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How Your Flat-Screen Fries the Climate

Enjoy watching that movie last night on your new flat-screen TV? Well think again.

Sorry to be a kill-joy, but the rising demand for flat-screen televisions could have a greater impact on climate change than the world’s largest coal-fired power stations, according to scientists.

To make TVs, manufacturers use a greenhouse gas called nitrogen trifluoride, which is 17,000 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Despite this, as the sets have become more popular, annual production of the gas has risen to about 4,000 tonnes.

The problem is that no one knows how much is being released into the atmosphere, according to Michael Prather, director of the environment institute at the University of California, Irvine. Prather’s research reveals that production of the gas, which remains in the atmosphere for 550 years, is “exploding” and is expected to double by next year.

South Dakota's Unbelievable New Abortion Law

The South Dakota law requires doctors to give patients who come for an abortion a written statement telling them that “the abortion will terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being,” and that they have “an existing relationship with that unborn human being” that is constitutionally protected. (What does the constitutionally protected part mean? Who knows.) In addition, doctors are ordered to describe “all known medical risks of the procedure and statistically significant risk factors,” including “depression and related psychological distress” and “increased risk of suicide ideation and suicide.”

The idea behind the statute is that if you force women to confront the implications of an abortion, they’ll be less likely to go through with it. That’s what the “whole, separate, unique, living human being” language is about. In Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court ruled that a fetus is not a person, in the legal sense of the word, which is to say it doesn’t have the same rights. So South Dakota couldn’t order doctors to tell women that to have an abortion is to kill a person. But human being is a different term that’s up for grabs, the drafters of the legislation decided.

Revealed: One Third of Brooklyn Museum's Coptic Collection is Fake

LONDON. A third of the Coptic sculptures at the Brooklyn Museum of Art are modern fakes. Its collection of late Egyptian sculpture was, until now, the second largest in North America. Brooklyn curator Dr Edna Russmann, who is concluding a study of the works, warns that other museums which acquired Coptic sculptures in the past 50 years are likely to face similar problems.

The unmasking of the forgeries will be revealed in an exhibition on “Coptic Sculpture in the Brooklyn Museum”, opening on 13 February 2009. The Art Newspaper can reveal that ten of Brooklyn’s 30 sculptures are now deemed to be complete fakes, with over half the remainder having been recarved and repainted in modern times.

The fakes were mainly bought in the 1960s and 70s, and can be traced back to major antiquities dealers in New York and in Switzerland, to where they were shipped from Egypt. Dr Russmann believes that the dismissal of these works will encourage scholars to “re-evaluate Coptic art”.

Mugabe tells West to 'go hang'

Robert Mugabe’s spokesman told the West on Tuesday it can “go hang a thousand times” over its criticism of the Zimbabwean president’s widely discredited reelection which has seen Washington push for UN sanctions.

“They can go and hang a thousand times, they have no basis, they have no claim on Zimbabwe politics at all,” spokesman George Charamba said in answer to a question about Western criticism of Mugabe’s violence-marred election.

The 53-member African Union was holding closed door talks on the final day of a summit in Egypt amid intensifying pressure for the continent’s leaders to act to resolve the crisis which some fear could destabilise southern Africa.

Charamba also appeared to reject a Kenyan-style power-sharing deal with opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, who won the first round of the presidential election, where the UN brokered a deal that ended weeks of bloodshed after a disputed election in December.

“I don’t know what power-sharing is,” Charamba said. “Kenya is Kenya, Zimbabwe is Zimbabwe.”

Zimbabwe election result delayed

Results from Zimbabwe’s presidential election, in which President Robert Mugabe is the only candidate, have been delayed but the outcome should be announced soon, electoral officials said.

Earlier, government sources said they expected Mugabe to be inaugurated on Sunday in time to attend an African Union (AU) summit in Egypt on Monday. It was not clear how much the delay, caused by the wait for results from rural areas, would hold up the swearing-in.

The election was widely condemned around the world after opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai withdrew a week ago, saying almost 90 of his supporters had been killed in government-backed violence.

Bill Gates to Sign off at Microsoft

Bill Gates is spending his last day at Microsoft Friday before turning his attention full time to philanthropy after decades spent building the US software colossus.

The Microsoft co-founder, known for his boyish face and nerdy manner, will spend his final day at the software giant he helped found over 30 years ago.

Paul Allen, who teamed up with Gates to start Microsoft in a garage in 1975, will be among those “roasting” his childhood friend at a gala dinner on Friday night.

After decades devoted to Microsoft, Gates plans to turn his attention full time to the philanthropic Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation he established with his wife.

Gates leaves Microsoft to wrestle with a fast-changing computer era and growing challenges from Internet juggernaut Google and longtime rival Apple, which makes Macintosh computers.

Three people will essentially fill the void Gates leaves behind at Microsoft.

Gates’s job as chief software architect is being handled by Ray Ozzie.

Craig Mundie inherited Gates’s chief research and strategy officer duties, while former Harvard University classmate Steve Ballmer is chief executive officer of the Redmond, Washington-based software firm.

Gates remains chairman of the Microsoft board of directors and its largest shareholder

Martian soil good enough for asparagus: NASA

Martian dirt is apparently good enough for asparagus to grow in, NASA scientists said Thursday, as they announced the results of a soil analysis collected by the US Phoenix Mars lander.

“There is nothing about the soil that would preclude life. In fact it seems very friendly,” said Samuel Kounaves, the project’s lead chemist at the University of Arizona in a telephone press conference.

“We basically have found what appears to be the requirements of the nutrients to support life, past, present or future,” said Kounaves.

Scientists found elements in the soil that included magnesium, potassium and sodium. “There are probably other mineral species, we are still working on data,” he said.

Revealed: Details of Contract Between Abu Dhabi and France

LONDON. The Art Newspaper has seen the contract signed on 7 March 2008 between the governments of Abu Dhabi and France for the creation of a Louvre Abu Dhabi.

It reveals that a relatively small number of works will be lent, with a “reasonable number” coming from the Louvre’s collections. At the launch of the new museum in 2012, it will be 300 works; four years later, 250 works, seven years later, 200. After ten years, the loans will cease. All works loaned to the museum will be indemnified from seizure within the UAE.

The Gulf emirate is paying E1bn ($1.6bn) over 30 years to a new body, the agence France-Muséum, that will administer this capital sum for the benefit of a consortium of participating French museums, which includes the Louvre with a share of 40%. The income is to benefit “new scholarly projects” in these museums “without any reduction to their current financing”.

Can Past Nuclear Explosions Help Detect Forgeries?

ST PETERSBURG. Can nuclear explosions advance art history? A former curator from the State Russian Museum in St Petersburg believes they can. She has developed a new method for dating paintings in collaboration with Russian scientists which, she says, provides “indisputable” evidence of whether a painting was made before or after 1945.

According to the inventors, the new patented technology is based on the idea that man-made nuclear explosions in the 1940s and 1950s released isotopes into the environment that do not occur naturally. The tiniest traces of these isotopes, Caesium-137 and Strontium-90, permeated the planet’s soil and plant life, and eventually ended up in all works of art made in the post-war era because natural oils are used as binding agents for paints

Supreme Court rules in favor of Second Amendment gun right

The court’s 5-4 ruling strikes down the District of Columbia’s 32-year-old ban on handguns as incompatible with gun rights under the Second Amendment. The decision goes further than even the Bush administration wanted, but probably leaves most firearms laws intact.

See also: DCist.