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New York, Microsoft Unveil Joint Crime-Tracking System
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-08-08/new-york-microsoft-unveil-joint-crime-tracking-system
New York police will be able to search for criminal suspects with cameras and license-plate readers through a new system developed in partnership with Microsoft Corp. (MSFT), the city said.
The New York Police Department worked with Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft, the world’s biggest software maker, to develop the Domain Awareness System, which aggregates and analyzes information from cameras, license-plate readers, sensors and law enforcement databases, according to a statement today from Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s office.
“The system is a transformative tool because it was created by police officers for police officers,” NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly said in the statement.
The system was unveiled by Bloomberg and Kelly at the headquarters of the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative a few blocks south of Wall Street, where personnel from the NYPD and its partners examine feeds from surveillance cameras, alerts from license-plate readers and reports from 911 calls.
There are about 3,000 closed-circuit television cameras connected to the Domain Awareness System, most of which are located in lower and midtown Manhattan, along with 2,600 radiation detectors carried by officers on patrol and several hundred license-plate readers mounted on police cars and deployed at bridges, tunnels and streets, Bloomberg said.
Instant Information
The system allows investigators to instantly see information including arrest records, 911 calls associated with a suspect and related crimes occurring in a particular area, according to the statement. It also allows investigators to map crimes to reveal patterns and track where a car associated with a suspect is located and has been in the past.
It also helps in counterterrorism efforts, such as allowing the NYPD to examine video feeds to determine who left a suspicious package at a location or help assess whether a radiation detector was set off naturally, by a weapon or by a harmless isotope used in medical treatments.
Under the agreement, the city will receive 30 percent of gross revenue on future sales of the system, which cost about $30 million to $40 million to develop, said Jessica Tisch, director of policy and planning for the NYPD’s counterterrorism bureau.
“We realized we had the opportunity to create a powerful and coordinated domain awareness system to help us combat both terrorism and conventional crime,” Kelly said at a press conference. “Not just dealing with the matters in financial system, but citywide by coordinating our alert systems with vast amounts of data. The system allows us to connect the dots by instantly tapping into the details of crime records, 911 calls, license plate readers, videotape footage and more.”
‘Our Expenses’
Bloomberg said that selling the system to other cities may allow New York to “recoup all of our expenses over a period of time and maybe even make a few bucks.”
Tisch showed how the system worked to alert officers to a 911 report of a suspicious package -- a box with Jack Daniel’s whiskey markings found outside a Union Square theater a few days ago -- and allow them to call up cameras within 500 feet to determine when the package was left and by whom. The package turned out to be trash that had blown away from another location.
“The idea is to get the information out into the field as quickly as possible,” Tisch said.
Privacy advocates such as the American Civil Liberties Union, which has asked police departments and agencies in 38 states to provide information on how they use license-plate readers, said the system may give the police information on innocent New Yorkers.
New Yorkers
“We fully support the police using technology to combat crime and terrorism, but law-abiding New Yorkers should not end up in a police database every time they walk their dog, go to the doctor or drive around Manhattan,” Christopher Dunn, associate legal director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement.
The mayor pointed out that the private sector has used similar technology for a long time, and that many buildings already have security cameras posted inside and at entrances and exits. He also said facial recognition isn’t being used in New York’s system.
“The bad guys have everything that we do too and if you really want to worry about security and freedoms, that’s the first thing,” Bloomberg said. “There’s a lot of evidence that there are a lot of bad guys around the world that are devoting a lot more resources than we are to taking away our freedoms.”
The mayor is the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News.
things could get hairy around here tomorrow..
lots of new eyes
Roswell UFO Crash: There Were 2 Crashes, Not 1, Says Ex-Air Force Official
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/03/roswell-ufo-crash_n_1715663.html
The 1947 UFO controversy of Roswell, N.M. is like a bad penny: It keeps turning up.
