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Former minister Crispin Blunt said she had “put the final torpedo” into any prospect of a “real Brexit” in “the most shameful surrender by a British leader since Singapore in 1942″.
No 10 however insisted she had simply been warning of the dangers allowing MPs – the majority of whom backed Remain in the referendum – to take control of the process.
In presenting his amendment Sir Oliver said he did not think there was currently a majority for any of the alternatives that had been put forward and that a compromise would have to be found.
He said he believed the first vote should enable MPs to disclose “where the votes lie” on a “plain vanilla basis” – with all votes cast on a paper slip at the end of the debate.
He suggested the House should then seek to establish a method of voting that would enable it to “zero in” on compromise which could command a majority over the course of the coming days.
Very small amounts of a radioactive isotope of sulfur, believed to have traveled across the Pacific Ocean from the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan, have been detected in La Jolla, Calif., by UC San Diego scientists.
But there's no need to worry: The amounts are nowhere near enough to cause health problems, researchers said.
Senior author Mark Thiemens and his team keep tabs on levels of sulfur-35 as part of their climate research. Readings collected shortly after the March 11 tsunami in Japan indicated that there were 1,500 atoms of sulfur-35 per cubic meter of air in La Jolla, a significant increase over normal levels.
The UCSD team interpreted the bump as the result of a reaction that would have occurred when plant workers used seawater to cool overheating reactors at Fukushima. Neutrons from the reactor core would have reacted with chlorine in ocean water to create radioactive sulfur, Thiemens said.
"The levels we observed are in no way harmful in California," Thiemens said.
The group reported the measurements Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Thiemens and his colleagues use highly sensitive instruments to detect the minuscule amounts of radioactive sulfur that circulate naturally in the atmosphere. That they detected a bump in levels of radioactive sulfur was "not surprising," said Kai Vetter, who teaches radiation detection at UC Berkeley. Vetter's lab has...
But Vetter and other nuclear engineers questioned elements of the research, which used the readings taken in La Jolla to extrapolate the amount of neutron leakage from the Fukushima plant. Elmer Lewis of Northwestern University and Michael Golay of MIT were unconvinced that the radiation in question even originated at ...
Edward Morse, of UC Berkeley, said that the traces of radioactive sulfur probably originated at Fukushima, but he took issue with the team's final calculations.
"They're not nuclear engineers," Morse said. "They were a little out of their depth."
For the Record, 8:45 p.m. Aug. 15: An earlier version of this post said that readings indicated there were 1,500 atoms of sulfur-35 per square meter of air in La Jolla. It should have said per cubic meter.
Casey Anthony: Is she running for her life?
Photo: Tsunami waves approach tanks of heavy oil for the Unit 5 reactor of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex in Okuma, Fukushima Prefecture, northeastern Japan, in this March 11 photo released by Tokyo Electric Power Co. The waves unleashed by a magnitude-9 earthquake destroyed backup generators for several reactor...
MARK COLVIN: The huge economic growth in the world's two most populous nations has already started to put extra strains on the oil market. Could the newly voracious Chinese and Indian thirst for oil also have dangerous strategic implications?
Two experts from the Lowy Institute have been looking at the possibilities, and their paper about it was released today. One of the authors, Anthony Bubalo, spoke to me this afternoon.
ANTHONY BUBALO: The rapidly growing Chinese and Indian economies are becoming two of the world's largest consumers of energy. In China's case, it's moved into second place behind the United States and in India's case, it's moved into sixth and rapidly rising. At the moment, oil is not the largest source of energy for I...
MARK COLVIN: But it's a growing sector of their demand, isn't it?
ANTHONY BUBALO: That's right, it's a growing sector, in a large part because their economies are expanding and those parts of the economy � the consumer sector, the industry sector that requires oil � are growing and growing quite dramatically.
MARK COLVIN: So you've got more middle class people, people moving into the middle class buying cars, but also their consumer demands for things like plastics, which require oil, are growing as well.
ANTHONY BUBALO: That's right. Now, why this is significant or significant in strategic terms is that both India and China are net importers of oil. In India's case, they've long been a net importer of oil. In China's case since about 1993 they became a net importer of oil, in part because their own oil resources were d...
MARK COLVIN: So effectively, they've got to get it from the same sources that America gets it from, that Europe gets it from, that we all get it from?
