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China Inflation Is `Somewhat Out of Control’ on Weak Currency, Soros Says
China’s decision to keep its currency weak has caused the government to lose control of inflation and risks fuelling wage-price gains, billionaire investor George Soros said.
While the policy helped insulate China from the financial crisis in 2008, the world’s second-biggest economy has missed its chance to allow the yuan to appreciate to tame inflation, Soros, chairman of Soros Fund Management LLC, said yesterday at a conference in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire.
“It would be very advantageous to allow the currency to appreciate as a way of controlling inflation,” Soros said. “The authorities missed that opportunity. You now have inflation somewhat out of control, and causing some serious danger of wage-price inflation.”
The yuan gained 4.6 percent against the U.S. dollar in the past two years, the second-smallest gain of 10 Asian currencies tracked by Bloomberg, even as economic growth rebounded and foreign-exchange reserves jumped to a record. Inflation accelerated to Read more…
Fires and Drought Trouble Texas and Other US Plains States
Photo: Alberto Tomas Halpern
A volunteer firefighter fights a fire which began outside Marfa, Texas, and was carried by winds to nearby Fort Davis, April 9, 2011
Drought conditions and high winds have fueled destructive wildfires in northern Mexico and the southern U.S. plains states, especially Texas, where dozens of homes have burned in recent days. The dry weather is also having an impact on agriculture that is likely to cause some food prices to rise.
Fast-moving wildfires scorched around 32,000 hectares of land in the west Texas ranch country around Fort Davis on Saturday and Sunday, killing cattle and horses, and leaving pastures charred and smoky. The fires reached populated areas near Fort Read more…
Russian Lawmakers to Warn Against Space-Based WMD
The KS battle station. Stripped surplus Buran test articles are docked to the core. They would act as nuclear weapon dispensers.
The lower house of Russia’s parliament was set on Monday to back a decree opposing any deployment of weapons of mass destruction in outer space, Interfax quoted the body’s executive service as saying on Saturday (see GSN, Aug. 11, 2009).
The State Duma decree, titled “In Connection with the 50th Anniversary of the First Manned Space Flight,” was slated for consideration before a Tuesday celebration of the April 12, 1961, flight of cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin.
“Russia takes consistent action to prevent the deployment of offensive armaments and an arms race in space,” though space systems are key to Russia’s defense, the preliminary document says.
“It is impossible to give a modern image to the armed forces of the Russian Federation and achieve high battle readiness and effectiveness for them without space systems of satellite intelligence, communications, targeting, navigation, missile attack warning and means of space missile defense,” the statement says (Interfax, April 9).
China and US gang up on N Korea
THE strategic rivals China and the US have been secretly sharing intelligence about North Korea.
Leaked records of highly sensitive US-China defence consultations reveal that despite Chinese complaints about US arms sales to Taiwan, and American concerns about a growing Chinese espionage threat, the CIA, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the US Defence Department have held secret talks on North Korea with Chinese military intelligence.
According to US diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks and provided exclusively to the Herald, US-Chinese defence talks held in Beijing in July 2009 included long exchanges about North Korea between the US Under Secretary of Defence for Policy, Michele Flournoy, and top Chinese generals.
Japan may raise severity of nuclear crisis to top level: report
(Reuters) – Japan is weighing raising the severity level of its nuclear crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant to a level 7 from level 5, putting it at par with the accident at the Chernobyl reactor in 1986, Kyodo news agency reported on Tuesday.
Kyodo said the government’s Nuclear Safety Commission has estimated the amount of radioactive material released from the reactors in Fukushima, northern Japan, reached a maximum of 10,000 terabequerels per hour at one point for several hours, which would classify the incident as a major accident according to the INES scale.
The scale, short for International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale, is published by the International Atomic Energy Agency and ranks nuclear and radiological accidents and incidents by their severity from 1 to a maximum of 7.
Japan had previously assessed the accident at reactors operated by Tokyo Electric Power Co, which engineers are still trying to bring under control, at level 5, the same level as the Three Mile Island accident in 1979.
On March 11 a 9.0 magnitude earthquake and a massive tsunami triggered the nuclear disaster where reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi complex were crippled due to a loss of power which disabled cooling functions.
A spokesman for the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, Japan’s nuclear safety watchdog, said on Tuesday that the level of the Fukushima incident was still a 5 and that he was unaware of any move by the government to raise the level.
Cost of Libya war for US at $608 million: Pentagon
AFP
WASHINGTON – The cost of the air war in Libya for the US military has reached $608 million, a US defense official said Monday.
The cost estimate covers the period from the start of international air strikes in Libya on March 19 to April 4, the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told reporters.
US officials previously had said the operation had cost $550 million through March 28.
The Pentagon has estimated the air campaign will cost the United States about $40 million a month, even after NATO allies took the lead in the UN-mandated operation designed to protect civilians against Moamer Kadhafi’s forces.
