World News Gathered & Syndicated

Hispanic, Afro-Caribbean and North American influences meld in Puerto Rico, a self-governing commonwealth that belongs to the United States.

Puerto Rican voters, who elect a governor for the island, have tended to favour parties that support the union with the US. Puerto Ricans do not pay US income tax, and the island receives federal funds.

There is an established cycle of migration between Puerto Rico and the US; hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans have lived and worked in New York and other cities.

The once substantial US military presence has been scaled down with the closures of a major naval base and a bombing range. Rancour over the latter grew after a civilian employee was killed by a stray bomb.

Explorer Christopher Columbus claimed Puerto Rico for Spain in 1493, heralding an influx of Spanish settlers. The newcomers, and the diseases they brought with them, decimated the territory's Taino indian population.

The main settlement, San Juan, became an important Spanish outpost. Slaves were brought to the island in the 16th and 17th centuries.

Puerto Rico's landscape is varied, and includes rainforests in the north-east. The territory is prone to hurricanes.

Tourism is an important money-earner; the island receives millions of visitors each year and is a port-of-call for cruise liners.

Once the centre of the Ottoman Empire, the modern secular republic was established in the 1920s by nationalist leader Kemal Ataturk.

The level of public debt was already relatively low, and although the effects of the recession were still felt, by 2010 the Turkish economy had started to bounce back – to the extent that by the beginning of 2011, concerns were being raised over whether the boom was sustainable.

Concerns over the potential for conflict between a secular establishment backed by the military and a traditional society deeply rooted in Islam resurfaced with the landslide election victory of the Islamist-based Justice and Development Party (AKP) in 2002.

The secularist opposition has on several occasions since then challenged the constitutional right of the AKP to be the party of government. In March 2008 the Constitutional Court narrowly rejected a petition by the chief prosecutor to ban the AKP and 71 of its officials, including President Abdullah Gul and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, for allegedly seeking to establish an Islamic state.

The government has accused military officers of plotting to overthrow it through an alleged secret organisation called Ergenekon (Sledgehammer), which led to the jailing of three generals for 20 years and lesser sentences against more than 300 other officers in 2012, as well as dividing public opinion. The officers involved accuse the government of a show trial to neutralise the anti-Islamist influence of the armed forces in politics.

The chiefs of staff resigned in the summer of 2011 in protests at the arrests of officers, and the government rather than the military appointed their successors for the first time.

Turkey became an EU candidate country in 1999 and, in line with EU requirements, went on to introduce substantial human rights and economic reforms. The death penalty was abolished, tougher measures were brought in against torture and the penal code was overhauled.

Reforms were introduced in the areas of women's rights and Kurdish culture, language, education and broadcasting. Women's rights activists have said the reforms do not go far enough and have accused the government of lacking full commitment to equality and of acting only under EU pressure.

After intense bargaining, EU membership talks were launched in October 2005. Accession negotiations are expected to take about 10 years. So far, the going has not been easy.

Turkey has long been at odds with its close neighbour, Greece, over the divided island of Cyprus and territorial disputes in the Aegean.

The breakthrough in its EU membership talks came just weeks after Turkey agreed to recognise Cyprus as an EU member – though it qualified this conciliatory step by declaring that it was not tantamount to full diplomatic recognition.

Several European countries continue to have serious misgivings over Turkey's EU membership, and Germany and France have called for it to have a "privileged partnership" with the EU instead of full membership.

Turkey long saw itself as the eastern bulwark of the Nato alliance, and underlined this by having close ties with Israel. But under Mr Erdogan Turkey has taken a pro-Palestinian and openly confrontational approach to Israel, counting on its new prestige in Arab countries to boost its regional standing as a power broker.

The outbreak of civil war in neighbouring Syria has seen Turkey's stance move from detente with the Assad government to open support for the rebels, albeit stopping short of military assistance. This has left Turkey exposed within the Nato alliance, which continues to keep the Syrian conflict at arms length, but has further enhanced Turkey's prestige in Arab public opinion.

Turkey is home to a sizeable Kurdish minority, which by some estimates constitutes up to a fifth of the population. The Kurds have long complained that the Turkish government was trying to destroy their identity and that they suffer from economic disadvantage and human rights violations.

