Hundreds are reported killed as powerful explosions struck the outskirts of Damascus early on Sunday, sending columns of fire into the night sky, and Syrian state television said Israeli rockets had struck a military facility just north of the capital.

NIGHT TIME ISRAELI TERROR ATTACK ON DAMASCUS:

Predictably, Israel throws gasoline on the fire raging in Syria. Israel has openly intervened in Syria for the second time this year, according to US officials.

Israel launched airstrike on Syria, says US

© AFP

Israel conducted an airstrike inside Syria in the night from Thursday to Friday, apparently targeting a weapons storage site, US officials said Friday night, speaking anonymously. Neither Israel nor Syria have confirmed the reports.

FRANCE 24

Israel launched an airstrike into Syria, apparently targeting a suspected weapons site, U.S. officials said Friday night.

The strike occurred overnight Thursday into Friday, the officials told The Associated Press. It did not appear that a chemical weapons site was targeted, they said, and one official said the strike appeared to have hit a warehouse.

The U.S. officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

Israel has targeted weapons in the past that it believes are being delivered to the Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah. Earlier this week, Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah said his group would assist Syrian President Bashar Assad if needed in the effort to put down a 2-year-old uprising.

Israeli Embassy spokesman Aaron Sagui would not comment Friday night specifically on the report of an Israeli strike into Syria.

“What we can say is that Israel is determined to prevent the transfer of chemical weapons or other game-changing weaponry by the Syrian regime to terrorists, especially to Hezbollah in Lebanon,” Sagui said in an email to the AP.

But FRANCE 24’s correspondent in Jerusalem, Gallagher Fenwick, said not to expect any kind of confirmation, whether from the Israeli military or from political officials.

“The attitude up until now has been to never fully acknowledge responsibility for any Israeli attack inside Syria, but always reminding - and that is what Israeli officials are doing this time again - that Israel is doing everything it needs to prevent weapons from falling into the hands of Israel’s enemy Hezbollah,” Fenwick added.

Syria's envoy to the United Nations said on Friday he was not aware of any attack by Israel against his country. "I'm not aware of any attack right now," Syria's U.N. ambassador, Bashar Ja'afari, told Reuters.

In 2007, Israeli jets bombed a suspected nuclear reactor site along the Euphrates River in northeastern Syria, an attack that embarrassed and jolted the Assad regime and led to a buildup of the Syrian air defense system. Russia provided the hardware for the defense systems upgrade and continues to be a reliable supplier of military equipment to the Assad regime.

The new strike came hours before President Barack Obama told reporters at a news conference in Costa Rica on Friday that he didn’t foresee a scenario in which the U.S. would send troops to Syria.

But a day earlier, Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel said that the US no longer ruled out arming rebels and more concretely the Free Syrian Army, said FRANCE 24’s Philip Crowther in Washington.

“The White House has asked for all options to be put on the table by the Pentagon and that includes no-fly zones, airstrikes, the arming of rebels, but the US is clearly very reluctant to go either of these ways right now,” Crowther added.

More than 70,000 peoples have died and hundreds of thousands have fled the country as the Assad regime has battled rebels.

(FRANCE 24 with wires)

In many countries– Italy, Spain, Germany, Portugal — and in parts of the US such as the Southwest, solar is at grid parity. That means it is as inexpensive to build a solar plant as a gas or coal one. The pace of technological innovation in the solar field has also accelerated, so that costs have started falling precipitously and efficiency is rapidly increasing. By 2015, solar panels should have fallen to 42 cents per kilowatt.

The Incredible Shrinking Cost of Solar Energy Drives Mega-Projects around the World

Posted on 05/03/2013 by Juan Cole

Rob Wile uses a graph to point out the obvious, the dramatic fall in the cost of solar power generation. In many countries– Italy, Spain, Germany, Portugal — and in parts of the US such as the Southwest, solar is at grid parity. That means it is as inexpensive to build a solar plant as a gas or coal one. The pace of technological innovation in the solar field has also accelerated, so that costs have started falling precipitously and efficiency is rapidly increasing. By 2015, solar panels should have fallen to 42 cents per kilowatt. Reneweconomy.com says that the best Chinese solar panels fell in cost by 50% between 2009 and 2012. That incredible achievement is what has driven so many solar companies bankrupt– if you have the older technology, your panels are suddenly expensive and you can’t compete. It is like no one wants a 4 year old computer. Conservatives shed no tears when better computers drive slower ones out of the market, but point to solar companies’ shake-out as somehow bad or unnatural. No wonder US solar installations jumped 76% in 2012. The reductions in cost over the next two years are expected to continue, at a slowing but still impressive 30% rate:

