Sections on today's Signs Page:
SOTT Focus
Signs Economic Commentary for 6 October 2008
Donald Hunt
SOTT.net
2008-10-06 11:24:00
Summary: The big financial bailout plan finally passed in the U.S. Congress Friday over the strong objections of the public. Will the bailout prevent the coming depression? Probably not. Mortgage securities are only a part of the problem.
The bailout plan is more than just a giveaway to the rich as represented by the big banks (although it is that). It probably is a panicked attempt to forestall the real potential crisis: a collapse of the huge, unregulated hedge funds based on derivatives and Credit Default Swaps (CDS).
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Best of the Web
Incoming Asteroid - Will Hit Earth October 7
SpaceWeather.com
2008-10-06 21:13:00
A small, newly-discovered asteroid named 2008 TC3 is approaching Earth and chances are good that it will hit. Steve Chesley of JPL estimates that atmospheric entry will occur on Oct 7th at 0246 UTC over northern Sudan [ref]. Measuring only a few meters across, the space rock poses NO THREAT to people or structures on the ground, but it should create a spectacular fireball, releasing about a kiloton of TNT in energy as it disintegrates and explodes in the atmosphere. Odds are between 99.8 and 100 percent that the object will encounter Earth, according to calculations provided by Andrea Milani of the University of Pisa. [ephemeris] [3D orbit]
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Naomi Wolf - Give Me Liberty and The US Coup of October 1, 2008
Naomi Wolf
Give Me Liberty
2008-10-06 03:48:00
Naomi Wolf is experiencing the Cassandra Syndrome - which is a term applied in situations in which valid warnings or concerns are generally dismissed or disbelieved. Societal sleep is a mighty foe.
Societal transformation into a 'controlled society' or fascist dictatorship does not happen without precedent, nor does it happen 'by accident'. There are very clear steps that signal such an environment and Wolf has consistently documented them. The following video interview is a continuance of that...
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U.S. News
Flashback: Judge Tills Pleads Guilty, Admits Coordinating Prostitutes with Jester National Representatives
Sandy Frost
Newsvine
2008-09-11 20:02:00
Editor's Note: This is not about those faithful Shriners who get up at zero dawn thirty to put on their clown makeup and drive to the hospital to put a smile on the face of burned and crippled children. This is not about those hardworking Shriners who spend their Saturdays building porches or putting on a fish fry or marching proudly in parades. The focus of this investigation has been on non profit transparency, disclosure and accountability and those who abuse their positions of public trust for private gain.
Sandy Frost
Starbucks, WA
Thursday, September 11, 2008
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McCain Plans Federal Health Cuts
Laura Meckler
The Wall Street Journal
2008-10-06 20:18:00
Medicare, Medicaid Spending Would Be Reduced to Offset Proposed Tax Credit
John McCain would pay for his health plan with major reductions to Medicare and Medicaid, a top aide said, in a move that independent analysts estimate could result in cuts of $1.3 trillion over 10 years to the government programs.
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GA: Five Arrested on Rape Related Charges
NewsChannel9.com
2008-10-04 17:54:00
Chickamauga - Five people are arrested on charges relating to the rape of a teenage girl. Chickamauga Police arrested the suspects on Friday after being tipped off by suspicious neighbors.
Wendy Higgins along with her neighbors are watching out for a family they didn't hesitate to turn in to police.
Neighbors believed some of the family members were involved in the molesting and raping of a 14 year old girl.
"The trailerpark came together as a family and got them out, we got the police we told the police everything and stuck together and waited it out together," says Wendy Higgins.
However, they didn't have to wait long within 48 hours Chickamauga Police arrested 5 people, who are accused of participating in, or protecting those who allegedly committed some unspeakable crimes.
Police say 54 year old David Hardin is being accused of molesting the teenage girl and then inviting other people to rape her while he watched. Two of those people are 21 year old Kevin Hicks and 19-year-old Preston Dennel both charged with statutory rape.
