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Gitmo Nation Paella: EU demands an end to austerity?
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  Source: Dr. Jones reports
  Sat, 27 Apr 2013 15:48
  MADRID, Apr 26 (Xinhua) -- The Spanish government of Mariano Rajoy announced on Friday a new package of economic reforms aimed at spurring growth following years of austerity that have resulted in soaring unemployment.
  The package includes an annual plan to boost employment, fiscal incentives for small and medium-sized companies, measures to help companies go global, and relaxed visa conditions for foreign investors.
  Meanwhile, austerity also remained "indispensable" and the government would not make fundamental changes to its economic policies, according to Deputy Prime Minister Soraya Saenz de Santamaria.
  The reforms come just a day after unemployment in Spain passed the six million mark for the first time in history. EU economic and monetary affairs commissioner Olli Rehn has asked the Spanish government on Thursday to design concrete policies to improve the labor market situation.
  In the meantime, Madrid also revised down its economic estimates for 2013.
  The government predicted the Spanish economy would contract by 1.3 percent in 2013 with a deficit of 6.3 percent. In 2014, the government expected the economy to expand by 0.5 percent.
  Spanish economy minister Luis de Guindos said the change in economic estimates was "in line with other modifications made by international institutions."
  The European Commission previously predicted that Spain's economy would contract by 1.4 percent this year while grow by 0.8 percent in 2014. The International Monetary Fund, meanwhile, said Spain's GDP would contract by 1.6 percent in 2013 to grow 0.7 percent in 2014.
Guest Post: Physical Gold Vs Paper Gold: Waiting For The Dam To Break
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  Source: Zero Hedge
  Sat, 27 Apr 2013 15:06
  Submitted by Alasdair Macleod, via GoldMoney.com,
  IntroductionIn this article I will argue that the recent slide in the gold price has generated substantial demand for bullion that will likely bring forward a financial and systemic disaster for both central and bullion banks that has been brewing for a long time. To understand why, we must examine their role and motivations in precious metals markets and assess current ownership of physical gold, while putting investor emotion into its proper context.
  In the West (by which in this article I broadly mean North America and Europe) the financial community treats gold as an investment. However, of the global pool of gold, which GoldMoney estimates to be about 160,000 tonnes, the amount actually held by western investors in portfolios is a very small fraction of this amount. Furthermore investor behaviour, which in itself accounts for just part of the West's bullion demand, is sharply at odds with the hoarders' objectives, which is behind underlying tensions in bullion markets. To compound the problem, analysts, whose focus incorporates portfolio investment theories and assumptions, have very little understanding of the economic case for precious metals, being schooled in modern neo-classical economic theories.
  These economic theories, coupled with modern investment analysis when applied to bullion pricing, have failed to understand the growing human desire for protection from monetary instability. The result has for a considerable time been the suppression of bullion prices in capital markets below their natural level of balance set by supply and demand. Furthermore, the value put on precious metals by hoarders in the West has been less than the value to hoarders in other countries, particularly the growing numbers of savers in Asia.
  These tensions, if they persist, are bound to contribute to the eventual destruction of paper currencies.
  The ownership of goldThe amount of gold bullion that backs investor-driven markets is not statistically recorded, but we can illustrate its significance relative to total stocks by referring back to the time of the oil crisis of the mid-1970s. In 1974 the global stock of gold was estimated to be half that of today, at about 80,000 tonnes. Monetary gold was about 37,000 tonnes, leaving 43,000 tonnes in the form of non-monetary bullion, coins and jewellery. Let us arbitrarily assume, on the basis of global wealth distribution, that two thirds of this was held by the minority population in the West, amounting to about 30,000 tonnes.
  This figure probably grew somewhat before the early 1980s, spurred by the bull market and growing fear of inflation, which saw investors buy mainly coins and mining shares. Demand for gold bars was driven by the rapid accumulation of dollars in the oil-exporting nations, as well as some hoarding by wealthy investors from all over the world through Switzerland and London.
  The sharp rise in global interest rates in the Volcker era, the subsequent decline of the inflation threat and the resulting bear market for gold inevitably led to a reduction of bullion holdings by wealthy investors in the West. Swiss and other private banks, employing a new generation of fund managers and investment advisors trained in modern portfolio theories, started selling their customers' bullion positions in the 1980s, leaving very little by 2000. In the latter stages of the bear market, jewellery sales in the West became a replacement source of bullion supply, but this was insufficient to compensate for massive portfolio liquidation.
  So by the year 2000, Western ownership of non-monetary gold suffered the severe attrition of a twenty-year bear market and the reduction of inflation expectations. Portfolios, which routinely had 10-15% exposure to gold 40 years ago even today have virtually no exposure at all. Given that jewellery consumption in Europe and North America was only 400-750 tonnes per annum over the period, by the year 2000 overall gold ownership in the West must have declined significantly from the 1974 guesstimate of 30,000 tonnes. While the total gold stock in 2000 stood at 128,000 tonnes, the virtual elimination of portfolio holdings will have left Western holders with little more than perhaps an accumulation of jewellery, coins and not much else: bar ownership would have been at a very low ebb.
  Since 2000, demand from countries such as India and more recently China is known to have increased sharply, supporting the thesis that gold has continued to accumulate at an accelerating pace in non-Western hands.
  Western bullion markets have therefore been on the edge of a physical stock crisis for some time. Much of the West's physical gold ownership since 2000 has been satisfied by recycling scrap originating in the West, suggesting that total gold ownership in the West today barely rose before the banking crisis despite a tripling of prices. Meanwhile the disparity between demand for gold in the West compared with the rest of the world has continued, while the West's investment management community has been actively discouraging investment.
  The result has been that nearly all new mine production and Western central bank supply has been absorbed by non-Western hoarders and their central banks. While post-banking crisis there has presumably been a pick-up in Western hoarding, as evidenced by ETF and coin sales and some institutional involvement, it is dwarfed by demand from other countries. So it is reasonable to conclude that of the total stock of non-monetary gold, very little of it is left in Western hands. And so long as the pressure for migration out of the West's ownership continues, there will come a point where there is so little gold left that futures and forwards markets cease to operate effectively. That point might have actually arrived, signalled by attempts to smash the price this month.
  This admittedly broad-brush assessment has important implications for the price stability essential to bullion banks operating in paper markets as well as for central banks attempting to maintain confidence in their paper currencies.
  Precious metals in capital marketsIn the West itself, the attitudes of the investment community are fundamentally different from even those of the majority of Western hoarders, who are looking for protection from systemic and currency risks as opposed to investment returns. Western investors are generally oblivious to the implications, the most fundamental of which is that falling prices actually stimulate physical demand. Before the recent dramatic slide in prices the investment community undervalued precious metals compared with Western hoarders, let alone those in Asia, encouraging physical bullion to migrate from financial markets both to firmer hands in the West as well as the bulk of it to non-West ownership. There is now irrefutable evidence that these flows have accelerated significantly on lower prices in recent weeks, as rational price theory would lead one to expect.
  Pricing bullion is therefore not as simple as the investment community generally believes. It is being put about, mostly on grounds of technical analysis, that the bull markets in gold and silver have ended, and precious metals have entered a new downtrend. The evidence cited is that medium and longer-term moving averages have been violated and are now falling; furthermore important support levels have been breached.
  These developments, which arise out of the futures and forward markets, have rattled Western investors who thought they were in for an easy ride. However, a close examination of futures trading shows the bearish case even on investment grounds is flawed, as the following two charts of official statistics provided by weakly Commitment of Traders data clearly show.
  The Money Managers category is the clearest reflection in the official data of investor portfolio positions, representing sizeable mutual and hedge funds. In both cases, the number of long contracts is at historically low levels, and shorts, arguably the better reflection of money-manager sentiment, remain close to high extremes. On this basis, investor sentiment is clearly very bearish already, with the investment management community already committed to falling prices. Put very simplistically there are now more buyers than sellers.
  Money Managers are in stark opposition to the Commercials, who seek to transfer entrepreneurial risk to Money Managers and other investor and speculator categories. The official statistics break Commercials down into two categories: Producer/Merchant/Processor/User, and Swap Dealers. Both categories include the activities of bullion banks, which in practice supply liquidity to the market. Because investors and speculators tend to run bull positions, bullion banks acting as market-makers will in aggregate always be short. A successful bullion bank trader will seek to make trading profits large enough to compensate for any losses on his net short position that arise from rising prices.
  A bullion bank trader must avoid carrying large short positions if in his judgement prices are likely to rise. He will be more relaxed about maintaining a bear position in falling markets. Crucially, he must keep these opinions private, and the release of market statistics are designed to accommodate these dealers' need for secrecy.
  Bullion banks' position details are disclosed at the beginning of every month in the Bank Participation Reports, again official statistics. They are broken down into two categories, based on the individual bank's self-description on the CFTC's Form 40, into US and Non-US Banks. Their positions are shown in the next two charts (note the time scale is monthly).
  In both gold and silver, the bullion banks have managed to reduce their exposure from extreme net short over the last four months. The reduction of their market exposure suggests that they have been deliberately transferring this risk to other parties, and is consistent with an anticipation that bullion prices will rise. It is the other side of the high level of bearishness reflected in the Money Manager category shown in the first two charts. The bullion banks control the market; the Money Managers are merely tools of their trade.
  There has been little reduction in open interest in gold and it has remained strong in silver, because risk has been transferred rather than extinguished. Daily official statistics on open interest are provided by the exchange and summarised in the next two charts (note that data is daily).
  From these charts it can be seen that recent declines in the gold price are failing to reduce open interest further, and in silver open interest remains stubbornly high. Therefore, attempts by bullion banks to reduce their net short exposure by marking prices down are showing signs of failure.
  We can therefore conclude that investor sentiment is at bearish extremes and the bullion banks have reduced their net short exposure to levels where it risks rising again. Therefore the downside for precious metals prices appears to be severely limited, contrary to sentiments expressed by technical analysts and in the media.
  This market position is against a background of a growing shortage of physical bullion, which is our next topic.
  Physical marketsCasual observers of precious metal prices are generally unaware that the headline writers focus on activity in the futures markets and generally ignore developments in physical bullion. This is consistent with the fact that market data is available in the former, while dealing in the latter is secretive. However, as with icebergs, it is not what you see above the water that matters so much as that which is out of sight below.
  It is not often understood in investment circles that gold and silver are commodities for which the laws of supply and demand are not overridden by investor psychology. Therefore, if the price falls, demand increases. Indeed, the increase in demand has far outweighed selling by nervous investors; even before the price-drop, demand for both silver and gold significantly exceeded supply. Evidence ranges from readily available statistics on record demand for newly-minted gold and silver coins and the net accumulation of gold by non-Western central banks, to trade-based information such as imports and exports of non-monetary gold as well as reports from trade associations reporting demand in diverse countries such as India, China, the UK, US, Japan and even Australia.
  All this evidence points in the same direction: that physical demand is increasing on every price drop. There is therefore a growing pricing conflict between futures and forward markets, which do not generally involve settlement but the rolling-over of speculative positions, and of the underlying physical metal. Furthermore, analysts make the mistake of looking at gold purely in terms of mining and scrap supply, when nearly all gold ever mined is theoretically available to the market, in the right conditions and at the right price. The other side of this larger coin is that if the price of gold is suppressed by activity in paper markets to below what it would otherwise be, the stimulus for physical demand, being based on a 160,000 tonne market, is likely to be considerably greater on a given price drop than analysts who are myopic beyond 2,750 tonnes of annual mine production might expect. The numbers that are available confirm this to have been the case, particularly over the last few weeks, with reports from all over the world of an unprecedented surge in demand.
  This is at the root of a developing crisis of which few commentators are as yet aware. Demand for physical has accelerated the transfer of bullion from capital markets to hoarders everywhere and from the West's capital markets to other countries, which has been the trend since the oil crisis in the mid-Seventies. This is what's behind an acute shortage of physical gold in capital markets, explaining perhaps why bullion banks feel the need to reduce their short positions.
  While we can detail their exposure in futures markets, meaningful statistics are not available in over-the-counter forward markets, particularly for London, which dominates this form of trading. Forwards are considerably more flexible than futures as a trading medium, generating trading profits, commissions, fees and collateralised banking business. The ability to run unallocated client accounts, whereby a client's gold is taken onto a bank's balance sheet, is in stable market conditions an extremely profitable activity, made more profitable by high operational gearing. The result is that paper forward positions are many multiples of the physical bullion available. The extent of this relationship between physical bullion and paper is not recorded, but judging by the daily turnover in London there is an enormous synthetic short physical position. For this reason a sharply rising price would be catastrophic and any drain on bullion supplies rapidly escalates the risk.
  Overseeing this market is the Bank of England co-operating with other Western central banks and the Bank for International Settlements, whose combined interest obviously favours price stability. They have been quick to supply the market if needed, confirmed by freely-admitted leasing operations in the past, and by secretive supply into the market, which has been detected by independent supply and demand analysis over the last 15 years. Furthermore, as currency-issuing banks, central banks are unlikely to take kindly to market signals that suggest gold is a better store of value than their own paper money.
  We can only speculate about day-to-day interventions by Western central banks in gold markets. In this regard it seems that the slide in prices on the 12th and 15th April was triggered by a very large seller of paper gold; if this market story and the amount mentioned are correct, it can only be central bank intervention, acting to deliberately drive prices lower. Given the market position, with Money Managers in the futures markets already short and highly vulnerable to a bear squeeze, the story seems credible. The objective would be to persuade holders of physical ETFs and allocated gold accounts to sell and supply the market, on the assumption that they would behave as investors convinced the bull market is over.
  ConclusionsFor the last 40 years gold bullion ownership has been migrating from West to elsewhere, mostly the Middle East and Asia, where it is more valued. The buyers are not investors, but hoarders less complacent about the future for paper currencies than the West's banking and investment community. There was a shortage of physical metal in the major centres before the recent price fall, which has only become more acute, fully absorbing ETF and other liquidation, which is small in comparison to the demand created by lower prices. If the fall was engineered with the collusion of central banks it has backfired spectacularly.
  The time when central banks will be unable to continue to manage bullion markets by intervention has probably been brought closer. They will face having to rescue the bullion banks from the crisis of rising gold and silver prices by other means, if only to maintain confidence in paper currencies. Any gold held by struggling eurozone nations, theoretically available to supply markets as a stop-gap, will not last long and may have been already sold.
  This will likely develop into another financial crisis at the worst possible moment, when central banks are already being forced to flood markets with paper currency to keep interest rates down, banks solvent, and to finance governments' day-to-day spending. Its importance is that it threatens more than any other of the various crises to destabilise confidence in government-backed currencies, bringing an early end to all attempts to manage the others systemic problems.
  History might judge April 2013 as the month when through precipitate action in bullion markets Western central banks and the banking community finally began to lose control over all financial markets.
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Juan Vrijdag Images - us-major-general-retired-gary-harrell-director
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  Sat, 27 Apr 2013 14:46
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  (C) Juan Vrijdag Juan Vrijdag
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  US Major General (retired) Gary Harrell Director of the King Abdullah II Special Operations Training Center (KASOTC) on a Segway with in the background a shooting-range.PHOTO JUAN VRIJDAG GENERAL INFO: Jordan and the United States have committed some USD200 million to training special forces for counter-insurgency operations in the Middle East with the opening on 19 May of the King Abdullah II Special Operations Training Center (KASOTC). The complex located Northeast of Amman, Jordan, stretching over 125 acres, will be directed by US Major General (retired) Gary Harrell. The 20 Jordanian and US trainers are expected to begin programmes in August 2009 for regional and domestic special operations and counter-terrorism forces. -the training center that is the world's largest special forces training facility of its kind, specializing in counter-terrorism and internal security missions. Users will have access to a multi-use tower; 100- and 300-meter live-fire, tactical, driving and urban ranges; and classroom facilities. The site includes 56 training buildings and a mock A300 aircraft fuselage; a centralized and integrated Range Operations Center to monitor and control all audio, video, special effects and target technology; networked day/night thermal cameras with 360-degree coverage to capture exercises for After Action Review; sound-effect speakers that project hundreds of realistic sounds, including shouts, animal noises and gunfire; integrated targetry; and special effects, such as rooftop explosion with debris, a concussion wave cannon, an automatic weapons simulator, simulated smells, a fog generator and an improvised explosive device (IED) kit.
While Wronged Homeowners Got $300 Apiece in Foreclosure Settlement, Consultants Who Helped Protect Banks Got $2 Billion
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  Source: BlackListedNews.com
  Sat, 27 Apr 2013 14:44
  The obscene greed-and-arrogance stories emanating from Wall Street are piling up so fast, it's getting hard to keep up. This one is from last week, but I missed it '' it's about the foreclosure/robo-signing settlement that was concluded earlier this year.
  The upshot of this story is that in advance of that notorious settlement, the government ordered banks to hire "independent" consultants to examine their loan files to see just exactly how corrupt they were.
  Now it comes out that not only were these consultants not so independent, not only did they very likely skew the numbers seriously in favor of the banks, and not only were these few consultants paid over $2 billion (over 20 percent of the entire settlement amount) while the average homeowner only received $300 in the deal '' in addition to all of that, it appears that federal regulators will not turn over the evidence of impropriety they discovered during these reviews to homeowners who may want to sue the banks.
  In other words, the government not only ordered the banks to hire consultants who may have gamed the foreclosure settlement in favor of the banks, but the regulators themselves are hiding the information from the public in order to shield the banks from further lawsuits.
  Secrets and Lies of the Bailout
  To recap: in the foreclosure deal, 13 banks agreed to pay a total of $9.3 billion to settle their liability in a number of areas, including robo-signing, which is just a euphemism for mass-perjury '' robo-signing is the practice of having low-level bank employees sign documents attesting to full knowledge of case files in court foreclosure actions, when in fact they were signing hundreds of files per day, often having no idea whether the paperwork was correct or not.
  It was done across the industry and turned housing cases across America into nightmares of jumbled and/or forged paperwork, in which even people who did not deserve to be thrown out of their homes were uprooted thanks to systematic errors by faceless bureaucrats who cut legal corners purely to save money.
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Pipeline Wars: US companies want to frack Rumania - and FREEZE out Gazprom
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  Source: Dr. Jones reports
  Sat, 27 Apr 2013 14:43
  Mass demonstrations against the extraction of shale gas have recently been held in Romania and Bulgaria. U.S. companies actively lobby the "shale revolution" in Eastern and Central Europe. All this happens against the background of anti-Russian slogans. "Shale fever" has already struck Lithuania, Ukraine, Moldova and Poland; the U.S. is rubbing its hands.
  Energy independence on Russia is currently a fashion trend in Europe's political circles. Accusing Russia's gas giant Gazprom of inflated gas prices, many European leaders rely on their own exploitation of shale deposits. We can see the supposedly positive experience in shale gas production in the U.S., which cut gas prices in the world five times, eliminated gas imports and created many jobs. The West strongly promotes this experience in the West as panacea for "Gazprom's dictatorship."
  A study conducted by Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University in 2011, predicted a 13-percent decline of Russia's share in the European natural gas market by 2040. "The geopolitical implications of the expansion of shale gas production in the United States will be enormous. With the arrival of liquefied natural gas to Europe - the product that was displaced from the U.S. market - the energy power of Russia, Venezuela and Iran began to weaken against the U.S. gas abundance," Amy Myers Jaffe, one of the authors of the study said two years ago. Numbers suggest that this is not the case, though. In 2009, the share of the Russian gas in Europe was 27 percent. Today, the figure has not changed much: it still remains on the level of 29-30 percent.
  In the report prepared by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, it was stated that the total volume of resources of Romania, Hungary and Bulgaria made up 538 billion cubic meters. For comparison, the projected capacity of the South Stream gas project makes up- 63 billion cubic meters a year). However, in a fit of strategic partnership, Romania and the United States approved an agreement with Chevron in early April on the exploration and exploitation of gas fields in eastern Romania. According to the head of the National Agency for Mineral Resources, Gheorghe DuÅ£u, "at the present time, no company can conduct unconventional exploration of natural resources." These licenses can be issued only with the thorough assessment of consequences for the environment and profitability of gas deposits, said Dutu. However, due to the lack of expertise, the moratorium on shale gas was lifted last week.
  In response, on April 4th, protest actions were held in 28 Romanian cities within the framework of the so-called "National Day Against the Exploitation of Shale Gas." "We are against corruption in the government. We fight for healthy environment, we fight for the right to live and to receive accurate information," organizers of the protest actions said. The protests were supported in the Bulgarian border town of Dobrich. The Bulgarians took to the streets under the slogan "Two countries - one water. Two peoples - one fight." They fear that the gas production in Romania will destroy natural resources in neighboring areas, including Dobruja - the region known as the "granary of Bulgaria."
  The protesters also demanded prosecutors should investigate the personal interest of the Mayor of Dobrich, Detelina Nikolova, and all officers, who accompanied her on her recent trip to the U.S.. Nikolova toured Texas, Pennsylvania and Colorado, where she met with representatives of shale gas companies. She strongly denies allegations of corruption. In Bulgaria, Chevron has not settled yet. On January 17, 2012, the Bulgarian government revoked the company a license to explore shale gas deposits in northeastern Bulgaria. Officials referred to a moratorium on shale gas and to the lack of evidence of environmental safety of the method of hydraulic fracking.
  What is the essence of the technology of hydraulic fracking? At first, a vertical well is drilled, which is then split into several horizontal wells up to 2-3 km in length. Afterwards, a mixture of water, sand and chemicals is pumped into these wells. As a result of the water attack (a mini earthquake), the walls of gas reservoirs are destroyed, and the entire amount of available gas is pumped up to the surface.
  The process requires a lot of water for each well - from 5 to 19 million liters. The mixture of chemicals is a commercial secret of corporations. A resident of the shale gas village of Dimock (PA), Ray Campbell, shared a sample of tap water with Russia's Vesti TV channel. There were 27 dangerous chemicals found in the water: uranium 238 and 235, as well as some unknown chemicals. "Even lab specialists do not know what it is," Ray said.
  Environmentalists of the world are highly concerned about the fact that the exploitation of shale gas leads to severe contamination of ground, surface waters and air. In pursuit of geopolitical influence, the Americans do not tell anyone that the current price of shale gas does not include the cost of land reclamation and water treatment, not to mention insurance in case of artificial earthquakes. The Americans do not say either that shale gas producers do not pay taxes. In other words, the production of shale gas in the U.S. is subsidized by the U.S. government. To crown it all, profitable reserves are much less than geological reserves. "Obama listens to his assistants, who work to promote shale gas. In reality, the reserves will be enough for 11-12 years, not 60," Arthur Berman, a well-known expert, a former officer at AMOCO oil company said.
