Colbun has decided to stop work on the $3.2 billion HidroAysen dam in the southern Patagonia region of Chile due to worldwide opposition. Colbun claims that before the project can move from the planning stage to the construction stage, Chile’s government must come up with an energy strategy that has wide support.

The dam would supposedly provide a third of Chile’s electricity, mainly to copper mines and the capital city of Santiago. The project would include five dams across two rivers in a highly remote region that would flood 15,000 acres of land. Protesters claim the dam would destroy valuable natural environment including famous ice fields, glaciers, mountains, and fjords.

Laguna San Rafael National Park would also be destroyed and thirteen different endangered species would be threatened, including the Huemul, an Andean deer. The protestors also oppose the power lines that would have to be put up to get the power to the necessary regions and cities.

Colbun is only the minority holder of the project with Endesa, a Spanish-owned company, possessing fifty-one percent of the project. Endesa is still planning to continue with the project as of now. Chile claims that Colbun’s request for an energy strategy is ridiculous because Chile’s government already has a new plan out this year. According to the BBC, this disagreement could halt the project for years.

Thousands of protesters across Chile have protested the dam since a supreme court decision allowed the project to continue. The protesters claim that in addition to the environmental threats the dam is also mainly for the benefit of mining companies, not for the average consumer.

Chile is the world’s top copper produce and many of the mining companies in the region, such as Codelco and BHP Billiton are planning $100 billion expansions. These expansions mean that Chile will have to double its energy production

President Sebastian Pinera, the first conservative president of Chile since the reinstatement of democracy in 1990, says that he supports the project because it will help reduce Chile’s 96% dependence on foreign oil; however, his support has been falling in the polls.

Colbun may wait until Pinera is voted out of office in the 2014 elections because his approval rating is so low, at 24% in April 2012, that they are worried it will hurt the reputation of their company and the project. Instead Colbun believes that waiting until the next president will probably result in less opposition. Whether or not they are correct is up for speculation.

The article Chilean Power Firm Halts Dam After Environmental Backlash appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.

New York, U.S.A. – Roger Waters’ extraordinary production of The Wall has smashed attendance records in South America playing to over 750,000 fans across a record-breaking 15 open-air stadiums shows in Chile, Brazil and Argentina.

This is the largest number of stadium shows ever played in South America by an international artist on one tour. The South American leg of The Wall included a record breaking 9 sold out shows in Buenos Aires, River Plate Stadium, exceeding the previous record of 5 nights held by the Rolling Stones (see link below to photos of The Wall in River Plate Stadium).

The Wall, an aural and visual masterpiece, has so far played 150 shows for a gross of US $218M in 27 countries. Due to overwhelming popular demand, The Wall returns to North America in 2012 kicking off this weekend, April 27 and 28th, at the Foro Sol stadium in Mexico for a historic run of 41 performances at stadiums and arenas.

The U.S. and Canadian leg begins on May 1st at the Toyota Center in Houston, TXwith dates through July 14th at the Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia, PA, including 2 nights at New York’s prestigious Yankee Stadium and 1 once-in-a-lifetime night at the world-famous Los Angeles Coliseum, for a total of 9 stadium shows. Tickets are available now at Ticketmaster.com and LiveNation.com.

The Pollstar Music Industry Awards, as voted by the music industry, has honored Roger Waters and The Wall Live with two of the highest accolades – the coveted “Major Tour of the Year” and “Most Creative Stage Production” of 2010. The Wall also won the “Most Creative Stage Production” for a second consecutive year in 2011.

“The best arena show ever. Period.” New York Post

“The Wall Live is flawless. Everyone should see it once before they die.” Philadelphia Inquirer

For press shots of The Wall stadium show at River Plate Stadium, Buenos Aires, please visit:

URL:  http://rogerwatersmedia.com
Login:  TheWallLiveSA
Password:  SouthAmerica2012

Roger Waters The Wall – North American Tour Itinerary

Image Courtesy of   Roger Waters The Wall

The article Roger Waters The Wall: Over 750,000 Fans in South America appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.

Countries across the world are currently experiencing extreme weather and droughts. The largest freshwater lake in China is at its lowest water levels for years thanks to a drought, according to state officials and media. The shrinking lake does not bode well for fishermen who rely on it for their livelihoods and for the local ecology.