For the US Air Force alone, the war costs about $4 million a day, the top civilian in the air force told reporters last week.
But Air Force Secretary Michael Donley said he expected that figure to come down with European allies carrying out bombing raids while US aircraft play a support role.
Strain from Japan earthquake may lead to more seismic trouble, scientists say
Japan won’t stop shaking. One month after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, the nation rode out yet another powerful aftershock Monday, the second in four days. This one rattled buildings in Tokyo and briefly cut power to the damaged nuclear plant in Fukushima.
With soldiers still looking for the bodies of thousands of people who vanished in the killer wave a month ago, Japan is coping with the painful reality that it sits in a seismic bull’s-eye.
A new calculation by American and Japanese scientists has concluded that the March 11 event may have heightened the stress on faults bracketing the ruptured segment of the Japan Trench.
“There’s quite a bit of real estate on which stress has increased, by our calculations,” said U.S. Geological Survey geophysicist Ross Stein. “The possibility of getting large, Read more…
Israel and Hamas Consider Cease-Fire
JERUSALEM — Israel and Hamas signaled on Sunday that they were willing to restore calm after days of intense fighting, and while militants in Gaza fired about 10 rockets and mortar shells into southern Israel, most fell in open areas close to the border and Israel did not immediately respond.
“We are interested in calm in the Gaza Strip,” Ghazi Hamad, the Hamas deputy foreign minister, told Israel Radio Sunday.
That represented a sharp reduction in activity since Hamas fired an antitank missile at an Israeli school bus on Thursday, critically wounding a 16-year-old boy and setting off Israeli aerial, artillery and tank fire against targets in Gaza that killed 18 Palestinians, 10 of whom were militants and the rest civilians, according to officials in Gaza.
Hamas and other militant groups fired about 130 mortar shells and rockets, including several mid-range ones, at southern Israel over the previous three days.
Israel’s defense minister, Ehud Barak, said Sunday that Israel had received several messages indicating that Hamas, the militant Islamic group that controls Gaza, was interested in a cease-fire.
“If they stop firing on our communities, we will stop firing,” Mr. Barak told Israel Radio.
Hamas spokesmen offered similar messages. Ghazi Hamad, the deputy foreign minister of the Hamas government in Gaza, told Israel Radio, “We are interested in calm in the Gaza Strip, but also that the Israeli Army cease operations against our people.”
Salah al-Bardaweel, a Hamas spokesman, said that Israel appeared to have accepted the idea of reducing hostilities. “The factions will be committed to Read more…
Speech By Comrade Chi Haotian Vice-Chairman Of China’s Military Commission
Revelation 9:13-16 comes to mind when I heard this
The following is the actual text of a speech delivered in December, 2005 by Comrade Chi Haotian the Vice-Chairman of China’s Military Commission to top officers and generals. Keep in mind that China has for many years advocated deceitful and covert warfare against its enemies. This is their Modus Operandi.
While 99% of Prudent Places USA uses data from scientific and government sources, we would be remiss not to mention one other piece of information. Numerous visionaries and "prophets" have seen troops invading America from China and Russia. Dumitru Duduman and Henry Gruver also predicted attacks along the East and Southeast coasts of America. Since September 11, 2001, nearly anything seems possible. Didn't we mistakenly think prior to 9-11 we were invincible? Impenetrable? Now we have to consider the unthinkable. The map below shows the "seen" routes of invasion.
Following Is Text From Speech:
“Comrades, I’m very excited today, because the large-scale online survey sina.com that was done for us showed that our next generation is quite promising and our Party’s cause will be carried on. In answering the question, “Will you shoot at women, children and prisoners of war,” more than 80 per cent of the respondents answered in the affirmative, exceeding by far our expectations. Today I’d like to focus on why we asked sina.com to conduct this online survey among our people. My speech today is a sequel to my speech last time, during which I started with a discussion of the issue of the three islands [Taiwan, Diaoyu Islands and the Spratley Islands — Ott] and mentioned that 20 years of the idyllic theme of ‘peace and development’ had come to an end, and concluded that modernization under the saber is the only option for China’s next phase. I also mentioned we have a vital stake overseas. The central issue of this survey appears to be whether one should shoot at women, children and prisoners of war, but its real significance goes far beyond that. Ostensibly, our intention is mainly to figure out what the Chinese people’s attitude towards war is: If these future soldiers do not hesitate to kill even noncombatants, they’ll naturally be doubly ready and ruthless in killing combatants. Therefore, the responses to the survey questions may reflect the general attitude people have towards war..We wanted to know: If China’s global development will necessitate massive deaths in enemy countries; will our people endorse that scenario? Will they be for or against it? The fact is, our ‘development’ refers to the great revitalization of the Chinese nation, which, of course, is not limited to the land we have now but also includes the whole world. As everybody Read more…
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