Friday, December 11, 2009 BERLIN: Germany Thursday unveiled the world's most powerful weather supercomputer that scientists hope will provide critical data on global warming for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).Weighing in at 35 tonnes and using 50 kilometres (31 miles) of cables, the supercomputer named "Blizzard" is capable of 158 TeraFlops, or 158 trillion calculations, per second.Scientists said that in addition to tracking reactions in the atmosphere and the oceans, "Blizzard" should be able to work out the influence of ice and plants on greenhouse gases and climate change.Blizzard is "60 times faster than its predecessor and one of the world's largest supercomputers," the German climate research centre in Hamburg said in a statement."The new supercomputer should be in a position to model even tornados and very small eddies," added the centre, whose data are also being used at the UN climate conference in Copenhagen.
BEIRUT: Thousands of people converged Saturday on central Beirut to mark the fourth anniversary of the assassination of Lebanese former premier Rafiq Hariri.Waving Lebanese flags and carrying pictures of the slain leader, men, women and children gathered under sunny skies in Martyr's Square where members of the parliamentary majority were to address the crowd. The rally comes as final preparations are underway in The Hague for the launch of the international tribunal set up to bring Hariri's killers to justice. It also comes as the country prepares for legislative elections in June that will pit Western-backed political parties against a Hezbollah-led alliance backed by Syria and Iran.Hariri died in a massive car bombing on February 14, 2005 that also killed 22 others. The assassination was widely blamed on then Lebanese power-broker Syria, which has denied any involvement. The attack on the Beirut seafront was one of the worst acts of political violence to rock Lebanon since t...
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