency/municipality level nationwide.
• July 19 – July 21: Vote-counting at the provincial level in 33 provinces.
• July 22 – July 24: The General Election Commission (KPU) will calculate the vote count from all across the country.
• July 25 – July 27: The KPU announces president-elect on July 25 and gives three days to the losers to accept the election’s results or not. This announcement is made only if the winner grabs a single majority.
• July 28-Aug.11: Settlements of election conflicts.
• Aug. 1-12: Officiating of election results.
• Oct. 20: President- and Vice President-elect are sworn in.

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Clinton urged Obama to talk tough on Iran

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton urged President Obama for two days to toughen his language on Iran before he did so, and then was surprised when he condemned Iran's crackdown on demonstrators last week, administration officials say.

At his June 23 news conference, Mr. Obama said he was "appalled and outraged" by Iranian behavior and "strongly condemned" the violence against anti-government demonstrators. Up until then, Mr. Obama and other administration officials had taken a softer line, expressing "deep concern" about the situation and calling on Iran to "respect the dignity of its own people."
Behind the scenes, the officials, who spoke on the condition that they not be named because they were discussing internal deliberations, said Mrs. Clinton had been advocating the stronger U.S. response, but the president resisted. When he finally took her advice, the aides said, he did so without informing her first.
This was the first known example of awkwardness between the two former rivals for the Democratic nomination for president since they made up following Mr. Obama's election. The disagreement also gave some insight into the Obama administration's foreign policy decision-making process five months into its term.
The officials said they were familiar with the language Mr. Obama used in his news conference because it was sent to the State Department a day earlier, but that Mrs. Clinton did not know until he uttered the words that he would choose that moment to make them public.
"It was a happy surprise," one administration official said. "It was echoing the line the secretary had been pushing for a couple of days."
Another official said Mr. Obama apparently did not make the final decision to go ahead with the tougher stance until shortly before his remarks.
"I don't think he himself had decided to do it until he did it, but we knew full well it was headed that way, because the White House sent over the actual language he'd use if he chose to take that line for folks to review and weigh in on, which State did," the second official said.
The White House and the State Department declined to comment publicly on Mrs. Clinton's "private advice" to Mr. Obama and their internal communications.