The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), the best known and most radical of the Kurdish movements, launched a guerrilla campaign in 1984 for a homeland in the Kurdish heartland in the southeast. Thousands died and hundreds of thousands became refugees in the ensuing conflict with the PKK, which Turkey, the US and the European Union deem a terrorist organisation.

Kurdish guerrilla attacks briefly subsided after the 1999 capture of PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, but soon began to increase again.

Partly in a bid to improve its chances of EU membership, the government began to ease restrictions on the use of the Kurdish language from 2003 onwards. As part of a new "Kurdish initiative" launched in 2009, it pledged to extend linguistic and cultural rights and to reduce the military presence in the mainly Kurdish southeast of the country.

Although fighting continued, the PKK signalled its readiness to cease fire in 2010. After months of talks, Abdullah Ocalan ordered his fighters to stop attacking Turkey and withdraw from the country from May 2013, effectively ending the insurgency.

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd, a global leader in digital media and digital convergence technologies, announced the launch of the 8 inch tablet, the GALAXY Note 8.0 in the UAE; a new era of intelligent Note technology set to re-ignite the mid-size tablet category that Samsung established in 2010.

Providing unrivalled multimedia performance within a compact one-hand-grip screen, the GALAXY Note 8.0 has the power and advanced technology to evolve the tablet experience and ensure that consumers achieve new levels of efficient multi-tasking while benefitting from superb voice call functionality.

Furthermore, the reengineered intelligent S Pen brings together the latest innovation and the ease of using a traditional pen and paper; creating a sophisticated mobile experience, enhancing life on-the-go.

“The GALAXY Note 8.0 heralds the next stage in evolution for the category, as we have continued to build upon the success of its predecessors to deliver the best Note device yet,” said Denzil D’Souza, Head – Business Planning Divison, IT Group, Samsung Gulf Electronics.

“In 2010 we launched the Samsung GALAXY Tab, introducing a new chapter in the mobile industry. Three years on we are continuing to innovate and evolve this sector to meet the ever changing demands of the modern consumer. Delivering the perfect fusion of portability and everyday productivity, the Samsung GALAXY Note 8.0 is a pioneering, pocket sized solution for every situation, whether at work or for play,” he added.

At the core of the GALAXY Note 8.0′s innovative solutions are beneficial functions, including multi-window options to split the portable 8 inch screen enabling optimal access to a number of live applications; a new generation of Samsung’s intelligent S Pen with advanced usability; access to a suite of S Note templates and tools that enable you to create, edit, manage and share documents; the Samsung “reading mode” technology to enjoy e-Books with optimized resolution, video and voice calls.* In addition, there are new exciting preloaded content and services such as Flipboard and Awesome Note, included at no additional cost, for the very first time on Samsung Galaxy tablet.

Slim and compact enough to become the perfect on-the-go work and play companion, the GALAXY Note 8.0 brings powerful performance and functionality to support even the most demanding of lifestyles. Designed to store and manage your personal and professional data efficiently, the new era device gives users the perfect pocket-sized organizational tool. The S Note and S Planner feature help to manage everyday tasks, including meeting notes, to-do lists and even personal diary entries. All content can be entered and updated with the finest of detail thanks to the evolution of the intelligent Samsung S Pen.

GALAXY Note 8.0 is packed with pre-loaded content and apps specifically for maximizing the value of mass multimedia consumer. Upgraded Chat-On provides easy instant messaging and group chatting in multiple formats – images, video, voice, contacts – for simple enjoyable communication. Awesome Note application is introduced in android tablet for the first time with the GALAXY Note 8.0 and it’s capable of unlimited note-taking using Memo, Diary and Must-remember lists. With Flipboard application, your news, social network and other feeds come together in one stylish, flippable format so you can enjoy all your news and life’s great moments in one place. In addition, a customized Flipboard version is exclusively developed for Samsung, enabling users to take the S Pen’s hover feature and preview article headers beneath Flipboard’s main screen tiles. Finally, Smart Remote gives you a universal remote control and electronic programming guide allowing you to manage TV and video watching seamlessly.