ANTHONY BUBALO: That's right, and that's the Middle East. Looking at current trends, the Middle East will only become even more important as a source of oil for the international community.
If you're looking at around 2010-2120, sources of oil outside the Middle East will have peaked, whereas what we know about the reserves in oil in the Middle East currently suggests that the Middle East will become an even larger supplier of the world's energy needs.
MARK COLVIN: Now, China and India are both super powers, in the sense they're both nuclear armed and China is, because of its huge size, is already developing into a major eastern superpower, but neither of them have really taken much interest in Middle East politics. Is that going to change?
ANTHONY BUBALO: That in fact has already changed. Certainly in China's case, in the last ten years, precisely at the moment where they've become conscious of what they call their energy security requirements, you've seen a growing interest in the Middle East.
And certainly recently, you've seen in two issues in particular, China playing a prominent role � and those two issues are Iran and Sudan.
In the case of Sudan, the Chinese stated very clearly that they would oppose the imposition of oil sanctions on Sudan over the Sudanese government's role in supporting belligerent militia groups in Dafur. In the case of Iran, again, China said very publicly that they oppose any effort to bring the Iranian nuclear issue...
MARK COLVIN: And all of this is important because China has a veto on the Security Council.
MARK COLVIN: So if the world is outraged by what's going on in Darfur, China can stop it and you're saying this is connected to this strategic issue of oil?
ANTHONY BUBALO: It's very connected. One of the main countries in the Middle East in which China is investing heavily in joint exploration and exploitation contracts is in fact in Sudan.
They're building a major oil pipeline to the coast, they're helping the Sudanese build a major oil refinery, there are some 10-15,000 Chinese workers in Sudan, working on these projects. And there's even information to suggest that a significant proportion of those workers have a security function.
MARK COLVIN: During the first year of the Bush administration, before September the 11th, what all the strategic analysts were saying was what was building up was a big confrontation between the United States and China.
That went away after September the 11th. But are you saying that as a result of this oil problem, that was only ever going to be on the backburner, that that's bound to come back?
ANTHONY BUBALO: There's certainly the potential for it to come back. Now, one of the reasons why we didn't see this kind of confrontation between China and the US was a decision by the Chinese to take, if you like, a small target strategy.
For economic reasons, they wanted to in every instance they could, avoid conflict or confrontations or diplomatic disputes with the United States. In the Middle East, or certainly in terms of energy security, it's slightly different. It's probably one of the few issues on which the small target strategy doesn't necessa...
MARK COLVIN: So it sounds as though really confrontation of some sort is inevitable, that the two powers are bound to clash over oil?
ANTHONY BUBALO: I don't think it's inevitable, but certainly over Middle Eastern issues, simply because the two, China and the US, see a lot of the issues in the region differently. There's more potential for the two countries to kind of bump heads.
And there's certainly a lot of potential to misunderstand each other's motives in the region, but that applies equally to Washington as it does to Beijing.
And the Iranian and the Sudanese issues are just two examples of that and of course, the US invasion of Iraq alarmed China, not just from the perspective of what it meant in terms of pre-emption, but also in terms of instability in the region, oil prices. I would think that the kind of talk of possible US military acti...
MARK COLVIN: Anthony Bubalo, who's a research fellow at the Lowy Institute.
Buoyed by a major arts grant, a local puppeteer takes his burlesque puppet show on the road.
Ricki Vincent is a large, bald, 47-year-old man covered in colorful tattoos who makes puppets do bad things. Not gossip or siphon gas from neighbors’ cars, or murder people like that creepy dummy from Magic. The Fort Worthian simply makes his puppets strip and talk dirty.
Creative Capital, a 7-year-old, New York City-based nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting new artists, awarded Vincent the grant, to be disbursed over a three-year period. Past recipients include Sam Green and Bill Siegel, the documentary filmmakers whose The Weather Underground was a 2003 Academy Award nomine...
Miss MiMi’s opened with two shows in Phoenix, Ariz., last month. Both performances in the small venue sold out. Next month, Vincent and his crew will play San Francisco, followed by dates in Austin and New Orleans. In 2007, Miss MiMi and company will embark on a major tour that will take them from Brooklyn to Europe. N...
Vincent first got turned on to puppets via Saturday morning cartoons.
“My childhood was based on puppet shows,” he said. Sid and Marty Krofft programs, especially HR Pufnstuff, were his favorites.
