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Oil billionaire Pickens puts his money on wind power

(CNN) — Billionaire oilman T. Boone Pickens is putting his clout behind renewable energy sources like wind power.

The legendary entrepreneur and philanthropist on Tuesday unveiled a new energy plan he says will decrease the United States’ dependency on foreign oil by more than one-third and help shift American energy production toward renewable natural resources.

The Pickens Plan calls for investing in domestic renewable resources such as wind, and switching from oil to natural gas as a transportation fuel.

In a news conference outlining his proposal, Pickens said his impetus for the plan is the country’s dangerous reliance on foreign oil.

Our dependence on imported oil is killing our economy. It is the single biggest problem facing America today, he said. Watch Pickens discuss plan for wind power

Wind power is … clean, it’s renewable. It’s everything you want. And it’s a stable supply of energy, Pickens told CNN in May. It’s unbelievable that we have not done more with wind.

Pickens’ company, Mesa Power, recently announced a $2 billion investment as the first step in a multibillion-dollar plan to build the world’s largest wind farm in Pampa, Texas.

Pickens said Tuesday that if the United States takes advantage of the so-called wind corridor, stretching from the Canadian border to West Texas, energy from wind turbines built there could supply 20 percent or more of the nation’s power. He suggested the project could be funded by private investors.

Power from thousands of wind turbines that would line the corridor could be distributed throughout the country via electric power transmission lines and could fuel power plants in large population hubs, the oil baron said.

Fueling these plants with wind power would then free up the natural gas historically used to power them, and would mean that natural gas could replace foreign oil as fuel for motor vehicles, he said.

Using natural gas for transportation needs could replace one-third of the United States’ imported oil and would save more than $230 billion a year, Pickens said.

We are going to have to do something different in America, Pickens told CNN. You can’t keep paying out $600 billion a year for oil.

His energy plan could be implemented within 10 years if both Congress and the White House treat the current energy situation as a national emergency and take immediate action, he predicted.

Pickens, a lifelong Republican, says he is not advising either presidential candidate, but is prepared to work with the next president.

The Web site for the plan urges people to sign up and help spread the word.

Oil analyst Peter Beutel of Cameron Hanover, an energy risk manager, said Pickens’ plan could definitely reduce the country’s dependency on foreign oil.

The best thing about it is that it’s a definite plan — it’s not something that either party has pitted itself outrightly against. It therefore has a tremendous chance for success on Capitol Hill.

Analyst Fadel Gheit of Oppenheimer Co. Inc., an investment firm, added that such a plan has been on the drawing board for years.

At least 21 states and the District of Columbia have set deadlines or goals for utilities to obtain electricity from clean, renewable sources instead of fossil fuel-burning plants. See where states stand on renewable resources

The scramble has triggered construction of large-scale wind farms throughout much of the nation, including proposals for the first U.S. offshore facilities.

Delaware and Galveston, Texas, have offshore projects in the works, although a farm proposed off New York’s Long Island was shelved this year because of high projected construction costs.

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Incidentally, where’s my $10?

(Tribune Media Services) — David Goldstein’s checked luggage is misplaced on a flight to Salt Lake City after he misses a connection. He spends $10 on socks and toiletries after Frontier Airlines promises it will cover his incidental expenses. But now the carrier is balking at a refund. What’s going on?

Q: I have a trivial travel issue that is turning into something that’s anything but trivial.

Frontier Airlines mishandled my bags on a recent flight to Salt Lake City. I had missed a connection, and the airline promised to send the bags to my hotel. It also gave me a sheet explaining that I would be reimbursed for up to $25 in incidental expenses.

That morning, I bought socks and toiletries for $10. My bags were not delivered as promised, so I phoned Frontier the following evening. Two hours after the call, my luggage arrived.

On my way back, I spoke with a Frontier representative at the airport. I gave her my receipts and filled out the necessary forms for reimbursement. Altogether, the process took several hours.

I’ve been waiting for my $10 reimbursement for months. I have called Frontier Airlines, left phone messages, and sent e-mails through its Web site. I want my money back — and a hand-signed apology from an executive at Frontier Airlines — and hope you can help me avoid a costly suit for the airlines and print this in your advice column to help other travelers.

— David Goldstein, Elkins Park, Pennsylvania

found here.

When Billy Joel met ‘The Stranger’

(CNN) — You might not have wanted to bet on Billy Joel in the summer of 1977.