The legend, rehashed by conspiracy theorists in countless documentaries, revolves around allegations that an unusual object fell from the sky -- an object so bizarre that the U.S. Air Force issued a press release that a flying saucer had crashed.
That story was quickly recanted, creating what would become one of the greatest urban legends in American history.
Until now, most debunkers doubted that there was even one crash. Now, in an exclusive interview, retired Air Force Lt. Col. Richard French told The Huffington Post that there were actually two crashes.
This revelation is especially remarkable considering that French was known in the past to debunk UFO stories.
The 1947 UFO controversy of Roswell, N.M. is like a bad penny: It keeps turning up.
The legend, rehashed by conspiracy theorists in countless documentaries, revolves around allegations that an unusual object fell from the sky -- an object so bizarre that the U.S. Air Force issued a press release that a flying saucer had crashed.
That story was quickly recanted, creating what would become one of the greatest urban legends in American history.
Until now, most debunkers doubted that there was even one crash. Now, in an exclusive interview, retired Air Force Lt. Col. Richard French told The Huffington Post that there were actually two crashes.
This revelation is especially remarkable considering that French was known in the past to debunk UFO stories.
French says he was told about the UFO "shootdown" by another military officer -- a confidential source -- from White Sands Proving Grounds, an area of the New Mexico desert where the U.S. military tested many weapons systems.
His source told French there was a second UFO crash near Roswell a few days after the first one.
"It was within a few miles of where the original crash was," French said. "We think that the reason they were in there at that time was to try and recover parts and any survivors of the first crash. I'm [referring to] the people from outer space -- the guys whose UFO it was."
While French offered no further details on what he says was a second UFO crash, he teased something else.
"I had seen photographs of parts of the UFO that had inscriptions on it that looked like it was in an Arabic language -- it was like a part number on each one of them. They were photographs in a folder that I just thumbed through."
That's an interesting parallel to the recent story of ex-CIA agent Chase Brandon, who claimed he found a box at CIA headquarters in the 1990s -- a box labeled "Roswell."
Brandon told HuffPost he looked in the box and went through written materials and photographs confirming his suspicions that the object which crashed at Roswell, "was a craft that clearly did not come from this planet."
That story set off a fury of controversy between those who believed and didn't believe Brandon's story.
And now we have French, who served more than 27 years in the military, including as an investigator and debunker for the Air Force's famous study of UFOs, known as Project Blue Book, which began in 1947.
"I'm one of the authors of Project Blue Book, and started with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, stationed in Spokane, Wash. One of the duties I had in 1952 was to debunk UFO stories," French said.
"In other words, if someone had a UFO sighting, I and another agent would try to come up with some logical explanation for this strange aerial appearance. Most of the reports were from civilians than military. We gave our analysis and tried to debunk it by saying it was swamp fog or that the thing they saw was actually hanging on wires. It went up through channels all the way to the presidential level."
But why was French ordered to debunk UFO reports in the first place?
"They never give you an explanation, but I'll tell you what my analysis of it is: If they accepted the fact that there are creatures coming to Earth from other universes or from wherever, it basically would destroy religions, and the fact that our military's helpless against them would destroy the reputation of the military," French said. "You're talking about military, national defense and religious reasons."
As it often turns out with eye-opening UFO stories, it comes down to who you believe.
Antonio Huneeus is a 30-year veteran UFO investigative reporter who recently spent time with French and is trying to uncover more facts about the information the former Military Intelligence officer would have us believe.
"We did a search and found his name on an official Air Force page that confirmed he was a combat pilot, but that page had nothing to do with UFOs," Huneeus, editor of Open Minds Magazine, told HuffPost.
"My reservations are about some of the claims that he makes, and because of his age, his memory isn't as good as it used to be," Huneeus said. "It's clear to me that he's fairly well read on the subject of UFOs, or he might have heard stories or talked to people. So, I'm trying to separate exactly what he lived and saw directly from what he heard and read."
Sixty years after French began investigating UFOs for Project Blue Book, he still thinks there's a cover-up.