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Bus with gamblers flips in California, 10 dead
Reuters
2008-10-06 17:43:00
Washington - A bus traveling to a casino in northern California ran off a rural road and overturned, killing at least 10 people, the San Francisco Chronicle and other media reported on Monday.
The newspaper's on-line edition said police confirmed 10 passengers had died and more than 30 others were injured when the charter bus left the road and rolled over into a ditch about 60 miles north of Sacramento on Sunday night.
Local television stations showed the crashed bus in a muddy drainage ditch where it landed back on its wheels.
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Madigan Asked To Open New Trials For Police Torture Victims
Jennifer O'Neill
WBBM
2008-09-25 17:15:00
There's a call for Ill. Atty. Gen. Lisa Madigan to open new trials for police torture victims under former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge.
A few dozen activists picketed in front of Loyola University's Beane Hall last night ahead of a speech by Madigan.
The Campaign to End the Death Penalty, which organized the protest, says Burge has been implicated in the torture of more than 100 black men between 1973 and 1991.
Some officers who worked under him are also accused of torturing men to get them to confess.
Students and family members of torture victims also took part in the picket.
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Father Convicted of Rape and Torture With Shock Collar
Associated Press
2008-09-24 17:11:00
Tennessee - A jury in Tazewell convicted a Claiborne County man of raping and torturing his teenage daughter with an animal shock collar.
The Knoxville News Sentinel reported the verdicts were returned Tuesday against the man, who is not being named to protect his daughter's identity.
The then- 17-year-old girl told a school resource officer at Cumberland Gap High School last year that her father used shock collars on her that he also used to train dogs.
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UK & Euro-Asian News
Russia says 'forces in Georgia' seeking to provoke new conflict
Agence France-Presse
2008-10-06 20:31:00
KARALETI, Georgia - Russia on Monday accused "forces in Georgia" of seeking to provoke a new conflict, but vowed to complete a withdrawal on schedule following the August war between the two countries.
Russian forces were dismantling checkpoints in buffer zones around Georgia's rebel regions as they prepared to pull back after the war over South Ossetia.
In a strongly worded statement, the Russian foreign ministry vowed to complete the withdrawal on schedule despite efforts by "forces in Georgia" to use "terrorist acts" to destabilize the situation and provoke a new conflict.
The deaths on Friday of seven Russian soldiers in an apparent car bomb in South Ossetia were cited as part of a Georgian bid to derail the withdrawal. Tbilisi has denied any involvement.
"The new aggravation of the situation in the South Caucasus provokes deep unease," the foreign ministry said, but added Russia "firmly intended" to withdraw forces from Georgian territory by Friday.
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UK: Police chief sent 'suicide' texts
BBC News
2008-10-06 17:05:00
A police chief sent text messages saying he was in "a dark place" and expressing a wish to kill himself just days before he died, an inquest heard.
Greater Manchester Police chief constable Michael Todd, 50, was found dead on Snowdon, Gwynedd, in March.
He had been confronted by his wife about an extra-marital affair.
A coroner recorded he died of exposure when his mind was affected by alcohol, a sleeping drug and "confusion" due to his personal situation.
The inquest in Caernarfon heard the officer's final text message read: "I'm sorry... forgive me in another life."
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UK: Teen 'endured marathon torture session'
National Nine News
2008-09-22 01:13:00
A British teenager has spoken out about a 13-hour torture session she endured at the hands of two friends who accused her of stealing a mobile phone.
Katie McNamara had her hair chopped off and was forced to lick her own blood off the floor after being punched, kicked, stabbed and locked in a cupboard, the UK's Daily Mail reports.
The 19-year-old was also burned with cigarettes and had a knife flung at her after being lured to the home of her friend Francesca Raby, 18, under the pretence of repairing their friendship.
McNamara has now spoken of the ordeal, telling the Daily Mail she believed she was going to die at the hands of her attackers.
"They were going to keep me another night if the neighbour had not turned up," she was quoted as saying.
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Power cuts feared in UK nuclear plants crisis
Geoffrey Lean and Jonathan Owen
The Independent
2008-10-05 22:37:00
Six out of 10 of the nation's atomic stations are operating below capacity, throwing their future into doubt.