The Xinhua news agency stated that Poyang Lake, located in East China’s Jiangxi province, is shrinking quickly and has experienced over a decade-long dry spell. This is due to the Gan River, which is connected to the lake, not receiving enough rain and causing the water levels to hit record lows. “This year’s level is very low,” an anonymous official declared, affirming that the rainfall for the area was 65 percent less than average for December.

Texas is also experiencing its worst drought on record. The year 2011 was the driest ever for the state, says the National Weather Service, and it was the second hottest. Meteorologists do not believe this will improve for the year 2012 and the result will be further restrictions on water and the death of millions of trees. Lake Lavon has shrunk by 12 feet due to North Texas’ lack of rain and record-setting heat. “It is a challenging time, especially to bring awareness to our consumers and businesses how critical our drought has impacted our reservoirs,” stated Denise Hickey, spokesperson for the North Texas Municipal Water District. “As we’re planning to move through this drought period, we’re also planning and initiating additional strategies to bring additional sources online.” The Texas Forest Service believes that so far, the severe drought has killed 500 million trees.

In Latin America, nations have also been dealing with a plethora of problems stemming from the extreme weather, including wildfires, droughts, and floods. Many have wondered if climate change and global warming are responsible for the unusual weather and according to experts, this is most likely the case. Chile experienced an uncharacteristic heat wave, which resulted in rampant burning wildfires, while Northern Mexico has been dealing with its worst drought in 70 years.

On the other hand, Colombia has had two seasons of heavy rain, which has killed 182 people and resulted in about $2 billion in damage. A rose farm in a Colombian town named Chia sustained an estimated $6 million dollars in damages from the April and December floods. Javier Castellanos, the rose farm manager, stated, “Never in the history of this farm- and it’s a business with 30 years in the market- have we ever had any such problem.” Researchers assert that Latin America is at more risk to the extreme weather changes worsening in the future than any other region in the world because of deforestation and its sprawling construction. These elements cause it to be more vulnerable to landslides and flooding.

The article Global Drought Defines Extreme Weather Worldwide appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.

In early December, an international team of astronomers discovered an incredibly fast rotating star, rotating at a radial velocity of 1.6 million km/h (1 million mph), which is approximately 100 times faster than the sun rotates (roughly four times a day). If the star, dubbed VFTS (short for VLT-FLAMES Tarantula Survey) 102, spun any faster, the centrifugal forces would rip it apart.

Working at the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope at the Paranel Observatory in Chile, the team located VFTS 102 160,000 light-years away from the Earth in the Tarantula Nebula, which is part of the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way galaxy. They detected the star because its traveling velocity was 30 km/s (70,000 mph) – much faster than those of other stars in the vicinity.

Philip Dufton, lead author of the paper that presents the team’s findings, stated, “The remarkable rotation speed and the unusual motion compared to the surrounding stars led us to wonder if this star had an unusual early life.” Dufton works at the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland. “It was suspicious.”

The centrifugal forces of VFTS 102 (which is a blue giant and has twenty-five times the mass and 100,000 times the luminosity of the sun) are so great that the star has an oblate spheroid shape. Furthermore, they cause VFTS 102 to spin out a disk of plasma at its equator.

The team of astronomers speculate that VFTS 102 had a violent past. It may have been part of a binary star system in which it and its companion star closely rotated around each other. VFTS 102′s fast rotation may have come from the two stars being so close together, which could have caused the companion star to stream gas over to VFTS 102.

Another member of the team, Matteo Cantiello, an astrophysicist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, further explains in the university’s press release, “This gas falls onto the companion star, increasing the mass and spinning it up. Similar to a tennis ball spinning fast after being hit by a glancing blow, a star rotates quickly after being hit off-center by the in-falling gas.”

At some point, the companion star went supernova, expelling much of its gas. The intense explosion ejected VFTS 102, which was sent hurdling through space at the current velocity in which it was discovered. Presently, a supernova remnant and pulsar lie near the blue giant. That these two objects are located nearby VFTS 102 serves as evidence that supports the team’s hypothesis, as the supernova remnant and pulsar may belong to the late companion star, which may have collapsed into a neutron star following its exploding.

“This is a compelling story because it explains each of the unusual features that we’ve seen,” Dufton writes. “This star is certainly showing us unexpected sides of the short, but dramatic lives of the heaviest stars.”

The article Fastest Rotating Star Discovered appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.

