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Euro zone boosts powers of rescue fund to aid Greece, Ireland, Portugal
Euro zone leaders agreed at an emergency summit on Thursday to give their financial rescue fund sweeping new powers to help Greece overcome its debt crisis and prevent market instability from spreading through the region.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy said leaders of the 17-nation currency area had agreed to ease lending terms to Greece, Ireland and Portugal, while private investors would voluntarily swap their Greek bonds for longer maturities at lower interest rates to help Athens.
Scientists find a mass of synthetic chemicals in every glass of milk
When you wake up and go to the kitchen to pour yourself a cold glass of milk, it seems you are filling your body with calcium, vitamins, and an abundance of goodness. That seemingly white beverage may look innocent, but the hidden ingredients packed into the liquid that is a popular staple in the American diet are anything but.
According to a recent study published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, scientists have found through analysis that one single glass of milk can contain a delightful (or not) medley of up to 20 different kinds of painkillers, antibiotics and growth hormones (http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021…). These medicinal residues, found in samples of cow, goat, and human breast milk, are from a variety of chemicals used to treat animal and human illness.
This research revealed that cow, goat, and human breast milk tested for traces of numerous anti-inflammatory drugs such as niflumic acid, mefenamic acid, flunixin, ibuprofen, diclofenac and ketoprofen — all of which are commonly used painkillers for animals and humans.
Traces of other drugs, such as lipid regulators, anti-epileptics, beta-blockers, antibiotics and various hormones (such as ethinylestradiol and estrone) were found Read more…
Poll: Only 52% of Americans approve of God’s performance
Dissatisfaction and anger with the federal government is nothing new, but now even Almighty God is having a tough time getting support from the public.
A recently released survey (PDF) by Public Policy Polling (PPP) found that only 52 percent of American voters approve of God’s performance, while nine percent disapprove and 40 percent are just not sure.
Among “very liberal” respondents, 19 percent disapproved. Only four percent of “very conservative” voters had a problem with the deity.
At 71 percent, God got His highest marks for creating the universe. His handling of animals was approved by 56 percent, and 50 percent even approved of His handling of natural disasters.
The same polling firm recently found that 44 percent of Republicans thought President Barack Obama would Read more…
Defence cuts will leave China as the world’s policeman, warns Nato chief
DEFENCE cuts across Europe will diminish Nato’s global role and leave China as the world’s policemen, the alliance chief warned yesterday.
Anders Fogh Rasmussen praised Britain and France for taking the lead on the Libya conflict but said they could not have done it without US help.
And he claimed the slashing of troops by European leaders will hit military transport and intelligence.
Mr Fogh Rasmussen spoke out just days after Defence Secretary Liam Fox unveiled plans to cut the Army by 17,000.
The director general said: “For the first time in the history of Nato we have seen an operation not led by the Americans.
“The Europeans couldn’t do this on their own and in that respect it is of course a matter of concern that we have seen substantial defence cuts in nearly all Nato allied nations. If the current development continues, the influence of Europe on the international scene will decline because of lack of critical transport capabilities, critical intelligence gathering capabilities and Read more…
First Famine of the 21st century a Wake-up Call
The United Nations has officially declared Somalia’s food crisis a famine in several parts of the country.
A boy drinks water from a pond in Bule Duba village in the outskirts of Moyale, near the edge of Oroma and Somali regions of Ethiopia, June 12, 2009. Prolonged drought, lack of water and limited pasture have led to conflict between the Somali and Borena ethnic groups in southern Ethiopia which left hundreds of people dead in February this year. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) says it needs some 100 million Swiss francs to prevent conflict, famine and epidemics as well as restore the livelihoods of 2.5 million people in the Horn of Africa. Picture taken June 12, 2009. REUTERS
The UN says consecutive droughts over the last few years in Somalia have created a famine in two regions of the south. It is now appealing for immediate action to keep the crisis from spreading to other parts of the region.
International aid agency Oxfam said, the UN announcing famine in parts of Somalia, the first in the region in the 21st century, must be an urgent wake up call to the rest of the world for greater action in East Africa.
Across Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya, 12 million women, men and children are in dire need of food, clean water and basic sanitation, following two years of failed Read more…
HR Bill 1505 allows for DHS takeover of seashores and coastal areas
A new house bill wants to allow the Department of Homeland Security to have jurisdiction over all federal lands on national seashores and coastal areas.