"It's going on today. There's no question about it. I've listened to their denials many times and, at that time, I was in direct opposition to their position. In my mind, there wasn't any question that UFOs were real."
UFO crash investigator: Leonard Stringfield's research goes public
Sixty volumes of “meticulous UFO research over 30 years” by the late Ufologist Leonard H. Stringfield were donated to the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), according to an August 3, 2012, announcement by MUFON Executive Director David MacDonald who spoke at the organization’s annual symposium.
The news of Stringfield’s work surfacing and in MUFON’s hands now had been kept secret prior to the 8 p.m. announcement as one of two “blockbuster UFO discoveries” that the group was to make at the Cincinnati event. A second briefing will be made about 4:30 p.m. on Sunday, August 5.
Stringfield (1920-1994) was an American ufologist who worked with government and private agencies to track UFO reports and had a special interest in reports of crashed objects.
MUFON Pennsylvania State Director John Ventre, reacting by telephone just minutes after the announcement, said MacDonald touched on just some of the written evidence compiled by Stringfield.
“In those 60 volumes we have government interference, the FBI and CIA stopping the ufologists at any cost,” Ventre said. “He names Donald Rumbsfeld and President Ford as being briefed on UFOs by J. Allen Hynek. He talks about UFO investigators being beaten or receiving death threats. He names heads of state that knew. He even has actor Jackie Gleason’s contact information in there. There is a lot of explosive information in there.”
Media stories from the past suggested that President Nixon had shown Gleason an actual alien body. Ventre said that MUFON plans to digitize the files and make them available to researchers in the future.
The subject of UFOs first caught Stringfield’s attention on August 28, 1945, just three days before the end of WWII, when he had his own encounter as an Army Air Force Intelligence Officer en route to Tokyo with 12 other specialists from the Fifth Air Force.
The group was approaching Iwo Jima at 10,000 feet with a sunlit sky.
"I was shocked to see three teardrop-shaped objects from my starboard-side window,” Stringfield wrote. “They were brilliantly white, like burning magnesium, and closing in on a parallel course to our C-46. Suddenly our left engine feathered, and I was later to learn that the magnetic navigation-instrument needles went wild. As the C-46 lost altitude, with oil spurting from the troubled engine, the pilot sounded an alert; crew and passengers were told to prepare for a ditch! I do not recall my thoughts or actions during the next, horrifying moments, but my last glimpse of the three bogies placed them about 20 degrees above the level of our transport. Flying in the same, tight formation, they faded into a cloud bank. Instantly our craft's engine revved up, and we picked up altitude and flew a steady course to land safely at Iwo Jima."
Stringfield walked away from the event frightened about what he had seen, and later heard independent reports from other witnesses that caused him to take a more serious look at UFOs.
He created Civilian Research, Interplanetary Flying Objects (CRIFO) and published the monthly newsletter, ORBIT. The newsletter caught the media’s attention and soon his paid subscribers swelled to 2,500, becoming the world’s largest civilian UFO research group of its day.
Then on September 9, 1955, the Air Defense Command (ADC), Columbus, OH, called on him for cooperation in passing along current UFO reports. The Ground Observer Corps (GOC) in southwestern Ohio was asked to call Stringfield with UFO activity and he was asked to call the ADC to report the better sightings.
In 1957, Stringfield became the public relations adviser for the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), a new civilian UFO reporting group operated by Donald Keyhoe – a position he held until 1972.
In the 1970s he began collecting witness accounts of crashed UFOs that included accounts of alien bodies. He went on to publish seven reports on this material until his death in 1994. He served as director of public relations and as a board member for MUFON. He was a regional director for the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies. He was an advisor to Grenada Prime Minister Sir Eric Gairy during efforts to establish a UFO research agency within the United Nations.