S Pen technology is now so advanced that it doesn’t even have to touch the screen. With Air View, the S Pen needs only to hover over the screen to see previews of videos, emails, photos and appointments on S Planner without opening the file or application. S Pen Gesture allows images and content to be easily edited and cropped, whilst Paper Artist and Photo Note allow photos to be artistically personalized. In addition, for the very first time in GALAXY Note category, you can use S Pen to control the physical menu/back buttons on the device with WACOM technology. Optimized to aid personalized creativity, the S Pen has evolved to increase everyday usability and enhance creation expression. Removing the S Pen from the GALAXY Note 8.0 will automatically launch innovative features such as Pen Detection that will suggest adapted menus and Page Buddy, a feature that will intuitively activate your most recently adapted S Note home screen.

Creative multi-tasking with the GALAXY Note 8.0 is effortless due to innovative Dual View feature; two multi-window options that seamlessly allow you to facilitate multi-screen usage. Dual View’s split screen accommodates optimal operation of different apps, such as launching the S Note on the web browser screen and allowing content to be resized, dragged and dropped as required. Additionally, multi-tasking is extended to phone calls. Pop Up Note allows users to access S Note at any time to keep track of key actions and Pop Up Video ensures users to keep surfing the web whilst chatting – content windows can be easily resized by pinching to enlarge or reduce.

Packed with features to engage, entertain and excite, the Samsung GALAXY Note 8.0 supports your practical everyday needs. Reading Mode transforms the device into an e-Book reader providing the optimal reading conditions to ensure you can curl up and enjoy a good book. Also, users can turn it into a universal remote control with Smart Remote, to seamlessly manage TVs, set-up boxes, DVD & Blu-ray players.

The GALAXY Note 8.0 is currently available in leading retail stores across the UAE. The GALAXY Note 8.0 WiFi version and GALAXY Note 8.0 3G/WiFi version is retailing at AED 1,699 and AED 1,999 respectively.

A $15m computer that uses "quantum physics" effects to boost its speed is to be installed at a Nasa facility.

Effectively, it can try all possible solutions at the same time and then select the best.

University researchers will also get 20% of the time on the machine via the Universities Space Research Agency (USRA).

Nasa will likely use the commercially available machine for scheduling problems and planning.

Canadian company D-Wave Systems, which makes the machine, has drawn scepticism over the years from quantum computing experts around the world.

Until research outlined earlier this year, some even suggested its machines showed no evidence of using specifically quantum effects.

Quantum computing is based around exploiting the strange behaviour of matter at quantum scales.

Most work on this type of computing has focused on building quantum logic gates similar to the gate devices at the basis of conventional computing.

But physicists have repeatedly found that the problem with a gate-based approach is keeping the quantum bits, or qubits (the basic units of quantum information), in their quantum state.

"You get drop out… decoherence, where the qubits lapse into being simple 1s and 0s instead of the entangled quantum states you need. Errors creep in," says Prof Alan Woodward of Surrey University.

Instead, D-Wave Systems has been focused on building machines that exploit a technique called quantum annealing – a way of distilling the optimal mathematical solutions from all the possibilities.

Annealing is made possible by physics effect known as quantum tunnelling, which can endow each qubit with an awareness of every other one.

"The gate model… is the single worst thing that ever happened to quantum computing", Geordie Rose, chief technology officer for D-Wave, told BBC Radio 4's Material World programme.

"And when we look back 20 years from now, at the history of this field, we'll wonder why anyone ever thought that was a good idea."

Dr Rose's approach entails a completely different way of posing your question, and it only works for certain questions.

But according to a paper presented this week (the result of benchmarking tests required by Nasa and Google), it is very fast indeed at finding the optimal solution to a problem that potentially has many different combinations of answers.

In one case it took less than half a second to do something that took conventional software 30 minutes.

A classic example of one of these "combinatorial optimisation" problems is that of the travelling sales rep, who needs to visit several cities in one day, and wants to know the shortest path that connects them all together in order to minimise their mileage.

The D-Wave Two chip can compare all the possible itineraries at once, rather than having to work through each in turn.

Reportedly costing up to $15m, housed in a garden shed-sized box that cools the chip to near absolute zero, it should be installed at Nasa and available for research by autumn 2013.

US giant Lockheed Martin earlier this year upgraded its own D-Wave machine to the 512 qubit D-Wave Two.

CHICAGO — Here’s a secret about the workout portions of the NBA combine: For the most part, it’s worthless. Since the NBA did away with five-on-five drills in 2009 — largely due to the fact that too many nervous agents were advising clients not to participate, causing attendance in the combine to dip — executives have been limited to watching big men post up against oversized pads and guards take uncontested jumpers. “Anyone that says they can learn something about a player from that,” said an Eastern Conference executive, “has never seen the player.”

