Friday, July 6, 2012

Breaking News Fri. July 6, 2012


Going to be a short post today folks, just unloaded the truck with goodies from Lowe's and expect to be up on a ladder shortly. LOL
I hope everyone has a great weekend. See you tomorrow with a documentary.

Be sure to visit RJ at the Global Glass Onion and the Ozarker at Conflicted Doomer , and Doug at 3Es News and David at ETF Daily
and support their good work and efforts to help get information and commentary out to everyone.
Don't forget to drop by RJ's site this afternoon for his amazingly comprehensive weekly wrap up of the financials.


Peak Oil and Energy News
Telegraph: Kurdistan 'begins oil exports to Turkey'  - Kurdistan has begun trucking exports of crude oil across the border to Turkey, the Telegraph understands, in a politically controversial move likely to boost oil companies in the semi-autonomous Iraqi region.
Reuters: BP excluded from early bidding for Abu Dhabi oil fields - report
Ecnomist: Oil prices Rollercoaster Another leap. Where next?

Reuters: UPDATE 2-US ethanol output falls to 10-mo low, drought darkens outlook

Global Conflict
VOA: Libya To Hold First Free Election in 60 Years Saturday
Reuters: Friend of Assad deserts Syria for France 

IPEZone: South Sudan Cuts Off Its Oil To Spite Its Economy 
MSNBC: US probes shipment of high-tech gear to Iran, N. Korea by U.N. agency 
MSNBC: Game-changer? General, close friend of Assad deserts Syria for France - President reportedly loses member of inner circle

WorldNews: Syria-gate? WikiLeaks' latest drop of secret files
LONDON - It was another mega-download moment brought to you by WikiLeaks.

On Thursday, at the progressive journalists hub in London called the Frontline Club, the group of whistleblowers officially announced the release of their latest massive “data set” regarding Syria.

The new release of some 2.5 million emails focuses entirely on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime as seen through the communications of its top ministries and companies. They date from August 2006 to March of this year, when the current crisis in Syria was building up deadly momentum.
UPI: Iran sells $500 million in energy bonds
Guardian: 'Bye-bye, Miss American Pie' – then US helicopter appears to fire on Afghans
A video has surfaced online that appears to show a US helicopter crew singing "Bye-bye Miss American Pie" before blasting a group of Afghan men with a Hellfire missile.

WorldCrunch: No Israel, Time Is Not On Your Side


OWS/Protests
CNN: Judge orders Twitter to turn over Occupy protester's tweets
You probably think your tweets aren't of any interest to the government. After all, most 140-character posts are public, often detailing nothing more interesting than snarky jokes or links to adorable cat videos on YouTube.
However, courts are increasingly subpoenaing Twitter for data on its users that can be used in criminal and civil cases.
Guardian: Three Occupy activists arrested in corporate campaign funding protest
WorldCrunch: Four Dead From Ongoing Protests Against Peruvian Gold Mine
LIMA - Ongoing protests this week against the construction of a US-backed gold mine in the northern Peruvian province of Cajamarca have left at least four dead. According to the lv7 website, the local population has rallied in protest to oppose the project called Conga, directed by the American mining firm Newmont.

Domestic Financial News
SoberLook: Recent US government spending cuts dampened recovery - further "austerity" may risk recession - In this week's economic report, the IMF described the US recovery as tepid and highly vulnerable to global shocks. 

CNN: Why Medicaid expansion is key part of health reform - Many Americans still don't understand how Medicaid works. The biggest misperception is that Medicaid is a universal health care program for all poor people. That's just not true. Many people with little to no income do not qualify for Mediaid. Yes, all children up to 100% of the poverty line, and children under 6 up to 133% of poverty line, are covered. Pregnant women up to 133% of the poverty line are covered as well. So are elderly and disabled Americans who qualify for Social Security's Supplemental Security Income. But there's where things start to break down. Parents are covered, but only to 1996 welfare levels. This keeps a lot of parents, even those who are very poor, from qualifying for Medicaid. Two parents and a child living in Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Louisiana or Texas with an income of $4,850 a year actually earn too much to qualify for traditional Medicaid. And if you're not a parent, then things are even worse. In most states, if you have no children, you can't qualify for Medicaid no matter how little you make.