  In 2013, there was not one single profitable shale gas well left in the U.S. Corporate expenses in 2012 to drill more than 7,000 wells in the U.S. totaled $ 42 billion. Profits from the sale of shale gas made up 32.5 billion. BP announced net losses of $ 5 billion; BG Group of Britain lost 1.3 billion, whereas the former leader of the industry - Chesapeake Energy - stands on the verge of bankruptcy.
  American analysts assert that the shale project is doomed. They see it not only as a politically motivated initiative, but also as yet another financial bubble that will grow in Europe. "The countries, where they are going to produce shale gas, will see what we saw. At first, there will be a short-lived boom, some new jobs will be created, but when the bubble bursts, there will be poor environment and devastated infrastructure left, like it happened in Dimock. This will happen to Latvia, Ireland and Ukraine," Wendy Lee, a professor at Bloomsburg University said.
  The U.S. is trying to engage Eastern and Central Europe on its own resources and the resources of its partners (Norway, Saudi Arabia). America frightens everyone with Gazprom's monopoly, which actually does not exist. The "shale union" has already become a goal for Ukraine, Poland, Moldova, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Great Britain. However, according to European experts, the amount of possible shale gas production in the EU in 2030 will amount to only 15 billion cubic meters a year. Optimists give a different number - 40 billion. However, this is only 3-5 percent of projected natural gas imports. Obviously, such minor additions will not change the market situation.
  Gazprom does not have to care much about it at all. The company's exports to Asian countries have been growing, while the Chinese have banned the development of shale gas. China thinks strategically.
  Lyuba Lulko
  Pravda.Ru
  Read the original in Russian
Privacy is 'off the table' in a 'post-9/11 world,' says New York City police chief | The Verge
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  Sat, 27 Apr 2013 14:07
  The rhetoric in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings is starting to recall the heightened fear that took hold after the terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001. That's especially true in New York City, where the suspected bombers were allegedly planning a second attack.
  In a press conference yesterday, both Mayor Michael Bloomberg and police commissioner Ray Kelly used the suspects' alleged plot to make the case for more surveillance cameras. "You're never going to know where all of our cameras are," Bloomberg said. "And that's one of the ways you deter people; they just don't know whether the person sitting next to you is just somebody sitting there or a detective watching."
  "You're never going to know where all of our cameras are."
  Kelly promised that the New York City Police Department (NYPD) is expanding its already massive network of cameras. The number of public sector surveillance cameras in New York City is reportedly between 3,500 and 6,000. In an interview earlier this week, Kelly praised the network of "smart cameras" that allow police to remotely read licenses and recognize suspicious packages.
  The cameras are part of the NYPD's elite surveillance system, developed by Microsoft over a three year period. It's known as The Domain Awareness System or simply "the dashboard," with the total costs reportedly between $30 million and $40 million.
  The dashboard aggregates data from cameras, mapped crime patterns, 911 alerts, arrest records, parking tickets, and radiation detectors, and it's getting smarter all the time. The cameras can detect when a bag or package is abandoned in a public place, Kelly told MSNBC earlier this week, and he hopes to expand this capability, which he refers to as "video analytics."
  It's known as The Domain Awareness System or simply "the dashboard"
  The NYPD is almost certainly the most advanced police department in the country, even expanding to include overseas bureaus in the years since the terrorist attacks on September 11th. However, other cities and even other countries have taken note of the Domain Awareness System. Police departments in other cities, as well as law enforcement and large events outside the US, have approached Microsoft about licensing the software.
  There are questions as to whether surveillance cameras actually prevent attacks: Boston's relatively extensive network of cameras still failed to catch the bombers in the act or dissuade them from their crime. The extensiveness and sophistication of the NYPD's surveillance network also has the American Civil Liberties Union and other public rights advocates worried, but Kelly believes standards of privacy are changing. "The privacy issue has really been taken off the table," he said. "I don't think people are concerned about it. I think people accept it in a post-9/11 world."
  Kelly's sense of conviction is reminiscent of Mayor Bloomberg's statement on the use of drones to monitor civilians: "get used to it."
Federal Reserve Refuses to Submit to an Audit of Germany´s Gold Held i | nsnbc international
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  Sat, 27 Apr 2013 14:01
  Dr. Long Xinming (4M),- The German government has been storing about half of its gold supply with the US FED, apparently in the NYC FED vaults. Germany decided to bring home all its gold, but the FED has said that isn't possible to do, and it would need until 2020 to be able to accomplish the transfer.
  The German government then asked to visit the FED vaults to inventory the gold and determine its actual existence, but the FED refused to permit Germany to examine its own gold. The reasons given were ''security'' and ''no room for visitors''. And nothing else.
  Germany did finally send some staff to the FED, and they were permitted only into the vault's anteroom where they were shown 5 or 6 gold bars as representative of their holdings, and were permitted nothing else.
  They apparently came a second time, and the FED did open only one of 9 rooms and let the Germans look at the stack of gold, but were not permitted to either enter or touch. And they returned home.
  There has been speculation for a long time, that the FED doesn't actually have much gold, that it has either sold it off, lent it out, or used it as collateral for borrowings. Either case, there are many claims that the gold that is being stored on behalf of many nations, doesn't actually exist.
  And nobody, other than FED staff, have actually been permitted inside the vaults to see or inventory any of the gold. There is no evidence that the gold actually exists, other than the word of the FED.
  Even more, the situation is the same with the supposed gold depository at Fort Knox. Nobody has seen the gold there for a very long time.
  The last audit, and the last public visit, was in 1953, just after U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower took office. No outside experts were allowed during that audit, and the audit team tested only about 5% of gold there. So, there hasn't been a comprehensive audit of Fort Knox in over 60 years.
  In 1974 six Congressmen, one Senator and the press were allowed to enter Fort Knox to see for themselves if the gold was there or not. The tour showed that there was gold in Fort Knox but, all the same, it sparked even more controversies.
  Only a small fraction of the gold reserves were made available for viewing, and one Congressman published a report saying that the gold bars held in the fort may have been less heavy than would have been expected.
  During the past two years, several US politicians have claimed that there is a high chance that neither Fort Knox nor the FED have any gold, or perhaps only a very small amount, and have demanded a full and public inventory and testing, but the FED have resolutely refused.
  I have no idea what to make of this. There was another incident last year when Goldman Sachs were proven to have been selling gold certificates to the public, ostensibly backed by real gold in their vaults, but the story leaked out that they in fact held no gold at all, and were doing ''fractional reserve'' gold banking, on the basis that few people would want to claim their gold at any one time.
  Even worse, Goldman were charging customers storage fees for the gold that didn't exist. Also, do you recall the information I circulated around the middle of last year, documenting the immense gold theft the FED pulled on much of the world during WW II?
  The FED came to all countries in Asia, Latin America and Africa and told them their gold holdings might not be safe because of the war, and they should permit the FED to take all of it to the US for safekeeping. Many countries obliged, receiving FED gold certificates in exchange, but when they later tried to cash in those certificates and reclaim their gold, they were told the certificates were fake, that they contained spelling and other mistakes which the FED would never have made, and that the serial numbers were wrong. And the FED still has all that gold.
  They even did that to Chiang Kai-Shek, taking all of Taiwan's gold '' that had been looted from China '' and never returning it. The last I heard, Chiang's wife was still trying to recover her gold from the FED.
  Apparently a few people have been successful in presenting their certificates to the FED, with documentation that was irrefutable, but even in those cases the owners were forced to settle for only 1% or 2% of the actual value. And most other people or nations who attempt to redeem these certificates are arrested by the FBI for fraud '' at the request of the FED.
  Late last year, a Canadian businessman had some of these certificates and tried to use them as collateral for a loan, and the FED had him arrested, extradited to the US, and charged him with fraud. Insiders claim this is common practice to frighten every one away.
  I've inserted here a graph that shows the increase in the FED's gold supply during the war. It also shows the amount decreasing heavily later, so perhaps some of the gold was returned, but it appears there was a great deal that never was.
  For many years after the war, the FED denied these transactions and even denied the existence of these certificates. But a crashed US military plane was found in the Philppine jungle with heavy wooden boxes full of metal containers, all with FED markings, and all containing hundreds of billions of dollars of these same certificates. That was when the entire story finally became public, but the Western media have never cared to report on it.
  I have many photos of the content of that aircraft, of the boxes and the cans and the certificates, if anybody cares to see.
  Some people claimed this was a CIA counterfeiting operation supported by the US government, as an attempt to just steal the gold from many poor nations.
  Via The 4th Media
  Dr. Long Xinming is the founder and senior editor of bearcanada.com. He is a frequent contributor to nsnbc international and our partner media The 4th Media in Beijig.
Scientology's Narconon Under Fire From Within | The Fix
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  Archived Version
  Sat, 27 Apr 2013 13:49
  The Scientology-affiliated rehab Narconon continues to come under fire. Its flagship location in Oklahoma has had seven patient deaths since 2005, three of them between November 2011 and July 2012. An expos(C) last August on NBC show Rock Center with Brian Williams investigated the three most recent deaths; tonight the same show features the former president of the facility and a former executive at a Narconon facility in Michigan accusing Narconon organizations across the country of engaging in non-existent treatment and deceitful marketing techniques. "Narconon preys on vulnerable people. That's part of the sales techniques," says Lucas Catton, who stepped down as President of Narconon's Arrowhead facility in Oklahoma in 2004.
  Catton and his former colleague Eric Tonorio accuse Narconon of hiring recent college graduates to be counselors, without any formal drug treatment training or instruction on how to treat patients addicted to drugs and alcohol. The rehabs reportedly spends thousands of dollars on "Certified Alcohol and Drug Counselor" certificates for its staff from an organization called the Pita Group, Inc., which was created by Kent McGregor, a contractor for Narconon's Arrowhead facility. Both Tenorio and Catton now describe Narconon's methods of treatment'--such as spending five hours per day in a sauna for 30 straight days'--as "pseudo-science." Both men arrived at Narconon as patients in the mid-'90s and eventually became Scientologists, at one point crediting the program with helping them get sober.
  Narconon Arrowhead CEO Gary Smith has sent an email to NBC News that denied Tenorio and Catton's accusations, claiming that only a small percentage of Narconon patients join Scientology and that only 25% of staff are Scientologists. He also provided a 2011 statement from Catton that thanked the facility for saving his life, while the Church of Scientology released video statements made by Tenorio in 2008 and Catton in 2009 thanking Narconon for turning their lives around. Despite that, Catton maintains, "Everything [at Narconon] was dedicated toward the purpose of advancing Scientology's aims."
Jamie Dimon Has Issues (or Meet The Idiot Selling Gold) | Across the Street
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Sat, 27 Apr 2013 13:13
  Update:On Friday April 26, JPM customers (US government??) added a whopping 558 contracts (55,800 troy oz.) to the totals reflected in this article. The CME group daily report can be found here, but note, these daily reports go into Never-neverland when the new one comes out (so save it if you want it for future reference).
  Somebody should explain to the blathering numbskulls at CNBS that when just one firm accounts for 99.3% of the physical gold sales at the COMEX in the last three months it's not what most of us on this side of the rainbow would consider ''broad-based'' selling. Of course discovering this kind of relevant information requires an internet connection, 2nd grade math and reading skills, and the desire to do a teeny-weeny bit of reporting. Sadly they've wandered so far down the rabbit hole that the concept of ''physical demand'' (i.e. people actually wanting to take possession of the stuff) is puzzling to them because the vast majority of the world's so-called ''gold-trading'' takes place in the realm of make believe (which is their natural habitat). It's all fun and games until somebody loses their metal and ''somebody'' has lost one hell of a lot of metal in the last 90 days.
  This is the CME Group's COMEX metals issues and stops year-to-date report, which can be found here everyday for free. It chronicles the physical delivery notices of various metals, including gold. Let's have a look:
  ''I'' is for ''Idiot''That's how I remember it, anyway. ''I'' actually stands for ''issues,'' meaning the firm parted with its metal (@ 100 troy ounces a shot), and ''S'' stands for ''stops,'' meaning the firm took delivery of gold. ''C'' is for customer accounts, ''H'' is house accounts. The first thing you should notice is that most transaction net out to zero in a given month (blue boxes), meaning the firm's gold holdings didn't change. What they delivered one day they got back the next, or vice versa. The green boxes show firms who received more than they delivered and the red boxes indicate firms who coughed up gold for Bernanke bucks (aka idiots). Note that Deutsche Bank's massive take in February more than offsets its deliveries in December and April.
  Notice one more thing before we move on: Despite Goldman's much ballyhooed ''Gold Sucks!'' call a few weeks ago, the squid has not parted with any yellow metal whatsoever in 2013. Hmmm.
  Now for the main event:
  J P Morgan has fumbled ownership of 1,966,000 Troy ounces of gold since February 1. That's 74% more gold than the US mint delivered through its American Eagle program in all of 2012. I mention this because there's little doubt in my mind that the US government is one of JPM's gold ''customers.'' So (if I am correct) the same US government who just let the Morgue dump its gold on the COMEX floor will once again be suspending gold sales to peasants.
  Maybe Jamie Dimon figures he'll buy back all that gold on the cheap when the rest of the world realizes how smart he is. Or maybe he's once again displaying that his firm doesn't have the slightest idea what ''hedging'' is and is teetering on the brink of collapse. That would explain the April 11th meeting between President Obama and the Pig 5 bank CEOs, wouldn't it? And you just have to get a little misty that Lloyd Blankfein was nice enough to provide some hot-air cover for his competitor, don't you?
  One thing's very clear: When it comes to selling physical gold, J P Morgan is acting alone. The 130 contracts NOT delivered by JPM in the last three months (of which 110 were fromABN AMRO) are but a footnote. If Jamie's right, he'll look like a genius in a few months, if not he should be able to recycle his quote regarding the infamous ''London Whale'' losses: ''Just because we're stupid, doesn't mean everybody else was.'' Time will tell.
  100 years ago John Pierpont Morgan famously testified to Congress, ''Money is gold, and nothing else.'' (Note: That is the exact quote, the full testimony can be found here). One has to wonder what the big guy would think of his legacy's disregard for sound money, $70 Trillion derivatives book, and ''House of Cards'' ''Fortress'' balance sheet.
  One more very, very important thing.Anybody who says there's been gold selling in the GLD is a freaking moron (Bob Pistrami, I'm looking in your direction). The GLD works much like a coat check. Unless you think checking your coat constitutes a real transaction of some kind you shouldn't think of changes in the GLD's gold holdings as sales. They're not. When you check your gold into the GLD you get shares (like a claim check). Where it gets wierd is you can sell these claim checks to nimrods who seem to think they've bought your coat, but aren't actually allowed to wear it.
  What nobody seems to appreciate is that every share of GLD is allowed to be sold TWICE (long and short, and it's really important to understand that). If you're foolish enough to doubt me (and foolish enough to short gold), go short GLD shares and see if anyone knocks on your door demanding gold. Saying the GLD is 100% backed by gold is a bold face lie because they're can be twice as many shares in play as gold backing them, which means GLD shares may be only 50% backed by gold before any rules are broken.
  When GLD (or any ETF for that matter) shares sold exceed the existing shares PLUS all the shortable (double-sold) shares, legitimate shares can not be found for settlement and that must be reported to the SEC's ''Fails to Deliver'' list, which is published twice a month with about a four-week delay (here).
  April 15, 2013 was this biggest volume day ever for GLD (93.7mm) and I'll guarantee you right now that record fails to deliver will be reported on or around that date, which should have required more gold to be deposited with the GLD (but that didn't happen). So instead of the half-assed explanation Pistrami offered (here) of how he thinks the GLD works, he should have raised the question of whether or not there were enough legitimate shares of GLD to facilitate trading (I say no way in hell).
  Gold continues to be pulled from the GLD (which really means people want their coats back) and still no one's concerned about the number doubled-owned shares. Worse yet, the responsibility for sorting this unholy mess out falls to SEC chief Mary Jo White who is celebrating her 16th day in office.
  I can't wait to see what happens next'....
  Notes for Nerds: This piece is not intended to describe the inner workings of the COMEX or GLD in detail, so don't bust my balls with minutiae, unless it is relevant to the discussion of JPM's massive gold sales or the double-ownership of ETF shares. Double-owned ETF shares are huge problem with ETFs in general, but the misrepresentation (by omission) of this fact by ETFs supposedly backed by tangible assets like gold and silver seems more egregious to me.
  In addition to the YTD CME Group metals report, you can track the hilarity on a day-by-day basis here.
  The February 1 to April 25 delivered gold contracts info referenced included only transactions between firms. For that reason Morgan Stanley's 307 contracts transferred from house account to customer account was excluded from the calculations.
  Total Net gold deliveries Feb 1 to April 25:
  Vision Financial '' 1 contractR J O'Brien '' 2ADM Investor Services INC '' 2Marex '' 5Citigroup Global Markets '' 10ABN AMRO '' 110JP Morgan '' 19,660
  Update:Friday April 26 (not included in article):
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The Ties That Bind Washington to Chechen Terrorists -
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  Archived Version
  Sat, 27 Apr 2013 11:36
  by Wayne MadsenGlobal ResearchApril 26, 2013
  Evidence is mounting that the accused dead Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev, allegedly killed during an April 19 shootout with police in Watertown, Massachusetts, became a radicalized>> Muslim while participating in a covert CIA program, run through the Republic of Georgia, to destabilize Russia's North Caucasus region'... The ultimate goal of the CIA's campaign was for the Muslim inhabitants of the region to declare independence from Moscow and tilt toward the U.S. Wahhabi Muslim-run governments of Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
  The Western corporate media largely ignored an important story reported from Izvestia in Moscow: that Tamerlan Tsarnaev attended seminars run by the Caucasus Fund of Georgia, a group affiliated with the neo-conservative think tank, the Jamestown Foundation, between January and July 2012. The U.S. media reported that during this six month time frame, Tsarnaev was being radicalized by Dagestan radical imam Abu Dudzhan>>, killed in a fight with Russian security forces in 2012. Tsarnaev also visited Dagestan in 2011.
  However, in documents leaked from the Georgian Ministry of Internal Affairs' Counterintelligence Department, Tsarnaev is pinpointed as being in Tbilisi taking part in seminars>> organized by the Caucasus Fund, founded during the Georgian-South Ossetian war of 2008, a war started when Georgian troops invaded the pro-Russian Republic of South Ossetia during the Beijing Olympics. Georgia was supported militarily and with intelligence support by the United States and Israel, and the American support included U.S. Special Forces advisers on the ground in Georgia. The Georgian intelligence documents indicate Tsarnaev attended the Jamestown Foundation seminars in Tbilisi.
  The Jamestown Foundation is part of a neo-conservative network that re-branded itself after the Cold War from being anti-Soviet and anti-Communist to one that is anti-Russian and ''pro-democracy.'' The network not only consists of Jamestown and the Caucasus Fund but also other groups funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Open Society Institute (OSI).
  Georgia has become a nexus for the U.S. aid to the Russian opposition trying to oust President Vladimir Putin and his supporters from power. In March [2010], Georgia sponsored, with CIA, OSI, and British MI-6 funds, a conference titled 'Hidden Nations, Enduring Crimes: The Circassians and the People of the North Caucasus Between Past and Future.' Georgia and its CIA, OSI, and British intelligence allies are funneling cash and other support for secessionism by ethnic minorities in Russia, including Circassians, Chechens, Ingushetians, Balkars, Kabardins, Abaza, Tatars, Talysh, and Kumyks>>.
  The March 21, 2010 conference in Tbilisi was organized by the Jamestown Foundation and the International School of Caucasus Studies at Ilia State University in Georgia. If Georgian counter-intelligence documents have Tamerlan Tsarnaev attending Jamestown conferences in Tbilisi in 2011, could the Russian FSB have tracked him to the Jamestown Hidden Nations seminar in March 2010? In any event, a year later the FSB decided to contact the FBI about Tsarnaev's ties to terrorists.
  The first Russian request to the FBI came via the FBI's Legal Attache's office at the U.S. embassy in Moscow in March 2011. It took the FBI until June of 2011 to conclude that Tamerlan posed no terrorist threat but it did add his name to the Treasury Enforcement Communications System, or TECS, which monitors financial information such as bank accounts held abroad and wire transfers. In September 2011, Russian authorities, once again, alerted the U.S. of their suspicions about Tamerlan. The second alert went to the CIA. By September 2011, Russian security agencies were well aware that the Hidden Nations seminar held a year earlier was a CIA-sponsored event that was supported by the Mikheil Saakashvili government in Georgia and that other similar meetings had been held and were planned, including the one that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was to attend in Tbilisi in January 2012.
  At some point in time after the first Russian alert and either before or after the second, the CIA entered Tamerlan's name into the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment list (TIDE), a database with more than 750,000 entries that is maintained by the National Counterterrorism Center in McLean, Virginia.
  The Jamestown Foundation is a long-standing front operation for the CIA, it being founded, in part, by CIA director William Casey in 1984. The organization was used as an employer for high-ranking Soviet bloc defectors, including the Soviet Undersecretary General of the UN Arkady Shevchenko and Romanian intelligence official Ion Pacepa. The Russian domestic Federal Security Bureau and the SVR foreign intelligence agency have long suspected Jamestown of helping to foment rebellions in Chechnya, Ingushetia, and other north Caucasus republics. The March 21 Tbilisi conference on the north Caucasus a few days before the Moscow train bombings has obviously added to the suspicions of the FSB and SVR.
  Jamestown's board includes such Cold War era individuals as Marcia Carlucci; wife of Frank Carlucci, the former CIA officer, Secretary of Defense, and Chairman of The Carlyle Group [Frank Carlucci was also one of those who requested the U.S. government to allow former Chechen Republic 'Foreign Minister' Ilyas Akhmadov, accused by the Russians of terrorist ties, to be granted political asylum in the U.S. after a veto from the Homeland Security and Justice Departments], anti-Communist book and magazine publisher Alfred Regnery; and Caspar Weinberger's Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Kathleen Troia KT>> McFarland. Also on the board is former Oklahoma GOP Governor Frank Keating, the governor at the time of the 1995 Murrah Federal Building bombing.