In theory, at least, Britain now has 10 operating nuclear power stations, stretching from Torness on the Firth of Forth to Dungeness on the south Kent coast. Each has two reactors, and ministers boast that they supply about one-fifth of the power that keeps the lights on.
The reality, as an Independent on Sunday investigation shows today, is very different. The majority of the power stations are in dire trouble, and their failure is leading to the most acute concern in years that the country may run short of electricity this winter.
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UK: Police refuse to allow mother to lay flowers at death scene of her young sons
Richard Edwards
Telegraph (UK)
2008-10-05 19:02:00
The mother of two young children killed in a fire at their family home has been marched away by police after trying to lay flowers on her own doorstep.
Denise Goldsmith, 29, said she wanted to pay tribute to her sons Lewis, seven, and Taylor, five, who died when a blaze broke out at their house in the coastal town of Eastbourne, Sussex.
The mother was locked out of the property on Saturday afternoon while her children were trapped inside as the flames tore through the house.
She returned to the scene yesterday, and witnesses said that she became hysterical when police told her she could not pass a cordon while forensics teams worked at the property.
She pleaded: "Let me in, I need to leave these flowers for my boys. I need to get through, this is my home."
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Around the World
Sri Lanka: 27 dead after political party office bombed
Haroon Siddique and agencies
The Guardian
2008-10-06 09:10:00
A suspected Tamil Tiger suicide bomber killed 27 people in Sri Lanka today, including an opposition leader, the country's military said.
At least 69 more were wounded in the attack on the new office of the opposition United National party in Anuradhapura, 130 miles north-east of the capital, Colombo, according to the military spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara.
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Pope says world financial system 'built on sand'
Richard Owen
Times Online
2008-10-06 20:35:00
Pope Benedict XVI today said that the global credit crisis shows that the world's financial systems are "built on sand" and that only the works of God have "solid reality".
Opening a Synod of Bishops in the Vatican the Pope referred to a passage from St Matthew's Gospel on false prophets, saying ''He who builds only on visible and tangible things like success, career and money builds the house of his life on sand''.
He added: ''We are now seeing, in the collapse of major banks, that money vanishes, it is nothing. All these things that appear to be real are in fact secondary. Only God's words are a solid reality''.
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Nepal: Torture of woman included threat to put poisonous lizards in her clothes
Amnesty
2008-09-24 17:21:00
Amnesty International is making urgent representations to the Nepalese authorities about the case of a woman who was allegedly tortured in police custody, including by being threatened with having poisonous lizards put inside her clothes.
The woman, Sumitra Khawas, was being questioned on 10 September about the alleged murder of her husband when - she claims - a police inspector and two other officers tortured her for at least two hours to make her sign a confession to the murder.
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Rights body says torture prevalent in the Philippines
Manny Mogato
El Economista.es
2008-09-23 17:03:00
Manila - Hundreds of political activists and even petty criminals are being tortured in the Philippines, the head of the country's independent human rights body said, urging lawmakers to ratify a U.N. protocol to prevent it.
"Torture is prevalent," Leila de Lima told a news conference in Manila on Tuesday. "It's almost a daily occurrence in our ordinary precincts or police stations."
De Lima, named head of the rights body early this year, said her office has documented more than 300 torture cases since 2005, but there could be more cases not brought to her attention.
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Sri Lanka: Another complainant in a torture case shot dead
The Mindanao Examiner
2008-09-20 01:03:00
Prompt enquiries from a competent and independent special police unit needs to be conducted into to the assassination of Siyaguna Kosgodage Anton Sugath Nishantha Fernando, who was a complainant in a torture case before the Supreme Court and a bribery case before the High Court against several police officers attached to the Negombo Police Station.
Nishantha Fernando, who had made complaints of torture and bribery against a senior police officer and several other police officers, was shot dead today, 20th September 2008, at Dalupotha junction, Negombo. He was shot at around 10 a.m. and was rushed to the Negombo hospital where he has been pronounced dead. He was driving his van accompanied by his 11 year old son when two persons travelling on a motorbike came from behind and shot him. The assassin fell from the motorbike but mangaged to remount and then fled towards Chilaw. Fortunately, the son was unharmed.