For a guy whose career had started out promisingly, he’d undergone more setbacks than a wild-armed pitcher. In his teen years he was a session pianist on Shadow Morton-produced records (including, allegedly, the Shangri-Las’ Leader of the Pack), but failed with his groups, including a heavy-metal duo.

He followed his first Top 40 hit, Piano Man, with a bitter second one, The Entertainer (in which he sang, If I go cold/I won’t get sold/I’ll get put in the back/In the discount rack/Like another can of beans, over an incongruous synthesizer track). He was considered a singer-songwriter with great potential but bickered with his label and his producers.

Making 1976’s Turnstiles, he fired producer James William Guercio — a consistent hitmaker with Chicago — and took the helm himself, with uneven results.

And yet he still had something, remembered Phil Ramone, who was to produce Joel’s 1977 breakthrough, The Stranger.

At a 1976 Columbia Records convention in Toronto, Joel opened a musical showcase and ripped the crowd up, Ramone recalls in a phone interview from Connecticut. My friends said, ‘Watch this guy.’ Watch Joel perform Piano Man

And then there was a series of concerts at New York’s Carnegie Hall in early June 1977, featured on the new anniversary edition of The Stranger (Columbia/Legacy), out Tuesday. (A special edition of the release also includes a DVD of other Joel performances.) Known then, as now, as an exciting live performer, Joel and his band gave a series of performances that impressed Ramone — though, he noted, the recorded versions paled in comparison.

I watched what he had done and tracked his past records, he says. Everything I’d seen hadn’t been captured on record.

The Stranger turned out differently.

Joel came through with a top-notch set of songs, and four of them — Just the Way You Are, Movin’ Out, She’s Always a Woman and Only the Good Die Young — became hits. The Stranger established Joel as a best-selling artist — reportedly, upon release, it was the biggest-selling Columbia album in history — and propelled him to his Rock and Roll Hall of Fame career. Watch Joel perform Only the Good Die Young in Russia

At the time, he just wanted to make a consistent record.

I don’t recall feeling this was going to be the breakthrough. We were just happy with the album we were making at the time, Joel says in the press materials for the Stranger re-release. (Joel wasn’t available for an interview with CNN.)

He acknowledges, though, that The Stranger could have been his last stand.

I didn’t know this at the time, but had it not been a successful album, the label probably would have dropped me. ‘Cause you have to remember, this was my fifth album without having had a major hit, he says.

Joel interviewed several producers, Ramone recalls, including the Beatles’ George Martin. Ramone, known for his graceful touch in the studio, was coming off Paul Simon’s Still Crazy After All These Years and the Barbra Streisand A Star Is Born soundtrack. He and Joel hit it off at an Italian lunch that took forever, Ramone says, and in July went into the studio to record. The album was recorded in three weeks — very quickly, says Ramone.

The producer remembers the sessions as full of humor, with his most difficult task reining in the members of Joel’s band. It was an accident that Ramone ended up included in the group portrait on the album’s back cover, dressed in New York Yankee regalia — I only posed because I thought, ‘They’ll never use this,’ he says.

The role I played was kind of like the captain of the team, he says. I doled out punishments — it was a crazy, lunatic group. There were times I’d throw out [ideas] and they’d say, ‘No way.’ They all had great opinions.

Then there was Joel, a forceful singer who, Ramone observes, is also extremely vulnerable. The singer had a tendency to hide behind his song’s characters; Ramone urged him to put more of himself into the vocals in The Stranger, and continued the advice for succeeding albums.

I would say, ‘When is Billy Joel going to show up?’ Ramone says. You have to adapt [the character] to you.

Running through the album’s tracks more than 30 years later, Ramone says there’s always something he’d like to change, but in general he’s very satisfied with the record, particularly the songs Scenes from an Italian Restaurant, The Stranger and Just the Way You Are.

The latter, he notes, was supposed to have been spiked — Joel, who wrote it for his then wife, thought it was too syrupy. (A chick song, he’s called it.) Moreover, Ramone’s suggestions for the song met with resistance: Drummer Liberty DeVitto rebelled against the Brazilian baion beat, and the band was unhappy when Ramone tapped jazzman Phil Woods to play the alto sax solo.

But the song proved to be the album’s big hit.

They put out ‘Movin’ Out’ [as the first single], and it [failed]. And then out of nowhere came ‘Just the Way You Are,’ Ramone says. The song got a big boost when Joel appeared as the musical guest on Saturday Night Live in February 1978 and eventually won Grammys for song and record of the year.

The Stranger was the beginning of a fruitful run for Joel and Ramone. The pair made seven more albums together, including the No. 1 records 52nd Street, Glass Houses and Storm Front, and still maintain a warm relationship, says Ramone.

