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Russian Diamond Field, Secret Until Now, Said to Contain ‘Trillions of Carats’
A new diamond field said to contain “trillions of carats” is hitting the news wires.
Christian Science Monitor reports that the deposit lies beneath an asteroid crater in Siberia known as Popigai Astroblem. The crater, 62 miles in diameter, was actually discovered by Russian scientists in the 1970s, but the information was classified until today.
According to the story in CSM and now being reported in several international news providers and mining publications, the Soviets decided to keep the discovery a secret because “the USSR’s huge diamond operations at Mirny, in Yakutia, were already producing immense profits in what was then a tightly controlled world market,” and the country had also invested heavily in synthetic diamonds.
Russian official news agency ITAR-Tass reports the diamonds at Popigai are “twice as hard” as Read more…
Arctic Sea Ice Melt May Trigger Extreme European Winter
Image: Jenny Downing/Flickr
By Stephen Leahy, the Guardian
The record loss of Arctic sea ice this summer may mean a cold winter for the UK and northern Europe. The region has been prone to bad winters after summers with very low sea ice, such as 2011 and 2007, said Jennifer Francis, a researcher at Rutgers University.
“We can’t make predictions yet … [but] I wouldn’t be surprised to see wild extremes this winter,” Francis told the Guardian.
This year’s ice melt has broken the 2007 record by an an area larger than the state of Texas.
Polar ice experts “thought that it would be many years until we again saw anything like we saw in 2007″, said Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado.
The unprecedented expanse of ice-free Arctic Ocean has been absorbing the Read more…
Smile, the Government Is Watching: Next Generation Identification
“You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement was scrutinized.”—George Orwell, 1984
Brace yourselves for the next wave in the surveillance state’s steady incursions into our lives. It’s coming at us with a lethal one-two punch.
To start with, there’s the government’s integration of facial recognition software and other biometric markers into its identification data programs. The FBI’s Next Generation Identification (NGI) system is a $1 billion boondoggle that is aimed at dramatically expanding the government’s current ID database from a fingerprint system to a facial recognition system. NGI will use a variety of biometric data, cross-referenced against the nation’s growing network of surveillance cameras to not only track your every move but create a permanent “recognition” file on you within the government’s massive databases.
By the time it’s fully operational in 2014, NGI will serve as a vast data storehouse of “iris scans, photos searchable with face recognition technology, palm prints, and measures of gait and voice recordings alongside records of fingerprints, scars, and tattoos.” One component of NGI, the Universal Face Workstation, already contains some Read more…
A World On The Verge Of War?
Here is a summary of where the world stands:
- Unable to reach a compromise over the weekend, South Africa is now in an all out labor strike, with the police again firing rubber bullets at miners with lethal escalation guaranteed
- Back from vacation, the once again penniless citizens of Spain, Greece, and Portugal have resumed protesting austerity
- US embassies attacked, in many cases with numerous casualties, in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Morocco, Sudan, Lebanon, India, Balgadesh, Indonesia, and others.
- Japan “appropriating” China-contested islands provoking a firestorm of retaliation including demands for “war with Japan“
- The Japanese ambassador to China dying mysteriously
- Netanyahu telling Meet the Press Iran will have a nuke in six-seven months and must be stopped beforehand
- Warships from more than 25 countries, including the United States, Britain, France, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, launching a military exercise in the Straits of Hormuz
- A third US aircraft – the CVN-74 Stennis – carrier is en route to Iran with an ETA of about 10 days
- And finally, a potential catalyst to light this whole mess on fire, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard announcing that its troops are now on the ground in Syria.
From Reuters: Read more…
Buy Gold, But Don’t Store It In The US Because ‘The Fed Will Take It Away From You One Day’
Today’s AM fix was USD 1,767.25, EUR 1,349.36 and GBP 1,089.42 per ounce.
Friday’s AM fix was USD 1,772.50, EUR 1,359.70 and GBP 1,093.53 per ounce.
Silver is trading at $34.52/oz, €26.44/oz and £21.36/oz. Platinum is trading at $1,699.00/oz, palladium at $685.50/oz and rhodium at $1,050/oz.
Gold rose $5.30 or 0.3% in New York and closed at $1,771.60. Silver climbed to $34.91 then dropped before bouncing back higher, and finished with a loss of 0.06%. Gold was up 2.02% for the week and silver another 3% for the week.