He published his first UFO book, "Inside Saucer Post 3-0 Blue" in 1957. Other books followed. His most famous, "Situation Red: The UFO Siege" was published in 1977 and subsequently translated into several languages. Later, he published seven reports on UFO Crash/Retrievals. The latest, "Status Report VII: Search for Proof in a Hall of Mirrors," was published in February 1994.
In his private life, Stringfield worked for DuBois Chemicals, a division of Chemed Corporation, Cincinnati. He died on December 18, 1994, in his sleep one day after his 74th birthday after a long battle with lung cancer.
The UFO chasers next door
Written by Lauren Odomirok
http://www.lakenormancitizen.com/news/item/2703-the-ufo-chasers-next-door/2703-the-ufo-chasers-next-door.html
Suzanne and Scott Ramsey met over the Aztec Incident, and now they’ve written a book about the alleged UFO crash of 1947.
Mooresville couple's book about the 'Aztec Incident' is the culimination of 25 years of research and healthy skepticism.
In the early morning desert haze of March 25, 1948, just eight months after an alleged UFO crash in Roswell, N.M., two employees of El Paso Oil Company came upon a brush fire on Hart Canyon Road, 12 miles northeast of Aztec, N.M., near a company drip tank.
When they arrived on the scene, something much more than flames greeted them. Upon the rocky hills sat a large, metallic, circular aircraft with no apparent seams, rivets, bolts or welds holding it together.
The craft appeared to be about 100 feet in diameter, and a shattered porthole was its only sign of damage. As a small crowd began to form around the scene, one man managed to open a door to its interior, revealing two thoroughly scorched small bodies slumped in their seats. Within minutes, military personnel arrived at the scene and began to question everyone in the general vicinity, swearing them to absolute secrecy as they prepared to move the craft to a secure location.
No one would hear much about this incredible occurrence until two years later when Frank Scully (who would later be the namesake for the the character of FBI agent Dana Scully in the televison show, The X Files), a columnist for the entertainment newspaper Variety, published Behind the Flying Saucers, a book that has sold more than 64,000 copies. He claimed the story came to him from Silas Newton, a wealthy oil man, and a mysterious "Dr. Gee," allegedly one of the scientists the military enlisted to help uncover how the craft had flown and who , or what, had piloted it.
Yet J.P. Cahn, a journalist for the San Francisco Chronicle, followed up this book with two exposés in True Magazine in 1952. There, he argued that Newton was a fraud, attempting to make money off of unsuspecting oil investors through the mention of an oil-finding device detailed in Scully's book, thus using a false story about a UFO to capture readers' attention.
As far as Cahn was concerned, Dr. Gee was none other than Leo GeBauer, Newton's business partner and the owner of Western Radio & Engineering Company, a radio and television parts supply store. As a direct result of Cahn's second piece, Flying Saucer Swindlers, both men were brought to trial in the District Court in Denver and found guilty of conducting a confidence game. The fantastic UFO story was discredited, its proponents silenced and, as far as the American public was concerned, the whole thing never happened.
Stealth 'incident?'
Thus lay dormant as a fraudulent tale the so-called "Aztec Incident" until Mooresville residents Scott and Suzanne Ramsey became intensely intrigued by it. They have spent the last 25 years crisscrossing the country, collecting more than 55,000 archived documents and interviewing crash site eyewitnesses in an attempt to discover the truth behind Aztec. Their research has culminated in the publication of a book titled The Aztec Incident: Recovery at Hart Canyon, from which come the details of the crash and its apparent deliberate cover-up.
The Ramseys don't appear to fit the mold of UFO conspiracy theorists. So much are they just the couple next door that neighbors, friends and acquaintances have had no idea that they actively pursue this research. The only visible signs connecting them to the mystery at Aztec are their striking, turquoise wedding bands made on a Native American reservation near the alleged crash site.
Outwardly, they appear to be ambitious entrepreneurs. Suzanne once had her own radio show on KENN in Farmington, N.M. She currently owns Uncle Scott's Root Beer, an all-natural, organic herb and spice micro-brew that can be found in shops and restaurants throughout the Southeast. Scott works in the magnetic wire industry, a product that creates a magnetic field for electric motors, generators, transformers, CAT scan machines, MRIs, trains and more.
