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Archive for June, 2011

Wallow Fire Threatening Power Supplies to New Mexico and Texas

June 9, 2011 Comments off

christianpost

Firefighters have battled through the night in an attempt to protect numerous Arizona mountain communities from the spreading Wallow fire that has forced thousands to evacuate and flee their homes.

(Photo: Reuters/Joshua Lott)Arizona Department of Trasportation workers prepare to close off a section of U.S. Highway 60 due to the Wallow Wildfire in Springerville, Arizona June 8, 2011. A wildfire believed sparked by inattentive campers blazed unchecked for an 11th day in eastern Arizona on Wednesday, leaving at least 600 square miles of pine forest blackened and menacing several mountain towns near the New Mexico border.

The fire has now become the second largest ever seen in Arizona, and is threatening electricity supplies as far away as Texas.

The fire, which during Wednesday night was being reported as covering 607-square miles, is expected to reach power lines by early Friday. It is feared that if lines are damaged, hundreds of thousands in New Mexico and Texas would face rolling blackouts.

For the early part of this week driving winds have Read more…

Categories: Arizona, New Mexico, Texas Tags: , , , , ,

Analysts raise alarm on Facebook expansion of facial recognition technology

June 9, 2011 Comments off

smartcompany

The expansion of Facebook’s facial recognition technology into Australia has raised privacy and security concerns, with local analysts warning information accumulated by the social networking giant could be used for malicious purposes.

In a statement on its blog on Tuesday, Facebook announced it had launched the feature beyond North America into most countries. The feature uses facial recognition technology to speed up the process of tagging friends in photos.

The technology scans new uploaded photos and determines if the faces in these new images resemble those in previously tagged photos. If they do, the feature will suggest friends to tag. Previously, users had to tag photos manually, without suggestions.

According to the social network’s blog, more than 100 million photos per day are uploaded to Facebook and the goal of the feature is to Read more…

Categories: Biometrics, Facebook Tags: , , , ,

Russia may develop nuclear offensive, arms race – Serdyukov

June 9, 2011 Comments off

en.rian.ru

Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov

Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov on Wednesday said that Russia would develop its own offensive nuclear force if NATO fails to come to agreement over the European defense shield.

“We have no other way, otherwise we’ll just have to develop an arms race,” Serdyukov said after a Russia-NATO meeting in Brussels.

The talks in Brussels, he said, did not result in the solution of conceptual approaches and the Russia-NATO working group on the missile shield issue only managed to agree on the plan of work for 2011.

“We failed to agree on conceptual approaches… Our dialogue must Read more…

Categories: Russia Tags: , , , , , ,

Two New Elements Added To Periodic Table: Ununquadium And Ununhexium-Elements with Atomic Number 114 and 116

June 9, 2011 2 comments

iupac

Two new elements have been added to the periodic table after a three-year review by the governing bodies of chemistry and physics.

The elements are currently unnamed, but they are both highly radioactive and exist for less than a second before decaying into lighter atoms. The table is the official compedium of known elements, organised according to properties of their atomic structure.

Details have been published in the journal Pure and Applied Chemistry. The review was conducted by a joint working party of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) and the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP).

In recent years, there have been several claims by laboratories for the discovery of new chemical elements at positions 113, 114, 115, 116 and 118 on the periodic table. The working party concluded that elements 114 and 116 fulfilled criteria for official inclusion in the table. The others, as yet, do not.

The new elements have temporary titles of ununquadium and ununhexium, but final names have Read more…

Categories: Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , ,

The Netherlands Second Country to Codify Net Neutrality After Chile

June 9, 2011 Comments off

osnews

I’ve been keeping you up to date about the situation around net neutrality in The Netherlands – and today, everything finally came to its logical conclusion. During a debate in our lower house, most of the kinks were ironed out, and our minister of economic affairs, Maxime Verhagen, will now turn net neutrality into law. This means that after Chile, The Netherlands will be the second country in the world to do so.

I already told you that Verhagen wished to comply with the lower house’s demands, but I failed to make the clarification that he just wanted to prohibit carriers and ISPs from throttling and blocking, without actually turning it into a law. During today’s debate, he faced an almost unanimous lower house asking for net neutrality to actually become a full-grown, big-boy law.

The only party against net neutrality was the Read more…

Categories: Netherlands Tags: , , , , ,

Bilderbergers May Give Green Light to Mexican Central Banker as New IMF Boss

June 8, 2011 Comments off

infowars

Business Report today reports that Mexican central banker Agustín Carstens will be the next boss at the International Monetary Fund.

Earlier today, Prison Planet.com editor and lead journalist Paul Joseph Watson reported via video that the new IMF head would be decided this week at the Bilderberg confab.