  Cooperating with Jamestown in not only its north and south Caucasus information operations, but also in Moldovan, Belarusian, Uighur, and Uzbekistan affairs, is the ubiquitous Open Society Institute (OSI), another cipher for U.S. intelligence and global banking interests. OSI's Central Eurasia Project has sponsored a number of panels and seminars with Jamestown.
  Russian security indicated in their first communication with the FBI that Tamerlan Tsarnaev had changed drastically since 2010. That change came after the Hidden Nations conference in Tbilisi. U.S. support for Chechen and North Caucasus secession came as a result of a public statement on August 2008 by GOP presidential candidate John McCain that after Russia illegally recognized the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, Western countries ought to think about the independence of the North Caucasus and Chechnya>>.
  Upon becoming President in 2009, Barack Obama adopted McCain's proposal and authorized CIA support for North Caucasus secessionists and terrorists with money laundered through the USAID, the National Endowment for Democracy, the Open Society Institute, Freedom House, and the Jamestown Foundation. In January 2012, Obama appointed an OSI activist and neocon, Michael McFaul of the right-wing Hoover Institution at Stanford University, as U.S. ambassador to Moscow. McFaul immediately threw open the doors of the U.S. embassy to a variety of Russian dissidents, including secessionists from the North Caucasus, some of whom were suspected by the Russian FSB of ties to Islamist terrorists.
  Whether Tamerlan Tsarnaev was always a CIA asset and participated in a ''false flag'' operation in Boston and became an unwitting ''patsy'' in a CIA plot, much like ''U.S. Marine ''defector'' to the Soviet Union Lee Harvey Oswald became a ''patsy'' in President Kennedy's assassination, or he was indeed radicalized in an attempt to infiltrate him into the ranks of the Caucasus Emirate and decided to defect and carry out a terrorist attack against the United States may never be known. If the latter is the case, Tsarnaev is much like Osama Bin Laden, once a CIA fighter in the field in Afghanistan who allegedly decided to launch a jihad against the United States. If Tsarnaev was a ''patsy'' like Oswald, that might explain the setting off of an incendiary device at the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston ten minutes after the twin bombings at the Boston Marathon. After Boston Police stated the fire was caused by an explosion, the Boston Fire Department went into cover-up mode and tried to claim the fire could have been caused by someone tossing a cigarette on to flammable material.
Researchers Call Out Twitter Celebrities With Suspicious Followings - NYTimes.com
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Sat, 27 Apr 2013 09:25
  Security researchers recently shed a bright light on the multimillion-dollar underground market for fake Twitter followers. Now, they are highlighting what they believe to be some of the market's high-profile clientele.
  In a follow-up to their earlier report, two Italian security researchers, Andrea Stroppa and Carlo De Micheli, call out Twitter accounts that added or lost a large number of followers in one day. Their list includes brands like Pepsi, Mercedes-Benz and Louis Vuitton; politicians like Newt Gingrich, Representative Jared Polis and Dmitri Medvedev, the Russian prime minister; and the rappers 50 Cent and Sean Combs, known as Diddy.
  Social media experts say there are several reasons why Twitter users would want to acquire large volumes of Twitter followers. For some people, it simply feeds the ego. For people and brands, a large Twitter following or Facebook fan base helps increase their visibility. If followers are constantly clicking on links to a brand's landing page, it also lifts the brand's position in Google's search results.
  ''It's natural for brands to want to build their Twitter and Facebook accounts because they are constantly looking for ways to expand awareness of their products and services and expand opportunities to create consideration of their products compared to others,'' said Susan Etlinger, an industry analyst at the Altimeter Group. ''The more content they publish, and more links people click on, the better their Google search results. ''
  Ms. Etlinger added that there was corporate pressure to justify a company's investment in social media. Twitter followers and Facebook ''likes'' offer some of the few seemingly hard metrics in an otherwise squishy realm of social media.
  ''Many brands struggle to measure the top line value of social media,'' Ms. Etlinger said. ''So there is a thirst to show momentum in different ways, one of which is to show that the brand has a bigger audience today than it did yesterday.''
  Some major brands have expressed skepticism about the impact of social media fans and followers. Last month, Coca-Cola, whose flagship brand has over 700,000 Twitter followers and more than 60 million Facebook fans '-- more than any other brand on Facebook '-- said a corporate study found that online buzz had no quantifiable impact on short-term sales.
  Social media fans and followers tend to be volatile, brand experts say. They may start following a brand for a specific contest or sweepstakes, then drop off when the campaign ends. But Mr. Stroppa and Mr. De Micheli said the follower changes they charted were drastic enough to warrant suspicion that they were purchased.
  For example, Mr. Polis, a Democrat from Colorado with 22,140 Twitter followers on his personal @jaredpolis Twitter account, gained, on average, 15 new followers a day for two years. Then, last July, he added 19,705 new Twitter followers. A few months later, he lost 13,332 Twitter followers in one day.
  A representative for Mr. Polis denied he had purchased fake followers and said one explanation for the sudden gains and subsequent losses was a ''follow-back'' campaign. Last July, Mr. Polis said he followed a large number of new people from his personal account and asked them to follow him back. In March, he said he stopped following those accounts because he was becoming frustrated by the lack of relevant content in his Twitter feed. He now follows only 2,200 people. He surmised that a large number of followers may have stopped following him, too.
  But Mr. De Micheli said that reasoning does not justify the sudden 19,705 jump in Mr. Polis's followers in one day. Twitter's own policy prevents users from following over 1,000 new people a day: ''Every Twitter account is technically unable to follow more than 1,000 users per day,'' Twitter says on its Web site. ''Please note that this is just a technical limit to prevent egregious abuse from spam accounts.''
  As for the sudden drop, Mr. De Micheli said it would be extremely rare for 13,332 followers to stop following the congressman on the same day. To have them stop following his account, Mr. Polis would have had to block 13,332 people manually, since the only way to stop an account from following you is to manually block it.
  ''Nearly the exact amount of followers 'magically appeared,' then disappeared,'' Mr. De Micheli said. He suggested that the losses was more likely due to Twitter, which routinely deactivates accounts it deems fake. He said Mr. Polis's follower drop matched ''what the typical 'low quality' fake followers acquisition-drop graph looks like'' when Twitter deletes those accounts.
  The researchers also call out Diddy, whose verified @iamdiddy account gained 185,399 Twitter followers one day last June '-- a 3,063 percent increase from the account's average daily gain '-- and then inexplicably lost 393,665 followers one day last month, 6,504 percent more that his average daily follower loss. A representative for Mr. Combs did not return a request for comment.
  Likewise, 50 Cent lost more than 190,342 Twitter followers over the course of one day last January, a 5,370 percent jump from his average daily follower loss. A representative for 50 Cent did not respond to a request for comment.
  Mercedes added 28,283 followers one day in October 2012 '-- a 20,992 percent jump from the brand's average daily follower gain. A spokesman for Mercedes did not respond to a request for comment.
  Likewise, Pepsi added 71,686 Twitter followers one day in November 2011 and has not added that number of Twitter followers in one day since. Before the bump, Pepsi followers trailed the number of people who followed Coca-Cola, which had more linear growth. After the bump, Pepsi's followers surpassed Coca-Cola's.
  Jeff Dahncke, a spokesman for PepsiCo, said that the bump was because of promotional campaigns. ''The spikes correlate with paid activations with Twitter '-- such as promoted Tweets '-- that were designed to boost our following around key brand activations,'' Mr. Dahncke said, citing a Pepsi summer concert series and ''X Factor'' and N.F.L. promotions that year. ''The followers are validated as real followers and are not fake accounts or bots.''
  But the researchers note that a one-day gain of more than 70,000 followers because of a promotional campaign is unlikely. ''The peaks are very high even through traditional advertising, and the shapes of the curves don't really convince us,'' Mr. De Micheli said, that the peaks are due to ''traditional Web advertising.''
  Mr. Stroppa said that a major Pepsi partnership with Twitter last year did not result in the same bump. Pepsi's followers looked particularly suspicious when compared to those of Starbucks, one of the longest-running major brands on Twitter. Starbucks regularly advertises on the service and pays to promote its posts. Starbucks' biggest daily follower gain is 17,562, compared to Pepsi's 71,700. (Sixty-six percent of Pepsi's followers are legitimate, according to Status People, an online service that claims to decipher real followers from fake and inactive accounts.)
  There are now more than two dozen online services willing to sell fake followers. Based on the number of fake accounts offered through those services '-- excluding overlapping accounts '-- Mr. Stroppa and Mr. De Micheli estimate that there are now more than 20 million fake accounts on Twitter. Those accounts can be sold to multiple buyers. At quoted rates, the two said a conservative estimate is that fake Twitter followers offer potential for a $40 million to $360 million business.
  Twitter said discerning real accounts from spam accounts can be difficult. ''Spam is a problem that faces the entire Web,'' said Jim Prosser, a Twitter spokesman. ''We have a variety of manual and automated methods that evolve over time for dealing with spam, and have even sued many of the most prominent spam organizations to keep them off our service. Users can also flag potential spam accounts for our review.''
  Ms. Etlinger of Altimeter cautioned brands from dealing in fake followers. ''There will always be people who try to game the system in every nook and cranny of business,'' she said. ''But brands should know that Twitter and Facebook are getting very good at weeding out fake fans and followers. So any gains would just be temporary.''
TSARNAEV UNCLE MARRIED TOP CIA MAN'S DAUGHTER
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Source: aangirfan
  Sat, 27 Apr 2013 08:53
  The CIA's Graham Fuller, "whose daughter married the uncle of the 'Boston Bombers'".The Boston bombers' uncle married the daughter of Graham Fuller, a top CIA officialGraham Fuller, according to the New York Times, encouraged the Reagan Administration to sell weapons to the Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran.This was known as the Iran-Contra Affair."[3][4]
  Fuller's 'document' suggested that the USA should continue to be friends with Iran, in order to counter Russia.
  Ruslan is the uncle of Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the alleged Boston bombers.Ruslan Tsarnaev met and married Samantha Ankara Fuller sometime in the early 1990's, while she was a graduate student in North Carolina, and he was in law school at Duke.
  The couple divorced sometime before 2004.Uncle Ruslan Tsarnaev and the CIA's Graham Fuller may have been in business together.Ruslan once worked for a Halliburton company "used as a front to obtain oil contracts from the Kazakh State".
  Ruslan Tsarni "was implicated in an investigation involving the laundering and theft of $6 billion."
They Don't Work For You
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  Archived Version
  Fri, 26 Apr 2013 17:19
  THESE TEACHERS SACRIFICED THEIR LIVES FOR THE CHILDREN THEY WORKED FOR.
  THESE SENATORS VOTED AGAINST PROTECTING THE CHILDREN THEY WORK FOR.
  THESE SENATORS DON'T WORK FOR YOU.
  They work for the NRA, whoworks for the gun industry,whose sole purpose is tosell more guns.
Dutch Man Said to Be Arrested in Powerful Internet Attack
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Source: NYT > Home Page
  Fri, 26 Apr 2013 16:44
  Dutch authorities say they have arrested a man in connection with an online attack on a spam-fighting site that ensnarled the Internet last month, causing widespread congestion and jamming crucial infrastructure around the world.
  While the authorities did not give the full name of the man in a statement published on a government Web site, they identified him as ''S.K.'' A source close to the investigation, who was not authorized to speak publicly, confirmed that the arrested man was Sven Olaf Kamphuis, a 35-year-old Dutch man who has been the spokesman of a group that was protesting a European antispam group's tactics.
  Spanish police arrested the man on Thursday at his home in Barcelona, at the request of the Dutch police, and seized his computers and mobile phones. He is expected to be sent to the Netherlands. Wim de Bruin, a spokesman for Dutch national prosecutor's office, said "S.K.'' was suspected of playing a role in a wave of attacks that took place last month.
  His arrest followed an investigation by authorities in the Netherlands and other European countries into Mr. Kamphuis's involvement in one of the largest attacks on the Internet. Mr. Kamphuis has been suspected of starting a distributed denial of service, or DDoS, attack against Spamhaus, the antispam group. Such attacks are a criminal offense under Dutch law.
  Mr. Kamphuis calls himself the ''minister of telecommunications and foreign affairs for the Republic of CyberBunker.'' But many consider him to be the Prince of Spam. He runs CB3ROB, an Internet service provider, and CyberBunker, a Web hosting company that in the past has hosted sites like WikiLeaks and the Pirate Bay, a site accused of abetting digital content piracy.
  Antispam groups say they believe CyberBunker acts as a conduit for vast amounts of spam. Last month, Spamhaus, an antispam group based in Geneva, added CyberBunker to its blacklist, which is used by major e-mail providers to block spam.
  In the days and weeks that followed the blacklisting, Spamhaus was targeted with an DDOS attack, its site flooded with traffic until it fell offline. After Spamhaus hired a Silicon Valley Internet security firm, CloudFlare, to defend against the attack, the attackers turned their ire on CloudFlare. When attempts to bring down CloudFlare were unsuccessful, the attackers hit back with a far more powerful strike that exploited the Internet's core infrastructure, called the Domain Name System, or D.N.S.
  Their attack quickly reached previously unknown magnitudes, growing to a data stream of 300 billion bits per second, which resulted in slowing Internet traffic for millions of Internet users around the world.
  Mr. Kamphuis has denied his role in the attack and said he was only a spokesman for Stophaus, a loose organization set up to take down Spamhaus. Asked about his involvement in the attacks last month, Mr. Kamphuis told The New York Times, ''We are aware that this is one of the largest DDOS attacks the world has (publicly) seen so far, yes.''
  But through his Facebook page, Mr. Kamphuis has actively called on hackers to take Spamhaus offline.
  ''Yo anons, we could use a little help in shutting down illegal slander and blackmail censorship project 'spamhaus.org,' which thinks it can dictate its views on what should and should not be on the Internet,'' he said on Facebook on March 23.
  Dutch prosecutors singled out Mr. Kamphuis because of his vocal role. Greenhost, a Dutch Internet hosting service, said in a blog post that it had found CB3ROB's digital fingerprints while studying the attack traffic directed at Spamhaus.
  Mr. Kamphuis's arrest in Barcelona was made through the European Union's judicial collaboration unit, Eurojust.
  Eric Pfanner contributed reporting.
Kinderporno aangetroffen bij adjunct-directeur van kinderkrant
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  Archived Version
  Source: VK: Home
  Fri, 26 Apr 2013 16:41
  26/04/13, 22:53 '' bron: ANP
  (C) ANP.
  De adjunct-hoofdredacteur van kinderkrant KidsWeek, Maarten H. (34), wordt ervan verdacht kinderporno te hebben gedownload. Ook zijn vriend is aangeklaagd. Op hun computer zijn 41 foto's en 61 filmpjes met kinderporno gevonden. Komende woensdag moeten ze voor de rechter komen. KidsWeek heeft H. op non-actief gezet.
  Justitie kwam de twee op het spoor na een tip van de internationale politieorganisatie Interpol. Hun computer bleek te zijn gebruikt om sites met kinderporno te bezoeken. De computer, cd-roms en dvd's zijn in beslag genomen en onderzocht. Daarbij is geen enkel bewijs gevonden dat de beide mannen zelf kinderporno hebben gemaakt, benadrukt het Openbaar Ministerie (OM).
  Volgens het OM ontkennen de twee verdachten de beschuldigingen. Hun advocaten waren vrijdagavond niet bereikbaar voor commentaar.
  KidsWeek is geschokt door de verdenking, laat directeur Mark Termeer van de uitgeverij weten. 'We hadden absoluut geen vermoeden. Hij werkt hier al 10 jaar en heeft een onberispelijke staat van dienst. Dit ligt natuurlijk heel gevoelig.'
  Termeer kreeg pas vrijdagmiddag te horen dat H. komende woensdag moet voorkomen. 'We hebben H. vervolgens gesproken. Hij bevestigde dat er een proces kwam. Daarop hebben we hem op non-actief gesteld. Zijn advocaat zei dat de kinderporno in 2009 is meegekomen bij het downloaden van andere films op een duister netwerk.'
  Of er nog een toekomst is voor H. bij KidsWeek, ook na vrijspraak, weet Termeer nog niet. 'Het vertrouwen is duidelijk geschonden. Je kunt je voorstellen dat we onaangenaam verrast zijn wanneer we pas de week ervoor horen van de zitting, terwijl dit al langer speelt.'
caller in
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Source: Lame Cherry
  Fri, 26 Apr 2013 16:38
  Link to vid I actually watched which is not in search results for this vid's name.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoXo6X7Xuog&feature=youtu.be
  TL alert and keeping this for future reference.
  agtG
Blog | Allergy, Hormones, Hashimoto's, Acupuncture, Herbs, Anxiety | Austin
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  Fri, 26 Apr 2013 16:21
  We arrived in Abadiana early Sunday(April 7th) morning. It's a small town in Brazil with a special individual, John of God, who heals in a place called The Casa of Don Ignancio. Sunday afternoon I received a tour of my first visit to The Casa. It began by walking through the gates and peering through white and blue buildings. The first room we entered was filled with lots and lots of canes, walkers and wheel chairs left by people who received 'a healing' and did not need them anymore. Next came the room where they perform the surgeries (physical), one of many remedies (other remedies include energetic surgery, herbs, crystal bed treatments, a visit to the waterfall and sitting in current) he prescribes. The surgeries are glamorized about John of God (lots of you tube videos and even Oprah has footage).
  The room is filled with pictures of healers from around the world. After a prayer, I am shown the infirmary where people go after surgery. Next, we see a kitchen where they make and provide free soup on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday for everyone who wants it. The path takes us to a beautiful overlook of rolling hills with many wood benches. People are praying and meditating. After passing the rooms that contain the crystal beds, we go toward the crystal store. As we turn the corner, there is a large crystal amongst hundreds of crystals that catches my eye. I walk up towards it and touch it with both hands. I smile as I am filled with joy and a powerful energy. My friend sees my response and tells me to put my forehead on it. When I do this, wow, it was as if I was seeing Kirlian photography. Vivid colors and different shapes fill my head like a kladieoscope. I walk away not knowing what to expect in the days to come'...possibilities.
  I decided to come see John of God because a friend and patient of mine came into my office many months ago. She told me to test her systems without telling me anything. I had not tested her systems for a few months, but there were always disbalances. This time only one system came up! I triple checked and crossed checked. Totally shocked, I asked what she had done. She told me she had gone to Brazil and seen John of God three months ago. It was at that moment that I heard a voice saying, ''You're going''. At that time, I did not understand why, who John was or what he did. I didn't mentally comprehend what was going on, but I told her if she was going again to let me know.
  Months passed and I vacation in Tulum, Mexico. When I get back, I receive an email from my friend giving me the dates of her next trip to Brazil. I was really interested in going, however; I just went on vacation'...time and money. Could I really take more time off and did I have the money for a two-week trip? I was entering my first test, how much did I want to go? I began dreaming the answer of yes, yes then more yeses'...and of course, the money came. I bought my ticket.
  People who have written books about John of God (there are many) say that when you buy your ticket, the spiritual energies begin to work on you. I didn't feel much different until two weeks before my trip. I began to dream of scenes and events that later actually came true. One of these was a dream in which I was directed to a prayer room (it turned out to be the current room). I began praying for myself. It then became clear that I was not there to pray for myself. My purpose was to pray for everyone I knew'...my family, friends and all my patients'...one by one. Little did I know, this would happen during my first visit in the current, which will be described in detail soon.
  It's Monday and rain comes down cleansing the streets and our souls. Puddles of mud are created just as our issues accumulate in a pool inside our energy field. Today I go for my second crystal bed treatment. This one will be for a double session back to back (40min). The crystal beds consist of 7 crystals, one for each chakra, with a colored flashing light (color coordinating to color of the chakra). The crystals are above you as you lie on a table face up. The flashing crystals hover above you from a device that holds the crystals over each chakra, flashing insequence with every other chakra (1st is simultaneous with 3rd charka..etc).
  The crystal bed treatment was wonderful. The first part was relaxing and I even fell asleep at times. When I was awakened, a question popped in my head of what color I needed help with (coordinating with which chakra or energetic area I needed help with). I saw yellow light. I felt and saw the light of five beings around me healing my physical body. Energy poured out of my solar plexus (my midsection around my Liver). Heat and constriction flowed out leaving me in a neutral space. Next, my palms automatically went face up. Energy flowed out my palms and my third eye, forming a triangle. The beings disappeared into the triangle. I began to receive a transmission of love, peace and serenity. The feeling was strong at first then began to fade. I found myself wanting to sing or hum. The humming flows out slow and drawn out. The notes were something I heard a shaman sing a few years ago during a ceremony.
  I came out feeling emptied of congested energy and restored; my body was thirsty for a fresh coconut water. After that pleasure, I visited the crystal store. For those who know me, I have a special relationship with crystals. They have been my assistants in helping others for many years. My search began for the ones that wanted to come to my clinic.
  We woke up early Wednesday morning to meet John of God. After getting our tickets to go in the first time line, we visited the translator to transcribe (to Portuguese) our top three things we wanted to work on. There is a lot of waiting in this process. Learning patience is part of the healing process of slowing us down.
  They call for the first time line and everyone squeezes into some resemblance of a line. The line moves into the first interior room called the first current room. Our line moves past a group of people who are seated and have their eyes closed. They are helping to cleanse the people passing through to see John of God or Jo£o de Deus.
  Then came my 10 seconds with him. I handed the translator my note of the three things I want to work on'...nothing was ever said between Jo£o and the translator. He takes my right hand into his hand and looks through me (he is looking at my aura, my energy). Something is muttered in Portuguese and he hands me a prescription. The translator tells me to go to current at 1:15 later that day and to pick up herbs at the pharmacy.
  Amanda and I ate some blessed soup, and then prayed on the deck overlooking beautiful green luscious hills.
  I was back at 1:15 for current, not knowing what to expect. I sat in a wooden pew (without crossing any part of my body) eyes closed for 5 hours! We were to hold the space, pray and clear the energy of the future lines of people to pass. Our job is also to support the body of Jo£o.
  Before I continue with current, I want to say more about who John of God is. He is a full-embodied medium. This means spirits enter him and perform the healing or prescription. He is not aware of what goes on, yet it is rough on his physical body. This is one of the purposes of current. To support John's physical body, while a spirit is in him.
