On Fri, 28 Feb 2003, Sean Donelan wrote: :ILIGAN, Mindanao - Muslim separatist rebels blacked out the southern third :of the Philippines in overnight sabotage attacks, leaving about 18 million :people in the dark for hours, officials said Thursday. So we have a bit of time to figure out how to profit from the millions of new babies to be born 9 months from now in the affected area. :Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) guerrillas blew up at least five :steel transmission towers before midnight using improvised explosives from :mortar shells on Wednesday, knocking out from the grid the key Agus :hydro-electric power complex outside this city. Judging by how well Hydro Quebec handled the ice storm a few years ago, we can probably expect many other domestic power providers to take more than a few hours to recover from multiple hits against the infrastructure. Though in that case they were hampered by icy road conditions. During some mild rolling brownouts here a while ago, I sent out the phone number of the local hydro company NOC to some stakeholders, and reminded them to write it down, as it won't be of much use to them if it is sitting in their email during a blackout. ;) Something to think about anyway. -- batz