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American terrorism in Pakistan: more children and Women killed under pretext of targeting Mujahideen
Mushtaq Yusufzai
TheUnjustMedia.com
2008-10-04 18:09:00
21 people, including women and a child, were martyred and several others injured in two different attacks by US pilotless spy plane and jet fighters on villages in North Waziristan Agency (NWA) on Friday.
Official and tribal sources said a US spy plane, also known as drone or Predator, fired two Hellfire missiles on Mohammad Khel village, about 20 kilometres west of Miramshah, headquarters of the NWA, in which 15 people were killed and several others injured. There were reports that those martyred in the missile attack included some Arabs, who were invited to a dinner by the pro-Taliban tribesmen in the village. According to the villagers and official sources, a US spy plane that had been flying over NWA since Friday morning blitzed two houses owned by the Dawar tribesmen, Daud Jan and Abdur Rahman. Tribesmen in Miramshah said they heard two heavy explosions caused by the missile strikes in the evening.
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Big Brother
Malaysian blogger Raja Petra Kamarudin goes on trial over sedition charges
Lee Glendinning and agencies
The Guardian
2008-10-06 10:43:00
The trial of one of the most prominent anti-government bloggers in Malaysia, who faces charges of sedition, began today.
Raja Petra Kamarudin, who runs the popular Malaysia Today news website, is accused of implying that a government minister had some involvement in the murder of a Mongolian woman.
The British-born 58-year-old faces up to three years in prison if found guilty.
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Germany to allow domestic military deployment
David Rising
Associated Press
2008-10-06 21:23:00
BERLIN - Germany's governing coalition partners want to change the constitution to allow for military deployment within the country if needed to combat terrorism, officials said Monday.
The proposal would allow use of the military only if police are overwhelmed and cannot properly respond to a situation themselves.
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Guidelines Expand FBI's Surveillance Powers
Carrie Johnson
Washington Post
2008-10-04 19:40:00
Techniques May Be Used in U.S. Without Any Fact Linking Subject to Terrorism
Justice Department officials released new guidelines yesterday that empower FBI agents to use intrusive techniques to gather intelligence within the United States, alarming civil liberties groups and Democratic lawmakers who worry that they invite privacy violations and other abuses.
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Flashback: Did Secret House Meeting Discuss Imminent Collapse of US Economy, Civil War?
Australia
2008-03-25 16:31:00
The House has held a closed session for the first time in 25 years and apparently discussed a hotly contested surveillance bill.
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Elite army combat unit to deploy within U.S.
Larry Shaughnessy
CNN
2008-10-06 14:57:00
The United States military's Northern Command, formed in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks, is dedicating a combat infantry team to deal with catastrophes in the U.S., including terrorist attacks and natural disasters.
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Axis of Evil
Palin's Tax Return Missing Travel Reimbursements
Peter Overby
NPR.org
2008-10-04 18:45:00
Vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin didn't report thousands of dollars in state travel reimbursements that she collected while living at home last year, according to her tax return for 2007.
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Palin's Ayers Attack "Racially Tinged"
Douglass K. Daniel
Associated Press
2008-10-05 15:38:00
By claiming that Democrat Barack Obama is "palling around with terrorists" and doesn't see the U.S. like other Americans, vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin targeted key goals for a faltering campaign.
And though she may have scored a political hit each time, her attack was unsubstantiated and carried a racially tinged subtext that John McCain himself may come to regret.
First, Palin's attack shows that her energetic debate with rival Joe Biden may be just the beginning, not the end, of a sharpened role in the battle to win the presidency.
"Our opponent ... is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough, that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country," Palin told a group of donors in Englewood, Colo. A deliberate attempt to smear Obama, McCain's ticket-mate echoed the line at three separate events Saturday.
"This is not a man who sees America like you and I see America," she said. "We see America as a force of good in this world. We see an America of exceptionalism."