It was during a business trip more than two decades ago that the Aztec Incident first captured Scott's attention. His flight from New Mexico to North Carolina had been canceled, so he looked up a customer who was in Farmington, just 27 miles from the Aztec site.
"What intrigued me was the Navajo Indians (who worked for the customer) talking about going mule deer hunting out by the old crash site," recalls Scott. "When they said 'flying saucer,' I thought they were talking about Roswell, and how could they be talking about Roswell when we're eight hours away?"
He began to research the Aztec Incident, his work leading to an interview on Suzanne's radio show, and the pair's first encounter. She writes in the introduction to their book, "Scott always stood out in my mind as a unique radio guest in that he was very focused on documenting every statement he made. Truth was all-important to him."
The couple soon bonded over their shared love for acquiring knowledge, so deep that Suzanne says that they have only gone two days in the course of their nine-year marriage — during their honeymoon in Puerto Rico — without discussing the Aztec Incident. "We're committed to it, or should be committed, one or the other," Suzanne jokes.
Suzanne says her own fascination with Aztec increased exponentially as the research began to unfold, and she saw just how many people would have to be involved in a cover-up effort. "You start out by thinking that it's about the crash and a UFO and you think, well, that's pretty much it, but my gosh, how many people had to work on this craft?" she asks rhetorically. "And how many government and military people were involved? And just what did it take to not only pick it up and remove it, but what they did afterward, how they worked on it, is just mind-blowing to me."
Panic prevention
The New Mexico of the 1940s, explains Scott Ramsey, was a desolate, forboding land of which only eight percent was available to be purchased by civilians. The rest was owned by the military, federal and state governments, or by Native American tribes. It is the Ramseys' belief, supported by one of the eyewitnesses, that this barren landscape was the ideal training ground for all sorts of military aircraft, especially during the time between the end of World War II and the start of the Cold War. They argue that the federal government would have been eager to discover the technology UFOs utilized to fly, and would keep this information classified to prevent it from falling into the wrong hands.
Scott supposes that the knowledge required to understand how a flying saucer moved at that time would have been extensive.
"In 1947 we had just put the first jet, the P80, into service," he says. "We had just gone from reciprocating pistons to a turbine jet engine. ... A lot of people in the Air Force said, 'Don't throw away the piston airplanes, these jet engines aren't going to work.' Now all of the sudden you have something round, with no wings, no fuselage, no intakes, no thrust out-takes. If you have something that can go that fast across the skies of New Mexico that they were tracking on radar — we're talking stealth, invisible aircraft — back then, that would be so advanced."
Indeed, following many widely publicized UFO reports in the American Southwest during this time, the United States Air Force initiated Project Sign to track and investigate such sightings in 1947. Although officially inconclusive as to the cause of the sightings, the project speculated at the end of the summer of 1948 that flying saucers were real crafts, not made by Russians or the United States, and were likely extraterrestrial in origin. This intelligence estimate is said to have been forwarded to the Pentagon, but later destroyed because of a lack of physical proof of the UFO visitations, which were explained as aircraft, meteors or hoaxes.
With the Cold War under way by 1947, the Aztec Incident falls into a period of heightened military alert where any potential threats to national security were taken very seriously. It is Suzanne Ramsey's opinion that the federal government would never disclose an alien visit when the fictional War of the Worlds radio broadcast in 1938 had already proved enough to cause widespread panic.
"You look at all the scary things going on and the uncertainty, and then we're dealing with someone like (Orson) Wells who comes along and does his show and scares the bejeezus out of people," says Suzanne. "I don't know if most people today would be comfortable with that topic (of UFOs). Can you imagine? There would be mass hysteria ... and I think the government as a father figure considered that, too."