Vincent, who with three younger siblings was raised by his mother, left home when he was 13. He quit puppeteering when he was 15, moved around the country, learned body piercing, and settled in Denver, where he opened Voodoo, a popular tattoo parlor. In 1996, when he was in his mid-30s, he got back into puppeteering.
Vincent put together a successful half-hour cable-access program, Dante’s Place, a variety show in hell hosted by a puppet named after The Inferno’s author. John Wayne (there for being gay), John Lennon (for his joke about Jesus in the ’60s), and other characters, famous and unknown, appeared in Dante’s hot seat. Vince...
Around the millennium, Vincent married and had a son. In 2001, after 9/11 and after he and his wife had separated, Vincent sold Voodoo and moved to California to do puppets full-time.
In Santa Ana, he got a part-time job at a tattoo parlor and began teaching outreach children’s programs and doing street theater. In between, he worked on his puppets and the concept of Miss MiMi. He also designed puppets for avant-garde filmmaker Kevin Micce: an 8-foot-tall saber-toothed Sasquatch, a Jesus with stigma...
Vincent moved to Fort Worth two years ago to start a relationship with a single mother of two whom he met on MySpace.com. They married, and he began work at a local tattoo parlor. He was frustrated professionally.
“I had to do art on the side, as a catharsis,” he said.
One day, owner Steve Spencer walked into the shop and saw Vincent stitching together an angry teddy bear. Vincent didn’t look happy, either.
A couple of weeks later, Spencer gave Vincent more than $10,000 to start a company to produce and market a line of gruesome bears, Scare Bears, and anything else weird that Vincent could conceptualize. Voodoo Dolls Productions opened as an online vendor about a year and a half ago. Immediately after he and Spencer shoo...
Vincent “is not just a great artist, he’s a great businessman,” said Spencer, a Fort Worth businessman and arts supporter. “It’s been a rewarding experience for me. It shows great potential.” Scare Bears and other Voodoo Dolls will be available at all forthcoming Miss MiMi’s shows.
As for the idea of Miss MiMi, Vincent said he’s always wanted to pay homage to old-fashioned burlesque — and if he pisses off some straitlaced farts, even better.
Computer-generated emojis made available by Finland's Foreign Ministry include people sweating in saunas, classic Nokia phones and heavy metal head-bangers.
Finland is launching a set of ‘national emojis’ to help promote the country’s image abroad, the Associated Press reports. Created by the Finnish Foreign Ministry, the new emoji will include classic Finnish imagery like people sweating in saunas, Nokia phones and heavy metal head-bangers.
Starting Dec. 1, the free emoji will be released one a day, like a seasonal advent calendar, so stay tuned.
If Finland’s experiment proves successful, maybe other countries will create national emoji too. We’ve already got some ideas. For Germany, a pretzel emoji. For Australia, a kangaroo emoji. For Canada, a poutine emoji. And for Wales, obviously, a corgi emoji.
WEST BAY � Fresh off selling more than two-thirds of its land in Florida, the St. Joe Co. is taking the first steps toward a new master plan for its property in Bay and Walton counties.
Though still very early in the process, the company wants to create a 112,000-acre Bay-Walton Sector Plan to guide development over the next 50 years. It wants public feedback on the new plan, which would replace the existing West Bay Sector Plan that totals about 75,000 acres.
St. Joe is holding four open houses in December to get public feedback; the first will be at 4:30 p.m. on Tuesday at the Bay County Public Library�s main branch.
�We�re hosting these open houses prior to filing any formal applications with the government authorities,� said Jorge Gonzalez, St. Joe senior vice president.
The goal is to introduce the public to the process and the geography involved with the new plan, Gonzalez said. The company wants a master plan for all of its property, and currently its holdings in western Bay and Walton County do not have one.
�It makes a lot of sense to us, and I think it does to (Bay) County too,� Gonzalez said.
There is no timeline to get the plan approved, Gonzalez said, stressing everything is preliminary right now. But St. Joe has already met with the two counties.
One reason St. Joe may be moving forward now is because of a 2011 change in the state�s growth-management laws, said Martin Jacobson, Bay County community development director.
�When you adopt a sector (plan) now, it puts land use on the ground, which is why they want to take all their property including the existing sector and amend it, so they get land use on the ground,� Jacobson said.
It�s unclear what that land use may be. The county hasn�t seen St. Joe�s land use plans, but the company is working on them, Jacobson said. The land use for the various parts would be either conservation or town center/village center, he said.