What is useful are the interviews, when team officials can poke and prod a prospective draft pick. North Texas forward Tony Mitchell said his interview with Detroit involved a series of rapid fire questions, requiring him to think quickly. UCLA’s Shabazz Muhammad said he was asked repeatedly about the NCAA investigation into him and to clarify how old he was. Pittsburgh’s Steven Adams said Dallas brought a sports psychologist to “mentally torment” him. Some players were interviewed by a handful of teams, some by as many as 15.

The interviews are private, but in the case of many players, some of the questions league execs are not hard to figure out. Here’s a sample of how some players answered some of those questions.

SI.com: Your father, Barry Larkin, is a Hall of Fame baseball player. Why didn’t you get into baseball?

Shane Larkin: “Pete Rose and Tony Perez taught me how to hit. Tony Perez had the whole bat waggle and Pete Rose lifted his leg. I had those things in my game early on, as an eight-year old. I was playing baseball at a YMCA in Orlando and when I came up to bat my coach saw my whole routine and he told me ‘Stop what you’re doing; whoever taught you how to hit doesn’t know what they are talking about. Give it up. Plant your foot, keep the bat still and you will be way more successful.’ So I tried to do what he said, but I couldn’t hit the rest of the season. And that was the last year I played organized baseball.”

SI.com: Did you ever feel pressure to play baseball because of your father?

SL: “Not really, because he never put any pressure on me. Of course, when I was in the clubhouse the guys on his team were always like, ‘When are you going to get out here on the field,’ but it was never pressure from my Dad. He actually wanted me to play football. That was the only sport he made me play. I wanted to play soccer because the kids at my elementary school played soccer, but he said, ‘Football was fun, I [have to play] football — he went to Michigan on a football scholarship — and if you don’t like it you don’t have to play again.’”

SI.com: You were a mediocre shooter before this season. What changed?

Victor Oladipo: “I just stayed in the gym. It was repetition after repetition. I felt like before, it was all a mental thing for me. I realized that if I miss, so what. I just go to the next shot. Once I realized that I’m just going to shoot the good shots, the open shots, the shots I feel like are the best, I’m going to make them at a high level. I started shooting with confidence, and they started going in at a high rate.”

SI.com: So you used to get rattled when you shot?

VO: “Yeah, I would say so. My first two years, whenever I missed a shot I would be like, ‘Oh, no need to keep shooting, the next probably isn’t going to go in either.’ This year, if I missed, I would shoot the next one with the same confidence. If I missed, it was rare. I knew the next one was going to go in.”

MANNIX: Oladipo rises in NBA draft Big Board 7.0

SI.com: How do you address questions about you not playing hard all the time last year?

Tony Mitchell: “Our season was so tough, I couldn’t get up for games, somewhat. We had a losing record, and it was hard. My effort was up and down. It should have been straight. There is no excuse. It definitely hurt my stock. [Without the questions], I think I would go in the lottery. Each and every team has asked me about it. I understand this is a business. They want to make sure I’m the right fit. I’m ready to prove them wrong.

SI.com: Do you get the sense that teams believe that you are going to work hard all the time?

TM: “Really, it’s a question mark. They just don’t know. I have to show it. I can’t talk about it anymore. I’ve accepted it. I have expectations, and I have to live up to them.

SI.com: You have compared your game to Kenneth Faried. What similarities do you see?

TM: “Our athleticism. I believe I can rebound just like him. Faried works tremendously hard and I know I can do the same thing.”

SI.com: You said at the end of the season that you would be delusional to think you were ready for the NBA. And here you are. What changed?

Archie Goodwin: “I had a talk with my coach and my family, and at the end of the day I felt it was the best decision for me going forward. I wanted to see where I’m at. Coach [John Calipari] said whether I stayed or not, he was going to battle for me. He wanted me to stay, but at the same time he would respect my decision if I wanted to leave. These last few weeks, he has been in my corner. We talk all the time. I was fortunate to have him as someone to vouch for me going forward.”

SI.com: Many have said that Kentucky’s vaunted recruiting class forced you into this decision. Is that true?

