Friday, July 1, 2011

Breaking News Fri. July 1, 2011

Good Morning and Happy Friday everyone! Looks like it's going to be a good weekend here. We're getting fall plantings ready. Going to be planting cabbages and things like that tomorrow into pots ready for setting out for some autumn goodness!
I thought this next story was kind of interesting.
GodLikeProductions: Godlike Productions Is For Sale To The Highest Bidder - 10 Day Ebay Auction
Looks like GLP is up for sale on Ebay. Damn! Hopefully the forums linked at the bottom of this post will be able to fill some of the gap. :D
Thanks go out this morning to the tireless RJ and lovely Ozarker at Global Glass Onion and
Conflicted Doomer.
Be sure and check out RJ's Friday wrap-up this afternoon. It's always full of good information, and, I think our Ozarker is working on an article for this weekend too!


Looks like serial rapist Strauss-Kahn is going to get away with his crime. Imagine that!
YahooNews: Strauss-Kahn sex charges on brink of collapse: sources
The sexual assault case against former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn was close to collapse on Friday, sources close to the case said, in a dramatic turnabout that could upend French politics again.

Japan
BBC: Japan Tankan survey shows business sentiment declined
Japan's big manufacturers have turned pessimistic about business conditions after the earthquake and tsunami, according to the Tankan survey.
Guardian: Revealed: British government's plan to play down Fukushima
GlobeandMail: Japan's businesses poised to recover from post-quake slump
ZeroHedge: So Much For That Japanese Recovery: Large Manufacturer Confidence Plummets


Global Conflict
ABCNews: California Slashes Services: Why Aren't Citizens Up in Arms?
TomDispatch: The Militarized Surrealism of Barack Obama 
WSJ: Hong Kongers March for Elections, Cheaper Housing 
BlackListedNews: U.S. War Number Six: Somalia 
Wired: U.N. Report Shreds Military’s Claim of Afghanistan Progress
ActivistPost: Tear-Gassing Children: The Shame of Israel (Video)
Telegraph: Israel 'sabotages two ships bound for Gaza', activists claimIsraeli saboteurs have carried out underwater "terrorist" attacks on two ships bound for Gaza in an attempt to break the blockade, activists have claimed.
CNN: Gadhafi's daughter: 'My father is a symbol, a guide'
SeattlePI: Gunmen ambush, kill 2 Iraqi police officers

Financial News
NPR: Minnesota Faces Government Shutdown Over Budget Impasse
Guardian: Eurozone delays decision on new Greek bailoutEurozone finance ministers, scrap planned meeting in Brussels on Sunday for phone talks on Saturday evening
BusinessInsider: June ISM Smashes Expectations At 55.3
BusinessInsider: Morgan Stanley Explains Why You Shouldn't Be Jumping For Joy After One Week Of Good News 
MineWeb: Gold and silver in high risk territory
This morning saw gold fall in both the dollar and the euro - a trend which continued into New yorl where further early falls were seen putting gold and silver on a risky course for now.
WSJ: Consumer Income Only Kept Afloat by Government Payments 
Bloomberg: JPMorgan Scores Victory for Repeat Offenders: 
Bloomberg: Geithner Exit Would Force Obama to Rebuild Team 
PoliticalCalculations: 2011: The Number of Pages in the U.S. Tax Code
For a Fourth of July challenge, how many pages does it take for the CCH Standard Tax Reporter to fully document the U.S. tax code as it stands in 2011?
If you answered 72,536, you're right. Note that we didn't say "you win"!... 
CuriousCapitalist: Geithner to Exit?
RawStory: Gov. Jerry Brown signs California budget cuts
YahooFinance: Big Banks Bow Out of Reverse Mortgage Market 
BusinessInsider: The One Big Economic Report Still Coming Today
YahooFinance: World stocks up as Greece clears bailout hurdle
World markets rise after Greece approves austerity measures to avoid debt default  
CNNMoney: Market outlook: More turbulence ahead 
Guardian: Manufacturing slowdown: what the economists say
Manufacturing figures in the UK and around the world came in weaker than expected on Friday. Find out what analysts and business organisations made of the data
MaxKeiser: Schiff: I think there will be panic out of the dollar
BusinessInsider: Europe's Southern Tier Is Still A Festering Problem 
Guardian: UK manufacturing growing at slowest pace in two years
Concerns deepen over UK economic recovery as manufacturing PMI figures show bigger drop than expected
BusinessInsider: More UK Horror, As Manufacturing Index Hits 21-Month Low On New Order Plunge
GreedGreenGrains: Volatile Commodity Prices 
FDL: Social Security Benefits Cuts Are in the Mix in Debt Ceiling Negotiations  
ZeroHedge: Stagflation Goes Global Again - UK And China Join Global Manufacturing Slowdown 
BusinessInsider: Saudi Women Ask GM To Stop Selling Cars In Their Country Until The Driving Ban Is Lifted
WashingtonPost: The coming explosion in heath inequality, cont'd 
ThinkProgress: While Fighting To Block SEC Investigation Of Goldman Sachs, Rep. Darrell Issa Bought Goldman Sachs Bonds 
Reuters: Consumer sentiment worsens in June as outlook sours 
Stateline: Judges uphold cost-of-living cuts to pensions  
Bloomberg: Goldman Sachs’s Central Bank Connections Reach Ever Deeper
NPR: Minn. Government Shuts Down As Budget Talks Fail
StarTribune: Judge orders most services to go darkTalks continued at Capitol, but Kathleen Gearin's ruling hewed to a narrow definition of what the state can keep open.
NYT: Italy Approves an Austerity Package
GlobeandMail: A chance to restore fiscal order, or to stiff Americans?  
Boston.com: GM spends $3.58M on federal lobbying in 1Q 
McClatchy: Here's a debt reduction plan: Collect billions from tax cheats 
CNBC: Fed's Massive Stimulus Had Little Impact: Greenspan 
CNNMoney: Debt ceiling debate is rolling back the clock to 2008
Even if there is no Treasury bond default, the debate is already hurting corporate America, threatening to erase the progress of the past two years.
JournalofCommerce: Asia Air Freight Falls 9.8 Percent