Jacobson wouldn�t speculate about how he would feel about these large-scale changes being adopted in one fell swoop.
�We�re going to have to wait and see what they show us; it�s just so preliminary right now,� he said.
Jacobson also said St. Joe�s focus is on creating age-restricted � in other words retirement � communities for the sector, similar to The Villages in Central Florida. The company�s goal is to add more development to the east of its WaterSound community near the Bay-Walton line.
Jacobson said utilities � water and sewer � jump out at him as the big issue to watch. The developments in the new sector would need municipal water and sewer, and the county would require St. Joe to lay the lines for it.
The southern portion of the sector plan would tie into Panama City Beach�s utilities, and the northern sector would tie into the county. But the county doesn�t have �anything,� as far as utilities go in the northwest sector, Jacobson said.
The managing director talks about what's driving the company's business around the world.
The star shares what viewers can expect from the next chapters of the series, sold by all3media international and Acorn Media International.
The company's VP talks about the current media landscape in Europe, detailing the challenges and opportunities of the region.
The managing director of UFA Fiction talks about Deutschland 86.
The Emmy-winning actor speaks about the types of roles he is attracted to and what drew him to Death and Nightingales.
Chris Chibnall, the new showrunner of Doctor Who, weighs in on Jodie Whittaker's Thirteenth Doctor and her companions.
The actress discusses the intriguingly tough and tender sides of her character and the roller-coaster pace of the series.
The Art of Zootopia is such a treat in the way that it not only revisits the movie’s delightfully heartwarming characters and fantastic art, but gives us an engaging look at what went into the making of Zootopia. The book starts with author Jessica Julius describing the movie’s original story pitch – a 1960s spy story ...
Just released today, The Art of Zootopia is both a captivating companion book to the movie, as well as a stand-alone coffee table book that doesn’t need any knowledge of the movie to be appreciated.
There's a difference between magic and tricks, and the innovative and the arbitrary. Into the breach tumbles the Grove Shakespeare Festival production of Shakespeare's "The Tempest."
Ken Sonkin, dressed in a tux, plays some very witty magic tricks out front before curtain, before he metamorphoses into a spritely on-stage Ariel (Sonkin is an acrobat as well as a magician, and he's a real find for the theater). What the magic act has to do with the play, beyond setting a mood for frivolity, is anybod...
Shigeru Yaji's costumes and Cliff Faulkner's austere, versatile set broadly suggest a Japanese design (the busy stagehands are dressed in black, Kabuki fashion) and if that were all, a Japanese conception--fierce energies generated along stylized lines--might serve "The Tempest" well.
For the wedding of Miranda and Ferdinand, however, we have dancers dressed in bright Caribbean costumes, dancing an African number (the program notes revive the speculation that "The Tempest" is set in Bermuda, but Bermuda isn't, strictly speaking, a Caribbean island). And when Alonso and his band of usurping schemers ...
It may be that this variety of looks and styles is a director's expedient to cloak the efforts of a very intermittent ensemble. This "Tempest" works from the outside in; there's no conceptual hub to keep the actors from wandering off into random playing styles. Charles Lanyer's performance as Prospero is a clue. Normal...
Kim Gillingham and Jeff Wittman make an attractive Miranda and Ferdinand, but neither has a classical style. This company of usurpers lacks the authority of its mission and social station--though Carl Reggiardo's suave Antonio has an excellent moment when he views the sleeping king Alonso and exclaims a conspiratorial,...
There's an energy and joyousness to Sonkin's Ariel that makes the part, in relation to the rest of this production, an added blessing. Matt McKenzie's feral Caliban is small and powerful--he looks like someone who could rip your arm off and chew it up--but he hops to distraction over his own lines.
Leslie and Terrence O'Brien as Stefano make a pair of likable comedians, but their inclusion of contemporary solecisms ("Hey, we're talkin' boodles here, guys," Stefano cries at one point) is a further indication of this production's mistrust of basic Shakespeare. As tempests go, this one is becalmed.
John C. Fletcher directs. The good original music is by Chuck Estes.
Performances Thursdays through Sundays, 8:30 p.m., at 12852 Main St., Garden Grove, (714) 636-7213, through Aug. 3.
Kenyan independence veterans have announced that they will file a lawsuit against the British government next week for the torture that they claim they suffered at the hands of their former British colonial rulers.

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