AG: “It didn’t impact my decision at all. Those guys are good players, but I feel I can compete with anybody. They didn’t have anything to do with it. It’s not about this class. Because the next season people could say I was leaving because of the next one. It would be an ongoing battle, nonstop. I don’t pay any attention to it. This was about my family and the way I personally felt.”

SI.com: It has been speculated that you left Pitt after your freshman season because you needed to take care of your family back in New Zealand. Is that true?

Steven Adams: “It was strictly a personal decision. I talked about it with my family but no one asked me to leave. I left because the best coaches in the world are in the NBA. They can help me progress. [Pitt] was good for me. Jaime [Dixon] is a really successful coach. He taught me a lot.”

SI.com: Did you think you were going to come to Pitt and put up the kind of numbers you did in New Zealand?

SA: “No, no chance. The competition is so much higher than in New Zealand. I wasn’t used to playing against much taller and stronger people. Basketball players look like rugby players in New Zealand, short and stocky. Here, they are really tall. I was learning to use my body to get a hook shot off, to outrebound big men by using my body. It was an adjustment.”

SI.com: It has been written that one of the reasons you didn’t go back to USC is because the new coach (Andy Enfield) didn’t recruit you back very hard. Is that true?

Dewayne Dedmon: “I mean, they did what they were supposed to do. I talked to all the coaches, had meetings with all the coaches. At the end of the day, my mind was made up to come out. They were good meetings, but I was still unsure about next year’s coaching staff. I wasn’t willing to put myself in jeopardy because of what they would do on the court. Sometimes you get broken promises. You never really know. There is always that little gray area.

SI.com: Did you think you wouldn’t fit in the system Enfield ran at Florida Gulf Coast?

DD: “No, that’s the way I like to play. Going through the year we just had, with the coaching changes, with Kevin O’Neil getting fired, with the assistant coach coming in and a whole new coaching staff coming in … I basically had my mind made up. They recruited me to come back, and they did a good job, but I had decided.”

SI.com: You were a guard in high school, grew seven inches as junior, and now you are a center. What are the challenges in having to switch positions?

Kelly Olynyk: “It was challenging. Suddenly you’re inside, you’re focusing on post moves, you’re playing with your back to the basket — it’s something I had never done before. The way I describe it is trying to make a quarterback a kicker. Those are two different positions. I was a point guard in high school. Being from a smaller town in Canada, there wasn’t a lot of talent where I came from. I had to do a lot of stuff. I had to score, pass, facilitate, run the team. It was a tough transition [to center], but once I gained that I kept those guard skills as well, so I can be a dual threat.”

SI.com: The perception of you is that you can score in the NBA, but no one is sure if you can rebound and defend. What can you do to change that before the draft?

KO: “I don’t know. I changed my body a lot. I want to improve it even more. I think what has helped me a lot is playing with the national team, playing overseas with pros all the time. It gave me the confidence to know that I belonged playing at that next level. That was reassuring.”

SI.com: You didn’t play at all last season because of academic issues. How have you been able to stay sharp?

Ricky Ledo: “I competed every day in practice. Most of the times I practiced as the other team’s best player. I was involved heavily. I worked out a lot with [God] Shammgod; he helped me with my dribbling and shooting off the dribble. I’m not just a spot shooter.

SI.com: If you had wanted to go back to Providence, would you have been academically eligible?

RL: “I would have. And it was a tough decision. I thought if I stayed I definitely would have been a top pick next year. But I felt it was the right time to come out. I wanted to play in front of my friends and family (Ledo is from Providence, R.I.), and it was disappointing that I couldn’t. But I learned a lot not playing. I’m a better player than I was last year.”

SI.com: Are you the best shooter in this draft?

RL: “I would say one of them. Top-three.”

Story By: by Gregory Warner

Mike Watson (left), CEO of Kenya’s Lewa Conservancy, and conservationist Ian Craig identify the carcass of a 4-year-old black rhino named Arthur, whom poachers had killed the night before. The well-armed, well-informed poachers very likely used night vision goggles and a silencer on an AK-47.

- Patrick Omondi, an official with the Kenya Wildlife Service

Game rangers report for duty at a community conservancy in northern Kenya. The flourishing safari economy in Kenya generates more than $1 billion a year and nearly 500,000 jobs.

