Mitsubishi recalls 14,700 electric cars globally over brakes

TOKYO (Reuters) - Mitsubishi Motors Corp said it would recall about 14,700 electric vehicles (EV) globally due to a brake problem unique to the electric-motor powered cars in one of the biggest callbacks involving the new generation of eco-friendly cars.

Mitsubishi Motors said that in Japan it would recall nearly 3,400 i-MiEV electric vehicles, as well as more than 2,400 MINICAB-MiEV vehicles.

Overseas, mostly in Europe, it said it was recalling about 8,900 i-MiEV vehicles. Some of those are sold as PSA Peugeot Citroen's iOn and C-Zero, though Mitsubishi declined to say how many.

The EV recall by Mitsubishi is small compared to recalls of conventional petrol-driven vehicles which have numbered in the millions, though it accounts for nearly half of their overall i-MiEV and MINICAB-MiEV production.

Electric vehicles are struggling to make inroads into the autos sector despite a big push by the Obama administration to boost sales, as the green cars often fall short of consumer expectations especially in running distance.

"This is a matter of one part, and it's too much to apply the issue to say there is something wrong with electric vehicles," said Tatsuo Yoshida, a senior analyst at Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities in Tokyo.

"The cause of the problem is identified and there were no accidents. But the problematic part is the brake, an important part for safety, and that means Mitsubishi Motors' quality check procedure is too weak."

The recalled vehicles may carry an improperly shaped or damaged electric pump, which sends air to the brake booster, the Japanese automaker said. The brake booster multiplies the forces applied from the foot and makes braking easier.

A problematic pump may cause the vehicle to run a longer distance when braking before it comes to a complete halt, a spokesman said. No injuries or deaths have been reported and there is no risk of fire, he added.

He declined to comment on the cost of the recall. The problematic part will be exchanged and the process will take about half an hour, the spokesman, who declined to be named, said.

The pump is not used in conventional cars, as the engine sends air to the brake booster.

The recall is one of the biggest involving electric vehicles. In August 2012, Fisker Automotive recalled 2,400 Karma plug-in hybrids to repair a faulty cooling fan unit that was the cause of a vehicle fire.

In Jan 2012, General Motors offered to fix the battery pack for the 8,000 Volt plug-in hybrids to eliminate the risk of a fire being triggered days after a crash.

Sales of electric cars make up only a small percentage of the overall autos market. In 2012, Nissan sold 9,819 of its world's best-selling EV, the Leaf, in the United States, where 14.5 million vehicles were sold in total.

Mitsubishi Motors has sold or exported a total of around 27,200 i-MiEVs since it first went on sale in July 2009.

The recall comes a month after Mitsubishi Motor was inspected by Japan's Transport Ministry, which said the automaker inappropriately reported about recalls involving minicars.

Mitsubishi Motors has been mired in a string of recall scandals including in 2000, when an insider's tip revealed the automaker had been hiding customer complaints illegally for over two decades.

(Reporting by Yoko Kubota; Editing by Richard Pullin and Jeremy Laurence)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/mitsubishi-recalls-14-700-electric-cars-globally-over-074022127--sector.html

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Asteroid mining: Second company announces plans. Time to stake a claim? (+video)

Deep Space Industries said Tuesday it plans to launch small prospector missions to asteroids beginning in 2015. The goal of asteroid mining is to make space exploration more affordable.

By Peter Spotts,?Staff writer / January 22, 2013

Meteorites sit on a display table at the Museum of Flying in Santa Monica, Calif., Jan. 22, where Deep Space Industries announced plans for the world's first fleet of commercial asteroid-prospecting spacecraft

Jonathan Alcorn / Reuters

Enlarge

Asteroids aren't just for dodging anymore. Less than a year after a company called Planetary Resources announced plans to survey, then mine, asteroids, a second company has set out its plans to turn orbiting piles of cosmic rubble into rocket fuel, solar panels, and trusses for spacecraft hundreds to thousands of miles above Earth.

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Suddenly asteroid mining has the potential of becoming a competitive field.

The ultimate goal is to make space exploration and development more affordable by obtaining fuel and construction material from easy-to-reach sources that flit past Earth all the time, rather than the costlier method of hauling everything up from Earth.

As a start, representatives of Deep Space Industries (DSI) on Tuesday outlined the company's plans to launch small prospector missions to asteroids beginning in 2015. A year later, the firm plans to launch its first sample-return mission, which aims to bring back samples of an asteroid not by the cupful, but in 60- to 150-pound quantities.