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Israel will have to reinstate pre-1967 border for peace deal, Olmert admits
Donald Macintyre
The Independent
2008-09-30 23:04:00
The outgoing Prime Minister of Israel, Ehud Olmert, has publicly acknowledged for the first time that "almost all" of the territory seized during the Six-Day War in 1967 will have to be given back in return for peace with the Palestinians.
In an interview with Israel's biggest-selling newspaper, Yedhiot Ahronot, in which he underlined the urgent need for an agreement to be reached while the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas remains in office, Mr Olmert warned that the alternative was "the very great danger that there will be a bloody clash, which will thwart any possibility of continuing negotiations".
Declaring that "what I am saying ... has not been said by any Israeli leader before me", Mr Olmert also went further than any member of his government in laying down some of the minimum requirements he believes he, or his successor will need to fulfil if there is to be a deal with Mr Abbas.
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Latest Palin Gaffe: Can't Name Supreme Court Case Other Than Roe V. Wade
The Huffington Post
2008-09-29 22:13:00
Today, the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz reported on potentially embarrassing clips of Sarah Palin being interviewed by Katie Couric that haven't yet been aired. The Politico has more information on one in particular:
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A 'great communicator' for the 'grand puppeteer': Ex-IDF, Mossad officials praise Obama
Jerusalem Post
2008-10-05 21:17:00
A Jewish group in the United States has recruited a number of retired IDF and high-ranking Mossad officials to appear in a video supporting Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, saying he would be a better partner for Israel in the White House.
In the video, released by the pro-Obama Jewish Council for Education & Research, Brig.-Gen (Ret.) Shlomo Brom, former IDF commander of strategic planning, said that the Bush administration caused major damage to Israel's interests. He said Obama would be a better president for Israel than his rival John McCain, whose policies, Brom said, would likely be too close to those of Bush that were "not so helpful for Israel."
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NYT: Is Palin prepping to be the prez?
James Oliphant
swamppolitics.com
2008-10-05 18:07:00
It's Sunday, so it's a good day to chew on esoteric stuff. It goes down easier.
Here's a provocative column from the New York Times' Frank Rich, who asks the question: Why is Sarah Palin acting like someone who believes she is going to be president very soon?
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Middle East Madness
Two US helicopters crash in Baghdad
NDTV Arabia
2008-10-05 19:56:00
An Iraqi soldier was killed and four people, including two US soldiers, were wounded when two American helicopters crashed in northern Baghdad, a media report said on Sunday.
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Blackwater Machine Gun Found in Raid on Iraqi Insurgents
Brian Ross
ABC News
2008-10-06 14:45:00
An M4 machine gun sent to Iraq by the Blackwater private security firm somehow disappeared from the company's storage facility in Baghdad and was later discovered during a US military operation, apparently against suspected insurgents, people familiar with the situation have told ABC News.
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Eleven members of same family killed by US fire in Iraq
The Earth Times
2008-10-05 23:48:00
Eleven people from one family were killed by US fire in the Iraqi city of Mosul, an official security source said on Sunday. "US troops killed 11 people from one family while conducting a dawn raid on a house in the 17 Tammuz neighborhood, western Mosul," the source told Voices of Iraq (VOI) news agency.
"Iraqi army forces delivered the bodies, which had been placed in nylon bags by the US forces, to the morgue in Mosul city," the source explained.
A morgue official told VOI that the dead included three women, three children and five men. A three-year-old child and three-month-old baby reportedly survived the operation.
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Grand Theft Economics
Lehman Cash Crunch Caused by Lender JPMorgan, Creditors Say
Linda Sandler and Jeff St.Onge
Bloomberg
2008-10-04 21:59:00
Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.'s main lender and clearing agent, JPMorgan Chase & Co., caused the liquidity crisis that led to Lehman's collapse, creditors said.
JPMorgan had more than $17 billion of Lehman's cash and securities three days before the investment bank filed the biggest bankruptcy in history on Sept. 15, the creditors committee said in a filing Oct. 2 in bankruptcy court in Manhattan. Denying Lehman access to the assets on Sept. 12, the bank "froze'' Lehman's account, the creditors claimed.