- Mike Watson, CEO of Kenya’s Lewa Conservancy

Mzee Kinyanjui is one of the first and longest-serving rangers to work for Lewa Conservancy. Now retired, he is often called upon for advice and guidance by the security department for his forensic skills.

John Palmeri, chief of security, says now they have a new enemy: the cellphone. If one of their rangers simply calls a poacher to alert them — say, there’s an unguarded rhino in the northeast corner — that phone call will be richly rewarded, reportedly to the tune of $3,500.

That’s a lot of money for a rural Kenyan, especially for committing a crime for which no Kenyan has ever served prison time. They’re all free on bail.

“This money is tempting people in the system,” Palmeri says.

Does it ever tempt him?

“No. … I came here when [there were 20 or fewer rhinos]. At the moment we have 125 animals here,” Palmeri says. “And especially, if you have been here, growing with these animals, and knowing that [the animals] have reached this number because of me.”

Not every ranger has such a personal link. Some are just here for the job. So the poaching crisis has left every conservancy in Africa with a question that any army fighting a guerrilla war hates to confront. It’s not how to defend; it’s whom can you trust.

Just recently the last rhino in Mozambique may have been killed, and if so, it was apparently with the direct assistance of the game rangers protecting it. The warden of Limpopo National Park recently told the Associated Press that he’d caught members of his staff “red-handed while directing poachers to a rhino area.”

And considering how much money is dangling there on the black market, it’s remarkable that more rangers haven’t been turned. So while it’s true that rhinos are losing the war against poachers, it’s also true that they have a surprising number of loyal friends.

A nation with a proud cultural heritage, Poland can trace its roots back over 1,000 years. Positioned at the centre of Europe, it has known turbulent and violent times.

The shoots of political freedom were trampled again 16 months later when communist leader Wojciech Jaruzelski declared martial law. But the movement for change was irreversible. Elections in summer 1989 ushered in eastern Europe's first post-communist government.

The presence in the Vatican of Polish Pope John-Paul II was an important influence on the Solidarity movement throughout the 1980s. The Roman Catholic church remains a very potent force in Polish life.

In the years between the end of communism and EU accession, power in Poland switched between the centre right and the centre left. Successive governments faced sleaze allegations.

In elections in 2010, the victory of the centre-right Civic Platfrom saw Prime Minister Donald Tusk become the first Polish leader to be re-elected since the end of communism.

Success

Poland has made major economic strides since the fall of communism, and especially since joining the EU. In 2009, when all the major European economies were contracting because of the credit crunch, Poland was the only country in Europe to experience economic growth.

There has been marked success in creating a market economy and attracting foreign investment. Germany is now Poland's biggest trading partner. There was a massive movement of workers to western Europe in the years after Poland joined the EU, but the exodus slowed down after the global economic crisis took hold.

Poland still has a huge farming sector – agriculture accounts for about 60% of the country's total land area – but the sector remains hampered by inefficiency, structural problems and lack of investment.

Warsaw's profile on the international stage was raised by its support for the US-led military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. Polish peacekeeping troops served in south-central Iraq from 2003 until 2008, and the country has also contributed a sizeable contingent to the Nato peacekeeping force in Afghanistan.

The prospect of a deep sea "gold rush" opening a controversial new frontier for mining on the ocean floor has moved a step closer.

The idea of exploiting the gold, copper, manganese, cobalt and other metals of the ocean floor has been considered for decades but only recently became feasible with high commodity prices and new technology.

Conservation experts have long warned that mining the seabed will be highly destructive and could have disastrous long-term consequences for marine life.

The ISA study itself recognizes that mining will cause "inevitable environmental damage".

But the report comes amid what a spokesman describes as "an unprecedented surge" of interest from state-owned and private mining companies.

The number of licences issued to prospect for minerals now stands at 17 with another seven due to be granted and more are likely to follow. They cover vast areas of the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans.

One of the most recent to be granted was to UK Seabed Resources, a subsidiary of the British arm of Lockheed Martin, the American defence giant.

Under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, the ISA was set up to encourage and manage seabed mining for the wider benefit of humanity – with a share of any profits going to developing countries.

Now the ISA is taking the significant step of moving from simply handling bids for mineral exploration to considering how to license the first real mining operations and how to share the proceeds.

The ISA's legal counsel, Michael Lodge, told the BBC: "We are at the threshold of a new era of deep seabed mining."

