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...humiliation. One thing we should pretty much count on is that Moscow right now is casting an eye toward Iran, the most direct route to restoring its influence in the Middle East. An Iranian-Russian alliance, Moscow knows, would be an Israeli-American nightmare, not to mention a major headache for the global economy. Russia sitting on Eurasian oil exports and Iran on the Strait of Hormuz would put 22 million bbl. a day under the control of a very unfriendly alliance. Will Moscow try to team up with Tehran...
...have suddenly gone cold. With jittery banks slashing the range of available mortgages, and rocketing gas prices nudging inflation to 3.8% - well above the Bank of England's 2% target - demand in Britain's housing market has been choked. House prices fell 1.7% last month, according to Halifax, a major mortgage lender, and a total of 8.8% over the past year. That's hit Britain's construction business hard. Shares in Taylor Wimpey, the U.K.'s largest house builder, have fallen more than 80% over the past 12 months. The construction downturn slowed growth in Britain to an anemic...
...once in 10 years event," and past blackouts in 1996, 1977 and 1965 bear that out. (After the 2003 event, Daigle notes, some utility operators in western Europe said that such a widespread blackout could never occur with the continent's better designed grid - but in fact a major failure hit their system just a couple months later.) "[Failure] is always possible," says Daigle. "But we have to find ways to reduce the possibility...
...pretty modest in scale," says Daigle. He notes that last year's federal energy act contained authorization for smart grid investment - but no money has been appropriated yet. That needs to change. As electricity demand increases in the U.S. and we become ever more networked, the consequences of a major power loss worsen as well. The blackout of 2003 cost some $6 billion, but it could have been far more costly. A smarter grid can also help improve energy efficiency - if customers and utilities know exactly how much electricity they are using in real-time, they should be able...
...core of Bush's business in Beijing this weekend. But even if the Chinese may be sidling up to the idea of one last sanctions push, it's not at all clear that Bush's fellow sports nut, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, is. Though Moscow is a major oil producer and sells arms to Tehran and Syria (among others) in the Middle East, it presumably would want to avoid the crisis an Israeli strike might bring. For one thing, another big spike in crude oil prices could cripple oil demand in the west, and drive down global prices...