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Why Paulson's Plan is a Fraud
Paul Craig Roberts
Counter Punch
2008-10-06 20:28:00
Is the Paulson bailout itself as big a fraud as the leveraged subprime mortgages?
Yesterday I discussed the bailout as proposed and noted that the proposal cannot succeed if it impairs the US Treasury's credit standing and/or the combination of mark-to-market and short-selling permits short-sellers to prosper by driving more financial institutions into bankruptcy.
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The Biggest Fraud in History: Why the Bailout Stinks
Mike Whitney
Counter Punch
2008-10-02 20:16:00
For nearly a year, we have been asking ourselves why the investors and foreign banks that bought up hundreds of billions of dollars of worthless mortgage-backed securities (MBS) from US investment banks have not taken legal action against these same banks or initiated a boycott of US financial products to prevent more people from getting ripped off?
Now we know the answer. It's because, behind the scenes, Henry Paulson and Co. were working out a deal to dump the whole trillion dollar mess on the US taxpayer. That's what this whole $700 billion boondoggle is all about; wiping out the massive debts that were generated in the biggest incident of fraud in history.
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Markets routed in global sell-off
Chris Giles, Michael Mackenzie, John Aglionby and Alan Beattie
Financial Times
2008-10-06 19:21:00
Stocks tumbled around the world on Monday as a wave of selling spread from Asia through Europe and the US as banks continued to reel from funding shortages and governments scrambled to stop a behind-the-scenes run on the world's banking system.
In New York, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell below the 10,000 mark for the first time since October 2004 while the FTSE 100 in London suffered its biggest one-day points loss ever.
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Wall Street tumbles amid global sell-off
Joe Bel Bruno
Associated Press
2008-10-06 19:50:00
New York - Wall Street suffered through another traumatic session Monday, with the Dow Jones industrials plunging as much as 800 points and setting a new record for a one-day point drop as investors despaired that the credit crisis would take a heavy toll around the world. The Dow also fell below 10,000 for the first time since 2004, and all the major indexes fell more than 7 percent.
The catalyst for the selling was the growing realization that the Bush administration's $700 billion rescue plan and steps taken by other governments won't work quickly to unfreeze the credit markets. Global banks, hobbled by wrong-way bets on mortgage securities, remain starved for cash as credit has dried up.
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Iceland adopts sweeping powers in banking overhaul
Reuters
2008-10-06 17:31:00
Reykjavik - Iceland has agreed legislation that gives the government wide-ranging authority over its banks, including the option to merge them or force them to declare bankruptcy, the country's prime minister said on Monday.
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The Living Planet
A quarter of the world's mammals risk extinction
The Independent (UK)
2008-10-06 21:58:00
A quarter of the world's mammals are at risk of extinction, the latest global analysis of threatened species revealed today.
At least 1,141 of the 5,487 mammals on Earth are under threat, largely as a result of hunting and the destruction of their habitat by humans, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
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Haiti storms left 793 people dead
BBC News
2008-10-03 19:59:00
Nearly 800 people in Haiti were killed in four major storms which devastated the country in August and September, officials have said.
More than 300 people were missing, the civil protection agency said.
Hurricanes Gustav and Ike and tropical storms Hanna and Fay killed 466 people in Gonaives, the hardest hit city.
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6.6 quake hits Tibet; kills at least 30
Kirby Chien
Reuters
2008-10-06 16:18:00
Beijing - A magnitude 6.6 earthquake killed at least 30 people in Tibet on Monday with a number of people buried in debris, Xinhua news agency said.
The victims were found near the epicenter in Gedar township of Damxung County, around 80 km (50 miles) west of the regional capital Lhasa, Xinhua reported.
"More people were still buried in debris and many houses collapsed," Xinhua quoted a local government official as saying.
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6.8 Magnitude Earthquake Hits Xinjiang
Bernama
2008-10-06 16:16:00
Urumqi -- A 6.8 magnitude earthquake shook northwest China on Sunday night, said the National Seismological Network.
