Word: oils
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Obama's ambitious plans will ultimately depend on politics, and most scientists are about as adept at Beltway Kabuki as most politicians are at freezing atoms. Chu has already created a miniflap by telling reporters it wasn't his job to badger OPEC about oil prices, and he has struggled to explain why he once called coal a "nightmare." Several of his scientific initiatives have stalled on Capitol Hill, victims of lackluster salesmanship. He got his unofficial welcome to politics in February, during a tour of the University of Pennsylvania's operations facility, when a snippy Vice President Joe Biden...
...well with Americans. They ranked global warming last in a national survey of 20 top priorities; in a global poll, only 44% of them wanted action to be taken on the issue, vs. 94% of Chinese. Most Republican leaders flatly reject prevailing climate science, while many Democrats from coal, oil and farm states are equally protective of the fossil-fuel status quo. This is why the American Clean Energy and Security Act - a far-reaching Democratic bill that would cap carbon emissions - has been marketed to a confused public on the basis of issues that poll far better: gas prices...
...electron spectrometers, gamma rays, polymers and other gee-whiz stuff few of us can understand; he once accidentally discovered an important pulse-propagation effect. But even his most obscure technical work had practical applications; his Nobel-winning breakthrough - supercooling atoms into "optical molasses" - inspired improvements in GPS data and oil exploration. "He's a real-world scientist," says physicist Carl Wieman, who won a separate Nobel using techniques that Chu pioneered. "He's very, very intense, and he's very, very good at solving problems...
...European companies are especially drawn to Libya because its so close to Europe; Italy, for example, avoids giant shipping costs involved in importing oil and gas from the Persian Gulf, by bringing in natural gas through a pipe under the Mediterranean. Libya is keen for investment to help fund much needed work in roads, rail links, telecommunications, and even on its oil rigs. Libya's Soviet-era military equipment is also in bad need of an overhaul, and France, Britain and Russia are all vying for multi-billion-dollar defense contracts. "Libya can offer a lot of investment opportunities," Zainy...
...Italian companies signed deals for huge oil and gas investments in Libya in 1998, soon after the Italian government issued an official apology for its human-rights violations in Libya before World War II, when Libya was an Italian colony. Last year - the 10th anniversary of that apology - the two countries signed a friendship treaty involving $5 billion worth of infrastructure deals. And in 2007, while trying to negotiate a major deal to sell Libya French fighter jets, French president Nicolas Sarkozy secured the release of a group of Bulgarian nurses from a Libyan prison, where they were jailed...