The lure is obvious. An assessment of the eastern Pacific – a five million sq km area known as the Clarion-Clipperton Zone – concluded that more than 27 billion tonnes of nodules could be lying on the sand.

Those rocks would contain a staggering seven billion tonnes of manganese, 340 million tonnes of nickel, 290 million tonnes of copper and 78 million tonnes of cobalt – although it's not known how much of this is accessible.

A map shows the spread of licensed areas across the zone.

According to the planning study, the ISA faces the challenge of trying to ensure that nodule mining's benefits will reach beyond the companies themselves while also fostering commercially viable operations.

The plan relies on providing operators with the right incentives to risk what would be expensive investments without losing the chance for developing countries to get a slice of the proceeds.

But the ISA identifies what it calls a "Catch-22" in this brand new industry as it tries to assess which companies are skilled enough to carry out the work.

"Competence cannot be gained," it says, "without actual mining at a commercial scale, but at the same time mining should not be allowed without prior demonstration of competence."

A key factor in the ISA's thinking is the need for environmental safeguards, so the document calls for monitoring of the seabed during any mining operation – though critics wonder if activity in the ocean depths can be policed.

The prospect of deep sea mining has already sparked a vigorous debate among marine scientists, as I found earlier this year on a visit to the British research ship, James Cook, exploring the hydrothermal vents of the Cayman Trough.

The expedition's chief scientist, Dr Jon Copley, a biologist from the University of Southampton, urged caution.

"I don't think we own the deep ocean in the sense that we can do what we like with it," he said. "Instead we share responsibility for its stewardship.

"We don't have a good track record of achieving balance anywhere else – think of the buffalo and the rainforest – so the question is, can we get it right?"

And Prof Paul Tyler, also a biologist, of the National Oceanography Centre, warned that unique species would be at risk.

"If you wipe out that area by mining, those animals have to do one of two things: they disperse and colonise another hydrothermal vent somewhere or they die.

"And what happens when they die is that the vent will become biologically extinct."

However, marine chemist Prof Rachel Mills, of the University of Southampton, called for a wider debate about mining generally on the grounds that we all use minerals and that mines on land are far larger than any would be on the seabed.

She has carried out research for Nautilus Minerals, a Canadian firm planning to mine hydrothermal vents off Papua New Guinea.

"Everything we are surrounded by, the way we live, relies on mineral resources and we don't often ask where they come from," she said.

"We need to ask whether there is sustainable mining on land and whether there is sustainable mining in the seas.

"I actually think it is the same moral questions we ask whether it's from the Andes or down in the Bismarck Sea."

This debate is set to intensify as the reality of the first mining operations comes closer.

David Shukman presents a documentary on deep sea mining on Discovery on the BBC World Service on Monday.

Follow David on Twitter

* Freeport first project approved since 2011

* Manufacturers concerned about unlimited gas exports

* Still unclear when DOE will act on other projects

* DOE says applications decided on case-by-case basis

* Lawmaker says more debate needed on gas exports

By Ayesha Rascoe

WASHINGTON, May 17 (Reuters) – The Obama administration
opened the door to a new era of U.S. energy exports on Friday,
approving the first liquefied natural gas project since the
start of a heated debate over how best to benefit from the shale
energy boom.

The Energy Department’s approval of unrestricted natural gas
exports from Freeport LNG’s Quintana Island, Texas, terminal
ends nearly a two-year pause in its review of export
applications as the administration addressed concerns that
sending unlimited amounts of domestic gas abroad could harm U.S.
manufacturers.

While the approval had been widely expected after growing
signals that President Barack Obama supported exports, the
timing of the decision just one day after the Senate approved a
new Energy Department secretary was a surprise. Many observers
had expected the administration would wait until Ernest Moniz
had settled into his new role before moving ahead.

The green light for Freeport’s terminal, which in its first
phase will export the equivalent of about two percent of current
U.S. gas production, offers little clarity on the future of the
more than two dozen LNG projects still awaiting a DOE decision.

The response to Friday’s decision was cautiously optimistic
on both sides of the debate. Dow Chemical, a major
consumer of U.S. gas that fears unfettered exports would drive
up prices, said it supported the Freeport decision because it
was a measured and balanced approach to LNG exports.