Gold is slightly weaker today but hovering near a 7 month high, as the US Fed’s announcement of QE3 has led to some investors diversifying into bullion as a hedge against inflation risk.
The yellow metal rose as high as $1,777.51 on Friday, a high not seen since February 2012 when it hit this year’s peak. Last September 2011, it reached a nominal high of nearly $1,920/oz.
QE3 will allow the Fed to print dollars to buy Read more…
Thousands of Lowood catfish die
The department of heritage and environment are investigating the death of hundreds of fish in the Brisbane River at Lowood.
DEAD and bloated catfish are washing up on the banks of the Brisbane River in their thousands, leaving scientists searching for an explanation.
SeqWater officers were seen scouring the banks of the river just outside the centre of Lowood yesterday, where scaly bodies were scattered along rocky sections of the bank or bobbing belly-up in the steady current.
It is believed hundreds of fish were found dead last week and more were counted yesterday – totalling in the thousands.
The dead fish were found as far upstream as the Lockyer Creek.
Only catfish seem to have been affected, leading to speculation that a virus may be sweeping through fish populations in the river.
Department of Environment and Heritage Protection executive director Andrew Connor said there would be no explanation for the fish Read more…
Russia to Create “Son of Satan” Missile
Last week, General Sergei Karakayev, Commander of the Strategic Rocket Forces, announced plans for a new heavy intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) to go into production as soon as 2018. He emphasized that the new missile would be capable of penetrating the NATO missile shield Russia dislikes so much. The new delivery system will carry a five-ton payload into orbit, almost as much as its predecessor, the infamous R-36m/SS-18 ICBM known by its NATO designation, “Satan.” Like “Satan,” “the Son of Satan” will use highly poisonous liquid propellant.
This escalation comes after President Obama once again hailed his Russia policy. The Russian announcement delivers a blow to the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), which limited U.S. and Russian warheads. An Obama Administration “reset” policy, New START traded real concessions to Moscow for promises of imaginary cooperation in arms control, in a Read more…
Intel’s new technology to replace passwords with wave of hand
The end of passwords?
Intel has developed a new prototype technology which claimed to do away with password for online banking, social networks and email, and instead provide access to them by just waving of hands.
The prototype technology, known as Client Based Authentication Technology, will replace passwords as well as enhance the process for accessing bank accounts, stock portfolios and other cloud-based personal data, Intel said.
Intel researchers have employed the technology in a tablet with new software and a biometric sensor that can recognise the patterns of veins on a person’s palm to access these services.
Claimed to enhance security, the new technology will Read more…
Typhoon Sanba With 170-mph Winds to Threaten Japan
Satellite image of Super Typhoon Sanba Friday afternoon, local time, Sept. 14, 2012, is from the Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC).Super Typhoon Sanba poses a growing threat to southwestern Japan and South Korea.
As of Friday evening, local time, Sanba remains a super typhoon, the equivalent of a Category 5 hurricane, according to The Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC). A super typhoon is a storm with maximum sustained winds of 150 mph or higher.
The Japan Meteorological Agency estimates Sanba’s central pressure to fall to 26.58 inches (900 mb), which would allow Sanba’s strength to rank in between Hurricane Rita and Hurricane Katrina from the Atlantic. Only one typhoon in the western Pacific, Super Typhoon Megi, had a lower pressure in the past 10 years.
Sanba’s movement to the north and northwest is expected to continue through at least Saturday.
The projected path brings Sanba close to Okinawa, Japan, by Saturday night, local time. While the island is well-prepared for typhoons, damage, power outages and flooding are likely.
“It will be a life-threatening situation for the Read more…
Strange Energy From Galactic Center Bombarding Earth
Strange particles believed to be emanating from the elusive ‘dark matter’ at the center of the galaxy have been confirmed to be bombarding Earth. Two physicists from the prestigious Department of Physics & Astronomy at University of California discovered more gamma-rays bombarding Earth than believed by astronomers. The stream of electromagnetic radiation (spewed by the process of intensive radioactive decay and other other high-energy emmisions) may be triggering the bizarre mutation of matter and an incredible energy cloud that an astrophysicist says threatens Earth.
According to a groundbreaking investigation conducted by two UC Irvine astrophysicists and submitted to the peer-reviewed American Physical Society journal Physical Review, colliding particles of dark matter may be creating a maelstrom of turbulent energy deep in the heart of the Milky Way Galaxy. Among the particles streaming from the Read more…
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