Construction has begun on the world’s largest solar plant. MidAmerican Solar and SunPower Corp. are building a 579 megawatt installation, the Antelope Valley Solar Project, in Kern and Los Angeles counties in California. That is half a gigawatt, just enormous. It will provide electricity to 400,000 homes in the state (roughly 2 million people?), and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 775,000 tons a year. The US emits 5 billion metric tons a year of C02, second only to China, and forms a big part of the world’s carbon problem all by itself. We just need 645 more of the Antelope Valley projects.

Important new research also shows that hybrid plants that have both solar panels and wind turbines dramatically increase efficiency and help with integration into the electrical grid. Earlier concerns that the turbines would cast shadows and so detract from the efficiency of the solar panels appear to have been overblown. Because in most places in the US there is more sun in the summer and more wind in the winter, a combined plant keeps the electricity feeding into the grid at a more constant rate all year round, which is more desirable than big spikes and fall-offs.

That Germany, then China, then the US are the world’s largest solar markets is no surprise. But that number 17 Japan will increase its solar installations by 120% in 2013 and so may be the second hottest solar market, just after China, this year, would mark a big change. Japan may well have 5 gigawatts of solar installed by the end of this year, even though the relatively new prime minister, Shinzo Abe, is no particular friend of the renewables. In my own view, if Japan made the right governmental and private investments, it could overtake China in the solar field and reverse its long post-bubble stagnation.

ABB has been commissioned a large solar electricity generating plant on the edge of the Kalahari Desert near Cape Town, South Africa. It will supply the electricity needs of around 40,000 persons and reduce annual emissions by 50,000 tons of carbon dioxide. South Africa emits 500 million tons of carbon dioxide annually, and is third in the world for per capita emissions. (Still, it only emits a 10th as much over-all as the US). But they just need a thousand more plants like the Kalahari one, and voila! South Africa is also imposing a carbon tax, which will hurry things along. (At the moment, South Africa is far too dependent on dirty coal plants, which not only fuel climate change but also spew deadly toxins such as mercury into the atmosphere, whence it goes into human beings.

Because of South African and Israeli demand in particular, demand for solar panels in the Middle East and Africa has risen over 600% during the past year. Saudi Arabia’s announced plans to save its petroleum for export by going solar at home will add a great deal to regional demand if it sticks to those plans. (In most countries, petroleum isn’t used much for electricity generation as opposed to transportation, but in oil states such as Saudi Arabia it often is used in power plants; but that cuts down on foreign exchange earnings.)

The two Indian states of Gujarat and Rajasthan are emerging as the solar giants in India, with each having now passed half a gigawatt in solar electricity generation capacity. The two account for some 88% of all of India’s solar power. But Rajasthan may soon outstrip Gujarat, given the state’s solar-friendly commitments, its ample amounts of scorching sunlight, and its vast deserts.

Detroit, USA. Last week the US committed $10 Billion to give Israel the green light to allow Israel to attack a sovereign nation, Iran. There was no announcement about one of hundreds of American cities. Welcome to Detroit.

JERUSALEM | Sun Apr 14, 2013 1:11pm EDT

(Reuters) - Israel has said it will not open a criminal investigation into the death of 12 Palestinian civilians in a November air strike on a house in the Gaza Strip during its war with Hamas.

The November 18 attack on the three-story home of the Dalu family was the bloodiest of the eight days of fighting between the Jewish state and Gaza's Islamist Hamas-led armed factions, in which around 170 Palestinians and six Israelis died.

Ten members of the Dalu family were killed, along with two neighbors. Human rights groups said the strike appeared to be unlawful.

An April 11 report by Israel’s Military Advocate General (MAG), released on Sunday, said the attack was aimed at "a senior terrorist operative and several other terrorists" responsible for launching rocket attacks at Israelis.