Determined to get to the bottom of the Aztec mystery, the Ramseys have worked to determine if such a large vehicle feasibly could have been moved across the desert. They spoke with a man who claims to have been part of a military group that "normalized" the Aztec site, erasing any signs that something unique had happened there. The Ramseys' dedication to the topic earned the respect and help of Frank Thayer, an assistant professor of journalism and mass communications at New Mexico State University, who assisted them with their book. They have also been featured on a 2006 episode of the History Channel entitled UFO Files Hanger 18.
The Doctors 'Gee'
The Ramseys have some strong opinions about the true motivations of the major literary players in this mystery — Scully, Cahn, Newton and GeBauer. They believe "Dr. Gee" was a composite of eight to nine scientists assigned to work on researching the flying saucer in secret and that Scully, attempting to accurately present the story as it was told to him by Newton and the scientists, was compelled to keep their real names confidential for their own safety. When Cahn could not obtain the real scientists' names from Scully, he did his best to sabotage the legitimacy of the event, according to the Ramseys.
"I think it was jealousy," says Scott. "I think Cahn thought that the San Francisco Chronicle could do a far better job making it a big story than Frank Scully could, and Cahn was the second person to try to buy the story. ... Scully wouldn't even divulge on his death bed to his family who the scientists were. I've talked to his kids. His one daughter and I corresponded for a number of years. He feared for their safety."
As for Newton and GeBauer, the Ramseys assert that they could not, and did not need to, profit from the flying saucer story.
To back his assertions, Scott explains that financial documents read, "The 32 people who were investors in the oil field with Newton were getting checks every month from an accounting company on behalf of Newton Oil. They were forbidden to testify (at the Denver trial), and the people who had successfully bought into the (oil-finding) machine had no qualms with it." Thus, the Ramseys believe Cahn's accusations that Newton was a swindler are false.
He continues that Newton "rediscovered Rangely oil field in Colorado, which 20 years before everyone had said was bled dry of any oil or gas. So he took on the big boys like the Phillips brothers, where we get Phillips 66 gas today, and said, 'Tell you what, if you guys think it's done, let me buy your leases. I'll give you a dollar for every lease.' And they all sold him the leases. He had this instrument that they talk about in court — the doodlebug (Cahn's oil-finding device) — and the GeBauer family still gets gas check money from the Rangely oil fields as of June of last year."
Moreover, Scott argues, Newton was worth $20 million while he was on trial, and would not have needed to scam anybody by knowingly selling faulty oil equipment.
Beyond the fraud speculation and government conspiracy theories lies an important point the Ramseys continue to ponder: Did extraterrestrial life visit Earth in 1948, and, if so, what does that mean for our world? If such life did find us, they believe the UFO technology must have been quite advanced and that it might help unite mankind by offering solutions to many problems such as war, famine and disease.
The mysteries of the Aztec Incident may lay buried in the desert sands of New Mexico forever, but the Ramseys have shown a truly insatiable desire to find out the truth. If they are right, the implications of such an alien visitation would be other-worldly indeed.
lookin good..
this day in potash history..
Essay: First U.S. patent was issued July 31, 1790 to Samuel Hopkins of Pennsylvania and Vermont for his improved process to produce potash and refined pearl ash.
http://www.thetowntalk.com/article/20120731/OPINION/120731007/Essay-First-U-S-patent-issued-July-31-1790?odyssey=nav|head&nclick_check=1
On April 10, 1790, the United States enacted the Patent Act of 1790, a law governing the issuance of patents in “any useful art, manufacture, engine, machine, or device, or any improvement thereon not before known or used.”
It also created a Patent Board to review applications that would give exclusive rights to make, use and sell the invention to the applicant.
During Colonial times and during the initial governance under the Articles of Confederation, colonial and state governments granted patents without review, and would grant similar patents that the courts would have to resolve. The 1790 act established a Patent Board manned by the secretary of state, the secretary of war and the attorney general — the first board members were Thomas Jefferson, Henry Knox and Edmund Randolph — to read and rule on patent applications.