The Latin America News Dispatch announced Carstens bid on May 25.

According to news reports, a dozen Latin American countries support the appointment of Carstens to head up the globalist loan sharking operation. The countries are Belize, Bolivia, Colombia, Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Dominican Republic, Uruguay and Venezuela.

The nations, a statement said, are convinced “of the need to promote greater participation of emerging economies in the region” in selecting the replacement of Dominique Strauss-Kahn as head of the world finance body.

Strauss-Kahn stepped down from the position after it was alleged he attempted to rape a hotel maid. Some believe Strauss-Kahn was set-up in order to remove him from the IMF.

French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde has also been mentioned as a possible replacement. Both Carstens and Lagarde have embarked on tours to promote their bids.

Agustín Carstens is a top-level insider. He is a Mexican economist who has held high-level positions at the Banco de México, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and Bank of International Settlements.

As an economist, he has advocated an orthodox neoliberal economic approach to the third world and so-called “emerging economies.”

Categories: IMF Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

China official: GOP ‘playing with fire’ with debt ceiling

June 8, 2011 1 comment

usatoday

There’s been an interesting warning on the debt ceiling today — from China.

Li Daokui, an adviser to the People’s Bank of China, told reporters in Beijing, “I think there is a risk that the U.S. debt default may happen.” And he puts the blame on congressional Republicans. “The result will be very serious and I really hope that they would stop playing with fire,” he said.

China is no disinterested party: It holds more than $1 trillion in Treasury debt as of March.

President Obama may well agree with the Chinese banker’s sentiment, as he urges Congress to go ahead and raise the nation’s $14.3 trillion debt ceiling.

Technically, U.S. obligations have already risen past that ceiling, but the Treasury Department says it can use accounting maneuvers to keep paying bills until Aug. 2.

Congressional Republicans, including those who control the U.S. House, say they won’t agree to a debt ceiling increase unless the White House and Democrats agree to major spending cuts.

The two sides are negotiating — as the world waits.

“I really worry about the risks of a U.S. debt default, which I think may lead to a decline in the dollar’s value,” Li said.

Categories: China, Dollar, United States Tags: , , , , ,

U.S.-Canada Perimeter Security and an Integrated North American Command

June 8, 2011 Comments off

infowars

While few details have emerged surrounding talks between the U.S. and Canada on a North American security perimeter, there is little doubt that deeper military integration between both countries will play an important part of any such deal. Plans for a common security perimeter have renewed calls to expand the NORAD bilateral air defence model to include ground and naval forces. There are also efforts to increase security cooperation in the Arctic and further integrate military command structures.

As part of the Tri Command Vision, North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), United States Northern Command (USNORTHCOM), and Canada Command (Canada COM) are working closer together in the defense and security of North America. Moving forward, the Tri Command strategic goals are to, “Improve unity of effort with each other and with our respective mission partners; develop a culture of continuous collaboration and cooperation in planning, execution, training, information management, and innovation; enhance intelligence and information sharing and fusion.” In order to better achieve these objectives, “The Commands shall develop and share Read more…

Categories: Canada, United States Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Iran Vows To Triple Uranium-Enrichment Capacity

June 8, 2011 Comments off

rferl

International tensions over Iran’s disputed nuclear program look set to rise further after that country’s atomic energy chief, Fereidoun Abbasi, announced plans to drastically step up production of enriched uranium.

Abbasi also said output would be transferred from Natanz to a new secretly built facility at Fordow, near Qom, whose existence paved the way for a fresh round of United Nations sanctions against Iran when it was revealed in 2009.

The announcement came after Read more…

Categories: Iran Tags: , , , , , ,

Scientists are sounding the alarm: the mysterious cracks appear across the planet

June 8, 2011 Comments off

thewatchers

Scientists do not know what to think about: South America is bursting at the seams. In southern Peru, suddenly appeared a huge crack length of 3 km and a width of about 100 meters.

Anomaly occurred in the district Huakullani Chukuito province near the famous Lake Titicaca. A crack has appeared almost immediately: the earth like a burst at the site of a large tension, the far scattered huge chunks of soil.

Interestingly, the crack did not appear in the earthquake. In general, there was no catastrophe, the earth simply gone. The crack occurred on level ground and is not associated with any disasters. Scientists are confused with this fact. Cracks also appear in neighboring Bolivia. And not so long ago, the crack happened in Africa – Ethiopia. Maybe these phenomena is common nature: the continents literally split in front of mankind. (BetaNovosti)

Recommended readings: Read more…

Categories: Earth changes, Strange Events Tags: , ,