  During the beginning of current, I felt a vortex of energy like a slow moving tornado in the middle of the room. I felt like it was a doorway to the spirit world. I have done all sorts of meditations'...Tai Chi, Qi Gong, Reiki treatments and nothing compared to this experience. What they did not tell me is that your issues begin to come up.
  I thought I was going to focus on a physical issue of mine then let it go. This was not the case. I automatically began to pray for my family, my girlfriend's family, my friends and each of my patients one by one. This feeling was so powerful.
  During the current session I could feel people's stuff or issues come up. The air was thick and I could sense emotions floating all around. Most of the energy would go into the vortex. This is one of the reasons we are to keep our eyes closed. Otherwise, some of the energy could enter us'...not a good thing obviously.
  Towards the last hour, we were directed to bring in the light and to ask for self help. This is where I began to practice Qi Gong (Yan Xin). This internal form helped me to absorb the qi or energy inward. The practice of course was amplified by being in current. After some closing prayers, we were allowed to open our eyes. The transition was slow back to this world. I later learned that everyone has a different experience in the current room. I heard some say it was the hardest thing they had ever done. The current room brings out our issues and we have nowhere to hide.
  The next morning, Thursday April 11, I get an invisible surgery. They seat you in a special room and ask you to close your eyes. You place your hand on your heart or whatever body part you want operated on. A few minutes pass, they ask us to enter another room to receive a blessing. I feel no different, yet I know something is happening. We then buy more herbs. We are to not eat peppers, drink alcohol, or have sex for 40days (the sex part applies to those receiving their 1st surgery, eight days for future surgeries). If you have any attachment to any one of those things, it could be rough. And if your like me, your thinking 'this better be worth it'. After the surgery, I am to go back to my room and sleep for the next 24 hours. This can also be a challenge. I love to sleep, but this is a little bit much. Being confined to the room and closing your eyes is part of the processing however.
  My girlfriend, Amanda, had a surgery at the same time as mine. She chose to touch her low back-sacrum area, where there's been low-grade pain for fifteen years. She had tried every kind of therapy possible except surgery. The next day after her invisible surgery, her back pain is 95% better! What is even more amazing to me is that she has a small, pink, two-inch incision line on her spine where her pain was. It was as if she had a physical surgery. I have heard of reports of people having these invisible surgeries from John of God, then later going back to their doctors and they find internal stitches in the x-rays. I am skeptical, but seeing it is believing it. Over a week later, the pain is 100% gone and the incision line is gone. Results, results, results are what I always say. My logical mine does not understand, but when you experience amazing effects, trust begins to grow in the process.
  The second time in the current room was more challenging and rewarding. Once again sitting for 4 hours with your eyes closed and not crossing any part of your body. The current room is where there are amazing gems can be discovered by facing your issues head on. This can be very intense. People cry and release; its like a spiritual washing machine. And sometimes you get wrung out.
  When I began meditation, it was very clear what I was to work on. For the next few hours I cleared blocks between myself and others I had personal issues with. Any negative emotions or blocks with anyone I knew must be cleansed for me to move on in this process. This was very tough. Think about someone that really triggers you, why they trigger you, and making peace (from your end) with them energetically. The current room accelerated this process exponentially (It has taken me years of other work, which never got me there). Involuntary tears fill my eyes at the peace in my heart. The blocks between these others and myself vanished. I released a weight I didn't realize I even had. These blocks are part of what creates disease. I accepted others for who they are, where they are at in their process of life, and saw the blocks I allowed to come from my end.
  The next day, Saturday, Amanda and I visited the waterfall. After about a mile hike down a gravel road in the Brazilian hill country, we enter the area of the Sacred Waterfall. Men and women must go down to the waterfall separately. It is truly beautiful (unfortunately no cameras are allowed). Huge Amazonian blue butterflies fill the air. Monkeys are in the trees as you dunk in the water cleansing your body, mind, and spirit. This is the kind of place where you might expect to see fairies.
  Sunday morning we go to church service that involves mostly songs and few prayers. All sorts of songs are sung; everything from Down at the River, to Imagine (by John Lennon) are sung. Songs are sung in English, French, German, Italian, and Portuguese. Truly unifying to hear people from around the world join in song and prayer.
  Wednesday, back to the Casa for two Currents in one Day
  Today I started with my first current of the day at 7:10am. This one went all over the map. I covered many areas of my life to work on. I started by a kind of review of what I accomplished in the first two currents. The current room was reminding me not to lose any ground that I had accomplished. New issues that started to come up over the days between the sessions came up. It is so profound to create a game plan for these issues, explore what energy has you locked into a pattern, and take the next step toward unwinding it. The new challenge with this session is that I would be on one issue then jump to the next, but then realize I needed more work on the previous issue. The current ended with a new mantra of mine called the Wise Warrior. It represents being in a calm non-reactive state, yet being in my power and being able to call upon my power when needed. The new model of wise warrior is like a Tai Chi master.
  I decided to try a second session of current in one day. This means sitting for about 8 hours total in one day. I thought I was up for the challenge. External challenges that I have been able to let go in the past were much harder this session. I got there early to get a good seat. I got out my prayer beads and did a round of prayers before current began. Right before current began (they close the doors), someone came in and squeezed in the pew next to me. Now, from the beginning I already felt slightly too tight, with little wiggle room. Then it got hot, and I got super sleepy. This suffering lasted for about an hour. Then my meditation kicked in. I was working on more depth of the same subjects as the morning. Then the wise warrior (That's me) got even more tested. Someone who was walking in line to see John of God, fell in front of me. My eyes stayed closed. However, the challenge lie in being calm, nonreactive and keeping your eyes closed while someone falls in front of you with a loud thump, a cane dropping, her shrieking, and the reacting of the people in the line. My energy didn't take on the energy of the person falling or the people in line. I simply allowed the energy to go up and out. (She turned out to be ok)
  After the session, I enjoyed a coconut water and a enjoyed a beautiful sunset (pictures soon to come). A few minutes after getting back to the hotel, I realized how stagnated I felt for not moving or talking for most of day. Irritability hit me hard. I wanted to workout, lift weights, run, or hit a punching bag, or something. But because I had a surgery last week, I am to do none of these. So I took a long walk. After a nice dinner, I treated myself to an acai pudding with mango cream to smooth out my ruffled feathers. And it worked.
  Thursday, April 18, 2013 Today we went into a line called the revision line (it's a line you go through in which John of God tells you what to do after your surgery). While in line you pass by all the people sitting in current. This was the first time I could feel the effect of current as a person going through line. Before, when I had sat in current I felt the energy generator we were creating. Now I was receiving a different benefit from current, they were cleansing me. There are two main rooms of current and they felt different. The first room of current felt like it began the cleansing process on a denser energetic level, perhaps physical. The second current room seemed lighter, cleansing a lighter layer. Then before you get to Jo£o de Deus, there are five to seven mediums to the left and the right of the line. These mediums are people who have been chosen by Jo£o and have gone to a special school to enhance their clairvoyant abilities. They are clearing stuff on all levels. To the left of Jo£o are five to eight huge 5ft crystals (I lost my counting ability), which just pull you forward. Seeing Jo£o was disappointing. He simply looked at me and gave me a prescription for more herbs. It is part of the process. As an American, I want to know my next step. This part of the world teaches you patience. I waited for hours for him to tell me to come back this afternoon. However, just going through the line is healing.
  During the afternoon, I went through the line again to get permission to go to the waterfall. He gives me a waterfall prescription, which allows me two more visits. The entire day was about waiting, learning patience, and allowing healing from going through the line. I felt it was a nice change from sitting in current for eight hours like the previous day.
  I also got to witness a couple of physical surgeries. WOW! I have seen them on You Tube but seeing them live is quite an experience. He performed a nose surgery on a man. This entails putting eight-inch forceps into the nose toward the brain and twisting over and over. He performed another surgery on a woman's abdomen to remove cancer. The physical surgeries are voluntary; any one can have one. This does not mean they are any more powerful over an invisible surgery. It's what ever you need to believe. I met so many people cured of cancer with invisible surgeries. Hearing the stories touched my heart. There was a story I heard today of a woman who was deaf and mostly blind. She was in line when John of God saw her in line. He stopped the line and asked her to come forward to perform an eye scraping surgery (he literally takes a scalpel and scrapes her eye). The next day the woman said it was the first time in over a decade she could see her hand in front of her face clearly. These stories are common, yet for some, it can take many trips of going to the Casa. The staff at the Casa says that everyone must participate in their own healing. With each trip, the spirits work on us but we must also work on ourselves.
  Friday April 18, 2013
  This was my final day to receive any healing from the Casa this trip. I chose to sit in current for the morning. I got up bright and early and got the Casa by 7am to get a seat. This current was amazing! I began my meditation and I fell deep fast. I received help from some spiritual guide who asked me to follow him. We went to an empty outdoor musical amphitheater. He showed me to my seat and for a flash he let me see the entire theatre filled with people. Everyone disappeared because he knew it would be too distracting for me. We were to practice traveling now from this place to some places that were familiar to me. This was what I labeled as astral travel which I had done some in the past. I was to practice this over and over. It was so much fun to travel and learn from masters, practitioners, and friends I had from my past. I began to ask if this was to prepare me for teachers I had not yet met. He smiled as if confirming the thought and said, ''You have no idea what is possible''. My job is to practice this level of astral travel and they will help me in the future. But I must do the work. I have to do everything I have learned on this trip in action. The rest of current was a review of all of my teachings during the trip. It turned out to be a 5-hour current. The last 30-45 minutes were challenging but prayer and Qi Gong sure do help.
  For the afternoon session, I decided to have my second invisible surgery. I did not feel many changes with my first surgery but I had made so much progress in current so I was optimistic. The surgery lasted over 15 minutes. I felt tired and out of it immediately thereafter. I went back to the hotel and fell asleep for a short while. I didn't sleep much until about 9pm. I crashed hard. In the middle of the night I felt like someone was touching me. I felt warm healing energy. Suddenly a full plastic 1.5Liter water bottle fell over and made a loud noise. It startled me. My immediate thought was that the healing spirits were here. Until then I had not felt much with the surgeries. I had one of the greatest rejuvenating nights of sleep in my life. I awoke with a peace, calmness, and the joy of a child. I was processing the rest of the morning what had happened that night. I was now convinced the spirits had come to help me heal from my surgery. Feeling is believing. I could feel some results from the surgery. At that moment, I knew I would be back for some more healing for my heart, mind, and soul. A little bit more to come'.....
Nazi Secret: Report Reveals 'Derrick' Actor Was SS Member - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Fri, 26 Apr 2013 14:39
  04/26/2013Font:-+DPA
  A 1993 archive photo of actor Horst Tappert playing the role of Stephan Derrick
  He was known far beyond Germany's borders for his portrayal of Detective Chief Inspector Stephan Derrick on television. On Friday, information emerged suggesting actor Horst Tappert served as a member of the notorious Waffen-SS and hid the fact for years.
  The German television show "Derrick" was one of the most successful crime show exports in the country's history, with broadcasters in 102 countries running it in syndication over the years. It emerged on Friday that the actor who played the enormously popular television detective, Horst Tappert, had a secret. He served as a member of the SS during World War II.
  The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported on Friday that Tappert was a member of an SS anti-aircraft group (SS-Flakabteilung), in Arolsen, Germany, that was under the command of the notorious Waffen-SS.
  Sociologist J¶rg Becker uncovered a document showing Tappert had been a member of the SS while conducting research at the German agency WASt -- which maintains records of members of the former Wehrmacht, the German military under the Nazis -- for a memoir he is writing about another person. Becker told the newspaper the document shows that Tappert became a member of the Waffen-SS as a low-level grenadier by March 1943 at the latest, at the age of 19.
  Prominent Dresden-based historian Jan Erik Schulte, an expert on the history of the SS, told SPIEGEL ONLINE that the circumstances of Tappert's membership in the SS and the question of whether he was pressured or coerced to join remains unclear.
  Tappert played the role of Detective Chief Inspector Stephan Derrick from 1974 to 1998. A total of 281 episodes were filmed by German public broadcaster ZDF.
  Tappert's affable portrayal of Inspector Derrick, an elegant, serious and empathetic official, embodied the character of an upstanding, postwar citizen in West Germany. It also helped to make the series popular abroad and Tappert one of the country's best-known actors internationally. He died in 2008 at the age of 85. In his comments about the war period and in his later memoir, Tappert never revealed any role in the SS.
  dsl -- with wires
  Keep track of the newsStay informed with our free news services:
  All news from SPIEGEL International
Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Fri, 26 Apr 2013 14:33
  The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA; Pub.L. 104''191, 110 Stat. 1936, enacted August 21, 1996) was enacted by the United States Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton in 1996. It was sponsored by Sen. Nancy Kassebaum (R-Kan.).[1] Title I of HIPAA protects health insurance coverage for workers and their families when they change or lose their jobs. Title II of HIPAA, known as the Administrative Simplification (AS) provisions, requires the establishment of national standards for electronic health care transactions and national identifiers for providers, health insurance plans, and employers.[2]
  This act gives the right to privacy to individuals from age 12 through 18. The provider must have a signed disclosure form the affected before giving out any information on provided health care to anyone, including parents.[3][4]
  The administrative simplification provisions also address the security and privacy of health data. The standards are meant to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the nation's health care system by encouraging the widespread use of electronic data interchange in the U.S. health care system.[citation needed]
  [edit]Title I: Health Care Access, Portability, and RenewabilityTitle I of HIPAA regulates the availability and breadth of group health plans and certain individual health insurance policies. It amended the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, the Public Health Service Act, and the Internal Revenue Code.
  Title I also limits restrictions that a group health plan can place on benefits for preexisting conditions. Group health plans may refuse to provide benefits relating to preexisting conditions for a period of 12 months after enrollment in the plan or 18 months in the case of late enrollment.[5] However, individuals may reduce this exclusion period if they had group health plan coverage or health insurance prior to enrolling in the plan. Title I allows individuals to reduce the exclusion period by the amount of time that they had "creditable coverage" prior to enrolling in the plan and after any "significant breaks" in coverage.[6] "Creditable coverage" is defined quite broadly and includes nearly all group and individual health plans, Medicare, and Medicaid.[7] A "significant break" in coverage is defined as any 63 day period without any creditable coverage.[8]
  Some health care plans are exempted from Title I requirements, such as long-term health plans and limited-scope plans such as dental or vision plans that are offered separately from the general health plan. However, if such benefits are part of the general health plan, then HIPAA still applies to such benefits. For example, if the new plan offers dental benefits, then it must count creditable continuous coverage under the old health plan towards any of its exclusion periods for dental benefits.
  An alternate method of calculating creditable continuous coverage is available to the health plan under Title I. That is, 5 categories of health coverage can be considered separately, including dental and vision coverage. Anything not under those 5 categories must use the general calculation (e.g., the beneficiary may be counted with 18 months of general coverage, but only 6 months of dental coverage, because the beneficiary did not have a general health plan that covered dental until 6 months prior to the application date). Since limited-coverage plans are exempt from HIPAA requirements, the odd case exists in which the applicant to a general group health plan cannot obtain certificates of creditable continuous coverage for independent limited-scope plans such as dental to apply towards exclusion periods of the new plan that does include those coverages.
  Hidden exclusion periods are not valid under Title I (e.g., "The accident, to be covered, must have occurred while the beneficiary was covered under this exact same health insurance contract"). Such clauses must not be acted upon by the health plan and also must be re-written so that they comply with HIPAA.
  To illustrate, suppose someone enrolls in a group health plan on January 1, 2006. This person had previously been insured from January 1, 2004 until February 1, 2005 and from August 1, 2005 until December 31, 2005. To determine how much coverage can be credited against the exclusion period in the new plan, start at the enrollment date and count backwards until a significant break in coverage is reached. So, the five months of coverage between August 1, 2005 and December 31, 2005 clearly counts against the exclusion period. But the period without insurance between February 1, 2005 and August 1, 2005 is greater than 63 days. Thus, this is a significant break in coverage, and any coverage prior to it cannot be deducted from the exclusion period. So, this person could deduct five months from his exclusion period, reducing the exclusion period to seven months. Hence, Title I requires that any preexisting condition begin to be covered on August 1, 2006.
  [edit]Title II: Preventing Health Care Fraud and Abuse; Administrative Simplification; Medical Liability ReformTitle II of HIPAA defines policies, procedures and guidelines for maintaining the privacy and security of individually identifiable health information as well as outlining numerous offenses relating to health care and sets civil and criminal penalties for violations. It also creates several programs to control fraud and abuse within the health care system.[9][10][11] However, the most significant provisions of Title II are its Administrative Simplification rules. Title II requires the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to draft rules aimed at increasing the efficiency of the health care system by creating standards for the use and dissemination of health care information.
  These rules apply to "covered entities" as defined by HIPAA and the HHS. Covered entities include health plans, health care clearinghouses, such as billing services and community health information systems, and health care providers that transmit health care data in a way that is regulated by HIPAA.[12][13]
  Per the requirements of Title II, the HHS has promulgated five rules regarding Administrative Simplification: the Privacy Rule, the Transactions and Code Sets Rule, the Security Rule, the Unique Identifiers Rule, and the Enforcement Rule.
  [edit]Privacy RuleThe effective compliance date of the Privacy Rule was April 14, 2003 with a one-year extension for certain "small plans". The HIPAA Privacy Rule regulates the use and disclosure of Protected Health Information (PHI) held by "covered entities" (generally, health care clearinghouses, employer sponsored health plans, health insurers, and medical service providers that engage in certain transactions.)[14] By regulation, the Department of Health and Human Services extended the HIPAA privacy rule to independent contractors of covered entities who fit within the definition of "business associates".[15] PHI is any information held by a covered entity which concerns health status, provision of health care, or payment for health care that can be linked to an individual.[16] This is interpreted rather broadly and includes any part of an individual's medical record or payment history. Covered entities must disclose PHI to the individual within 30 days upon request.[17] They also must disclose PHI when required to do so by law such as reporting suspected child abuse to state child welfare agencies.[18]
  A covered entity may disclose PHI (Protected Health Information) to facilitate treatment, payment, or health care operations without a patient's express written authorization.[19] Any other disclosures of PHI (Protected Health Information) require the covered entity to obtain written authorization from the individual for the disclosure.[20] However, when a covered entity discloses any PHI, it must make a reasonable effort to disclose only the minimum necessary information required to achieve its purpose.[21]
  The Privacy Rule gives individuals the right to request that a covered entity correct any inaccurate PHI.[22] It also requires covered entities to take reasonable steps to ensure the confidentiality of communications with individuals.[23] For example, an individual can ask to be called at his or her work number instead of home or cell phone numbers.
  The Privacy Rule requires covered entities to notify individuals of uses of their PHI. Covered entities must also keep track of disclosures of PHI and document privacy policies and procedures.[24] They must appoint a Privacy Official and a contact person[25] responsible for receiving complaints and train all members of their workforce in procedures regarding PHI.[26]
  An individual who believes that the Privacy Rule is not being upheld can file a complaint with the Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights (OCR).[27][28] However, according to the Wall Street Journal, the OCR has a long backlog and ignores most complaints. "Complaints of privacy violations have been piling up at the Department of Health and Human Services. Between April of 2003 and November 2006, the agency fielded 23,886 complaints related to medical-privacy rules, but it has not yet taken any enforcement actions against hospitals, doctors, insurers or anyone else for rule violations. A spokesman for the agency says it has closed three-quarters of the complaints, typically because it found no violation or after it provided informal guidance to the parties involved."[29] However, in July 2011, UCLA agreed to pay $865,500 in a settlement regarding potential HIPAA violations. An HHS Office for Civil Rights investigation showed that from 2005 to 2008 unauthorized employees repeatedly and without legitimate cause looked at the electronic protected health information of numerous UCLAHS patients.[30]
  [edit]Transactions and Code Sets RuleHIPAA was intended to make the health care system in the United States more efficient by standardizing health care transactions. HIPAA added a new Part C titled "Administrative Simplification" to Title XI of the Social Security Act. This is supposed to simplify health care transactions by requiring all health plans to engage in health care transactions in a standardized way.
  The HIPAA/EDI provision was scheduled to take effect from October 16, 2003 with a one-year extension for certain "small plans". However, due to widespread confusion and difficulty in implementing the rule, CMS granted a one-year extension to all parties.[citation needed] On January 1, 2012 newer versions, ASC X12 005010 and NCPDP D.0 become effective, replacing the previous ASC X12 004010 and NCPDP 5.1 mandate.[31] The ASC X12 005010 version provides a mechanism allowing the use of ICD-10-CM as well as other improvements.
  After July 1, 2005 most medical providers that file electronically did have to file their electronic claims using the HIPAA standards in order to be paid.[citation needed]
  Under HIPAA, HIPAA-covered health plans are now required to use standardized HIPAA electronic transactions. See, 42 USC § 1320d-2 and 45 CFR Part 162. Information about this can be found in the final rule for HIPAA electronic transaction standards (74 Fed. Reg. 3296, published in the Federal Register on January 16, 2009), and on the CMS website here:CMS information on HIPAA standardized electronic transactions
  Key EDI(X12) transactions used for HIPAA compliance are:
  EDI Health Care Claim Transaction set (837) is used to submit health care claim billing information, encounter information, or both, except for retail pharmacy claims (see EDI Retail Pharmacy Claim Transaction). It can be sent from providers of health care services to payers, either directly or via intermediary billers and claims clearinghouses. It can also be used to transmit health care claims and billing payment information between payers with different payment responsibilities where coordination of benefits is required or between payers and regulatory agencies to monitor the rendering, billing, and/or payment of health care services within a specific health care/insurance industry segment.
  For example, a state mental health agency may mandate all healthcare claims, Providers and health plans who trade professional (medical) health care claims electronically must use the 837 Health Care Claim: Professional standard to send in claims. As there are many different business applications for the Health Care claim, there can be slight derivations to cover off claims involving unique claims such as for Institutions, Professionals, Chiropractors, and Dentists etc.
  EDI Retail Pharmacy Claim Transaction (NCPDP Telecommunications Standard version 5.1) is used to submit retail pharmacy claims to payers by health care professionals who dispense medications, either directly or via intermediary billers and claims clearinghouses. It can also be used to transmit claims for retail pharmacy services and billing payment information between payers with different payment responsibilities where coordination of benefits is required or between payers and regulatory agencies to monitor the rendering, billing, and/or payment of retail pharmacy services within the pharmacy health care/insurance industry segment.
