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Russian resources fuel China’s economic growth
China has increased high tech exports to Russia 300% in the past five years, while its imports from Russia are dominated by commodities, the Economic Development Ministry said.
China accounted for the bulk of Russia’s bilateral trade, which reached $60 billion in 2010. Russia has increased equipment exports by only 30% since 2005, according to a ministry report on economic relations with China.
No government documents pertaining to Russia’s relations with economic partners are ever published. There is a confidential part to Russia’s foreign economic strategy through 2020, which gives a detailed description of goals and risks related to contacts with each of Russia’s economic partners. Based on this strategy, two years ago the Economic Development Ministry worked out very specific country plans through 2012.
The 2010 report on the China plan progress is addressed to Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Zhukov, who chairs the Russian-Chinese Commission.
In 2009 Zhukov said shortly before Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s visit to China: “Unfortunately, the share of machinery and equipment in our exports to China is sparse. Our plan is to increase exports of products with a high level of processing.”
However, the ministry report indicates that the progress has been unimpressive so far. Russia’s imports from China are $19bn Read more…
Egypt and Israel Headed for Crisis
Israeli officials have expressed alarm at a succession of moves by the interim Egyptian government that they fear signal an impending crisis in relations with Cairo.
The widening rift was underscored yesterday when leaders of the rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah signed a reconciliation pact in the Egyptian capital. Egypt’s secret role in brokering the agreement last week caught both Israel and the United States by surprise.
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, called the deal “a tremendous blow to peace and a great victory for terrorism”.
Several other developments have added to Israeli concerns about its relations with Egypt, including signs that Cairo hopes to renew ties with Iran and renegotiate a long-standing contract to supply Israel with natural gas.
More worrying still to Israeli officials are reported plans by Egyptian authorities to open the Rafah crossing into Gaza, closed for the Read more…
Big Brother Gov’t Seeks to Tax and Track All Drivers
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| Dees Illustration |
Eric Blair
Activist Post
“Oh, say can you see…the land of the fee, and home of the slave?” Americans really better wake up before it’s too late. Perhaps it already is.
Today Pete Kasperowicz of The Hill reported that the Obama administration, following a March Congressional Budget Office report, has “floated” the idea of taxing drivers per mile. Kasperowicz writes:
The plan is a part of the administration’s ‘Transportation Opportunities Act,’ an undated draft of which was obtained this week by Transportation Weekly.
…Among other things, CBO suggested that a vehicle miles traveled (VMT) tax could be tracked by installing electronic equipment on each car to determine how many miles were driven; payment could take place Read more…
New study: Nations requiring the most vaccines tend to have the worst infant mortality rates
(NaturalNews) A new study, published in Human and Experimental Toxicology (http://het.sagepub.com/content/earl…), a peer-reviewed journal indexed by the National Library of Medicine, found that nations with higher (worse) infant mortality rates tend to give their infants more vaccine doses. For example, the United States requires infants to receive 26 vaccines — the most in the world — yet more than six U.S. infants die per every 1000 live births. In contrast, Sweden and Japan administer 12 vaccines to infants, the least amount, and report less than three deaths per 1000 live births.
The authors of the study, Neil Z. Miller and Dr. Gary Goldman, conducted a literature review to determine the immunization schedules for the United States and all 33 nations with better infant mortality rates than the United States. The total number of vaccine doses specified for infants aged less than one year was then determined for each country. The 34 nations were then organized into data pairs consisting of total number of vaccine doses specified for their infants and infant mortality rates. A scatter plot of the data pairs provided evidence of a positive correlation: infant mortality rates and vaccine doses tend to increase together.
Nations were also grouped into five different vaccine dose ranges. The mean infant mortality rates of all nations within each Read more…
Osama bin Laden dead: hi-tech secret may end up in China
There are growing fears that top-secret stealth technology taken from the helicopter that crashed during the raid on the home of Osama bin Laden could be smuggled into China and cause a diplomatic row.
The American troops used thermite grenades to destroy the helicopter’s main body but its rear section was left intact and taken away by the Pakistani military soon after the night raid on Monday. It is feared that if Islamabad refuses a request from Washington for the return of the tail section that the issue could turn into a diplomatic rift Read more…
Flooding forces more evacuations along Mississippi, Ohio rivers
Authorities ordered more evacuations near the Mississippi and Ohio rivers as floodwaters continued to surge southward early Friday, inundating farmlands, highways and homes.
The east-central Arkansas towns of Cotton Plant, Gregory and McClelland were under mandatory evacuations, a spokesman for the state’s emergency management department said.
Waters toppled at least one levee in the area, prompting the evacuation order, the spokesman said. The order affected about 1,000 residents from the three small towns.
In Memphis, Tennessee, riverside parks were flooded and the Shelby County Office of Preparedness warned that homes on the upscale Mud Island were among the 2,832 properties that could be affected by flooding.
“There’s nothing you can do to stop it,” said Ben Ferguson, a syndicated talk show host who lives on the island.
Floods prompted authorities to close more than 20 miles of westbound Interstate 40 in eastern Arkansas. The eastbound stretch of Read more…
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