The American Petroleum Institute called the move a step in
the right direction, but said the rest of the applications need
to be approved swiftly.

Analysts warned that U.S. exporters are racing the clock.
Other countries including Canada and Australia are also building
up LNG facilities, threatening to soak up market share.

“The window of opportunity is closing quickly so the longer
the process takes in getting DOE approval the likelihood that
the U.S. will face steeper competition is increasing,” said Teri
Viswanath, an analyst at BNP Paribas.

For a FACTBOX on the other pending projects:

TWO YEAR WAIT

Since the department signed off on exports from Cheniere’s
Sabine Pass terminal in 2011, the first project to
apply, a fierce debate over the future of America’s natural gas
bounty has swept through Washington and elsewhere.

Rapid growth in shale gas output has placed the United
States in a position to be a major gas exporter, upending years
of expectations that the nation would have to rely increasingly
on imports of gas. Freeport LNG, among the first to realize that
the import terminal it built in 2008 would likely be useless,
moved to revamp it for exports instead.

Some 26 applications have been filed to export natural gas,
but a vocal contingent led by Dow Chemical have argued that
allowing unlimited exports could raise prices and hinder a
resurgence in U.S. manufacturing.

Energy Department authorization is required for gas exports
to all but a handful of countries with free-trade agreements.
Without approval to export to major gas consumers that don’t
hold such agreements, including Japan and India, multi-billion
dollar LNG export facilities would likely not be economically
feasible.

The administration held off on making further decisions in
order to study the potential impact on the U.S. economy, which
is in the midst of an industrial rebirth thanks in part to the
cheap energy offered by an excess of natural gas.

A Energy department-commissioned study by NERA Economic
Consulting released late last year found that the more gas
exports allowed, the greater the economic benefits.

On Friday, natural gas prices for 2015 and beyond were
little moved by the news, trading at around $4.30-$4.60 per
million British thermal units (mmBtu). That is only a little bit
higher than current prices as traders expect the rapid rise in
shale gas production to outstrip demand, including the rise that
is likely to come from LNG exports.

The Freeport project, part-owned by ConocoPhillips
and Osaka Gas Co Ltd, will allow the company to export
up to 1.4 billion cubic feet of natural gas a day for 20 years.
Osaka, Chubu Electric Power Co and BP have already
committed to buying gas from the project.

For a FACTBOX on the project see:

FAVORING FRONT OF THE LINE

The department stressed that going forward, applications
would be reviewed on a case by case basis. Decisions will be
made on the applications in the order in when they were filed
with the department and giving preference to the companies which
have filed with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which
must issue a license for construction of LNG terminals.

Senator Ron Wyden, a prominent skeptic of unrestrained gas
exports, said the department’s “measured” approach provides a
“constructive way for this discussion to go forward.”

“Based upon my conversations with DOE it is my expectation
that the department will use that process to assess the market
impacts of each export decision after it is announced, to ensure
American consumers are not harmed by large-scale exports,” said
Wyden, the democratic chairman of the Senate energy committee.

With critics calling for allowing only a limited amount of
exports, supporters of the gas projects have raised concerns
that the terminals at the front of the line will have an unfair
advantage.

Freeport was at the top of the queue. Other projects near
the beginning of the line, include terminals backed by Dominion
, Sempra, BG Group and Veresen Inc.

“Everything we’ve seen to date points to a subset of the
pending applications being conditionally approved, a small first
tranche,” said Kevin Book, energy analyst with ClearView Energy
Partners.

The department’s approvals are conditional pending FERC’s
decision on a construction license, a separate process that
typically takes months.

MORE DEBATE NEEDED?

Congressman Edward Markey, a prominent critic of gas
exports, called the decision to allow exports from Freeport
premature.

“The Department of Energy still doesn’t even know what the
impact of natural gas exports will be on domestic businesses and
consumers, but they are approving more exports anyways,” Markey
said.

Dow Chemical said it does support exports, but “not too much
too soon.”

Ironically the company owns a 15 percent stake in the
Freeport terminal, which it purchased in 2004 on the assumption
that it would be forced to import frozen gas to use as its
plants.

“We’ve never been against exports, but we’ve opposed
unfettered exports that risk seeing natural gas prices rise too
fast for consumers,” said Dow Vice President George Blitz.

He said the company would not be investing in the export
portion of the terminal.