So far, no casualties have been reported, XINHUA news agency reported Monday.
The epicenter was fixed at 39.6 degrees north latitude and 73.9 degrees east longitude, in a mountainous area about 100 km away from the county seat of Wuqia, Kizilsu Kirgiz Autonomous Prefecture. The source of the earthquake was 33 kilometers underground.
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Type Of Plankton -- Food Source For Many Fish -- Has Ability To Survive Climate Change
Science Daily
2008-10-06 15:36:00
Queen's researchers have found that the main source of food for many fish - including cod - in the North Atlantic appears to adapt in order to survive climate change.
Billions of Calanus finmarchicus, a plankton species, which are just a few millimetres in size, live in the waters of the North Atlantic where the research was carried out.
It showed they responded to global warming after the last Ice Age, around 18,000 years ago, by moving north and maintaining large population sizes and also suggests that these animals might be able to track the current change in habitat.
The effect of global climate change on the planet's ecosystems is one of the key issues scientists are currently focussing on and the research has been published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, a publication of the national academy of science of the UK and the Commonwealth, today.
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US: Central Florida Neighborhoods Invaded By Frogs
WESH.com
2008-09-12 07:20:00
Standing water everywhere and hot weather create the perfect situation to incubate eggs. Central Florida is being invaded, not by mosquitoes, but by frogs. The tiny frogs are too daunting -- until you multiple them by about 1 million.
"Last night there was 11 big ones on my house, jumping and hitting me in the head and stuff like that," Cindy Trumpolt said.
"I told them we should get on our knees and pray, because I think it is a plague. I do," one resident said.
Many residents are worried the frogs will get into their home or car.
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Health & Wellness
As parents question vaccinations, the number of reactionaries increases
Julie Deardorff
Chicago Tribune
2008-10-05 12:49:00
Measles cases in the United States are rising, and parents who reject vaccination are shouldering much of the blame.
Nearly half of the 131 cases so far this year involved unvaccinated children. Fourteen cases were reported in California through the first seven months of this year.
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Paul Krugman: McCain's health plan amounts to "health care destruction"
Paul Krugman
The New York Times
2008-10-06 06:01:00
Sarah Palin ended her debate performance last Thursday with a slightly garbled quote from Ronald Reagan about how, if we aren't vigilant, we'll end up "telling our children and our children's children" about the days when America was free. It was a revealing choice.
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Science & Technology
Space rock found on collision course with Earth
Maggie McKee
New Scientist
2008-10-06 21:56:00
For the first time, astronomers have found an object on a certain
collision course with Earth. Fortunately, it is so small it is not
expected to cause any damage, burning up in the atmosphere somewhere
above northern Sudan in the wee hours of Tuesday morning. It may,
however, produce a brilliant 'shooting star'.
The space rock, dubbed 2008 TC3, was first spotted on Monday in a
survey by the Mt Lemmon Observatory near Tucson, Arizona.
Its brightness suggests it is no more than about 5 metres across - so
small it will likely be destroyed in the atmosphere, says Andrea
Milani Comparetti of the University of Pisa in Italy.
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'Intelligent' computers put to the test
David Smith
The Guardian
2008-10-05 21:10:00
Can machines think? That was the question posed by the great mathematician Alan Turing. Half a century later six computers are about to converse with human interrogators in an experiment that will attempt to prove that the answer is yes.
In the Turing test a machine seeks to fool judges into believing that it could be human. The test is performed by conducting a text-based conversation on any subject. If the computer's responses are indistinguishable from those of a human, it has passed the Turing test and can be said to be "thinking".
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Earliest Animal Footprints Ever Found Show Animals Walking 30 Million Years Earlier Than Previously Thought
Science Daily
2008-10-06 15:13:00
The fossilized trail of an aquatic creature suggests that animals walked using legs at least 30 million years earlier than had been thought. The tracks -- two parallel rows of small dots, each about 2 millimeters in diameter -- date back some 570 million years, to the Ediacaran period.