  EDI Health Care Claim Payment/Advice Transaction Set (835) can be used to make a payment, send an Explanation of Benefits (EOB), send an Explanation of Payments (EOP) remittance advice, or make a payment and send an EOP remittance advice only from a health insurer to a health care provider either directly or via a financial institution.
  EDI Benefit Enrollment and Maintenance Set (834) can be used by employers, unions, government agencies, associations or insurance agencies to enroll members to a payer. The payer is a healthcare organization that pays claims, administers insurance or benefit or product. Examples of payers include an insurance company, health care professional (HMO), preferred provider organization (PPO), government agency (Medicaid, Medicare etc.) or any organization that may be contracted by one of these former groups.
  EDI Payroll Deducted and other group Premium Payment for Insurance Products (820) is a transaction set which can be used to make a premium payment for insurance products. It can be used to order a financial institution to make a payment to a payee.
  EDI Health Care Eligibility/Benefit Inquiry (270) is used to inquire about the health care benefits and eligibility associated with a subscriber or dependent.
  EDI Health Care Eligibility/Benefit Response (271) is used to respond to a request inquiry about the health care benefits and eligibility associated with a subscriber or dependent.
  EDI Health Care Claim Status Request (276) This transaction set can be used by a provider, recipient of health care products or services or their authorized agent to request the status of a health care claim.
  EDI Health Care Claim Status Notification (277) This transaction set can be used by a health care payer or authorized agent to notify a provider, recipient or authorized agent regarding the status of a health care claim or encounter, or to request additional information from the provider regarding a health care claim or encounter. This transaction set is not intended to replace the Health Care Claim Payment/Advice Transaction Set (835) and therefore, is not used for account payment posting. The notification is at a summary or service line detail level. The notification may be solicited or unsolicited.
  EDI Health Care Service Review Information (278) This transaction set can be used to transmit health care service information, such as subscriber, patient, demographic, diagnosis or treatment data for the purpose of request for review, certification, notification or reporting the outcome of a health care services review.
  EDI Functional Acknowledgement Transaction Set (997) this transaction set can be used to define the control structures for a set of acknowledgments to indicate the results of the syntactical analysis of the electronically encoded documents. Although it is not specifically named in the HIPAA Legislation or Final Rule, it is necessary for X12 transaction set processing. The encoded documents are the transaction sets, which are grouped in functional groups, used in defining transactions for business data interchange. This standard does not cover the semantic meaning of the information encoded in the transaction sets.
  [edit]Brief 5010 Transactions and Code Sets Rules Update Summary1) Transaction Set (997) will be replaced by Transaction Set (999) "acknowledgement report".2) The size of many fields {segment elements} will be expanded, causing a need for all IT providers to expand corresponding fields, element, files, GUI, paper media and databases.3) Some segments have been removed from existing Transaction Sets.4) Many segments have been added to existing Transaction Sets allowing greater tracking and reporting of cost and patient encounters.5) Capacity to use both "International Classification of Diseases" versions 9 (ICD-9) and 10 (ICD-10-CM) has been added.[32][33]
  [edit]Security RuleThe Final Rule on Security Standards was issued on February 20, 2003. It took effect on April 21, 2003 with a compliance date of April 21, 2005 for most covered entities and April 21, 2006 for "small plans". The Security Rule complements the Privacy Rule. While the Privacy Rule pertains to all Protected Health Information (PHI) including paper and electronic, the Security Rule deals specifically with Electronic Protected Health Information (EPHI). It lays out three types of security safeguards required for compliance: administrative, physical, and technical. For each of these types, the Rule identifies various security standards, and for each standard, it names both required and addressable implementation specifications. Required specifications must be adopted and administered as dictated by the Rule. Addressable specifications are more flexible. Individual covered entities can evaluate their own situation and determine the best way to implement addressable specifications. Some privacy advocates have argued that this "flexibility" may provide too much latitude to covered entities.[34] The standards and specifications are as follows:
  Administrative Safeguards '' policies and procedures designed to clearly show how the entity will comply with the actCovered entities (entities that must comply with HIPAA requirements) must adopt a written set of privacy procedures and designate a privacy officer to be responsible for developing and implementing all required policies and procedures.The policies and procedures must reference management oversight and organizational buy-in to compliance with the documented security controls.Procedures should clearly identify employees or classes of employees who will have access to electronic protected health information (EPHI). Access to EPHI must be restricted to only those employees who have a need for it to complete their job function.The procedures must address access authorization, establishment, modification, and termination.Entities must show that an appropriate ongoing training program regarding the handling of PHI is provided to employees performing health plan administrative functions.Covered entities that out-source some of their business processes to a third party must ensure that their vendors also have a framework in place to comply with HIPAA requirements. Companies typically gain this assurance through clauses in the contracts stating that the vendor will meet the same data protection requirements that apply to the covered entity. Care must be taken to determine if the vendor further out-sources any data handling functions to other vendors and monitor whether appropriate contracts and controls are in place.A contingency plan should be in place for responding to emergencies. Covered entities are responsible for backing up their data and having disaster recovery procedures in place. The plan should document data priority and failure analysis, testing activities, and change control procedures.Internal audits play a key role in HIPAA compliance by reviewing operations with the goal of identifying potential security violations. Policies and procedures should specifically document the scope, frequency, and procedures of audits. Audits should be both routine and event-based.Procedures should document instructions for addressing and responding to security breaches that are identified either during the audit or the normal course of operations.Physical Safeguards '' controlling physical access to protect against inappropriate access to protected dataControls must govern the introduction and removal of hardware and software from the network. (When equipment is retired it must be disposed of properly to ensure that PHI is not compromised.)Access to equipment containing health information should be carefully controlled and monitored.Access to hardware and software must be limited to properly authorized individuals.Required access controls consist of facility security plans, maintenance records, and visitor sign-in and escorts.Policies are required to address proper workstation use. Workstations should be removed from high traffic areas and monitor screens should not be in direct view of the public.If the covered entities utilize contractors or agents, they too must be fully trained on their physical access responsibilities.Technical Safeguards '' controlling access to computer systems and enabling covered entities to protect communications containing PHI transmitted electronically over open networks from being intercepted by anyone other than the intended recipient.Information systems housing PHI must be protected from intrusion. When information flows over open networks, some form of encryption must be utilized. If closed systems/networks are utilized, existing access controls are considered sufficient and encryption is optional.Each covered entity is responsible for ensuring that the data within its systems has not been changed or erased in an unauthorized manner.Data corroboration, including the use of check sum, double-keying, message authentication, and digital signature may be used to ensure data integrity.Covered entities must also authenticate entities with which they communicate. Authentication consists of corroborating that an entity is who it claims to be. Examples of corroboration include: password systems, two or three-way handshakes, telephone callback, and token systems.Covered entities must make documentation of their HIPAA practices available to the government to determine compliance.In addition to policies and procedures and access records, information technology documentation should also include a written record of all configuration settings on the components of the network because these components are complex, configurable, and always changing.Documented risk analysis and risk management programs are required. Covered entities must carefully consider the risks of their operations as they implement systems to comply with the act. (The requirement of risk analysis and risk management implies that the act's security requirements are a minimum standard and places responsibility on covered entities to take all reasonable precautions necessary to prevent PHI from being used for non-health purposes.)[edit]Unique Identifiers Rule (National Provider Identifier)HIPAA covered entities such as providers completing electronic transactions, healthcare clearinghouses, and large health plans, must use only the National Provider Identifier (NPI) to identify covered healthcare providers in standard transactions by May 23, 2007. Small health plans must use only the NPI by May 23, 2008.
  Effective from May 2006 (May 2007 for small health plans), all covered entities using electronic communications (e.g., physicians, hospitals, health insurance companies, and so forth) must use a single new NPI. The NPI replaces all other identifiers used by health plans, Medicare, Medicaid, and other government programs. However, the NPI does not replace a provider's DEA number, state license number, or tax identification number. The NPI is 10 digits (may be alphanumeric), with the last digit being a checksum. The NPI cannot contain any embedded intelligence; in other words, the NPI is simply a number that does not itself have any additional meaning. The NPI is unique and national, never re-used, and except for institutions, a provider usually can have only one. An institution may obtain multiple NPIs for different "subparts" such as a free-standing cancer center or rehab facility.
  [edit]Enforcement RuleOn February 16, 2006, HHS issued the Final Rule regarding HIPAA enforcement. It became effective on March 16, 2006. The Enforcement Rule sets civil money penalties for violating HIPAA rules and establishes procedures for investigations and hearings for HIPAA violations. For many years there were few prosecutions for violations.[35]
  This may have changed with the fining of $50,000 to the Hospice of North Idaho (HONI) as the first entity to be fined for a potential HIPAA Security Rule breach affecting fewer than 500 people.[36] Rachel Seeger, a spokeswoman for HHS, stated, ''HONI did not conduct an accurate and thorough risk analysis to the confidentiality of ePHI as part of its security management process from 2005 through Jan. 17, 2012.'' This investigation was initiated with the an unencrypted laptop containing 441 patient records being stolen from an employee's vehicle.[edit]HITECH Act: Privacy RequirementsSee the Privacy section of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH Act).
  [edit]Effects on research and clinical careThe enactment of the Privacy and Security Rules has caused major changes in the way physicians and medical centers operate. The complex legalities and potentially stiff penalties associated with HIPAA, as well as the increase in paperwork and the cost of its implementation, were causes for concern among physicians and medical centers. An August 2006 article in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine detailed some such concerns over the implementation and effects of HIPAA.[37]
  [edit]Effects on researchHIPAA restrictions on researchers have affected their ability to perform retrospective, chart-based research as well as their ability to prospectively evaluate patients by contacting them for follow-up. A study from the University of Michigan demonstrated that implementation of the HIPAA Privacy rule resulted in a drop from 96% to 34% in the proportion of follow-up surveys completed by study patients being followed after a heart attack.[38] Another study, detailing the effects of HIPAA on recruitment for a study on cancer prevention, demonstrated that HIPAA-mandated changes led to a 73% decrease in patient accrual, a tripling of time spent recruiting patients, and a tripling of mean recruitment costs.[39]
  In addition, informed consent forms for research studies now are required to include extensive detail on how the participant's protected health information will be kept private. While such information is important, the addition of a lengthy, legalistic section on privacy may make these already complex documents even less user-friendly for patients who are asked to read and sign them.
  These data suggest that the HIPAA privacy rule, as currently implemented, may be having negative impacts on the cost and quality of medical research. Dr. Kim Eagle, professor of internal medicine at the University of Michigan, was quoted in the Annals article as saying, "Privacy is important, but research is also important for improving care. We hope that we will figure this out and do it right."[37]
  [edit]Effects on clinical careThe complexity of HIPAA, combined with potentially stiff penalties for violators, can lead physicians and medical centers to withhold information from those who may have a right to it. A review of the implementation of the HIPAA Privacy Rule by the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that health care providers were "uncertain about their legal privacy responsibilities and often responded with an overly guarded approach to disclosing information...than necessary to ensure compliance with the Privacy rule".[37] Reports of this uncertainty continue.[40]
  [edit]Costs of implementationIn the period immediately prior to the enactment of the HIPAA Privacy and Security Acts, medical centers and medical practices were charged with getting "into compliance". With an early emphasis on the potentially severe penalties associated with violation, many practices and centers turned to private, for-profit "HIPAA consultants" who were intimately familiar with the details of the legislation and offered their services to ensure that physicians and medical centers were fully "in compliance". In addition to the costs of developing and revamping systems and practices, the increase in paperwork and staff time necessary to meet the legal requirements of HIPAA may impact the finances of medical centers and practices at a time when insurance companies and Medicare reimbursement is also declining.
  [edit]Education and TrainingEducation and training of healthcare providers is paramount to correct implementation of the HIPAA Privacy and Security Acts. Effective training must describe the statutory and regulatory background and purpose of HIPAA and a general summary of the principles and key provisions of the Privacy Rule. Explain and define the type of entities that are covered by the Privacy Rule. The term business associate is defined, as are the requirements of the Privacy Rule when they carry out health care activities and functions on behalf of covered entities. Describes Privacy Rule provisions that address how entity organization may affect privacy functions, Describes the health information that is protected by the Privacy Rule. The presentation extensively describes the required and permitted uses and disclosures of PHI by a covered entity or its business associate, including situations where PHI may be used or disclosed without the individual's authorization and when such authorization is required. The Rule's minimum necessary provisions and its requirements are explained. Summarizes the Privacy Rule's provisions and requirements related to research. Describes when a covered entity may use and disclose PHI for research purposes and what research is affected. The presentation illustrates the relationship of the Privacy Rule's research provisions to other research rules, such as the Common Rule. Describes the Privacy Rule's administrative requirements for covered entities, such as policies and procedures, data safeguards, documentation and record retention, prohibition on retaliation, complaints to the covered entity, workforce training and sanctions.
  [edit]HIPAA and drug and alcohol rehabilitation organizationsSpecial considerations for confidentiality are needed for health care organizations that offer federally-funded drug or alcohol rehabilitation services.
  Predating HIPAA by over a quarter century are the Comprehensive Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism Prevention, Treatment and Rehabilitation Act of 1970[41] and language amended by the Drug Abuse Office and Treatment Act of 1972.[37][42]
  [edit]Notable ViolationsIn 2012, two executives at Prime Healthcare Services disclosed a patient's chart to multiple media outlets without the patient's consent. The release was in response to a California Watch article on Prime Healthcare Services billing practices at Shasta Regional Medical Center. In this incident, Randall Hempling, the hospital CEO, and Dr. Marcia McCampbell, its chief medical officer, showed up at the offices of the Redding Record Searchlight with Darlene Courtois in order to refute an article which was about to be published. Courtois did not consent to this release as is required under HIPAA. The hospital admits that they did not have written consent, but instead claim that: "As far as we're concerned, the patient gave that permission when she gave her records to California Watch and was quoted on the record. That waived her privacy." But under HIPAA, there is no such thing as implied authorization.[43] The FBI has questioned Courtois in regard to this information release.[44]
  [edit]Legislative information[edit]References^104th Congress, 1st Session, S.1028^Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services^"Ruling on teenage abortions won't affect California - yet.". San Francisco Chronicle. June 26, 1990. ^"President Clinton Extols New Rules to Ensure Medical Privacy". Los Angeles CQ Press. 2008. ^29 U.S.C. § 1181(a)(2)^29 U.S.C. § 1181(a)(3)^29 U.S.C. § 1181(c)(1)^29 U.S.C. § 1181(c)(2)(A)^42 U.S.C. § 1320a-7c^42 U.S.C. § 1395ddd^42 U.S.C. § 1395b-5^45 C.F.R.160.103^Definitions of a Covered Entity^Terry, Ken "Patient Privacy - The New Threats" Physicians Practice journal, volume 19, number 3, year 2009, access date July 2, 2009^See 45 CFR Sections 160.102 and 160.103.^45 C.F.R.164.501^45 C.F.R.164.524(b)^45 C.F.R.164.512^45 C.F.R.164.524(a)(1)(ii)^45 C.F.R.164.502(a)(1)(iv)^45 C.F.R.164.502(b)^45 C.F.R.164.526^45 C.F.R.164.522(b)^45 C.F.R.164.528^45 C.F.R.164.530(a)^45 C.F.R.164.530(b)^"How to File A Health Information Privacy Complaint with the Office for Civil Rights"^45 C.F.R.160.306^"Spread of records stirs fears of privacy erosion", December 23, 2006, by Theo Francis, The Wall Street Journal^http://www.hhs.gov/news/press/2011pres/07/20110707a.html. ^CMS Transactions and Code Sets Regulations^CSM.gov "Medicare & Medicaid Services" "Standards for Electronic Transactions-New Versions, New Standard and New Code Set - Final Rules"^"The Looming Problem in Healthcare EDI: ICD-10 and HIPAA 5010 migration" October 10, 2009 - Shahid N. Shah^Wafa, Tim. How the Lack of Prescriptive Technical Granularity in HIPAA Has Compromised Patient Privacy. Northern Illinois University Law Review, Volume 30, Number 3, Summer 2010. SSRN 1547425. ^Medical Privacy Law Nets No Fines. Rob Stein: The Washington Post.^[1] Feds step up HIPAA enforcement with hospice settlement^ abcdWilson J (2006). "Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act Privacy rule causes ongoing concerns among clinicians and researchers". Ann Intern Med145 (4): 313''6. PMID 16908928. ^Armstrong D, Kline-Rogers E, Jani S, Goldman E, Fang J, Mukherjee D, Nallamothu B, Eagle K (2005). "Potential impact of the HIPAA privacy rule on data collection in a registry of patients with acute coronary syndrome". Arch Intern Med165 (10): 1125''9. doi:10.1001/archinte.165.10.1125. PMID 15911725. ^Wolf M, Bennett C (2006). "Local perspective of the impact of the HIPAA privacy rule on research". Cancer106 (2): 474''9. doi:10.1002/cncr.21599. PMID 16342254. ^"Keeping Patients' Details Private, Even From Kin," New York Times, July 3, 2007.^Pub.L. 91-161; 42 U.S.C. § 290dd-3 (1976); omitted and moved to 42 U.S.C. § 290dd-2 (2006 through Pub.L. 102-321)^Pub.L. 92-255, 42 U.S.C. § 290ee-3 (1976); omitted and moved to 42 U.S.C. § 290dd-2 (2006 through Pub.L. 102-321)^Hiltzik, Michael (January 4, 2012). "Her case shows why healthcare privacy laws exist". Los Angeles Times. ^http://www.redding.com/news/2012/jan/10/local-prime-patient-visited-by-feds/[edit]External links
Nobody Walks in L.A.: The Rise of Cars and the Monorails That Never Were
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Source: History & Archaeology | Smithsonian.com
  Fri, 26 Apr 2013 12:17
  Artist's conception of a future monorail for Los Angeles, California in 1954 (Source: Novak Archive)
  ''Who needs a car in L.A.? We got the best public transportation system in the world!'' says private detective Eddie Valiant in the 1988 film Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
  Set in 1947, Eddie is a car-less Angeleno and the movie tells the tale of a an evil corporation buying up the city's streetcars in its greedy quest to force people out of public transit and into private automobiles. Eddie Valiant's line was a wink at audiences in 1988 who knew quite well that public transportation was now little more than a punchline.
  Aside from Detroit there's no American city more identified with the automobile than Los Angeles. In the 20th century, the Motor City rose to prominence as the home of the Big Three automakers, but the City of Angels is known to outsiders and locals alike for its confusing mess of freeways and cars that crisscross the city '-- or perhaps as writer Dorothy Parker put it, crisscross the ''72 suburbs in search of a city.''
  Los Angeles is notorious for being hostile to pedestrians. I know plenty of Angelenos who couldn't in their wildest dreams imagine navigating America's second largest city without a car. But I've spent the past year doing just that.
  About a year and a half ago I went down to the parking garage underneath my apartment building and found that my car wouldn't start. One thing I learned when I moved to Los Angeles in 2010 was that a one-bedroom apartment doesn't come with a refrigerator, but it does come with a parking space. ''We only provide the essentials,'' my apartment's building manager explained to me when I asked about this regional quirk of the apartment rental market. Essentials, indeed.
  My car (a silver 1998 Honda Accord with tiny pockets of rust from the years it survived harsh Minnesota winters) probably just had a problem with its battery, but I really don't know. A strange mixture of laziness, inertia, curiosity and dwindling funds led me to wonder how I might get around the city without wheels. A similar non-ideological adventure began when I was 18 and thought ''I wonder how long I can go without eating meat?'' (The answer was apparently two years.)
  Living in L.A. without a car has been an interesting experiment; one where I no longer worry about fluctuations in the price of gas but sometimes shirk social functions because getting on the bus or train doesn't appeal to me on a given day. It's been an experiment where I wonder how best to stock up on earthquake disaster supplies (I just ordered them online) and how to get to Pasadena to interview scientists at JPL (I just broke down and rented a car for the day). The car '-- my car '-- has been sitting in that parking spot for over a year now, and for the most part it's worked out pretty well.
  But how did Los Angeles become so automobile-centric? How did Angeleno culture evolve (or is it devolve?) to the point where not having a car is seen as such a strange thing?
  One of the first cars ever built in Los Angeles, made in 1897 by 17-year-old Earle C. Anthony (Photo by Matt Novak at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles)
  Los Angeles owes its existence as a modern metropolis to the railroad. When California became a state in 1850, Los Angeles was just a small frontier town of about 4,000 people dwarfed by the much larger Californian cities of San Francisco and Sacramento. Plagued by crime, some accounts claimed that L.A. suffered a murder a day in 1854. But this tiny violent town, referred to as Los Diablos (the devils) by some people in the 1850s would become a boomtown ready for a growth explosion by the 1870s.
  From the arrival of the transcontinental railroad in 1876 until the late 1920s, the City of Angels experienced incredibly rapid population growth. And this growth was no accident. The L.A. Chamber of Commerce, along with the railroad companies, aggressively marketed the city as one of paradise '-- a place where all your hopes and dreams could come true. In the late 19th century Los Angeles was thought to be the land of the ''accessible dream'' as Tom Zimmerman explains in his book Paradise Promoted.
  Los Angeles was advertised as the luxurious city of the future; a land of both snow-capped mountains and beautiful orange groves '-- where the air was clean, the food was plentiful and the lifestyle was civilized. In the 1880s, the methods of attracting new people to the city involved elaborate and colorful ad campaigns by the railroads. And people arrived in trains stuffed to capacity.
  With the arrival of the automobile in the late 1890s the City of Angels began experimenting with the machine that would dramatically influence the city's landscape. The first practical electric streetcars were started in the late 1880s, replacing the rather primitive horse-drawn railways of the 1870s. The mass transit system was actually borne of real estate developers who built lines to not only provide long term access to their land, but also in the very immediate sense to sell that land to prospective buyers.
  By the 1910s there were two major transit players left: The Los Angeles Streetway streetcar company (LARY and often known as the Yellow Cars) and the Pacific Electric Railway (PE and often known simply as the Red Cars).
  No one would mistake Who Framed Roger Rabbit? for a documentary, but the film has done a lot to cement a particular piece of L.A. mythology into the popular imagination. Namely, that it was the major car companies who would directly put the public transit companies out of business when they ''purchased'' them in the 1940s and shut them down. In reality, the death of L.A.'s privately-owned mass transit would be foreshadowed in the 1910s and would be all but certain by the end of the 1920s.
