João Figueiredo

• Oje - o Jornal Economico - Nacional - Transporte ferroviário de mercadorias contribuiria para a competitividade do País, diz especialista&quot;Os países que dependam exclusivamente do transporte rodoviário de mercadorias que não tenham apostado atempadamente em soluções intermodais vão ter agravados os seus custos nos transportes de mercadorias, o que mexe também com as importações e as exportações. Somos nós os últimos pagadores de um sistema logístico insuficiente que foi criado com esta obsessão pelas estradas&quot;.<br />
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  Para este especialista é necessário apostar em linhas férreas nacionais alternativas, principalmente à linha do Norte, com &quot;vários problemas de saturação por o transporte de mercadorias conviver com comboios rápidos e regionais&quot;, sugerindo que as linhas do Oeste e da Beira Baixa - que considera um bom exemplo de requalificação - podem ser boas opções.(tags: portugal railway reference)
• Projecto hidroagícola no Baixo Mondego "ficará concluído até final da década"Os processos relativos aos concursos, &quot;mesmo correndo bem, demoram dois a três anos&quot;, mas com a concretização daqueles três blocos &quot;ficaremos com mais de 80% do empreendimento concluído&quot;, acrescentou António Serrano. &quot;Ainda ficam a faltar sete blocos&quot;, reconheceu o governante, sublinhando no entanto que estes - equivalentes a menos de 20% da área total do projecto - já começaram a &quot;ser programados&quot;.(tags: portugal mondego)

• Mudanças de espiões e dirigentes causam mal-estar em serviço das "secretas" - Política - PUBLICO.PTEstratégicas de Defesa (SIED), o serviço &quot;externo&quot;, onde voltou um clima de mal-estar. Por causa da contratação de pessoal, como foi o caso de uma ex-assessora do grupo parlamentar do PS, mas também por algumas escolhas de funcionários do Serviço de Informações e Segurança (SIS) para postos no SIED(tags: portugal SIS SIED intelligence information service)

• Germany Imagines Suburbs Without Cars - NYTimes.comStreet parking, driveways and home garages are generally forbidden in this experimental new district on the outskirts of Freiburg, near the French and Swiss borders. Vauban’s streets are completely “car-free” — except the main thoroughfare, where the tram to downtown Freiburg runs, and a few streets on one edge of the community.(tags: urban planning cars transportation)

• Chinese missile could shift Pacific power balance - Yahoo! Newsa game-changing weapon being developed by China — an unprecedented carrier-killing missile called the Dong Feng 21D that could be launched from land with enough accuracy to penetrate the defenses of even the most advanced moving aircraft carrier at a distance of more than 1,500 kilometers<br />
  The Pentagon has been worried for years about China getting an anti-ship ballistic missile. The Pentagon considers such a missile an &quot;anti-access,&quot; weapon, meaning that it could deny others access to certain areas.(tags: china military missile us weapons)

• 12 Keys To Succeeding In Your Own Business - NASDAQ.comWhat does it take to start and succeed in business? Although the answer to that question is different for every business and every business owner, there are a handful of key principles that seem to guide small business owners who are both successful and happy with their success. Here are the ones I&#039;ve found to be most important for starting and building small businesses.(tags: business startup *** reference tips)

• Financial Lexicon 101: Summary Of Key Terms | zero hedgelist of key terms for all those lost in the current labyrinth of definitions, acronyms and euphemisms(tags: economics finance banks money list reference)
• Financial Debate Renews Scrutiny on Size of Banks - NYTimes.com“The disagreeable but sound thing to do regarding institutions that are too big to fail is to dismantle them over time into institutions that can be prudently managed and regulated across borders.”(tags: finance crisis economics banks)
• FreeFileSyncFreeFileSync is an Open-Source folder comparison and synchronization tool. It is optimized for highest performance and usability without restricted or overloaded UI interfaces.(tags: windows software opensource OSS sync backup sysadmin)

• 10 Ways to Keep Cool Without Air Conditioning: A Planet Green Roundup - Planet GreenA roundup of posts from Planet Green and TreeHugger about keeping cool without air conditioning(tags: architecture energy ac buildings)
• FT.com / Columnists / Wolfgang Münchau - A test cynically calibrated to fix the resultIf you tried to test the safety of cars or children’s toys using the same method the European Union applied in its stress tests on banks, you would end up in jail. How so? Simply because the testing mechanism was calibrated to fix the result. The purpose of the exercise was to ensure that the only banks that failed it were those that would have to be restructured anyway.<br />
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  At the same time, the supposedly clever idea was to demonstrate to the outside world that the rest of the banking system remained sound. The purpose of this cynical exercise was to pretend that the EU was solving a problem, when in fact it was not.(tags: eu economics banks fud crisis)
• American railways: High-speed railroading | The Economistthe problem with America’s plans for high-speed rail is not their modesty. It is that even this limited ambition risks messing up the successful freight railways. Their owners worry that the plans will demand expensive train-control technology that freight traffic could do without. They fear a reduction in the capacity available to freight. Most of all they fret that the spending of federal money on upgrading their tracks will lead the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), the industry watchdog, to impose tough conditions on them and, in effect, to reintroduce regulation of their operations(tags: railroad railway transportation us)

• Can you audit the software that goes in your body? - Boing BoingThe Software Freedom Law Center&#039;s latest white-paper, &quot;Killed by Code: Software Transparency in Implantable Medical Devices,&quot; examines the strange circumstances around pacemakers and other implanted medical devices. Regulators like the FDA inspect the hardware designs for these devices in great detail, but the crucial software that runs the devices is a closed book -- a proprietary secret that&#039;s only ever called in for examination when the devices start to crash, with disastrous circumstances.(tags: software opensource OSS medical)

• Economic Crisis Forces Local Governments to Let Asphalt Roads Return to Gravel - WSJ.comPaved roads, historical emblems of American achievement, are being torn up across rural America and replaced with gravel or other rough surfaces as counties struggle with tight budgets and dwindling state and federal revenue. State money for local roads was cut in many places amid budget shortfalls.(tags: roads maintenance articles us economy downgrade)

Fotografia : Wolfgang Staudt

Segundo um artigo do Wall Street Journal devido a dificuldades de financiamento vários condados dos Estados Unidos estão a retirar o asfalto de estradas secundárias e a devolve-las ao estatuto de estrada de terra batida, ou de gravilha para ser mais correcto. 

Nalguns casos as estradas são simplesmente abandonadas à sua sorte esperando que a natureza e o uso façam o seu papel porque até o custo de trituração e compactação da camada de asfalto degradada excede a capacidade financeira.

Para além da enorme quebra de receitas devido à crise - para alguns condados a primeira quebra de receitas na história dos seus departamentos de estradas - os custos dos materiais usados na repavimentação também duplicaram ao longo dos últimos 10 anos.