HR Bill 1505, the “National Security and Federal Lands Protection Act,” would force the Secretary of the Interior to cede authority of coastal public lands, as well as lands located along the borders of Canada and Mexico, to the Secretary of Homeland Security when the latter sees fit. It would give the Dept. of Homeland Security the ability to construct roads and fences, deploy patrol vehicles and set up “monitoring equipment” in the National Seashore with impunity. And it would waive the need for the Dept. of Homeland Security to comply with environmental laws in areas within 100 miles of a coastline or international border.
The laws from which the Dept. of Homeland Security would be exempt include the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Read more…
Police Use of iPhone Iris Scanners Raise Privacy Concerns
The so-called “biometric” technology, which seems to take a page from TV shows like “MI-5″ or “CSI,” could improve speed and accuracy in some routine police work in the field. Dozens of police departments nationwide are gearing up to use a tech company’s already controversial iris- and facial-scanning device that slides over an iPhone and helps identify a person or track criminal suspects.
But its use has set off alarms with some people who are more concerned about possible civil liberties and privacy issues. Constitutional rights advocates are concerned, in part because the device can accurately scan an individual’s face from up to four feet away, potentially without a person’s being aware of it.
“This is (the technology) stepping out of the cruiser and riding on the officer’s belt, along with his flashlight, his handcuffs, his sidearm or the other myriad tools,” said John Birtwell, spokesman for the Plymouth County Sheriff’s Department in southeastern Massachusetts, one of the first departments to use the devices.
“What we don’t want is for them to become a general surveillance tool, where the Read more…
Never Mind Bret, Season is Just Getting Started
The circle gets the square, or in this case, the big red circle near Africa has room to become the strongest feature yet for the 2011 season.“A stronger tropical wave now over the eastern North Atlantic might be a feature to watch during the next week or so.”While Bret is now pushing out to sea and remains no threat to the mainland U.S., indications continue to point toward a busy August and September as far as hurricanes are concerned.
A sizable tropical wave has rolled westward, off the coast of Africa, and bears watching as it cruises along through Antilles waters this weekend.
It is still a little early to expect much from the Cape Verde area, but one of the tropical waves could help to breed a tropical cyclone in the southwestern part of the Atlantic Basin by next week.
According to Tropical Weather and Hurricane Expert Meteorologist Dan Kottlowski, “A stronger tropical wave now over the Read more…
The Global Physical Gold & Silver Reserves Race is the New Nuclear Arms Race
The old Cold War USA-USSR nuclear arms race has been replaced by the new East-West Central Bank battle to accumulate physical gold and physical silver reserves. While Western Central Banks and their puppet bullion banks have distracted and goaded private citizens with the invention of fraudulent bogus paper gold and paper silver derivative products, including ETFs more recently, and paper futures contracts for a much longer period of time, they themselves have been making sure to avoid the very fraudulent paper products they have invented and have been diving headfirst into real physical precious metals.
As Central Banks continue to significantly devalue all major global currencies through excessive creation of new supply out of thin air in a digital world where “new money” is never even printed into paper/cotton form but only is created as digital bytes that are sent across international borders, the private families that are the majority shareholders in the world’s most powerful Central Banks have engaged in heavy buying of Read more…
2011: Headed for Record Arctic Melt?
July 11, 2011: Arctic sea ice, seen by satellite. Credit: NASA.
This year could be well on its way toward earning a dubious spot in the record books.
Arctic sea ice has melted away with astonishing speed in the first half of July, at an average rate of about 46,000 square miles (120,000 square kilometers) per day, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in Boulder, Colo.
That’s equivalent to an area roughly the size of Pennsylvania melting into the sea every 24 hours.
“That’s relatively fast,” said Julienne Stroeve, a research scientist at the NSIDC.
Already, sea ice extent — how far ice extends across the ocean — this year is below the extent for the same time in 2007, a year which, in September, saw the lowest sea ice coverage ever recorded.
As of July 17 this year, sea ice covered 2.92 million square miles (7.56 million square kilometers) of the frigid Arctic Ocean. That may sound like a lot, but it’s 865,000 square miles (2.24 million square kilometers) below the 1979 to 2000 average.
However, Stroeve said, much of what Read more…
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