  By the 1910s the streetcars were already suffering from widespread public dissatisfaction. The lines were seen as increasingly undependable and riders complained about crowded trains. Some of the streetcar's problems were a result of the automobile crowding them out in the 1910s, congesting the roads and often causing accidents that made service unreliable. Separating the traffic of the autos, pedestrians and streetcars were seen as a priority that would not be realized until the late 20th century. As Scott L. Bottles notes in his book Los Angeles and the Automobile, ''As early as 1915, [the L.A. Public Board of Utilities] called for plans to separate these trains from regular street traffic with elevated or subway lines.''
  The recession-plagued year 1914 saw the explosive rise of the ''jitney,'' an unlicensed taxi that took passengers for just a nickel. The private streetcar companies refused to improve their service in a time of recession and as a result drove more and more people to alternatives like the jitney and buying their own vehicle.
  The Federal Road Act of 1916 would jumpstart the nation's funding of road construction and maintenance, providing matching funding to states. But it was the Roaring Twenties that would set Los Angeles on an irreversible path as a city dominated by the automobile. L.A.'s population of about 600,000 at the start of the 1920s more than doubled during the decade. The city's cars would see an even greater increase, from 161,846 cars registered in L.A. County in 1920 to 806,264 registered in 1930. In 1920 Los Angeles had about 170 gas stations. By 1930 there were over 1,500.
  This early and rapid adoption of the automobile in the region is the reason that L.A. was such a pioneer in the area of automotive-centric retailing. The car of the 1920s changed the way that people interacted with the city and how it purchased goods, for better and for worse. As Richard Longstreth notes in his 2000 book, The Drive-In, The Supermarket, and the Transformation of Commercials Space in Los Angeles, the fact that Southern California was the ''primary spawning ground for the super service station, the drive-in market, and the supermarket'' was no coincidence. Continuing the trend of the preceding decades, the population of Los Angeles swelled tremendously in the 1910s and '20s, with people arriving by the thousands.
  ''This burgeoning middle class created one of the highest incidences of automobile ownership in the nation, and both the diffuse nature of the settlement and a mild climate year-round yielded an equally high rate of automobile use,'' Longstreth explains. The city, unencumbered by the geographic restrictions of places like San Francisco and Manhattan quickly grew outward rather than upward; fueled by the car and quite literally fueled by the many oil fields right in the city's backyard. Just over the hills that I can see from my apartment building lie oil derricks. Strange metal robots in the middle of L.A. dotting the landscape, bobbing for that black gold to which we've grown so addicted.
  Oil wells at Venice Beach on January 26, 1931 (Source: Paradise Promoted by Tom Zimmerman)
  Los Angeles would see and turn down many proposals for expanded public transit during the first half of the 20th century. In 1926 the Pacific Electric built a short-running subway in the city but it did little to fix the congestion problems that were happening above ground.
  In 1926 there was a big push to build over 50 miles of elevated railway in Los Angeles. The city's low density made many skeptical that Los Angeles could ever support public transit solutions to its transportation woes in the 20th century. The local newspapers campaigned heavily against elevated railways downtown, even going so far as to send reporters to Chicago and Boston to get quotes critical of those cities' elevated railways. L.A.'s low density was a direct result of the city's most drastic growth occurring in the 1910s and '20s when automobiles were allowing people to spread out and build homes in far flung suburbs and not be tied to public transit to reach the commercial and retail hub of downtown.
  As strange as it may seem today, the automobile was seen by many as the progressive solution to the transportation problems of Los Angeles in the 1920s. The privately owned rail companies were inflating their costs and making it impossible for the city to buy them out. Angelenos were reluctant to to subsidize private rail, despite their gripes with service. Meanwhile, both the city and the state continued to invest heavily in freeways. In 1936 Fortune magazine reported on what they called rail's obsolescence.
  Though the city's growth stalled somewhat during the Great Depression it picked right back up again during World War II. People were again moving to the city in droves looking for work in this artificial port town that was fueling the war effort on the west coast. But at the end of the war the prospects for mass transit in L.A. were looking as grim as ever.
  In 1951 the California assembly passed an act that established the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transit Authority. The Metro Transit Authority proposed a monorail between the San Fernando Valley and downtown Los Angeles. A 1954 report issued to the Transit Authority acknowledged the unique challenges of the region, citing its low density, high degree of car ownership and current lack of any non-bus mass rapid transit in the area as major hurdles.
  The July 1954 issue of Fortune magazine saw postwar expansion brought on by the car as an almost insurmountable challenge for the urban planner of the future:
  As a generation of city and regional planners can attest, it is no simple matter to draw up a transit system that will meet modern needs. In fact, some transportation experts are almost ready to concede that the decentralization of urban life, brought about by the automobile, has progressed so far that it may be impossible for any U.S. city to build a self-supporting rapid-transit system. At the same time, it is easy to show that highways are highly inefficient for moving masses of people into and out of existing business and industrial centers.
  Somewhat interestingly, that 1954 proposal to the L.A. Metro Transit Authority called their monorail prescription ''a proper beginning of mass rapid transit throughout Los Angeles County.'' It was as if the past five decades had been forgotten.
  Longtime Los Angeles resident Ray Bradbury never drove a car. Not even once. When I asked him why, he said that he thought he'd ''be a maniac'' behind the wheel. A year ago this month I walked to his house which was about a mile north of my apartment (uphill) and arrived dripping in sweat. Bradbury was a big proponent of establishing monorail lines in Los Angeles. But as Bradbury wrote in a 2006 opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times, he believed the Metro line from downtown to Santa Monica (which now stretches to Culver City and is currently being built to reach Santa Monica) was a bad idea. He believed that his 1960s effort to promote monorails in Los Angeles made a lot more sense financially.
  Bradbury said of his 1963 campaign, ''During the following 12 months I lectured in almost every major area of L.A., at open forums and libraries, to tell people about the promise of the monorail. But at the end of that year nothing was done.'' Bradbury's argument was that the taxpayers shouldn't have to foot the bill for transportation in their city.
  With the continued investment in highways and the public repeatedly voting down funding for subways and elevated railways at almost every turn (including our most recent ballot's Measure J which would have extended a sales tax increase in Los Angeles County to be earmarked for public transportation construction) it's hard to argue that anyone but the state of California, the city of Los Angeles, and the voting public are responsible for the automobile-centric state of the city.
  But admittedly the new Metro stop in Culver City has changed my life. Opened in June of last year, it has completely transformed the way that I interact with my environment. While I still may walk as far as Hollywood on occasion (about 8 miles), I'm able to get downtown in about 25 minutes. And from Downtown to Hollywood in about the same amount of time.
  Today, the streetcars may be returning to downtown L.A. with construction starting as early as 2014 pending quite a few more hurdles. Funding has nearly been secured for the project which would again put streetcars downtown by 2016.
  But even with all of L.A.'s progress in mass transit, my car-less experiment will probably come to a close this year. Life is just easier with a car in a city that still has a long way to go in order to make places like Santa Monica, Venice, the Valley and (perhaps most crucially for major cities trying to attract businesses and promote tourism) the airport accessible by train.
  But until then my car will remain parked downstairs. I'll continue to walk almost everywhere, and you can be sure I'll dream of the L.A. monorails that never were.
Who Got The Golden Margin Call At The European Close?
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  Archived Version
  Source: Zero Hedge
  Fri, 26 Apr 2013 12:13
  Gold and silver prices are plunging after the European equity markets closed. It seems someone got the tap on the shoulder and needed to fund some liquidity. Given the 'unusual' strength in high-beta European assets this week, it would suggest someone (or many someones) were short and squeezed to cover in a hurry and perhaps this post-close dump in gold and silver reflects the final end-of-week realization of losses that need to be funded.
  or is it post London physical close catch down in paper from the post-GDP move?
  Average:Your rating: NoneAverage: 4.9(8 votes)
NYPD to Study Airborne Chemical Attacks - WNYC
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  Fri, 26 Apr 2013 11:52
  The NYPD and a national laboratory will be studying how chemical weapons could spread in the air and throughout the subway system this summer in what is the first study of its kind in such a large urban environment.
  Researchers with the Brookhaven National Laboratory will release non-toxic, odorless gas in that mimics how chemical, biological and radiological weapons would disperse. About 200 sampling devices will be used to detect to the gas.
  "We want to be able to determine how toxic material can flow through the transit system, it's one of the concerns that we've had for a while and how it flows on the streets of our city," Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said in a statement.
  The tests will begin in July in all five boroughs in 21 subway stations. It is not expected to have an impact on commuting or other activity, police say.
  Boston and Washington have conducted similar tests, but this will be the largest.
PBS Drops Another Bombshell: Wall Street Is Gobbling Up Two-Thirds of Your 401(k)
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  Fri, 26 Apr 2013 11:37
  By Pam Martens: April 25, 2013
  Frontline Chart Showing Impact of 401(k) Fees Over 50 Years of Saving for Retirement
  If you work for 50 years and receive the typical long-term return of 7 percent on your 401(k) plan and your fees are 2 percent, almost two-thirds of your account will go to Wall Street. This was the bombshell dropped by Frontline's Martin Smith in this Tuesday evening's PBS program, The Retirement Gamble.
  This is not so much a gamble as a certainty: under a 2 percent 401(k) fee structure, almost two-thirds of your working life will go toward paying obscene compensation to Wall Street; a little over one-third will benefit your family '' and that's before paying taxes on withdrawals to Uncle Sam.
  To put it another way '' you work for Wall Street. You are their slave, their lackey and as long as their toadies dominate in Congress, nothing is going to change on the legislative front to stop the looting. Wall Street seized millions of homes through illegal foreclosures and stripped the equity from the owners. They got away with it. Some Wall Street firms further enriched themselves making bets that the housing market would collapse, using their inside knowledge of the bogus loans they had made. They got away with that also. Now Wall Street is busy asset stripping the retirement plans of the working class in America while President Obama proposes to cut Social Security benefits through a discredited calculation called Chained CPI '' conveniently causing people to save more in their 401(k) plans to make up for the potential loss. But the more you save, the more Wall Street asset strips.
  The Retirement Gamble was written by the outstanding team of Martin Smith and Marcela Gaviria, who exposed in January that when it came to Wall Street, the U.S. Justice Department had ''no investigations going on. There were no subpoenas, no document reviews, no wiretaps.'' The head of the criminal division of the Justice Department, Lanny Breuer, announced he was stepping down one day after that program aired. He returned to Covington & Burling, the corporate law firm representing Wall Street firms.
  The revelation of the two-thirds wealth transfer machinery was delivered by none other than John Bogle, the legendary founder of The Vanguard Group, a low-load mutual fund firm, who served as its Chairman and CEO from 1974 to 1996. Bogle is no slouch. He's one of the most highly respected men in finance and graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University with a degree in Economics.
  This is the relevant portion of the transcript from the program:
  Bogle: Costs are a crucial part of the equation. It doesn't take a genius to know that the bigger the profit of the management company, the smaller the profit that investors get. The money managers always want more, and that's natural enough in most businesses, but it's not right for this business.
  Smith: Bogle gave me an example. Assume you're invested in a fund that is earning a gross annual return of 7 percent. They charge you a 2 percent annual fee. Over 50 years, the difference between your net of 5 percent '-- the red line '-- and what you would have made without fees '-- the green line '-- is staggering. Bogle says you've lost almost two thirds of what you would have had.
  Bogle: What happens in the fund business is the magic of compound returns is overwhelmed by the tyranny of compounding costs. It's a mathematical fact. There's no getting around it. The fact that we don't look at it'-- too bad for us.
  Smith: What I have a hard time understanding is that 2 percent fee that I might pay to an actively managed mutual fund is going to really have a great impact on my future retirement savings.
  Bogle: Well, you have to rely on somebody to get out a compound interest table and look at the impact over an investment lifetime. Do you really want to invest in a system where you put up 100 percent of the capital, you the mutual fund shareholder, you take 100 percent of the risk and you get 30 percent of the return?
  Smith takes Bogle's advice and pulls up a compounding calculator on his laptop. On air, he shows the viewer the results:
  Smith: Take an account with a $100,000 balance and reduce it by 2 percent a year. At the end of 50 years, that 2 percent annual charge would subtract $63,000 from your account, a loss of 63 percent, leaving you with just a little over $36,000.
  There's another way to prove the point. Pull up a compounding calculator on line. Take an account with a $100,000 balance and compound it at 7 percent for 50 years. That gives you a return of $ 3,278,041.36. Now change the calculation to a 5 percent return (reduced by the 2 percent annual fee) for the same $100,000 over the same 50 years. That delivers a return of $1,211,938.32. That's a difference of $2,066,103.04 '' the same 63 percent reduction in value that Smith's example showed.
  Presently, 70 percent of Americans who have any kind of retirement plan at their place of employment have a 401(k) plan. Not everyone is paying 2 percent fees. Some are paying more and others are paying less '' sometimes much less if using passively managed index funds. But, historically, Wall Street has preyed on the least informed and the least educated, which tends to be the poor and middle class.
  Consider the testimony of Gail Kubiniec, a former Assistant Manager at CitiFinancial, a unit of mega Wall Street firm Citigroup, to the Federal Trade Commission in 2001 concerning the premise on which she loaded on extra charges to loans:
  ''I and other employees would often determine how much insurance could be sold to a borrower based on the borrower's occupation, race, age, and education level. If someone appeared uneducated, inarticulate, was a minority, or was particularly old or young, I would try to include all the coverages CitiFinancial offered. The more gullible the consumer appeared, the more coverages I would try to include in the loan'...''
  The Retirement Gamble can be viewed in its entirety here.
Charlemagne: Amsterdam, Nice, Lisbon'... | The Economist
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  Archived Version
  Fri, 26 Apr 2013 11:08
  LIKE Lord Voldemort of Harry Potter fame, ''treaty change'' is an idea so terrifying that most Eurocrats dare not speak of it. So when Wolfgang Sch¤uble, Germany's finance minister, declared recently that it was needed for the next move in tackling the euro crisis, Brussels gasped. What was Germany up to? It was surely no coincidence that, on the same weekend, Britain's David Cameron was in Berlin to talk to Angela Merkel about reforming the European Union.
  There was a time when treaty change was pushed only by enthusiasts for ''ever-closer union'' in Europe. Then small changes were made mainly to satisfy legalistic Germans. Nowadays those keenest on the idea are either wanting to slow down some aspects of integration, like Germany, or to reverse it, like Britain. Even before the crisis, the endless renegotiation of the EU's rule-book had reached its limits. The last big rewrite took the best part of a decade: the constitutional treaty was rejected by French and Dutch voters in 2005, and its successor, the Lisbon treaty, had to be put to the Irish twice before passing. Today, even assuming that Europe's debtors and creditors can agree, any revision could invite disaster. Much of the euro zone is in a deep and prolonged recession, and Eurosceptic parties of many stripes are on the rise in both north and south.
  The euro zone is caught between volatile markets that demand action to fix the broken single currency and citizens, many of whom are hostile to a European project that seems to bring nothing but bail-outs and austerity. So Europe's leaders will do almost anything to avoid submitting a treaty to voters. The European Central Bank has acted autonomously to prevent the break-up of the euro. EU rules have been modified within (and beyond) the limits of existing treaties. Euro-zone members are pushed by Brussels to cut deficits and reform their economies.
  That said, Germany has forced through two treaty amendments, albeit ''surgical'' ones. The first was to permit the replacement of temporary euro-zone bail-out funds with the permanent European Stability Mechanism (it started operating months before the amendment was fully ratified). The second enshrined tougher budget rules (despite a British attempt to block it). The threat of losing EU funds then convinced Irish voters to endorse this fiscal compact in a referendum.
  A bigger overhaul of the treaty is now being put off as long as possible. Over the past year EU leaders have squashed most ideas from Brussels for long-term reform, such as mutualised debt, a central euro-zone budget or greater powers to dictate national economic policies. Instead the focus has been on ''banking union'' that would entrust bank supervision and crisis management to European authorities. The aim is to stop craven national supervisors protecting their banks, and to sever the tie between weak banks and weak sovereigns. The fact that much of this could be done within existing treaties made the controversial banking union more palatable.
  But no sooner had the idea been launched than Germany began a rearguard action. Its eleventh-hour legal objections to the creation of a single supervisor were overcome only after finance ministers declared their readiness ''constructively'' to consider an amendment, when a future treaty revision takes place, to strengthen the separation between the European Central Bank's (ECB) monetary and supervisory functions.
  Mr Sch¤uble then dug his next defensive trench: the creation of a European ''authority'' to restructure and wind up ailing banks, the obvious complement to the new supervisor, would require treaty change. Even the Germans' closest allies, the Finns and the Dutch, were discomfited by his contradiction of the spirit, if not the letter, of a December summit deal calling for the establishment of a European resolution ''mechanism''.
  The Germans argue that there is no point in rushing a European resolution system when plans to create 27 national ones have yet to be approved. And whereas the treaties foresaw granting the ECB supervisory powers, they have no explicit provisions for a European body to deal with bust banks, especially one that involves committing taxpayers' money. The European Commission insists this is compatible with current treaties, though some privately admit the legal base is open to question.
  The charitable view is that Germany is merely the most purist of the EU's members. The cynical one is that Germany is trying to block any move to share liabilities for Europe's banks, or at least delaying until after its federal election this autumn. Mr Sch¤uble's views should be treated as an opening position, not his final word. There may be room to fudge the distinction between the commission's idea for a European ''mechanism'' and his notion of a ''network'' of national bodies.
  The question that still has no answer
  Germany says the EU should neither rush to revise the treaties, nor be afraid to do so when needed. As Dumbledore tells Harry Potter: ''Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself''. But the German tactic of incremental change may no longer work. Any treaty change is unlikely to remain small. It will be pulled from one end by the commission, which promises to present proposals next year to transform the EU into a ''federation of nation-states''. From the other end, Britain has given notice that it will exploit any treaty change to demand reforms or renegotiate its relations with the EU ahead of a referendum by 2017.
  The price for any repatriation of British powers, demanded by France, among others, is likely to be a more tightly integrated ''core'' euro zone. Sooner or later, treaty change will come. Germany and others may then have to answer the question they keep avoiding: what sort of union do they really want?
The Biggest Price-Fixing Scandal Ever | Politics News | Rolling Stone
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  Archived Version
  Fri, 26 Apr 2013 11:03
  Conspiracy theorists of the world, believers in the hidden hands of the Rothschilds and the Masons and the Illuminati, we skeptics owe you an apology. You were right. The players may be a little different, but your basic premise is correct: The world is a rigged game. We found this out in recent months, when a series of related corruption stories spilled out of the financial sector, suggesting the world's largest banks may be fixing the prices of, well, just about everything.
  You may have heard of the Libor scandal, in which at least three '' and perhaps as many as 16 '' of the name-brand too-big-to-fail banks have been manipulating global interest rates, in the process messing around with the prices of upward of $500 trillion (that's trillion, with a "t") worth of financial instruments. When that sprawling con burst into public view last year, it was easily the biggest financial scandal in history '' MIT professor Andrew Lo even said it "dwarfs by orders of magnitude any financial scam in the history of markets."
  That was bad enough, but now Libor may have a twin brother. Word has leaked out that the London-based firm ICAP, the world's largest broker of interest-rate swaps, is being investigated by American authorities for behavior that sounds eerily reminiscent of the Libor mess. Regulators are looking into whether or not a small group of brokers at ICAP may have worked with up to 15 of the world's largest banks to manipulate ISDAfix, a benchmark number used around the world to calculate the prices of interest-rate swaps.
  Interest-rate swaps are a tool used by big cities, major corporations and sovereign governments to manage their debt, and the scale of their use is almost unimaginably massive. It's about a $379 trillion market, meaning that any manipulation would affect a pile of assets about 100 times the size of the United States federal budget.
  It should surprise no one that among the players implicated in this scheme to fix the prices of interest-rate swaps are the same megabanks '' including Barclays, UBS, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and the Royal Bank of Scotland '' that serve on the Libor panel that sets global interest rates. In fact, in recent years many of these banks have already paid multimillion-dollar settlements for anti-competitive manipulation of one form or another (in addition to Libor, some were caught up in an anti-competitive scheme, detailed in Rolling Stone last year, to rig municipal-debt service auctions). Though the jumble of financial acronyms sounds like gibberish to the layperson, the fact that there may now be price-fixing scandals involving both Libor and ISDAfix suggests a single, giant mushrooming conspiracy of collusion and price-fixing hovering under the ostensibly competitive veneer of Wall Street culture.
  The Scam Wall Street Learned From the Mafia
  Why? Because Libor already affects the prices of interest-rate swaps, making this a manipulation-on-manipulation situation. If the allegations prove to be right, that will mean that swap customers have been paying for two different layers of price-fixing corruption. If you can imagine paying 20 bucks for a crappy PB&J because some evil cabal of agribusiness companies colluded to fix the prices of both peanuts and peanut butter, you come close to grasping the lunacy of financial markets where both interest rates and interest-rate swaps are being manipulated at the same time, often by the same banks.
  "It's a double conspiracy," says an amazed Michael Greenberger, a former director of the trading and markets division at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and now a professor at the University of Maryland. "It's the height of criminality."
  The bad news didn't stop with swaps and interest rates. In March, it also came out that two regulators '' the CFTC here in the U.S. and the Madrid-based International Organization of Securities Commissions '' were spurred by the Libor revelations to investigate the possibility of collusive manipulation of gold and silver prices. "Given the clubby manipulation efforts we saw in Libor benchmarks, I assume other benchmarks '' many other benchmarks '' are legit areas of inquiry," CFTC Commissioner Bart Chilton said.
  But the biggest shock came out of a federal courtroom at the end of March '' though if you follow these matters closely, it may not have been so shocking at all '' when a landmark class-action civil lawsuit against the banks for Libor-related offenses was dismissed. In that case, a federal judge accepted the banker-defendants' incredible argument: If cities and towns and other investors lost money because of Libor manipulation, that was their own fault for ever thinking the banks were competing in the first place.
  "A farce," was one antitrust lawyer's response to the eyebrow-raising dismissal.
  "Incredible," says Sylvia Sokol, an attorney for Constantine Cannon, a firm that specializes in antitrust cases.