The Ediacaran preceded the Cambrian period, the time when most major groups of animals first evolved.
Scientists once thought that it was primarily microbes and simple multicellular animals that existed prior to the Cambrian, but that notion is changing, explained Loren Babcock, professor of earth sciences at Ohio State University.
"We keep talking about the possibility of more complex animals in the Ediacaran -- soft corals, some arthropods, and flatworms -- but the evidence has not been totally convincing," he said. "But if you find evidence, like we did, of an animal with legs -- an animal walking around -- then that makes the possibility much more likely."
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Saturn's Radio Broadcasters Mapped In 3D For First Time
Science Daily
2008-10-06 14:46:00
Observations from NASA's Cassini spacecraft have been used to build, for the first time, a 3D picture of the sources of intense radio emissions in Saturn's magnetic field, known as the Saturn Kilometric Radiation (SKR).
The SKR radio emissions are generated by high-energy electrons spiralling around magnetic field lines threaded through Saturn's auroras. Previous Cassini observations have shown that the SKR is closely correlated with the intensity of Saturn's UV aurora and the pressure of the solar wind.
The measurements were made using Cassini's Radio and Plasma Wave Science (RPWS) experiment. The results will be presented by Dr Baptist Cecconi, of LESIA, Observatoire de Paris, at the European Planetary Science Congress on the 23rd of September.
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Sun Is Not A Perfect Sphere, NASA Spacecraft Finds
Science Daily
2008-10-06 14:41:00
Scientists using NASA's RHESSI spacecraft have measured the roundness of the sun with unprecedented precision. They find that it is not a perfect sphere. During years of high solar activity the sun develops a thin "cantaloupe skin" that significantly increases its apparent oblateness: the sun's equatorial radius becomes slightly larger than its polar radius.
Their results appear the Oct. 2nd edition of Science Express.
"The sun is the biggest and therefore smoothest object in the solar system, perfect at the 0.001% level because of its extremely strong gravity," says study co-author Hugh Hudson of UC Berkeley. "Measuring its exact shape is no easy task."
The team accomplished the task by analyzing data from the Reuven Ramaty High-Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager, RHESSI for short, an x-ray/gamma-ray space telescope launched in 2002 on a mission to study solar flares. Although RHESSI was never intended to measure the roundness of the sun, it has turned out ideal for the purpose. RHESSI observes the solar disk through a narrow slit and spins at 15 rpm. The spacecraft's rapid rotation and high data sampling rate (necessary to catch fast solar flares) make it possible for investigators to trace the shape of the sun with systematic errors much less than any previous study. Their technique is particularly sensitive to small differences in polar vs. equatorial radius or "oblateness."
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Sun Warms and Cools the Earth
Dr Zbigniew Jaworowski
Center for Political Research
2008-09-20 12:53:00
In an op-ed in a Polish weekly I commented recently on a remarkable decrease of global temperature in 2008, and over the past decade. Not surprisingly the op-ed evoked a strong reaction from Polish co-workers of IPCC, denying the existence of cooling. Surprising, however, was that the criticism dwelled upon a "global climatic conspiracy", and "colossal international plot". I did not use these words nor even hinted at such an idea. The idea was probably apparent from the data and facts I presented, showing weaknesses of the man-made global warming hypothesis. Without irrational political or ideological factors, it is really difficult to understand why so many people believe in human causation of the Modern Warm Period, which was never plausibly proved by scientific evidence. Some of these factors I will discuss here.
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Our Haunted Planet
No new articles.
Don't Panic! Lighten Up!
UK: Horse is barred from pub
The Telelgraph
2008-10-05 20:42:00
A horse who has been a regular at a pub for several years has been barred after the landlady bought new carpets.
Peggy, a 12-year-old mare, used to enjoy a pint of John Smith's bitter and a packet of pickled onion crisps alongside owner Peter Dolan inside O'Malleys in Jarrow, South Tyneside.
But when landlady Jackie Gray had the pub refitted and renamed as the Alexandra Hotel, she had to bar Peggy.
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