Key congressional Republicans - most prominently Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who was Mr. Obama's opponent in last year's election - criticized the president for being too "timid" and failing to speak out early against the Iranian regime's crackdown on protests following the disputed June 12 presidential election.
Mr. Obama initially said he did not want to appear to be interfering in Iran's internal affairs and provide ammunition to the regime, which tends to blame the United States and other Western countries for any unrest. In addition, he knew he would most likely have to deal with the current government as part of the West's efforts to prevent Iran from producing a nuclear weapon, officials said.
"On the one hand, he may have felt that the United States should naturally criticize the Iranian government's violent crackdown on the protesters," said Alireza Nader, an analyst at the Rand Corp. "On the other, he acknowledged that the U.S. was still willing to engage with Iran in the future. Strong U.S. criticism of the Iranian government could jeopardize future negotiations."
Mrs. Clinton agreed with the president, but she thought it was time to get tougher after the June 20 killing of a young woman, Neda Agha-Soltan, on a Tehran street, officials said. A video of the killing was widely viewed on the Internet.
At the same time, they added, she was content to leave the decision to Mr. Obama, because she understood that he bore ultimate responsibility for any consequences.
However, Mr. Obama's sudden decision to toughen his language on Tehran had the effect of making the State Department look out of sync with the White House.
Until about an hour before the presidential news conference, the State Department continued to follow a more cautious public line, using words like "deeply concerned" about the situation in Iran, but refusing to "condemn" the crackdown. Then came Mr. Obama's surprise.
"The United States and the international community have been appalled and outraged by the threats, the beatings and imprisonments of the last few days," he said. "I strongly condemn these unjust actions, and I join with the American people in mourning each and every innocent life that is lost."
The decision on Iran was very personal, officials said. Mr. Obama knew his senior aides' views, but it was up to him to "pull the trigger."
"We have so few tools when we deal with Iran, and we don't fully understand what's going on, so all we've got is what the president says," the first administration official said. "There isn't a huge process behind it."
In general, the officials said, Mr. Obama has relied on the government bureaucracy to formulate language on foreign affairs.
For example, before Mr. Obama's meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Friday, everything he said was a "result of a long process involving meetings and briefing papers," the official said. Even with North Korea, another country that has no diplomatic relations with the U.S., "we have a formalized mechanism in the six-party [nuclear] talks and more moving pieces."
Analysts said the Iran episode shows Mr. Obama's nuanced thinking and in-depth analysis of foreign policy, although some warned that he risks being too cautious and appearing indecisive.
"The demonstrators in Iran have revealed the extreme caution of Obama's approach to the world, as if he is afraid of making a mistake, and his dislike of disruptions to an agenda he has already laid out," Reginald Dale, director of the Transatlantic Media Network at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said in reference to the president's offer of engagement, which so far has been spurned by Tehran.
Kim R. Holmes, vice president of the Heritage Foundation, who was assistant secretary of state for international organizations in the George W. Bush administration, said: "The caution that we should not meddle was shown to be pointless after the Iranian leadership blamed the protests on America and Britain anyway."
Michael J. Green, former senior director for East Asian affairs on the National Security Council in the Bush White House, said Mr. Obama may be trying the learn from his predecessor's mistakes.
Mr. Bush tended to make decisions during meetings with his national security team, but the problem was that his aides "interpreted his directions differently," especially during his first term, Mr. Green said.
At the time, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's aides often said that he "felt good" about the outcome of a White House meeting, because Mr. Bush had taken his advice. Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld felt the same way, except that their advice was usually very different.
"It seems that Obama is trying to avoid such confusion by laying out specifically what he wants," Mr. Green said.
As involved as Mrs. Clinton may have been in the process leading up to Mr. Obama's decision on Iran, "the secretary of state usually doesn't have the last say, because he or she is not there with the president all the time," he said. "With all the modern technology, location still means power."

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Greening the Internet: How much CO2 does this article produce?

Twenty milligrams; that's the average amount of carbon emissions generated from the time it took you to read the first two words of this article.
How green is your website? Calculating all the factors involved in a website can be tricky.

How green is your website? Calculating all the factors involved in a website can be tricky.

Now, depending on how quickly you read, around 80, perhaps even 100 milligrams of C02 have been released. And in the several minutes it will take you to get to the end of this story, the number of milligrams of greenhouse gas emitted could be several thousand, if not more.

This may not seem like a lot: "But in aggregate, if you consider all the people visiting a web site and then all the seconds that each of them spends on it, it turns out to be a large number," says Dr. Alexander Wissner-Gross, an Environmental Fellow at Harvard University who studies the environmental impact of computing.

Wissner-Gross estimates every second someone spends browsing a simple web site generates roughly 20 milligrams of C02. Whether downloading a song, sending an email or streaming a video, almost every single activity that takes place in the virtual environment has an impact on the real one.

As millions more go online each year some researchers say the need to create a green Internet ecosystem is not only imperative but also urgent.

"It is part of the whole sustainability picture," Chris Large, head of research and development at UK-based Climate Action Group, told CNN.

"Scientists are saying to us that we have 10 years to take some serious action to avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change so taking some sort of initiative is absolutely vital."

A number of studies have highlighted the growing energy demands of computers. A 2007 report from research firm Gartner, for example, estimates the manufacturing, use and disposal of information and communications technology generates about two percent of the world's greenhouse gases -- similar to the level produced by the entire aviation industry.

Anti-virus software firm McAfee reports that the electricity needed just to transmit the trillions of spam emails sent annually equals the amount required to power over two million homes in the United States while producing the same level of greenhouse gas emissions as more than three million cars.