Peak oil and Energy News
Grist: Biomass is the new coal
TheOilDrum: Opec Meeting Reveals Further Degeneration of the MENA Region
BizJournals: Drought may hamper Eagle Ford Shale production 
EnergyBulletin: Natural gas boom: just a bunch of hot air?  
ABCNews: Oil Drops 11 Percent in 2nd Quarter 
CNBC: Oil-Rich Middle-East Running Low on Gas: Analyst  
ProPublica: Oil and Gas Drilling Surges Despite Increased Oversight 
EarlyWarning: Update on North Sea Oil Production
NYT: China Opens Oil Field in IraqBEIJING — China’s largest oil company has begun operations at Al-Ahdab oil field in Iraq, making the field the first major new area to start production in Iraq in 20 years, according to an official news report on Tuesday.
Crash_Watcher: The relationship between hunger and petroleum consumption-Part 2
USAToday: Future of federal solar programs in doubt

Environmental News
WiredScience: Megafires May Change the Southwest Forever 
The plants and animals of the southwestern United States are adapted to fire, but not to the sort of super-sized, super-intense fires now raging in Arizona.
The product of drought and human mismanagement, these so-called megafires may change the southwest’s ecology. Mountainside Ponderosa forests could be erased, possibly forever. Fire may become the latest way in which people are profoundly altering modern landscapes.
MSNBC: Los Alamos fire set to become state's biggest ever
Recent wildfires could be 'at least as severe and maybe more so than anything we've seen since the last Ice Age,' geologist says 
BaltimoreSun: Fire menacing Los Alamos lab nears record size

NatGeo: "Exceptional" Giant Squid Found Dying off Florida 
Reuters: House Fast-Tracks Bill to Limit EPA Power Over Mountaintop Coal Removal
A vote is expected next week on bipartisan legislation that would restrict the power of EPA rules covering mountaintop mining, waterways and wetlands

WASHINGTON—Conservationists knew that new GOP anti-regulatory muscle in the 112th Congress would be intent on debilitating landmark legislation such as the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act.
But they're still taken aback by an attempt to incapacitate the latter in one fell swoop.
Next week, the full House is expected to vote on a fast-moving bipartisan bill that would elbow the federal government aside and elevate the power of state-level rules covering mountaintop-removal mining, waterways and wetlands. Even if it passes, however, the bill isn't expected to gain traction in the Senate.
ThinkProgress: As Oklahoma Swelters Under Record Heat and Drought, Inhofe Bails on Heartland Denier Conference: ‘I am Under the Weather’


Independent: Extreme weather link 'can no longer be ignored'
Scientists to end 20-year reluctance with study into global warming and exceptional weather events

