GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Ireland is reeling today after Taoiseach Enda Kenny tore into the Vatican Wednesday 20 July, “in language never before used by an Irish government leader,” as the Irish Times put it, with the national newspaper noting that relations with the Vatican had reached a historic low. “Kenny accused the Vatican of downplaying or ‘managing’ the rape and torture of children in order to uphold its own power and reputation”, and the heavily Catholic country is holding its breath to hear the Vatican’s response.
Kenny’s remarks were made in connection with fallout from the Cloyne Report, which identifies 19 priests and reports on multiple cases of sexual and child abuse in the diocese of Cloyne in Country Cork.
Swiss scenery would be improved without power lines, argues HTST, which is considering a popular initiative
BERN, SWITZERLAND – Several groups have fought power lines in Switzerland over the years, arguing against them for esthetic reasons, particularly in tourist areas. Now, as a group in canton Valais is about to present a feasibility study showing that the lines can be effectively buried underground, a popular initiative to require their removal is underway, reports RSR.
A new organization, HTST, is discussing the option of a popular initiative with various partners, according to RSR, which could get underway by the end of 2011 and 2012, to put the issue to a national vote. The group argues that power lines waste energy, are a danger to the population’s health, and ruin the countryside.
Val d'Anniviers hydroelectric power plant
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Switzerland’s independent electricity authority, the EICom, said Monday 14 June that an 8 percent price hike announced by Swissgrid in May is unjustified.
The rates hike is for 2011 and would have a direct impact on consumer prices, EICom notes.
EICom has told Swissgrid that the new rates cannot be implemented for now, while it carries out a more extensive review.
Swissgrid is the national electricity carrier whose members are Swiss electricity companies.
Wind turbine, Saint Brais, Jura, Switzerland (photo: ©2010, Suisse Eole)
Update 28 August GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – New wind turbines at Saint-Brais, canton Jura, will raise Switzerland’s total annual renewable energy power production to 17.5 MW, according to Suisse Eole, the Swiss wind energy promotion association. Switzerland has a limited number of wind turbines, but the Jura wind park is the first in the country to be financed by a broad citizen base: some 600 private investors are behind the two 2 MW turbines. Suisse Eole predicts an increase of 200 MW of power by 2015.
By 2030 wind farming in Switzerland could provide 2.5 percent of the national electricity supply, and by 2050 that figure will jump to 7 percent, the group says.
The figures show the promise of wind production in Switzerland, although newly published international figures indicate that Switzerland is unlikely to match some other European countries’ adoption of wind power.
Power has been restored to much of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro in Brazil after the two cities experienced four hours of electrical blackout. The power outage, apparently caused by transmission problems at a hydroelectrical station at the Itaipu dam, also briefly affected neighbouring Paraguay and, for longer, nine of Brazil’s 27 states. MCNBC reports that the dam is the world’s second largest, after China’s Three Gorges dam. The blackout is raising concerns about the country’s management of its electricity infrastructure, with recent accusations that earlier accusations that smaller blackouts have been caused by hackers, and with worries that power problems could be a problem in the runup to the 2016 Olympic Games.
Links to other sites: BrazzilMag, MSNBC, Shanghai Daily