The first U.S. patent, signed by President George Washington, was granted on July 31, 1790, to Samuel Hopkins of Pennsylvania and Vermont for his improved process to produce potash and refined pearl ash. Hopkins devised a system to produce higher-quality potash. Potash is an impure form of potassium carbonate derived by leaching the chemical from the ashes of trees, especially from burning hardwoods. It has been used in soap, making glass, bleaching textiles, leavening for bread and fertilizer. Potash is combined with slaked lime to make caustic potash or lye. Saltpeter, an essential ingredient of black gunpowder is made by cooking down a mix of potash and nitrite-rich dung (bat guano works well).
New England settlers expanded into areas with thick stands of hardwoods. They clear-cut the trees and burned them. The ashes from huge open fires of hardwood logs were gathered and leached, and the resulting solution was boiled down and melted into a crude black potash. It was essential to their trade as one of the few ways to earn cash.
What Hopkins figured out was how to make more refined potash. His patented process was to burn the raw ashes in a furnace before they were dissolved in water. This second burning resulted in much greater carbonate formation. Hopkins also increased yields by mixing the insoluble residue from one batch with the raw ashes of the next, instead of simply discarding it. For a five-year license for a furnace using his process, Hopkins required a down payment of $50, or a half-ton of potash, and another $150, or a ton and a half of potash, over the next five years, payable to his agents in various cities.
Hopkins also got the first patent from the Canadian parliament in 1791 for his potash process.
Until the 1860s, the U.S. remained the world’s leading producer of potash. But the refined potash was replaced by the purer deposits discovered in dry-lake alkali beds; a large deposit found in Stassfurt, Germany, in the mid-1800s essentially doomed the U.S. potash industry until World War I, when the embargo against Germany revived the production of potash from ashes, and spurred exploration to find American mineral deposits. The U.S. mines deposits in New Mexico, California and Utah to supply its needs.
The Patent Board issued 57 patents in the three years the 1790 act was in force, but the application process was too cumbersome for its members. They pushed for the changes in the Patent Act of 1793, which included the granting of patents without review. It was not until the establishment of the U.S. Patent Office, with one application reviewer, in 1836 that patents were issued after review of the merits. The patent office now has nearly 7,500 examiners working on a backlog of more than 600,000 applications. It issued Patent No. 8,000,000 on Aug. 16, 2011, for a visual prosthesis.
Canadian Companies Showing More Interest in Ethiopia
http://www.ezega.com/News/NewsDetails.aspx?Page=heads&NewsID=3351
July 28, 2012 - Canadian companies are showing keen interest in investing in the manufacturing and energy sectors, according to the Reporter. Canadian Ambassador to Ethiopia Michele Levesque on Monday Canadian companies are showing keen interest in investing in the manufacturing and energy sectors in Ethiopia.
Telahun Workeneh, trade commissioner with the Canadian Embassy in Addis Ababa, told The Reporter that a number of companies that are interested in the manufacturing sector are communicating with the embassy. Telahun declined to disclose the names of the companies. However, he said that they would soon start holding talks with the government of Ethiopia on the possibilities that they would invest in the manufacturing sector.
So far Canadian companies are active in mining and petroleum exploration. Africa Oil has been prospecting for oil in the Ogaden and South Omo Valley, while Allana Potash is working on a potash mine field in the Dallol depression. Allana Potash would start production in 2014.
Three Canadian companies have acquired exploration licenses for precious metals in west and north Ethiopia. The companies acquired concessions in Wollega zone, western Oromia, and in Tigrai Regional State. According to Telehaun, these companies are asking for more land.
A Canadian company called Aecom is engaged in supervision work on the construction of national power grid by the Ethiopian Electric Power Corporation. Telahun said Canadian companies are giving due attention to Africa. “Mining, energy and aviation are the three areas where Canadian companies have comparative advantage and more firms will work in these sectors in Africa,” Telahun concluded.
AI