ZeroHedge: Fire Closes in on Plutonium at Los Alamos National Laboratory 
Platts: Has the IEA's move to release oil made OPEC redundant? 
ScientificAmerican: Extreme Weather and Climate Change:
The evidence is in: global warming has caused severe floods, droughts and storms. We present a three-part series by John Carey, who was funded by the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, and other selections from the editors.
NYT: Cuomo Will Seek to Lift Ban on Hydraulic Fracturing 
BBC: Tanzania 'will mine uranium on Selous Game Reserve'Tanzania will go ahead with plans to mine uranium in the UN World Heritage site Selous Game Reserve, the natural resources minister has told the BBC.
DesdemonaDespair: Climate change increases the risk of ozone damage to plants, Swedish research finds
Wired: Millions of Fishes: The Ultimate Marine Library
NationalPost: Franken pipelineAccording to Jeremy Symons, senior vice-president of the National Wildlife Federation, referring to the proposed $7-billion Keystone XL pipeline, "Toxic and corrosive tar-sands sludge is not like regular oil. We need to update our safety regulations to deal with it. That process hasn't happened. This is the next Deepwater Horizon disaster in the making."
DesdemonaDespair: Elephant numbers down 50 percent – Half of remaining populations no longer viable
ExtinctionProtocol: Entire ecosystem at risk from south Georgia drought- hunderds of fish found dead 
NewScientist: 5000 Christchurch quake homes will not be rebuilt
The magnitude 7.0 and 6.3 quakes that shook the city in September 2010 and February this year caused extensive structural damage. Crucially, the quakes weakened the soil beneath large areas of the city through a process called liquefaction, whereby pressure from shaking ground transforms wet but solid sand into unstable slurry. The government has published a map outlining areas where the damage is too severe to rebuild in the near-term.
GristList: Critical List: New York could approve fracking; animals get stoned 
PsyOrg: Recycling: A new source of indispensible 'rare earth' materials mined mainly in China

America in Decline
Great new article from Guy McPherson!
GuyMcPherson: Bricks in the wall
The U.S. Department of Defense consumes 360,000 barrels of oil each day. Yet corporate Amerika wants you to conserve, no doubt to save the last drops for the military (to be used to secure more oil). We’re being fleeced, folks, and the fleecing continues unabated at all levels. Here’s a minor example of the fox guarding the financial chicken coop, but it’s hardly extraordinary.
Good: What's the Most Literate City in America?
WSJ: The Day the Law Left TownTexas City Sends Police Packing to Cut Costs; Sheriff Plays Catch as Catch Can
WSJ: U.S. Food Stamp Use on the RiseGrowth in the food stamp program continued in the U.S. — with 27 states providing benefits to at least 1 in 7 people.
Grist: What we could have bought with the $4 trillion we spent on Iraq and Afghanistan 
Pay for America's entire high-speed rail system eight times over -- and that's according to a deliberately high, rail-hostile estimate from the CATO institute.
Telegraph: New San Francisco bridge built in China to be shipped to US
First, China made cut-price clothes and knick-knacks. Then it learned how to make mobile phones and iPads. Now it is making a 2,050ft-long bridge spanning the San Francisco bay. Shanghai to San Francisco before being assembled on site.
ZeroHedge: Guest Post: How Much Would It Cost To Buy Congress Back From Special Interests? 
NPR: What Does A 'Post-American World' Look Like? 
Politico: Poll: 4 in 10 see 'permanent decline'


Food and Water
BeforeItsNews: No Wonder Iowa Wants to Make Farm Photos Illegal
(video is disturbing)


Bloomberg: Corn Extends Worst Monthly Loss Since 2008, Wheat Drops as Food Costs Ease
MontgomeryAdvertiser: Alabama farmer: Drought 'a disaster'
Sammy Williams is watching his income wither and die.
The Henry County man farms 1,500 acres of cotton, peanuts and corn with his brother, brother-in-law and two full-time employees. But there will not be much to farm this year. The drought has seen to that.
FoodRenegade: Who Will Defend Our Farmers?
BBC: Kenyans protest over GM maize imports
Hundreds of people have marched in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, against government plans to import genetically modified (GM) maize. 