CalculatedRisk: Consumer Bankruptcy filings Decrease 13 Percent in First Half of 2012
ABCNews: 5 Million Jobs Still Missing Since Recession Ended

MiamiHerald: Mass. man pays off mortgage with pennies
DailyFinance: How the Worst Deal in the History of Finance Could Get Even Worse

NYT: Unemployment Report for June - The nation’s employers created almost enough jobs to keep up with population growth in June, but not nearly enough to reduce the backlog of nearly 13 million unemployed workers.
CalculatedRisk: June Employment Report: 80,000 Jobs, 8.2% Unemployment Rate

WSJ: Vital Signs: Slowing in Nonmanufacturing - The service sector is slowing. The Institute for Supply Management’s nonmanufacturing index, a monthly measure of service-sector activity, fell to 52.1 in June from 53.7 in May. Readings above 50 indicate expansion, so the service economy is still growing. But the index has fallen three times in the past four months, and is now at its lowest level in 2½ years.

CNBC: Economic Fears Take Toll on Retail Sales in June
SeattleTimes: Military-base closures, mergers save less money than Pentagon projected
The military-base closures and realignments that prompted the merger of Fort Lewis and McChord Air Force Base two years ago cost more than the Pentagon predicted, according to the Government Accountability Office.

ETFDailyNews: Experts Are Warning That Recession 2013 Is Inevitable? (INDEXSP:.INX)


Global Financial News
Mish: Eurozone Composite PMI Signals Steep Rate of Contraction; Germany Contracts at Steepest Rate in 3 Years; German Construction Activity Plummets 3rd Month

GlobeAndMail: Corporations behave badly – and we pay
Telegraph: Angela Merkel is wrong, say 172 economists
A group of 172 leading economists have written an open letter to Angela Merkel warning her that her decision to agree to allow eurozone bail-out funds to support sinner states was "wrong"
MSNBC: Japan to go broke by October? Standoff threatens to 'collapse' budget

Fortune: Something's rotten in Paris
Guardian: Europe and China cut interest rates while Bank of England extends QE  - Move to stimulate growth with a £50bn injection of electronic money into the UK and interest rate cuts in the eurozone and China
 
WSJ: China Offers Muted Response to U.S. Hit Over Auto Duties
GlobeAndMail: Germany launching Libor probe of Deutsche Bank: sources

Zerohedge: RBS 'Glitch' Goes Airborne As Biggest Russian Bank Halts All Credit, Debit Card Operations
TheAtlantic: USAF Drones Trail Civilian Auto Traffic in New Mexico
The USAF is reportedly targeting and trailing civilian auto traffic on New Mexico's highways. Harmless or just another example of the blurred lines between the international and domestic application of US military technology?
Zerohedge: Deutsche Bank Shares Slide As Bafin Discloses Liebor Probe Of Biggest German Bank
WSJ: Canada Creates More Jobs Than Expected

WSJ: IMF to Cut Global Forecasts


Commodities/Metals
Mineweb: Gold recovers after release of U.S. payrolls data
ETFDaily: Dow/Gold Ratio: Dividing The Dow Jones Index By Golds Price 80 Years After It’s Low

Environmental
USGS
M 4.4, 210km WNW of Bandon, Oregon
M 4.7, 263km ESE of Lambasa, Fiji


ThinkProgress: NOAA Says ‘Chances Increase For El Niño’: That May Be Good for U.S. In Short Term, But Would Lead To Rapid Warming - It’s looking increasingly likely we’ll see an El Niño starting this summer. If so, next year will almost certainly be the hottest year on record. The silver lining is that climatologist Kevin Trenberth says an El Niño would probably be a change “for the better” for the U.S. ”in the short term” since it might mean a weaker hurricane season and some relief for the devastating drought that is slamming the Southwest.
MSNBC: Drought hits 56 percent of continental US; 'significant toll' on crops

CNNireport: Aftertaste of Storm Still Lingers 
USNews: Record-breaking heat bakes Midwest, heads east

MSNBC: Coral clues to climate: Reefs vanished for 2,500 yearsSunTimes: Fourth day of 100-degree heat now forecast for Chicago
 
MSNBC: Heat not enough? Twisters might be next - The Midwest, already baking from a heat wave, could see "a tornado or two" by Friday evening, the National Weather Service warned.
Zerohedge: “Disaster Made In Japan”: Whitewash v. Reality, Still


ClimateCrocks: Satellite View of Super Derecho

America in Decline
ChicagoTribune: Ex-Arizona governor, 96, detained at checkpoint in sweltering heat
USNews: Whites-only Christian gathering riles some Alabama neighbors 
 A three-day whites-only religious conference — which will conclude with a flaming cross — in Lamar County, Alabama, has some residents upset at the racist implications while the minister complains that his freedom of speech is being violated.