"Most people don't appreciate that the computer on your desk is contributing to global warming and that if its electricity comes from a coal power plant it produces as much C02 as a sports utility vehicle," said Bill St. Arnaud of Canarie, a Canada-based internet development organization.

"Some studies estimate the internet will be producing 20 percent of the world's greenhouse gases in a decade. That is clearly the wrong direction. That is clearly unsustainable," added St. Arnaud.

What do you include when working out IT's carbon footprint?

Calculating the carbon footprint of the entire web however is not as easy as measuring the greenhouse gas emissions of a car.

Data centers -- massive buildings housing hundreds, if not thousands, of power hungry servers storing everything from Facebook photos and YouTube videos to company web sites and personal emails -- are often labeled as the worst offenders when it comes to harming the environment.

In 2002, global data center emissions amounted to 76 million tons of carbon dioxide -- a figure that is likely to more than triple over the next decade, according to a 2008 study by the Climate Group and Global e-Sustainability Initiative (GeSI). The footprint of network infrastructure, which is responsible for transporting information from data centers to personal computers, mobile phones and other devices, is harder to pinpoint.

However the same study estimates fixed broadband accounts for around four million tons of carbon emissions and could account for nearly 50 million tons of emissions by 2020.

The manufacturing, transport and use of personal computers and laptops also has what some say is the most significant impact, producing roughly 200 million tons of emissions in 2002.

As millions of people buy new laptops and computers every year, this figure could triple by the end of the next decade, according to the Climate Group report. And it is also true that, like driving a car compared to taking public transportation, some online activities produce more greenhouse gases than others.

More electricity is needed to store, transmit and download a video compared to a simple email, for example. A single search using Google releases 0.2 grams of C02 into the atmosphere, according to Google.

"And what that includes is the energy that we at Google use to be able to receive your search, process it and then send it back to you," Erik Teetzel, one of Google's "green" engineers, told CNN.

"If people are counting things outside the activity that we do, then we don't have control over that so we don't factor that into the equation," said Teetzel.

"We can measure exactly the number of queries that we service and come up with a very accurate estimate and answer from measured results of our actual emissions or energy use per query that we serve."

The drive for energy efficiency

Citing competitive reasons, Teetzel declined to divulge Google's annual power bill, yet he said the internet company has been taking steps to make its main six, five megawatt server farms green as well as the other, smaller data centers it has around the world. It is doing this by using more renewable energy, recycled water and efficient software that requires less electricity to run.

"From a business perspective, it makes sense to get the most what you want to call useful work done using the least amount of resources," said Teetzel.

"Our energy efficiency efforts really did stem from us making our business more competitive."

A number of other companies are also working to take the various pieces that comprise the infrastructure of the internet in a more sustainable direction. Wissner-Gross of Harvard has a company called C02Stats that enables businesses to monitor and manage the environmental impact of their web sites and then purchase renewable energy certificates based on their sites' monthly carbon footprint.

Netherlands-based Cleanbits lobbies web sites to go green by either by purchasing carbon offsets or switching to green hosting providers, like AISO.net, a solar-powered data center based in California. And, like Google, Yahoo also incorporates renewable power and other efficiency measures in its data centers.

However as more of the world joins an age characterized by global flows of information and communication, some say the role the internet plays in making the lives of millions not only more efficient but also environmentally friendly should not be discounted.

"I don't think we've done a good deal with articulating the fact that IT is inherently an efficiency tool," said Teetzel. "That is why you and I use the internet now to find out a lot of information that would have previously been found by us getting in a car and driving somewhere."

"It is a little bit unfair to say that you have this huge carbon cost of the IT industry without articulating the fact that in many, many cases it offsets what I would call heavier, more carbon intense activities that we do in our daily lives," he added.

"Moving electrons is far more efficient than moving atoms. It is actually a paradigm change."

source : www.cnn.com

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