Half of the miners involved with the accident at the San Jose mine are still unemployed, one year later. Those who have jobs are only part-time as mechanics, odd-job men or greengrocers. When the miners were trapped underground in Chile, great things were predicted for them. They thought nothing would be the same in their lives.

They would be rich; cinema producers would make films about them and journalists would pay fortunes for their stories. Therefore, they thought they would never have to work again. Jean Romagnoli was the miners’ physical trainer while they were below ground. He helped them to stay in shape so they could fit into the capsule used for their rescue.

“The promises that were made to them when they reached the surface, like for example that they were going to all have a job in the national mining industry; they’ve all vanished,” Romagnoli said. The reality has been quite different. Some of them are dealing with the psychological impact of what they went through.

Only a couple of the 33 men trapped for two months at San Jose have ventured back down the mines. Raul Bustos, a miner who works as a guest speaker for a telephone company said, “I’ve dealt with those problems, but there are two or three of the miners who still have problems. They haven’t been able to get over it, and they’re still on sick leave.”

He believes every miner deals with psychological impacts in their own different ways. Last July, 31 of  33 men launched legal action against the Chilean state, accusing them of failing to do their job properly by allowing the San Jose mine to remain open in the year before the accident. They are claiming a compensation of $500,000 per man.

Meanwhile, the state is claiming the mine owners’ money back for the millions of dollars spent on the miners’ rescue.  Jean Romagnoli said to BBC News  that any mining company is avoiding giving them jobs because they think of them as damaged goods. “They think they’re psychologically unbalanced still, and there’s a risk in contracting them,” he said.Despite their recent frustrations, there is still some hope that they are going to become rich men very soon.

Mike Medavov, the Hollywood producer who grew up in Chile has bought the rights to make a movie about the miners. He seems to have affinity with the accident. Jose Rivera has been hired to write the script. He wrote the screenplay for the Che Gevara film. As well,Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Hector Tobar is working on a book about the miners.

The book will be based on the diary that Victor Segovia, a miner among the 33 kept writing below ground. The profits from the sales will be split between the miners.

The article Chile Miners’ Hopes are Still on Hold appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.

“This art is fun to look at. While it’s outsider art and folk art, it’s urban, rather than tractors and chickens” (Kathy Silvestri)

The urban art is one of the arts that struggles the most to be discovered since it is difficult for the artists to expose their art on the streets. But now, many of them have gathered together in an event, which has given them the opportunity to exposed, paint in any way and form they can, without any limitations.The adobe walls of a house located in the Historical Old Town of Cuenca, in Ecuador, has become the surface needed for 50 artists coming from diverse parts of the world such as Colombia, Chile, United States and Ecuador to expose their art, by painting the walls with graffiti’s.

The idea at first emerged with the purpose to promote and incentive the citizens to get to know a way of expressing, and communication throughout every color, symbol, and trace, said the Cuencan artist Qué Zhinín. The big house located in the Padre Aguirre street, had been rented by him and some friends, to utilize it as a type of laboratory, and work place to expose their graffiti art. In his case, he painted a scorpion with fuchsia and black colors, leaving the interpretation of it to the people’s imagination.

Among the invited artist, the exposition counts with an American artist whose nickname is Tanna. For her the urban art is her life, and she finds and relates that in Cuenca many things are occurring in the same manner than in her country. “The authorities, do not allow us to paint in the city”, she said. For her the exposition acts like an open door, for the artists to show their art.An Ecuadorian artist from Quito, known as S2, found out about this opportunity to expose the art throughout Internet, and therefore he traveled to Cuenca in order to expose his unique way of painting known as Stencil, which consists inn working with templates.

Overall, the exposition has brought interest to the people and the neighbors. One of the neighbors form the Padre Aguirre street named Ricardo Tapia, commented: “This proposal gives life to the neighborhood, and it is important that this kind of cultural manifestations are generation, since they contribute to the educate people in a fun and artistic way”. Nevertheless, this exposition also counted with paper art creations. The cuencan artist known as Mango exposed the origami figures, with earring and candelabrum forms.

Finishing the last strokes of the silhouette of a skinny woman, the Cuencan Artist Kross, said that: “Through the graffiti’s, the feelings are evoked. It is necessary to have a collectivity support, because it is a creativity exposure. The components of the colonial house, such as pillars, roofs, walls, doors, and windows were converted in art proposals, exposing different techniques and desiring to reach and communicate with the people.

The article Urban Artists Exposing Their Art in Cuenca, Ecuador appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.