MSNBC: Is US government reading email without a warrant? It doesn't want to talk about it
Guardian: How US prison labour pads corporate profits at taxpayers' expense
Thanks to rightwing lobbying, companies can use a loophole to exploit a scheme designed to give offenders work experience

In 1979, Congress created the Prison Industry Enhancement Certification Program (known as PIE; pdf) to establish employment opportunities for inmates "that approximate private sector work opportunities". On the surface, the program is a great idea. It gives prisoners something to do, allows them to contribute to their own upkeep and, hopefully, gives them a better shot of getting an actual living wage job upon release. Such was the intention, anyway.

Unfortunately, and perhaps unsurprisingly, this is not how the PIE program has worked out. Instead, it has become little more than a tidy profit-making scheme for corporations and other entities willing to exploit the captive labor force – often at the expense of private sector jobs.


Food and Water
DetroitNews: U.S. farms face a shortage of foreign workers

Science and Technology
Slate: How To Make Sure You Won't Lose All Internet Access on Monday
If you want to make sure you’ll still be able to use the Internet when you wake up Monday morning, go to this website right now, click “Detect,” and follow the instructions from there.
That’s the website of the DNS Changer Working Group (DCWG), set up by court order to fix a bunch of servers that had been taken over by an Estonian crime ring. The ring, which was busted last November, had been using the servers to redirect millions of Internet users to rogue websites when they tried to visit normal websites. The FBI took over the servers and cleaned them up, but it doesn’t particularly want to be in the business of running DNS servers permanently—so it’s shutting them down on July 9.
Technolog: 'Internet doomsday' malware explained in helpful video

ANN: Romania blocks probe into King's mysterious roots

io9: Tweets of the words "beer" and "church" by U.S. county [Map Porn] 

MSNBC: A stunning close-up of Mars taken by visiting NASA rover
Red Planet panorama of 'Greeley Haven' is actually a mosaic of 817 different images

Slate: Islamist Group in Timbuktu Poised To Destroy Rare Centuries-Old Texts on Science and MathematicsPhys.org: Brain scanner, not joystick, is in human-robot future
TheAtlantic: Faster, Stronger, Earlier: The American Particle Accelerator That Never Was 
io9: 10 Science Experiments That Looked Like the End of the World [Video]


Medical and Health
RockCenter: Prescription drug addiction among pregnant women becoming 'monstrous tidal wave'
MSNBC: Diseases from animals hit 2 billion people a year 

Statesman: Texas last in nation on health care quality, report card says


Doomsteading, Gardening, Urban Farming
CanadianDoomer: A Used Pig


Other News
CSMonitor: George Zimmerman fund-raising appeal for $1 million bond
SacBee: Push to ban gay marriage flagging in Iowa

MSNBC: 2nd boy dies after shock incident in Tenn. lake
ThinkProgress: South Carolina Judge Sentences Drunk Driver To Bible Study

MSNBC: Survey: 30% of meat eaters won't date a vegetarian 
Guardian: The issue of female bishops shows what the church says about all women

Wired: Chinese iPad Game Depicts Slaughter of Stereotypical Japanese 
NADTA: Savages: Stone’s Stoner Film Reminds Us Why Marijuana Should Be Legal – TIME


Politics
CBSNews: Obama declines arm-wrestle challenge
CBSNews: A slow death for No Child Left Behind? 

Hosted: More states freed from No Child Left Behind law

CSMonitor: Brad Pitt's mom endorses Mitt Romney, slams Obama
Guardian: Is Ted Nugent an asset or a liability for Mitt Romney's presidential campaign? | Poll


Forums
TinfoilPalace: Cheap, Old, Easy Recipes
TinfoilPalace: Concern grows over H1N1 outbreak in Bolivia

TheOilAge: Heinberg: end of growth update- blowing in the wind
TheOilAge: To be Prepared, A Templar Musing.
 
HubbertsArms: I, pet goat 2
HubbertsArms: The Empire Will Eat Itself
 
SilCo: Angola's Chinese Built Ghost Town
SilCo: How Horseshit doomed us all.

DestinyCalls: Dark books repository : Lots of interesting and rare tomes
DestinyCalls: The Newton Manuscripts Online

2 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
  2. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete