Archive
State Dept. wants to make it harder to get a passport
If you don’t want it to get even harder for a U.S. citizen to get a passport — now required for travel even to Canada or Mexico — you only have until Monday to let the State Department know.
The U.S. Department of State is proposing a new Biographical Questionnaire for some passport applicants: The proposed new Form DS-5513 asks for all addresses since birth; lifetime employment history including employers’ and supervisors names, addresses, and telephone numbers; personal details of all siblings; mother’s address one year prior to your birth; any “religious ceremony” around the time of birth; and a variety of other information. According to the proposed form, “failure to provide the information requested may result in … the denial Read more…
Man Arrested For Not Giving Cops His Cell Phone (Video)
IMF bombshell: Age of America nears end: China’s economy will surpass the U.S. in 2016
For the first time, the international organization has set a date for the moment when the “Age of America” will end and the U.S. economy will be overtaken by that of China.
The Obama deficit tour
The Wall Street Journal editorial page’s Steve Moore critiques the president’s speeches attacking Republican budget plans.
And it’s a lot closer than you may think.
According to the latest IMF official forecasts, China’s economy will surpass that of America in real terms in 2016 — just five years from now.
Put that in your calendar.
It provides a painful context for the budget wrangling taking place in Washington, D.C., right now. It raises enormous questions about what the international security system is going to look like in just a handful of years. And it casts a deepening cloud over both the U.S. dollar and the giant Treasury market, which have been propped up for decades by their privileged status as the liabilities of the world’s hegemonic power.
According to the IMF forecast, whomever is elected U.S. president next year — Obama? Mitt Romney? Donald Trump? — will be the last to preside over the world’s largest economy.
Most people aren’t prepared for this. They aren’t even aware it’s that close. Listen to experts of various stripes, and they will tell you Read more…
Massive Severe Outbreak Coming Next Week
It appears the onslaught of tornadoes and severe thunderstorms that have claimed dozens of lives and left communities in ruins from the Plains into the East over the past few weeks is going to continue right into next week.
Next up is another severe outbreak set to hit areas from Oklahoma to Ohio Friday afternoon and night.
After that, AccuWeather.com severe weather experts are already greatly concerned about the tornado potential with a series of storm systems set to track across the hard-hit Plains, Midwest and Southeast throughout next week.
“This could be more widespread than anything we’ve seen this season,” said AccuWeather.com Expert Senior Meteorologist Dan Kottlowski.
“We’re going to see multiple outbreaks of severe weather Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday next week from the Ohio Valley to the southern Plains and into the southeastern U.S.,” Kottlowski explained. “The orientation of upper-level winds with this setup look to favor a high risk of tornado development.”
“People should review tornado safety guidelines and take any [severe thunderstorm or tornado] watches and warnings very seriously,” Kottlowski stressed.
While severe thunderstorms with this outbreak could get under way as early as late Sunday, the main threat will evolve Monday Read more…
Feds to Supreme Court: Allow Warrantless GPS Monitoring
The Obama administration is urging the Supreme Court to allow the government, without a court warrant, to affix GPS devices on suspects’ vehicles to track their every move.
The Justice Department, saying “a person has no reasonable expectation of privacy in his movements (.pdf) from one place to another,” is demanding the justices undo a lower court decision that reversed the conviction and life sentence of a cocaine dealer whose vehicle was tracked via GPS for a month without a court warrant.
The petition, if accepted by the justices, arguably would make it the biggest Fourth Amendment case in a decade — one weighing the collision of Read more…
Pakistan urges end to US strikes
The row between the US and its Asian ally over the scale of the unauthorized CIA drone operations in Pakistan’s North Waziristan were exposed last week.
Pakistan has repeatedly criticized the attacks which it condemns for violating the country’s sovereignty.
Washington, on the other hand, defends the strikes as necessary to fight the militants it claims to have holed up.
But Pakistan’s Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said on Sunday that Washington should share better intelligence so Islamabad can take action against militants itself.
For several months, Pakistani diplomats and military officials have complained that they were being kept in the dark by the US administration’s non-UN-sanctioned military campaigns.
Politicians on both sides are disappointed with the results of investment of billions of dollars in the US military and civilian assistance since 2001 with Washington admitting in a recent report to Congress that the results of the spending fell short of expectations.
More than 1,180 people were killed by over 120 CIA drone strikes in 2010 alone, reports say.
The strikes have further fueled the anti-US sentiment already on the rise in the region.
Stocks Sink on U.S. Credit Outlook as Euro Falls on Debt Crises
U.S. stocks sank the most in a month, oil slid and gold rose to a record after Standard & Poor’s cut the American credit outlook to negative and concern about Europe’s debt crisis worsened. Greek two-year bond yields surged to 20 percent for the first time since at least 1998.
The S&P 500 tumbled 1.6 percent to 1,298.09 at 1:13 p.m. in New York and the Stoxx Europe 600 Index slid 1.7 percent. Ten- year Treasury yields lost three basis points to 3.38 percent as concern about Europe’s finances overshadowed S&P’s move. The euro lost 1.4 percent to $1.4227, while Portuguese debt- insurance costs rose to a record. The S&P GSCI index of 24 commodities slid 1.3 percent as oil and cocoa tumbled.
S&P assigned a one-in-three chance it will lower the U.S. rating in the next two years, saying the credit crisis and recession that began in 2008 worsened a deterioration in public finances. Budget differences among Democrats and Republicans remain wide and it may take until after the 2012 elections to get a proposal that addresses the concern, S&P said.
“This is another indication of the need for the U.S. to better control its fiscal destiny, both for its sake and that of the global economy,” said Mohamed El-Erian, chief executive officer at Newport Beach, California-based Pacific Investment Management Co., the world’s biggest manager of bond funds. “Absent credible medium-term fiscal reform, every segment of U.S. society would be faced with higher borrowing costs, a weaker dollar and a less bright outlook for employment, investment and growth.”
Broad Decline
Commodity, industrial and technology companies had the biggest Read more…
Historic Tornado Outbreak: 3 Days, 241 Tornadoes, 14 States
This image, courtesy of the National Weather Service Forecast Office in San Diego, Calif., shows tornado reports April 14-16, 2011 as of 12:00 p.m. EDT Sunday April 17, 2011..From Thursday, April 14, 2011 to Saturday, April, 16, 2011, devastating tornadoes rampaged across communities of the southern United States. Cities and towns from Oklahoma to North Carolina were assaulted by the deadly twisters.
The tornado outbreak led to a total of 241 tornado reports in 14 states over the three-day period. This will likely rank this tornado outbreak among the largest in Read more…
How Our Government is Tracking and Databasing Your Every Move
Big Brother is Watching
The war on terror and cybersecurity are excuses that have spurred huge investments into the surveillance industry, which has become a war on “liberty and privacy.”
The Obama administration has moved forward with a Bush regime program to screen state computer traffic on private-sector networks, including those connecting people to the Internet, The Washington Post revealed July 3.
That project, code-name “Einstein,” is related to the much-larger, Read more…
Gas prices surge toward $4, threaten economic recovery
Click Map to enlarge
Gas prices continued to gallop toward $4 a gallon early this week, both in the area and across the state, as prices in Minocqua and Rhinelander hit $3.99 on Tuesday, even as prices for crude oil eased, at least temporarily.
Across the nation, according to GasBuddy.com on Wednesday morning, the national average price for a gallon of regular gasoline stood at $3.79; in Wisconsin, the average was $3.87. Four states, including Illinois, have seen prices already surpass $4.
Crude oil prices moved downward Tuesday from $113 a barrel – the highest price since September 2008 – to $106, a Read more…
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