Despite budget cuts and ongoing sequestration,The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said, the military can afford to take action in Syria — at least in the short term. “If we were asked to do something in Syria, your question is, ‘Do I have the capability and the capacity to do it?’ and the answer is yes,” he said. But any long-term commitment in Syria would require supplemental funding from Congress. “I can certainly get what I need to do something immediately,” he explained, “but to sustain it over time would require additional funding.”

Martin Dempsey cautious on Syria
By: Stephanie Gaskell
April 30, 2013 05:28 PM EDT

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff hit a cautionary note on Syria Tuesday, questioning just how effective U.S. military intervention might be in ending the two-year civil war there.

Still, Army Gen. Martin Dempsey said the Pentagon was pressing ahead with development of military options for President Barack Obama.

“Whether the military effect would produce the kind of outcome I think that not only members of Congress but all of us would desire — which is an end to the violence, some kind of political reconciliation among the parties and a stable Syria — that’s the reason I’ve been cautious about the application of the military instrument of power,” Dempsey told reporters during a luncheon hosted by the Christian Science Monitor.

“It’s not clear to me that it would produce that outcome,” he said.

The administration acknowledged last week there’s evidence that chemical weapons have been used in Syria — but it’s still unclear when, where and by whom. At a press conference at the White House on Tuesday, Obama reiterated the use chemical weapons would be a “game changer” but did not repeat his recent admonition that it would be a “red line” for U.S. and international action.

Dempsey, noting the Pentagon’s planning said, “Nothing I’ve heard in the last week or so has changed anything about the actions we’re taking as a military. We’ve been planning. We’ve been developing options. We are looking to determine whether these options remain valid as conditions change.”

“Now that doesn’t mean what you’ve heard over the last week wouldn’t change the policy calculus both in this capital and others,” he added. “But militarily our task has been to continue to plan, to continue to engage with partners in the region and to continue to refine options so that if we’re asked to implement any of them we’ll be ready to do that.”

The options, though, were less than desirable, he readily acknowledged.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and other members of Congress have been urging the establishment of a no-fly zone over Syria. And Dempsey said it’s doable, but not ideal.

First, Syria has a sophisticated air defense system, thanks to the Russians. “Now, the United States military has the capability to defeat that system — but it would be a greater challenge, take longer and require more resources,” Dempsey said. “To have a no-fly zone you simply don’t penetrate it — you have to control it. So it means that at some level you’d have to degrade the integrated air defense system.”

A no-fly zone also requires a complex personnel-recovery plan, he said. “So we would have to position resources that in the event of a pilot going down — either by hostile activity or by mechanical failure — that we’d have the ability to extract them from that situation,” he said.

And most importantly, there’s great concern that President Bashar Assad’s regime would fight back.

“I have to assume, as the military member with responsibility for these kind of activities, that the potential adversary isn’t just going to sit back and allow us to impose our will on them, that they could in fact take exception that we were imposing a no-fly zone and act outside of their borders with long-range rockets and missiles and artillery and even asymmetrical threats,” he said.

Dempsey also questioned just how effective a no-fly zone would be. About 10 percent of the casualties taken by the Syrian opposition are from air attacks, he said. “The other 90 percent are through direct fire or artillery,’ he went on, “so the question then becomes: If you eliminate one capability of a potential adversary, will you be inclined to find yourself in a position to be asked to do more against the rest?

“None of these reasons are reasons not to take action, as I’ve said from the start, but they all should be considered before we take that first step,” he said.

Despite budget cuts and ongoing sequestration, the general said, the military can afford to take action in Syria — at least in the short term.

“If we were asked to do something in Syria, your question is, ‘Do I have the capability and the capacity to do it?’ and the answer is yes,” he said. But any long-term commitment in Syria would require supplemental funding from Congress. “I can certainly get what I need to do something immediately,” he explained, “but to sustain it over time would require additional funding.”

Spending cuts are already affecting readiness across the services — something the Pentagon can’t afford if it’s going to take on another major military mission.

“Over time, unless we get our budget house in order — and I mean both us internally but also the government writ large — I will be concerned about atrophying skills and reduced readiness,” he said.

This article first appeared on POLITICO Pro at 5:14 p.m. on April 30, 2013.

Unemployment rate in Europe 12%

Nasa Watch - The race to replace the Shuttle

Bad Day at Bagram

acidbath81 

It was a cargo shift.... The pilot announced it over the tower freq as it was happening. I got to witness this in person, not a fun day.