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Ryan nicole parker

Women Directors Meet and Organize

any regular reader of this blog know that lamentable pathetic statistics of women directors in hollywood. the women directors drink been trying to put together in requital for years to on same innards in these numbers. now that the numbers are continuing to go rearward, i think they’re actually pissed and are organizing again. veteran tv director rachel feldman held a meeting in her home last week and submitted this report.on july 2, 10 women met at the home of rachel feldman, dga director and wga writer, to deliberate over changing the existence for woman in media in respective distinctive ways. undaunted by 30 years of things only getting worse for women behind the camera in hollywood and the issues that their employment imparity breeds, these ten women from a variety of perspectives; academic, creative and non-profit, put their heads together. crystal allene cook who runs the the geena davis institute on gender in media suggested examining the similarities between our issues and connecting our struggles under an brolly alliance. actress and activist susan davis, spoke about her documentary “invisible women” - which highlights the age discrimination issue against actresses. lindsay horvath from now would dig to put some muscle behind our issues and help to bring into being a media event making our struggles thunderous and clear to the industry and to world, who don’t nonetheless appear to heed, responsibility or want to understand the relevance of our issues.we reproduce 53% of the population and 65% of the pecuniary resources in the us. by 2010, women between the ages of 40-60 resolution be the largest demographic in america. we are tired of being underrepresented, misrepresented and discriminated against. our goal is to tide mainstream media with our dazzle and do nothing less than change the upper classes we live in. soon, we desire personality out our next step. stay tuned.
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Death toll from Pakistan rally blast rises to 17

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (CNN) — The death toll from Sunday’s suicide bomb attack at a rally in Islamabad has risen to 17 after a police constable succumbed to his injuries, officials said.

The additional death brings to 13 the number of officers killed when the attacker detonated an explosive.

The other four casualties are civilians: the blast also wounded another 52 people.

On Monday, investigators combed through the site of the explosion looking for clues about the attacker, police said.

The suicide bomber detonated near a police station at the outermost security perimeter of a protection cordon set up by the government for Sunday’s rally, according to Islamabad police Inspector General Asghar Gardezi.

The rally was organized outside Islamabad’s Red Mosque to protest the government’s deadly raid and siege of the mosque last July.

In the aftermath of Sunday’s attack, the bodies of several policemen lay on the side of the road, while other police officers and civilians seriously wounded in the blast were loaded onto stretchers and placed in ambulances.

The attacker struck the police position on a roundabout around 8 p.m. (10 a.m. ET) near the rally and near a marketplace. Watch the chaotic aftermath

Police say it appears the suicide attacker was either on foot or on a bicycle. There was no initial evidence of a car bombing.

Pakistan’s Acting Interior Minister Rehman Malik said some 12,000 people attended Sunday’s rally, which marked a year since the government standoff and subsequent raid on Islamabad’s Red Mosque, or Lal Masjid.

Malik, who headed to the blast site shortly after the attack, said there were no lapses in security provided for Sunday’s rally. Pakistan speaks out about blast

Last year’s July 10 raid — ordered by President Pervez Musharraf, who was Pakistan’s army chief at the time — ended a week-long bloody stand-off between military forces and Islamic extremists.

More than 100 people died when the security forces stormed the mosque. Most were radical students holed up inside, but the dead also included some women and children.

The raid was intended to rout Islamic extremists seeking to establish Taliban-style rule across the capital.

But instead, it led to more suicide attacks on civilians, police and security forces.

It also led to the collapse of a controversial cease-fire between Musharraf’s government and tribal leaders in the lawless territories along Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan.

The 2006 truce was blamed for establishing a safe haven for Taliban and al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan’s tribal regions.

Musharraf’s popularity further plummeted following the raid. His grip on power had already been tested by widespread protests earlier in 2007 because of his dismissal and house arrest of Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry.

A month after the raid, he considered imposing a state of emergency in Pakistan, senior government officials said, citing the growing security threat in the tribal regions.

The officials said U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice helped talk him out of imposing the measure — which his critics said would have been merely a ploy to help him regain power and silence his political opponents. Musharraf eventually did impose a six-week state of emergency starting in early November, suspending the constitution and sacking dozens of judges.

That move backfired, leading more Pakistanis to rally behind Musharraf’s political opponents, and helping the opposition win control of the government in February.

Musharraf remains president under the new government, but his power has eroded since the elections and after he abandoned his position as Pakistan’s army chief late last year.

found here.