  All of these stories collectively pointed to the same thing: These banks, which already possess enormous power just by virtue of their financial holdings '' in the United States, the top six banks, many of them the same names you see on the Libor and ISDAfix panels, own assets equivalent to 60 percent of the nation's GDP '' are beginning to realize the awesome possibilities for increased profit and political might that would come with colluding instead of competing. Moreover, it's increasingly clear that both the criminal justice system and the civil courts may be impotent to stop them, even when they do get caught working together to game the system.
  If true, that would leave us living in an era of undisguised, real-world conspiracy, in which the prices of currencies, commodities like gold and silver, even interest rates and the value of money itself, can be and may already have been dictated from above. And those who are doing it can get away with it. Forget the Illuminati '' this is the real thing, and it's no secret. You can stare right at it, anytime you want.
  The banks found a loophole, a basic flaw in the machine. Across the financial system, there are places where prices or official indices are set based upon unverified data sent in by private banks and financial companies. In other words, we gave the players with incentives to game the system institutional roles in the economic infrastructure.
  Libor, which measures the prices banks charge one another to borrow money, is a perfect example, not only of this basic flaw in the price-setting system but of the weakness in the regulatory framework supposedly policing it. Couple a voluntary reporting scheme with too-big-to-fail status and a revolving-door legal system, and what you get is unstoppable corruption.
  Every morning, 18 of the world's biggest banks submit data to an office in London about how much they believe they would have to pay to borrow from other banks. The 18 banks together are called the "Libor panel," and when all of these data from all 18 panelist banks are collected, the numbers are averaged out. What emerges, every morning at 11:30 London time, are the daily Libor figures.
  Banks submit numbers about borrowing in 10 different currencies across 15 different time periods, e.g., loans as short as one day and as long as one year. This mountain of bank-submitted data is used every day to create benchmark rates that affect the prices of everything from credit cards to mortgages to currencies to commercial loans (both short- and long-term) to swaps.
  Gangster Bankers Broke Every Law in the Book
  Dating back perhaps as far as the early Nineties, traders and others inside these banks were sometimes calling up the company geeks responsible for submitting the daily Libor numbers (the "Libor submitters") and asking them to fudge the numbers. Usually, the gimmick was the trader had made a bet on something '' a swap, currencies, something '' and he wanted the Libor submitter to make the numbers look lower (or, occasionally, higher) to help his bet pay off.
  Famously, one Barclays trader monkeyed with Libor submissions in exchange for a bottle of Bollinger champagne, but in some cases, it was even lamer than that. This is from an exchange between a trader and a Libor submitter at the Royal Bank of Scotland:
  SWISS FRANC TRADER: can u put 6m swiss libor in low pls?...PRIMARY SUBMITTER: Whats it worthSWSISS FRANC TRADER: ive got some sushi rolls from yesterday?...PRIMARY SUBMITTER: ok low 6m, just for uSWISS FRANC TRADER: wooooooohooooooo.'‰.'‰. thatd be awesome
  Screwing around with world interest rates that affect billions of people in exchange for day-old sushi '' it's hard to imagine an image that better captures the moral insanity of the modern financial-services sector.
  Hundreds of similar exchanges were uncovered when regulators like Britain's Financial Services Authority and the U.S. Justice Department started burrowing into the befouled entrails of Libor. The documentary evidence of anti-competitive manipulation they found was so overwhelming that, to read it, one almost becomes embarrassed for the banks. "It's just amazing how Libor fixing can make you that much money," chirped one yen trader. "Pure manipulation going on," wrote another.
  Yet despite so many instances of at least attempted manipulation, the banks mostly skated. Barclays got off with a relatively minor fine in the $450 million range, UBS was stuck with $1.5 billion in penalties, and RBS was forced to give up $615 million. Apart from a few low-level flunkies overseas, no individual involved in this scam that impacted nearly everyone in the industrialized world was even threatened with criminal prosecution.
  Two of America's top law-enforcement officials, Attorney General Eric Holder and former Justice Department Criminal Division chief Lanny Breuer, confessed that it's dangerous to prosecute offending banks because they are simply too big. Making arrests, they say, might lead to "collateral consequences" in the economy.
  The relatively small sums of money extracted in these settlements did not go toward reparations for the cities, towns and other victims who lost money due to Libor manipulation. Instead, it flowed mindlessly into government coffers. So it was left to towns and cities like Baltimore (which lost money due to fluctuations in their municipal investments caused by Libor movements), pensions like the New Britain, Connecticut, Firefighters' and Police Benefit Fund, and other foundations '' and even individuals (billionaire real-estate developer Sheldon Solow, who filed his own suit in February, claims that his company lost $450 million because of Libor manipulation) '' to sue the banks for damages.
  One of the biggest Libor suits was proceeding on schedule when, early in March, an army of superstar lawyers working on behalf of the banks descended upon federal judge Naomi Buchwald in the Southern District of New York to argue an extraordinary motion to dismiss. The banks' legal dream team drew from heavyweight Beltway-connected firms like Boies Schiller (you remember David Boies represented Al Gore), Davis Polk (home of top ex-regulators like former SEC enforcement chief Linda Thomsen) and Covington & Burling, the onetime private-practice home of both Holder and Breuer.
  The presence of Covington & Burling in the suit '' representing, of all companies, Citigroup, the former employer of current Treasury Secretary Jack Lew '' was particularly galling. Right as the Libor case was being dismissed, the firm had hired none other than Lanny Breuer, the same Lanny Breuer who, just a few months before, was the assistant attorney general who had balked at criminally prosecuting UBS over Libor because, he said, "Our goal here is not to destroy a major financial institution."
  In any case, this all-star squad of white-shoe lawyers came before Buchwald and made the mother of all audacious arguments. Robert Wise of Davis Polk, representing Bank of America, told Buchwald that the banks could not possibly be guilty of anti- competitive collusion because nobody ever said that the creation of Libor was competitive. "It is essential to our argument that this is not a competitive process," he said. "The banks do not compete with one another in the submission of Libor."
  If you squint incredibly hard and look at the issue through a mirror, maybe while standing on your head, you can sort of see what Wise is saying. In a very theoretical, technical sense, the actual process by which banks submit Libor data '' 18 geeks sending numbers to the British Bankers' Association offices in London once every morning '' is not competitive per se.
  But these numbers are supposed to reflect interbank-loan prices derived in a real, competitive market. Saying the Libor submission process is not competitive is sort of like pointing out that bank robbers obeyed the speed limit on the way to the heist. It's the silliest kind of legal sophistry.
  But Wise eventually outdid even that argument, essentially saying that while the banks may have lied to or cheated their customers, they weren't guilty of the particular crime of antitrust collusion. This is like the old joke about the lawyer who gets up in court and claims his client had to be innocent, because his client was committing a crime in a different state at the time of the offense.
  "The plaintiffs, I believe, are confusing a claim of being perhaps deceived," he said, "with a claim for harm to competition."
  Judge Buchwald swallowed this lunatic argument whole and dismissed most of the case. Libor, she said, was a "cooperative endeavor" that was "never intended to be competitive." Her decision "does not reflect the reality of this business, where all of these banks were acting as competitors throughout the process," said the antitrust lawyer Sokol. Buchwald made this ruling despite the fact that both the U.S. and British governments had already settled with three banks for billions of dollars for improper manipulation, manipulation that these companies admitted to in their settlements.
  Michael Hausfeld of Hausfeld LLP, one of the lead lawyers for the plaintiffs in this Libor suit, declined to comment specifically on the dismissal. But he did talk about the significance of the Libor case and other manipulation cases now in the pipeline.
  "It's now evident that there is a ubiquitous culture among the banks to collude and cheat their customers as many times as they can in as many forms as they can conceive," he said. "And that's not just surmising. This is just based upon what they've been caught at."
  Greenberger says the lack of serious consequences for the Libor scandal has only made other kinds of manipulation more inevitable. "There's no therapy like sending those who are used to wearing Gucci shoes to jail," he says. "But when the attorney general says, 'I don't want to indict people,' it's the Wild West. There's no law."
  The problem is, a number of markets feature the same infrastructural weakness that failed in the Libor mess. In the case of interest-rate swaps and the ISDAfix benchmark, the system is very similar to Libor, although the investigation into these markets reportedly focuses on some different types of improprieties.
  Though interest-rate swaps are not widely understood outside the finance world, the root concept actually isn't that hard. If you can imagine taking out a variable-rate mortgage and then paying a bank to make your loan payments fixed, you've got the basic idea of an interest-rate swap.
  In practice, it might be a country like Greece or a regional government like Jefferson County, Alabama, that borrows money at a variable rate of interest, then later goes to a bank to "swap" that loan to a more predictable fixed rate. In its simplest form, the customer in a swap deal is usually paying a premium for the safety and security of fixed interest rates, while the firm selling the swap is usually betting that it knows more about future movements in interest rates than its customers.
  Prices for interest-rate swaps are often based on ISDAfix, which, like Libor, is yet another of these privately calculated benchmarks. ISDAfix's U.S. dollar rates are published every day, at 11:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m., after a gang of the same usual-suspect megabanks (Bank of America, RBS, Deutsche, JPMorgan Chase, Barclays, etc.) submits information about bids and offers for swaps.
  And here's what we know so far: The CFTC has sent subpoenas to ICAP and to as many as 15 of those member banks, and plans to interview about a dozen ICAP employees from the company's office in Jersey City, New Jersey. Moreover, the International Swaps and Derivatives Association, or ISDA, which works together with ICAP (for U.S. dollar transactions) and Thomson Reuters to compute the ISDAfix benchmark, has hired the consulting firm Oliver Wyman to review the process by which ISDAfix is calculated. Oliver Wyman is the same company that the British Bankers' Association hired to review the Libor submission process after that scandal broke last year. The upshot of all of this is that it looks very much like ISDAfix could be Libor all over again.
  "It's obviously reminiscent of the Libor manipulation issue," Darrell Duffie, a finance professor at Stanford University, told reporters. "People may have been naive that simply reporting these rates was enough to avoid manipulation."
  And just like in Libor, the potential losers in an interest-rate-swap manipulation scandal would be the same sad-sack collection of cities, towns, companies and other nonbank entities that have no way of knowing if they're paying the real price for swaps or a price being manipulated by bank insiders for profit. Moreover, ISDAfix is not only used to calculate prices for interest-rate swaps, it's also used to set values for about $550 billion worth of bonds tied to commercial real estate, and also affects the payouts on some state-pension annuities.
  So although it's not quite as widespread as Libor, ISDAfix is sufficiently power-jammed into the world financial infrastructure that any manipulation of the rate would be catastrophic '' and a huge class of victims that could include everyone from state pensioners to big cities to wealthy investors in structured notes would have no idea they were being robbed.
  "How is some municipality in Cleveland or wherever going to know if it's getting ripped off?" asks Michael Masters of Masters Capital Management, a fund manager who has long been an advocate of greater transparency in the derivatives world. "The answer is, they won't know."
  Worse still, the CFTC investigation apparently isn't limited to possible manipulation of swap prices by monkeying around with ISDAfix. According to reports, the commission is also looking at whether or not employees at ICAP may have intentionally delayed publication of swap prices, which in theory could give someone (bankers, cough, cough) a chance to trade ahead of the information.
  Swap prices are published when ICAP employees manually enter the data on a computer screen called "19901." Some 6,000 customers subscribe to a service that allows them to access the data appearing on the 19901 screen.
  The key here is that unlike a more transparent, regulated market like the New York Stock Exchange, where the results of stock trades are computed more or less instantly and everyone in theory can immediately see the impact of trading on the prices of stocks, in the swap market the whole world is dependent upon a handful of brokers quickly and honestly entering data about trades by hand into a computer terminal.
  Any delay in entering price data would provide the banks involved in the transactions with a rare opportunity to trade ahead of the information. One way to imagine it would be to picture a racetrack where a giant curtain is pulled over the track as the horses come down the stretch '' and the gallery is only told two minutes later which horse actually won. Anyone on the right side of the curtain could make a lot of smart bets before the audience saw the results of the race.
  At ICAP, the interest-rate swap desk, and the 19901 screen, were reportedly controlled by a small group of 20 or so brokers, some of whom were making millions of dollars. These brokers made so much money for themselves the unit was nicknamed "Treasure Island."
  Already, there are some reports that brokers of Treasure Island did create such intentional delays. Bloomberg interviewed a former broker who claims that he watched ICAP brokers delay the reporting of swap prices. "That allows dealers to tell the brokers to delay putting trades into the system instead of in real time," Bloomberg wrote, noting the former broker had "witnessed such activity firsthand." An ICAP spokesman has no comment on the story, though the company has released a statement saying that it is "cooperating" with the CFTC's inquiry and that it "maintains policies that prohibit" the improper behavior alleged in news reports.
  The idea that prices in a $379 trillion market could be dependent on a desk of about 20 guys in New Jersey should tell you a lot about the absurdity of our financial infrastructure. The whole thing, in fact, has a darkly comic element to it. "It's almost hilarious in the irony," says David Frenk, director of research for Better Markets, a financial-reform advocacy group, "that they called it ISDAfix."
  After scandals involving libor and, perhaps, ISDAfix, the question that should have everyone freaked out is this: What other markets out there carry the same potential for manipulation? The answer to that question is far from reassuring, because the potential is almost everywhere. From gold to gas to swaps to interest rates, prices all over the world are dependent upon little private cabals of cigar-chomping insiders we're forced to trust.
  "In all the over-the-counter markets, you don't really have pricing except by a bunch of guys getting together," Masters notes glumly.
  That includes the markets for gold (where prices are set by five banks in a Libor-ish teleconferencing process that, ironically, was created in part by N M Rothschild & Sons) and silver (whose price is set by just three banks), as well as benchmark rates in numerous other commodities '' jet fuel, diesel, electric power, coal, you name it. The problem in each of these markets is the same: We all have to rely upon the honesty of companies like Barclays (already caught and fined $453 million for rigging Libor) or JPMorgan Chase (paid a $228 million settlement for rigging municipal-bond auctions) or UBS (fined a collective $1.66 billion for both muni-bond rigging and Libor manipulation) to faithfully report the real prices of things like interest rates, swaps, currencies and commodities.
  All of these benchmarks based on voluntary reporting are now being looked at by regulators around the world, and God knows what they'll find. The European Federation of Financial Services Users wrote in an official EU survey last summer that all of these systems are ripe targets for manipulation. "In general," it wrote, "those markets which are based on non-attested, voluntary submission of data from agents whose benefits depend on such benchmarks are especially vulnerable of market abuse and distortion."
  Translation: When prices are set by companies that can profit by manipulating them, we're fucked.
  "You name it," says Frenk. "Any of these benchmarks is a possibility for corruption."
  The only reason this problem has not received the attention it deserves is because the scale of it is so enormous that ordinary people simply cannot see it. It's not just stealing by reaching a hand into your pocket and taking out money, but stealing in which banks can hit a few keystrokes and magically make whatever's in your pocket worth less. This is corruption at the molecular level of the economy, Space Age stealing '' and it's only just coming into view.
  This story is from the May 9th, 2013 issue of Rolling Stone.
Retired 4 star Admiral Blows Whistle on Benghazi new Evidence | Politisite
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Fri, 26 Apr 2013 10:02
  Ambassador Stevens carried through the streets of Benghazi for 5 hours while US media alleged he was being helped to the hospital? More Obama White House lies!
  By Doc Vega
  A lot has been said and written, but this promises to break the case wide open!
  There have been many theories and accusations about the Benghazi fiasco that not only cost Ambassador J. Christian Stevens his life, but the lives of his staff and one Navy Seal body-guard as well. This action which led to a complete conflagration of terrorist attacks against US diplomatic buildings throughout the Middle East and North Africa still remains largely uninvestigated by the government, unprosecuted by AG Eric Holder's Depart of Justice, and refuses to bring the guilty parties to justice while many know the truth and are not coming forward. Even though President Obama is implicated in this oversees tragedy still the truth has not emerged.
  That has all changed. Finally, an authoritative figure with the proper credentials has stepped up to the plate to tell the true story of what did happen without the lies and cover-ups that have so far kept those guilty of murder from standing trial. The admission on the part of this man will likely blow the Benghazi scandal wide open and lead to arrests if we can get our legal system to act as it should. That, however, is a big if.
  Related: Read Letter: Special Ops Vets Demand Benghazi Congressional Investigation
  The story as it truly unfolded
  According to a report from the Washington Times, retired 4 Star Admiral James Lyons reveals the entire plot that led to the deaths of Americans in Libya that could have been prevented, who gave the orders, and why events took place as they tragically did. Admiral James Lyons is probably the highest ranking figure ever to intervene in a federal government criminal case, and testify. Thanks to this man's dedication to his country and the truth, we will finally know the truth and who was responsible.
  In his words Lyons says that the attack on Benghazi was a bungled kidnapping attempt to be perpetrated upon Ambassador Stevens. This was to appear to be a hostage exchange for a terrorist prisoner who was to be released in trade for a supposedly captured US ambassador. The trade would have been for Omar Abdel Rahman an international prisoner, known as the Blind Sheikh.
  This apparent abduction by terrorists of our ambassador and then negotiated trade for the Blind Sheikh would have been the ''October Surprise'' that would have elevated President Obama's flagging popularity and boosted his approval ratings for a re-election. A dramatic prisoner exchange that saved our ambassador's life However, something went horribly wrong. A cunning and illegal bit of treachery by the Obama White House turned into something entirely different. Obama's October surprise turned into a carnage orchestrated by the White House itself as the President, Leon Panetta, and CIA Director, David Petraeus watched via a UAV real-time feed as a 7 hour attack on the Benghazi Embassy raged. Reportedly, stand down orders were given several times to different units within striking distance.
  A plot of pure deception
  With what should have been only a staged kidnapping of Ambassador J. Christian Stevens, instead, Navy Seals Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty refused a stand down order and began doing their job of protecting the ambassador using force. Immediately the well-trained Seals began inflicting heavy casualties upon the terrorists who thought they were merely in a cake walk to abduct Ambassador Stevens without mishap. As a result of the plan going awry, a massive attack arose from the anger of the terrorists who felt they had been betrayed by President Obama. In the aftermath of the battle which saw Navy Seal Glen Doherty was killed after the embassy had been overrun along with the ambassador's staff. Ambassador Steven's whose body showed up 5 hours later at a Benghazi hospital supposedly overcome by smoke as the initial press reports indicated was, in fact, raped, tortured, and dragged around Benghazi in retaliation for the botched Obama White House plan.
  Obama hands over Libya to Al Qaeda
  Was this just a freak occurrence that belies the true nature of dealings in Libya with American diplomatic efforts, just one glitch in normal standard operating procedure? No, according to former Admiral Lyons and many others such as Glen Beck, who have all uncovered evidence that lead to much more sinister deeds being undertaken. Evidence of a working relationship between the US and its alleged terrorist enemies had already delivered Libya to the Al Qaeda terrorist organization through infiltration of the government, media, and general society prior to the rebellion against Muammar Gaddafi that toppled the dictator last year. That the US has worked with Al Qaeda awarding them security contracts for all US embassies and consulates as well as border protection has instead allowed Libya to become a haven for numerous terrorist operators who have automatic access to Libya's territory to carry out their training. All this with the support and blessing of the Obama administration. This is not only unthinkable, but beyond excuse or rationalization. There should already be indictments for many in the state department, in the DOJ, all the way up to the oval office, yet, so far nothing has been done.
  Treason plain and simple
  It goes even farther than that. Evidence indicates that Ambassador Stevens was being used as an arms dealer to supply Jihadists in the region to support yet another uprising in Syria. Just prior to the murder of our ambassador, he was trying to locate guns that had been walked across Libya's border to other countries just as the ATF had done in operation Fast and Furious on the border of Mexico. These are not the actions of inexperience or bad intelligence. They are the actions of traitorous intention. President Obama will, no doubt, be linked to these deaths and operations if Congress will only act, and do its duty in prosecuting a treasonous president who is endangering national security.
  There is no where else for a Congressional investigation to turn other than naming the conspirators, determining when officials knew, and assembling the evidence that murder was committed on behalf of the White House to silence those who knew and could testify. Through out the Obama presidency over the last four years the administration has master minded operations that have caused numerous controversies and crises.
  When will the GOP take action?
  The Republicans have missed opportunities to discredit the President, to impeach Obama in the wake of waging war against Libya without Congressional approval, and allowed executive privilege to quash subpoenaed demands for evidence on Fast and Furious never released by AG Eric Holder. John Boehner, Speaker of the House, has refused to exercise initiative whenever the GOP could have used much-needed momentum to stem the tide against the incessant assaults against state's rights, constitutional rights, and the traditional institutions of America. Will the recent damning evidence now uncovered over the Benghazi fiasco thanks to Admiral James Lyons be implemented to convict the President of potential high treason, or will we see yet another case of criminal acts ignored and hidden at the expense of the American people? If you bother to take interest and act as a responsible citizens contact your congressman and demand action!
  Post Published: 17 January 2013Author: DocVegaFound in section: U.S. Politics, White HouseTags:Admiral Lyons, Al Qaeda, Ambassador Stevens, ATF, Barack Obama, Benghazi, benghazi attack, Eric Holder, Fast and Furious, Gaddafi, Glen Doherty, jihadists, libya, Obama, Obama treason over Benghazi, Omar Abdel Rahman, Steven, Tyrone Woods, United States, US helps terrorists overthrow Libya
LYONS: The key Benghazi questions still unanswered - Washington Times
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Fri, 26 Apr 2013 10:01
  We now have the so-called Independent Accountability Review Board report on the Sept. 11 attack on our Benghazi special mission compound. While it concludes there was no spontaneous mob protest outside the compound, it fails to provide answers to many key questions. For example, it does not address why the Obama administration continued to lie to the American public for the better part of two weeks, saying that the attack on our consulate was mob violence that got out of control over a 14-minute anti-Islamic video that few had seen. Some officials, including former CIA Director David H. Petreaus, apparently lied to Congress, which is a felony.
  Another finding of the review board was that there was no advance warning of an impending attack, an assertion that strikes at the board's credibility. Aside from the significance of the Sept. 11 anniversary date, the facts indicate that there was both strategic and tactical warning of an impending attack. There were numerous reports put out by the Benghazi compound, our Tripoli embassy and even Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens concerning the deteriorating security situation in eastern Libya, including Benghazi. It was well known that there were uncontrolled, well-armed militias, many of which were al Qaeda-affiliated, roaming freely throughout eastern Libya.