Such amounts not only would present a bonanza for the research community. They also would provide pristine test material for mining, refining, and manufacturing techniques the company is developing for use in space.

To company chairman Rick Tumlinson, DSI's ultimate goals represent a logical next step beyond government-sponsored exploration programs. He drew an analogy between NASA's human-spaceflight program and the Lewis and Clark Expedition under Thomas Jefferson, which was followed by a westward flow of settlers.

"We are the settlers and shopkeepers" heading into this latest frontier, he added.

Over the past 32 years, astronomers have discovered about 9,000 near-Earth asteroids, largely with the goal of assessing the risk of a collision with Earth. But among those 9,000, about 1,700 require only about as much energy to reach as a trip to the moon ? an alluring prospect for cosmic prospectors interested in exploiting the asteroids' resource potential.

For all the various elements asteroids may provide ? from platinum to iron and silicon ? perhaps the most immediately valuable resource they carry is water ice, which can be used to make rocket fuel.

Therein lies the early money, according to officials with DSI and with Planetary Resources.

One early market, DSI officials say, could well be communications satellites. These run out of fuel long before their hardware fails. Although in principle these satellites could be refueled, sending that fuel from Earth is prohibitively expensive. So, before their tanks run dry, they must be sent to graveyard orbits where they won't collide with other satellites and become space junk. Fuel manufactured in space from water ice liberated from asteroids, however, could extend the operating life of a satellite.

Each month of additional service is worth another $5 million to $8 million to a communications-satellite operator, notes David Gump, DSI's chief executive officer.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/yrGdeFeQ544/Asteroid-mining-Second-company-announces-plans.-Time-to-stake-a-claim-video

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NJ's 'baddest lawyer' accused in FBI informant murder

Martin Oeser / AFP - Getty Images, file

Paul W. Bergrin at the Legal Center of the U.S. Army's Taylor Barracks in Mannheim, Germany, on 24 August 2004. Bergrin is accused of orchestrating the murder of an FBI informant.

By Joseph Ax, Reuters

NEWARK, New Jersey -- New Jersey attorney Paul Bergrin facilitated a litany of crimes through his law firm, including drug trafficking, prostitution and the murder of an FBI informant, prosecutors said on Tuesday as his trial began in Newark federal court.

A former federal prosecutor and prominent defense lawyer, Bergrin, 57, faces charges that he orchestrated the 2004 murder of Kemo DeShawn McCray, an FBI informant and witness against one of his clients, as well as 24 other counts ranging from racketeering to conspiring to kill witnesses.

But Bergrin, who has represented rapper L'il Kim and U.S. soldiers accused of crimes in Iraq, said the government's case rests almost entirely on the testimony of career criminals intent on reducing their sentences.

"You'll find in this case conclusively that you can't trust any of the witnesses against me," Bergrin, who is acting as his own attorney, told the jury on Tuesday during opening arguments.

The witnesses include a number of Bergrin's former associates and clients who prosecutors acknowledge were active participants in Bergrin's criminal enterprise.

The trial represents the U.S. Justice Department's second attempt to prosecute Bergrin, dubbed "the baddest lawyer in the history of Jersey" by New York Magazine.

The first trial included only the McCray murder charges, after U.S. District Judge William Martini severed them from the rest of the indictment.

McCray was gunned down in broad daylight on a Newark street, after prosecutors claim Bergrin told a client, "No Kemo, no case," implying that McCray's death would help a gang associate beat criminal charges. A jury deadlocked in November 2011 on whether to convict Bergrin.

Since then, the case has traveled a labyrinthine legal path.

Last June, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia removed Martini from the case and ruled that he had erred in separating the McCray charges from the racketeering counts, which allege that all of Bergrin's crimes can be tied to the criminal enterprise he ran out of his law practice.

With two dozen additional counts to prove, prosecutors plan to introduce new evidence, including a recording of Bergrin allegedly telling a Chicago hit man to murder another witness and make it look like a home invasion.

"It cannot under any circumstances look like a hit," Bergrin allegedly told a Latin Kings gang member secretly working with the government, according to Assistant U.S. Attorney John Gay.

But Bergrin said jurors would see that recording, when taken in context, for what it was: "bluffing" and "gamesmanship" in which Bergrin led the presumed hit man on after he realized the man had no intention of killing anyone.

In addition, prosecutors claim Bergrin was involved in trafficking hundreds of pounds of cocaine, using his law firm to connect suppliers with distributors and allowing cocaine to be stored at a restaurant he owned.

He is accused of tampering with witnesses, including what Gay described as the "brainwashing" of a 9-year-old girl so that she would lie about the brutal stabbing of her mother by her father, a Bergrin client.

"This case is about a lawyer who used his law license to disguise the fact that he was a drug dealer, a pimp and a murderer," Gay said.

Bergrin, however, said the jury would "be unable to separate fact from fiction" thanks to the unreliability of the government's witnesses.

"All I ask is that you keep an open mind," he said.

Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.

Source: http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/23/16655924-baddest-lawyer-in-history-of-jersey-accused-of-orchestrating-fbi-informants-murder?lite

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Session Daily - To close achievement gap, lawmakers want to catch ...

Education

published 1/22/2013

In its ongoing quest to narrow the achievement gap, the House Education Finance Committee heard testimony Tuesday on prekindergarten and other early childhood services for Minnesotas youngest learners.

St. Paul public school officials described their districts prekindergarten program, which serves about 1,100 4-year-olds this year, with another 740 children on a waiting list. Judy Halper, the CEO of Jewish Family and Childrens Service of Minneapolis, outlined the benefits of the Parent-Child Home Program, which uses intensive home visits to help parents prepare their children for school. Several representatives of MinneMinds, a statewide campaign to increase state funding for early education, also spoke of the need to invest early in the states youth.

An economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis said that investments in the education and skills of young children particularly those who are at risk of doing poorly in school yield a high public return. Rob Grunewald cited research indicating that the long-term benefits of such interventions can range from reduced costs associated with crime and special education to increased tax revenue. According to one study by Wilder Research, school readiness in Minnesota is worth $56,000 per low-income child, with most of the benefits going to taxpayers and society rather than the children and families themselves.

The meeting coincided with Gov. Mark Daytons unveiling of a budget proposal that includes new investments in early childhood education and optional all-day kindergarten.

I think this is very encouraging, Rep. Paul Marquart (DFL-Dilworth), the committee chairman, said of Tuesdays testimony. We have data-proven strategies and efforts that are making a difference.

Closing the achievement gap between rich and poor, white and minority students is one of the committees top priorities. A central question that lawmakers will ask, Marquart said, is, Where can we get the best value for every dollar that we spend?

Its a question that also concerns Republicans. Rep. Pam Myhra (R-Burnsville) pointed to a federal report on the Head Start program, which aims to improve the school readiness of poor children. That report, which compared children in Head Start to others in a mix of care settings, found what she called a fade-out effect: Many of the initial benefits of Head Start dissipate by the time participants enter first grade.

Myhra agrees that its important to help children succeed in school, but she said after the meeting that she worries about the focus of some early education programs. My concern is that were pushing academics before children are ready for it.

- Sarah Lemagie

---

Source: http://www.house.leg.state.mn.us/hinfo/sessiondaily.asp?storyid=3282

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Tour of the Deep Underground Science and Engineering Lab

Just for the heck of it, I'll defend my semantics. Yup... DUSEL was proposed in the early 2000s right after Homestake shutdown. And the key being, using that site "as an underground science laboratory". Prior to that, it was indeed used... "as a goldmine" (with some science on the side). So it indeed seemed like a 'new' proposal.

As the NSF was asking for RFPs at the time, there were three or four contenders (a new mine in Colorado, and an existing mine in MN, and of course Homestake). At the time, Ho

Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/4fZYcPvfM18/story01.htm

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UK Space Agency unveils new chief

22 January 2013 Last updated at 06:32 ET

The UK Space Agency (UKSA) has promoted its director of space science into the position of chief executive.

Dr David Parker takes the top job at a time when British orbital activity is experiencing a great renaissance.

The UK government has identified space as one of the key sectors to help pull the economy out of the doldrums.

British space companies currently earn some ?9bn a year, employing nearly 30,000 staff. They experienced positive growth right through the recession.

Chancellor George Osborne rewarded that performance by giving the UKSA a big uplift in the amount of money it could spend within the European Space Agency (Esa).

At the Paris-based organisation's ministerial council in November, Britain pledged ?1.2bn to projects over the next five years.

That was nearly a 30% increase on the previous period, and makes the UK the third largest player at the European level behind Germany and France.

Dr Parker not only leads the UK delegation to Esa but also chairs one of its most important committees - the Programme Board for Human Spaceflight, Microgravity and Exploration.

"I am extremely proud to accept this position," the new chief executive said.

"The last two years have proved what we can accomplish in space through collaboration and targeted investment. Britain is working together for a remarkable future in space, and at the UK Space Agency, we are leading the way."

Dr Parker succeeds Dr David Williams who has taken up a post with Australia's national science funding agency, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO).

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21142865#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa

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