Science and Technology
YahooNews: Mathematicians Want to Say Goodbye to Pi
"I know it will be called blasphemy by some, but I believe that pi is wrong."
That's the opening line of a watershed essay written in 2001 by mathematician Bob Palais of the University of Utah. In "Pi is Wrong!" Palais argued that, for thousands of years, humans have been focusing their attention and adulation on the wrong mathematical constant.
NewScientist: Missile exhaust blows giant bubble in the sky



NewScientist: Belly button biomes begin to blossom
The human navel should be designated as a bacterial nature reserve, it seems. The first round of DNA results from the Belly Button Biodiversity project are in, and the 95 samples that have so far been analysed have turned up a whopping total of more than 1400 bacterial strains. In 662 cases, the microbes could not even be classified to family, "which strongly suggests that they are new to science", says team leader Jiri Hulcr of North Carolina State University in Raleigh. 
NewScientist: Beetles beat us to the screw and nut
Good: The Tiger Stone: A Contraption that "Prints" Roads
Inquirer: Tiny spy drones poised to alter warWright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio—About 3 kilometers from the cow pasture where the Wright Brothers learned to fly the first airplanes, military researchers are at work on another revolution in the air—shrinking unmanned drones, the kind that fire missiles into Pakistan and spy on insurgents in Afghanistan, to the size of insects and birds.
The base’s indoor flight lab is called the “microaviary,” and for good reason. The drones in development here are designed to replicate the flight mechanics of moths, hawks and other inhabitants of the natural world.
“We’re looking at how you hide in plain sight,” said Greg Parker, an aerospace engineer, as he held up a prototype of a mechanical hawk that in the future might carry out espionage or kill.


Medical and Health
M&C: Protests after 17 babies die at Kolkata hospitalNew Delhi
The deaths of 17 newborn babies at a state hospital in India sparked protests, with angry relatives smashing furniture and allegedly attacking doctors on Thursday, officials said.
CNNMoney: Wal-Mart takes on Medicaid
RawStory: Population grows at fastest rate in 50 years: data
The population grew at the fastest pace for nearly half a century last year, adding almost half a million people due in large part to a high birth rate, official data showed on Thursday.
(so, what does this next story mean???)
NewScientist: Recession puts babies on hold
FEAR of getting fired has forced many couples in Europe and the US to abandon plans to have babies.
NYT: Local Laws Fighting Fat Under Siege
NYT: Egyptian Seeds Are Linked to E. Coli in Germany and France
European investigators fitting together the puzzle pieces of devastating E. coli outbreaks in Germany and France cautiously identified a likely source on Wednesday: contaminated fenugreek seeds from Egypt.
TheEconomist: Healthcare Reform One step closer to the Supremes  


Doomsteading, Gardening, Urban Farming
MotherEarthNews: Designing & Planting Your Own Forest Garden: Selecting Trees for the Top Canopy
FoodRenegade: Tomato Basil Soup Recipe 
DoomerinCanada: Fresh Food Rant 
TreeHugger: Three Easy, Low-Tech Ways to Keep Container Gardens Watered 
ContainerGardening: Dulcy Mahar: Quick tricks with containers help a busy gardener

Other News
DeclineoftheEmpire: Don't Fall AsleepThe biggest story going is that the New Normal is here. Since few seem to have noticed, and certainly no one has said anything about it, I thought I would.
NatGeo: 9 Fourth of July Myths Debunked 
NPR: As Tuscaloosa Rebuilds, Exodus Of Immigrants Makes Job Harder
Telegraph: Giant statue of Jesus Christ opened in Peru
Peruvian President Alan Garcia inaugurates one of the world's tallest statues of Jesus Christ in Lima.
BBC: Body 'unseen in Massachusetts swimming pool for days'
Authorities in the US state of Massachusetts are trying to find out how a body lay unnoticed in a swimming pool for more than two days as the public continued to use the facility.
TheAtlantic: 90 Years of the Chinese Communist Party
The largest political party in the world celebrates its anniversary. But can its dominance last until its 100th?
TechReview: How Divorce Lawyers Use Social Networks
They're finding useful information for legal cases on Facebook and Twitter.
RawStory: Nearly 1.3 million in Ohio sign recall of union-busting bill
Time: Hugo Chávez Reveals His Battle With Cancer: Will It Affect His Re-election Battle?


The Forums
TinfoilPalace:The End Times - all the evidence shows we are nearing the end of man's tragic experiment....
TinfoilPalace:Radiation in Our Food
TheOilAge:Math of doom
TheOilAge:Lies Our Leaders Tell Us – “Nobody Could Have Predicted”
Hubberts-Arms:Walmart Should Get Off the Dole
Hubberts-Arms:One thousand teachers to be fired in Chicago
SilentCountry:Russia to deploy 2 army brigades in Arctic
SilentCountry:What a Way to Go - The Movie

1 comment:

  1. Must read article there on Early Warning, especially for our European friends. North Sea oil is RAPIDLY declining and is predicted to be just about gone in 20 years, leaving Europe with virtually no oil production at all. The implications are quite dire.

    ReplyDelete