  We know in June 2012 both the International Red Cross and the United Kingdom closed their offices in Benghazi after an attempted terrorist attack on the British ambassador and assassinations of others. On June 6, a bomb exploded outside the wall of the U.S. special mission compound. The CIA was tracking for several months the movements of one of the leaders of the Ansar al-Sharia terrorist group that carried out the attack on our mission. How could the CIA not detect the planning or the movement of the jihadists who carried out the ''organized'' attack?
  On Sept. 10, a video featuring al Qaeda boss Ayman al-Zawahri calling on Libyans to avenge the U.S. killing of a Libyan al Qaeda leader certainly should have been a red flag for Stevens and the compound, but the report is silent on this and other issues. On the morning of Sept. 11, we know that one of the Libyan police officers assigned to guard the mission was seen taking pictures of the inside of the compound. A memo found later stated that the ambassador found this to be ''troubling.''
  We know that on the afternoon of Sept. 11, the Blue Mountain Security manager who provided the guards for the Benghazi compound sensed that something was wrong and put out an alert on his radio and cellphone. According to media reports, there were roadblocks and check points set up well in advance of the attack. The last person to see Stevens was the Turkish consul general, who likely had to pass through these roadblocks. He told columnist Diana West that he didn't notice anything unusual '-- a questionable assertion. The report concludes that there was no immediate tactical warning of the impending attack. This is mind-boggling.
  With regard to the lack of a U.S. military response to the attacks, the report does not shed any new light on the Pentagon position that there simply was not sufficient time for U.S. forces outside of Libya to respond. The best the military could muster was positioning an unarmed surveillance drone over the compound about 90 minutes after the attack started.
  It has been reported that Secretary of Defense Leon E. Panetta gave verbal approval to prepare two Marine anti-terrorist teams based in Rota, Spain, for deployment to Benghazi and Tripoli, but it took the first team 23 hours to transit the several hundred miles to Tripoli. The second team was never deployed because officials stated U.S. personnel were already evacuated from Benghazi. This makes no sense, since the second team could have secured the U.S. mission compound, which is U.S. territory, prevented further looting and permitted immediate access by the FBI to gather valuable intelligence information. Why we did not secure the Benghazi mission compound is another unanswered question. What is it that our personnel were kept from seeing?
  The record needs to be set straight on U.S. force availability. The report makes no mention of the 130-man, fully armed and well-led Marine Force-Recon unit that was on the ground in Sigonella, Sicily, and could have been in Benghazi in a matter of a few hours. Likewise, in similar circumstances, an effective tactic for dispersing a mob is to have a fighter aircraft make a low pass in full after-burner, but this was not mentioned in the report.
  Aside from U.S. resources, the report does not discuss why we didn't request security assistance from the Turkish or Italian Benghazi consulates or the British security team that reportedly was at the mission compound only one hour before the attack. Each has stated that they would have provided support but were never asked. Why?
  Another key question which must be answered is what important activity was being conducted at our Benghazi mission compound to cause Stevens to have to be there on the night of Sept. 11 to meet the Turkish consul general, even though he feared for his safety? According to various reports, one of Stevens' main missions was to facilitate the transfer of military equipment to jihadists and other Muslim Brotherhood and al Qaeda-affiliated groups fighting the Bashar Assad regime in Syria, which also fought our forces in Iraq.
  This is a major betrayal that cost the lives of four Americans. Congress needs to form a special bipartisan investigative committee to uncover the facts and make them known to the American public. Nothing less is acceptable.
  Retired Adm. James A. Lyons was commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet and senior U.S. military representative to the United Nations.
Has Britain's Got Talent been faking it?
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Source: Culture | guardian.co.uk
  Fri, 26 Apr 2013 09:53
  Alice Fredenham: confident on The Voice (left); crippling nerves on Britain's Got Talent. Photograph: Ken McKay/PA/BBC
  Seven years in, and everybody more or less knows what to expect from Britain's Got Talent. Street dance. Sob stories. Judges who shout impossible percentages at contestants instead of just saying "yes". Judges who say "It's a yes" instead of just saying "yes". Amanda Holden only being able to express astonishment by detaching her jaw like a hungry snake about to devour an egg. A bit more street dance. Nothing else.
  And yet this year, a new element has been introduced to the show: constant accusations of fakery. Britain's Got Talent isn't Britain's Got Talent any more, it seems, unless Monday's tabloids are jammed with outraged claims that all the decent contestants were famous before they auditioned.
  Take the Johnson Brothers '' a pair of nice, if slightly Mulligan and O'Hare-ish, young men who belted out a nice, if slightly Mulligan and O'Hare-ish version of The Impossible Dream last week. They were introduced as sandwich makers from Wales, but have since been exposed as secret cruise ship singers.
  Then there was Francine Lewis, the impressionist who dazzled Simon Cowell with impersonations of Stacey Solomon and Katie Price. It was an unprecedented performance. Original, unique. Unless, of course, you'd seen her doing the exact same impersonations of Stacey Solomon and Katie Price on Channel 4's Very Important People last year.
  The best (or worst) was Alice Fredenham, who shook off her crippling nerves to perform My Funny Valentine in the first episode of BGT, but then turned up on The Voice one week later breezily confident. Was she faking it on BGT? Does Cowell have the nerve to puppetmaster the performers? Was this all a giant conspiracy? Are any of us expected to ever believe anything we see ever again?
  The real question raised here is whether or not anyone actually cares any more. After more than a decade of reality TV talent shows, we've become inured to this, haven't we? Every year, audiences are expected to endure at least one story about an act that already has a record deal, or has a lucrative cruise ship career, or was brought in as a ringer by the producers. I mean, how long has that dancing five-year-old from Saturday's show been in the business? Two decades? Three? And, frankly, I've yet to be convinced that Pudsey the dancing dog wasn't just a kid with a rug taped to him all along.
  By this point, all the backstage jiggery-pokery should just wash over us, so why am I still bothered? Is it because the accusations of fakery harm Britain's Got Talent, or is it because entertainment has become even more cynical than us, the viewers? Maybe, as I imagine Simon Cowell whispers to his army of wannabes, it's all just "part of the fun" and I'm over-thinking it. But then again, maybe BGT just isn't that fun anymore. Let me know what you think.
BUSTED: Obama Lied About No More Wall St. Bailouts
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Source: The Daily Bail
  Fri, 26 Apr 2013 09:51
  Obama pats himself on the back.
  "Because of Financial Reform, the American people will never again be asked to foot the bill for Wall St's mistakes. There will be no more taxpayer-funded bailouts. Period. If a large financial institution should ever fail, we will have the tools to wind it down without endangering the broader economy."
  ---
  By Dr. Pitchfork
  This sounds great, but it's complete baloney. How do we know? Because in SIGTARP's recent report on Extraordinary Financial Assistance Provided to Citi, Geithner admits, in no uncertain terms, that the fabled "resolution authority" will never actually be used and that taxpayer-funded bailouts are still on the table. The report notes:
  "As Secretary Geithner told SIGTARP, while the Dodd-Frank Act gives the Government 'better tools,' and reduced the risk of failures, '[i]n the future we may have to do exceptional things again' if the shock to the financial system is sufficiently large. Secretary Geithner's candor about the prospect of having to 'do exceptional things again' in such an unknowable future crisis is comendable. At the same time, it underscores a TARP legacy, the moral hazard associated with the continued existence of institutions that remain 'too big to fail.'"
  In other words, in spite of Obama's claims, and in spite of the very specific language within the bill itself, Geithner reserves the right to break the law ("do exceptional things") in order to save the big banks the next time they get into trouble. Moreover, we have every expectation that the government will do exactly that. We still have Too Big To Fail, and according to Geithner, Too Big To Fail means there WILL be more bailouts the next time around.
  Sorry, Mr. President, you've been BUSTED!
REPORT: Several Bitcoin Businesses Have Had Their Bank Accounts Shut Down
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Source: EconomicPolicyJournal.com
  Fri, 26 Apr 2013 09:50
  FT takes a snarky swing at Bitcoins:There are many reasons to doubt the monetary value of Bitcoin, the virtual currency whose exchange rate has been gyrating wildly this month, but no one can deny its comedy value.[...]at the New York branch of the Federal Reserve, which held a gathering this week for some of the grandees of financial regulation. When one person asked if Bitcoin could become a viable unit of international exchange, participants burst out laughing.
  Of much greater concern for bitcoin holders, FT also reports:In recent weeks, several Bitcoin businesses have had their bank accounts shut down, suggesting traditional banks are getting worried about enabling the currency. It comes on the heels of a ruling in the US that all businesses that exchange or transfer virtual currency are ''money services businesses'' and must register with the government and introduce money laundering checks and training for staff.
  BitFloor, a New York-based exchange, shut down after its account was closed. In Canada, Ottawa-based broker Canadian Bitcoins has had two of its four banks shut down.
  James Grant, founder of Canadian Bitcoins, says he was given no clear explanation why his banks abandoned him.
  The big crash comes when MtGox gets harassed or closed by regulators.
Europe's Hypocritical History of Cannibalism
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Source: History & Archaeology | Smithsonian.com
  Fri, 26 Apr 2013 09:46
  In 2001, a lonely computer technician living in the countryside in Northern Germany advertised online for a well-built man willing to participate in a mutually satisfying sexual act. Armin Meiwes' notice was similar to many others on the Internet except for a rather important detail: The requested man must be willing to be killed and eaten.
  Meiwes didn't have to look far. Two hundred and thirty miles away in Berlin, an engineer called Bernd Brandes agreed to travel to Meiwes' farmhouse. There, a gory video later found by police documented Brandes' consensual participation in the deadly dinner. The cannibalism was both a shock to the German public and a conundrum to German prosecutors wanting to charge Meiwes with a crime.
  Cannibalism might be humanity's most sacred taboo, but consent of a victim typically eliminates a crime, explains Emilia Musumeci, a criminologist at the University of Catania, in Italy, who studies cannibalism and serial killers.
  More technically, cannibalism is not designated as illegal in Germany's extensive criminal code: Until that point, laws against murder had sufficed to cover cannibalism. If Brandes had volunteered his own life, how could Meiwes be accused of murder?
  Because of his victim's consent, Meiwes was initially found guilty of something akin to assisted suicide, and sentenced to eight years in jail. Had there not been widespread uproar about the seemingly lenient penalty, Meiwes would be out of jail by now. Instead, the uproar led to a subsequent retrial, where Meiwes was found guilty of killing for sexual pleasure. He will likely spend the rest of his life in jail.
  The unusual Meiwes case is just one of the topics to be discussed this weekend at an interdisciplinary cannibal conference to be held at the Manchester Museum'--the world's first, say many attending the meeting.
  The idea of a cannibalism conference might sound like the basis for a macabre joke about coffee-break finger food. However, there's serious cannibal scholarship taking place in many disciplines, says conference organizer Hannah Priest, a lecturer at Manchester University, who has previously hosted other academic meetings on werewolves and monsters under the banner of her publishing company Hic Dragones. ''From contemporary horror film to medieval Eucharistic devotions, from Freudian theory to science fiction, cannibals and cannibalism continue to repel and intrigue us in equal measure,'' advertises the conference's website.
  When the call for abstracts went out last fall, ''our first response was one from anthropology, another one was on heavy metal music and the third was on 18th-century literature,'' Priest says. ''Academics will quite happily discuss very disturbing things in quite polite terms and forget that not everybody talks about this stuff all the time.''
  It is perhaps fitting that the conference should take place in Europe because the region has a long chronicle of cannibalism, from prehistory through the Renaissance, right up to the 21st-century Meiwes case. In addition, the area has bequeathed us a bounty of fictional cannibals, including Dracula, who is arguably the world's most famous consumer of human blood and a gory harbinger of the current pop culture fascination with vampires and zombies.
  Europe boasts the oldest fossil evidence of cannibalism. In a 1999 Science article, French paleontologists reported that 100,000-year-old bones from six Neanderthal victims found in a French cave called Moula-Guercy had been broken by other Neanderthals in such a way as to extract marrow and brains. In addition, tool marks on the mandible and femur suggested that tongue and thigh meat had been cut off for consumption.
  The cannibalism at Moula-Guercy wasn't an isolated incident in prehistory. In the past decade, researchers have reported other evidence that Neanderthals continued eating each other until just before their disappearance. In one particularly grisly discovery at the El Sidr"n cave in Spain, paleontologists discovered that an extended family of 12 individuals had been dismembered, skinned and then eaten by other Neanderthals about 50,000 years ago.
  When early Homo sapiens began engaging in cannibalism is a topic of debate, although it is clear they eventually did, says Sandra Bowdler, an emeritus professor of archeology at the University of Western Australia. Evidence is scant that this happened in early human hunter-gatherer communities, she says, although in 2009 Fernando Rozzi, at the Centre National de la R(C)cherche Scientifique, in Paris, reported finding a Neanderthal jaw bone that may have been butchered by early humans.
  Even if Europe's Homo sapiens didn't consume each other in prehistory, they certainly did in more modern times. References to acts of cannibalism are sprinkled throughout many religious and historical documents, such as the reports that cooked human flesh was being sold in 11th-century English markets during times of famine, says Jay Rubenstein, a historian at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
  However, the world's first cannibal incident reported by multiple, independent, first-hand accounts took place during the Crusades by European soldiers, Rubenstein says.
  These first-hand stories agree that in 1098, after a successful siege and capture of the Syrian city Ma'arra, Christian soldiers ate the flesh of local Muslims. Thereafter the facts get murky, Rubenstein says. Some chroniclers report that the bodies were secretly consumed in ''wicked banquets'' borne out of famine and without the authorization of military leaders, Rubenstein says. Other reports suggest the cannibalism was done with tacit approval of military superiors who wished to use stories of the barbaric act as a psychological fear tactic in future Crusade battles.
  In 2001, a lonely computer technician living in the countryside in Northern Germany advertised online for a well-built man willing to participate in a mutually satisfying sexual act. Armin Meiwes' notice was similar to many others on the Internet except for a rather important detail: The requested man must be willing to be killed and eaten.
  Meiwes didn't have to look far. Two hundred and thirty miles away in Berlin, an engineer called Bernd Brandes agreed to travel to Meiwes' farmhouse. There, a gory video later found by police documented Brandes' consensual participation in the deadly dinner. The cannibalism was both a shock to the German public and a conundrum to German prosecutors wanting to charge Meiwes with a crime.
  Cannibalism might be humanity's most sacred taboo, but consent of a victim typically eliminates a crime, explains Emilia Musumeci, a criminologist at the University of Catania, in Italy, who studies cannibalism and serial killers.
  More technically, cannibalism is not designated as illegal in Germany's extensive criminal code: Until that point, laws against murder had sufficed to cover cannibalism. If Brandes had volunteered his own life, how could Meiwes be accused of murder?
  Because of his victim's consent, Meiwes was initially found guilty of something akin to assisted suicide, and sentenced to eight years in jail. Had there not been widespread uproar about the seemingly lenient penalty, Meiwes would be out of jail by now. Instead, the uproar led to a subsequent retrial, where Meiwes was found guilty of killing for sexual pleasure. He will likely spend the rest of his life in jail.
  The unusual Meiwes case is just one of the topics to be discussed this weekend at an interdisciplinary cannibal conference to be held at the Manchester Museum'--the world's first, say many attending the meeting.
  The idea of a cannibalism conference might sound like the basis for a macabre joke about coffee-break finger food. However, there's serious cannibal scholarship taking place in many disciplines, says conference organizer Hannah Priest, a lecturer at Manchester University, who has previously hosted other academic meetings on werewolves and monsters under the banner of her publishing company Hic Dragones. ''From contemporary horror film to medieval Eucharistic devotions, from Freudian theory to science fiction, cannibals and cannibalism continue to repel and intrigue us in equal measure,'' advertises the conference's website.
  When the call for abstracts went out last fall, ''our first response was one from anthropology, another one was on heavy metal music and the third was on 18th-century literature,'' Priest says. ''Academics will quite happily discuss very disturbing things in quite polite terms and forget that not everybody talks about this stuff all the time.''
  It is perhaps fitting that the conference should take place in Europe because the region has a long chronicle of cannibalism, from prehistory through the Renaissance, right up to the 21st-century Meiwes case. In addition, the area has bequeathed us a bounty of fictional cannibals, including Dracula, who is arguably the world's most famous consumer of human blood and a gory harbinger of the current pop culture fascination with vampires and zombies.
  Europe boasts the oldest fossil evidence of cannibalism. In a 1999 Science article, French paleontologists reported that 100,000-year-old bones from six Neanderthal victims found in a French cave called Moula-Guercy had been broken by other Neanderthals in such a way as to extract marrow and brains. In addition, tool marks on the mandible and femur suggested that tongue and thigh meat had been cut off for consumption.
  The cannibalism at Moula-Guercy wasn't an isolated incident in prehistory. In the past decade, researchers have reported other evidence that Neanderthals continued eating each other until just before their disappearance. In one particularly grisly discovery at the El Sidr"n cave in Spain, paleontologists discovered that an extended family of 12 individuals had been dismembered, skinned and then eaten by other Neanderthals about 50,000 years ago.
  When early Homo sapiens began engaging in cannibalism is a topic of debate, although it is clear they eventually did, says Sandra Bowdler, an emeritus professor of archeology at the University of Western Australia. Evidence is scant that this happened in early human hunter-gatherer communities, she says, although in 2009 Fernando Rozzi, at the Centre National de la R(C)cherche Scientifique, in Paris, reported finding a Neanderthal jaw bone that may have been butchered by early humans.
  Even if Europe's Homo sapiens didn't consume each other in prehistory, they certainly did in more modern times. References to acts of cannibalism are sprinkled throughout many religious and historical documents, such as the reports that cooked human flesh was being sold in 11th-century English markets during times of famine, says Jay Rubenstein, a historian at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
  However, the world's first cannibal incident reported by multiple, independent, first-hand accounts took place during the Crusades by European soldiers, Rubenstein says.
  These first-hand stories agree that in 1098, after a successful siege and capture of the Syrian city Ma'arra, Christian soldiers ate the flesh of local Muslims. Thereafter the facts get murky, Rubenstein says. Some chroniclers report that the bodies were secretly consumed in ''wicked banquets'' borne out of famine and without the authorization of military leaders, Rubenstein says. Other reports suggest the cannibalism was done with tacit approval of military superiors who wished to use stories of the barbaric act as a psychological fear tactic in future Crusade battles.
  Either way, post-Crusade European society was not comfortable with what happened at Ma'arra, Rubenstein says. ''Everybody who wrote about it was disturbed,'' he says. ''The First Crusade is the first great European epic. It was a story people wanted to celebrate.'' But first they had to deal with the embarrassing stain.
  Part of the problem was that cannibalism at Ma'arra simply didn't fit in with the European self-image. In medieval times, cultural enemies'--not military or religious heroes'--were commonly depicted as cannibals or giants, ''especially in narratives of territorial invasion and conquest,'' argues Geradine Heng, in Cannibalism, The First Crusade and the Genesis of Medieval Romance. ''Witches, Jews, savages, Orientals, and pagans are conceivable as'--indeed, must be'--cannibals; but in the 12th-century medieval imaginary, the Christian European subject cannot.''
  By the 16th century, cannibalism was not just part of the mental furniture of Europeans; it was a common part of everyday medicine from Spain to England.
  Initially, little bits of pulverized mummies imported from Egypt were used in prescriptions against disease, but the practice soon expanded to include the flesh, skin, bone, blood, fat and urine of local cadavers, such as recently executed criminals and bodies dug up illegally from graveyards, says University of Durham's Richard Sugg, who published a book in 2011 called Mummies, Cannibals and Vampires: The History of Corpse Medicine from the Renaissance to the Victorians.
  Medicinal cannibalism reached a feverish pitch around 1680, Sugg says. But the practice can be traced back to the Greek doctor Galen, who recommended human blood as part of some remedies in the 2nd century A.D., and it continued all the way into the 20th century. In 1910, a German pharmaceutical catalog was still selling mummy, says Louise Noble, who also wrote a book on the topic called Medicinal Cannibalism in Early Modern English Literature and Culture.
  While Europeans ate ''mummy'' to cure their physical ailments, the same culture sent missionaries and colonists to the New World to cure New World indigenous people of their purported barbaric cannibalism, some of which was entirely fabricated as a rationale for conquest, Bowdler says. ''It's certainly possible that Europeans were consuming more human flesh at the time than people in the New World,'' Sugg says.
  ''It's a big paradox,'' Noble adds. The term cannibal was being used to describe someone inferior while the ''civilized in Europe were also eating bits of the human body,'' she says.
  The word cannibal first entered the English language in the mid-16th century by means of Spanish explorers, says Carmen Nocentelli, a 16th-century comparative literature and culture scholar at the University of New Mexico. It derives from the Spanish word Canibales, which was used by Columbus in his diaries to describe indigenous people of the Caribbean islands who were rumored to be eaters of human flesh, Nocentelli says. In his diaries, it is clear Columbus didn't initially believe the rumors, she adds.
  But the name stuck: Cannibal became a popular term used to describe people in the New World. It was certainly sexier than the Greek and then Latin word ''anthropophagi,'' which a 1538 dictionary defines as ''people in Asia, which eate [sic] men,'' Nocentelli says.
  Because there's evidence that colonists exaggerated accounts of cannibalism in the New World, some scholars have argued that all cannibalism reports in the colonies were fictitious. But the balance of evidence suggest some reports were certainly true, Bowdler says, namely, from human blood proteins found in fossilized feces at American Southwest sites to first-hand reports from reliable sources about cannibal practices among Mesoamerican Aztecs and Brazilian Tupinamb. ''One of the reasons cannibalism is so controversial is because we have few detailed accounts of how it worked in society,'' Bowdler adds.
  Bowdler has been compiling a list of well-documented accounts of worldwide cannibalism that she will present at the conference this weekend. In particular, she'll discuss categories of cannibalism where consuming human flesh is ''not considered out-and-out bad'' in the society where it is practiced, she says.
  One such category is survival cannibalism, where people consume each other out of absolute necessity, such as the 16 survivors of a 1972 plane crash in the Andes mountains or the members of Sir John Franklin's failed 1845 expedition to the Arctic.
  Another category is mortuary cannibalism, the consumption of the dead during their funeral rites, practiced through the 20th century in the Eastern Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea and the Brazilian and Peruvian Amazon. ''This is not, as we may instinctively imagine, morbid and repulsive,'' notes the University of Manchester's Sarah-Louise Flowers in her conference abstract, ''but is instead an act of affection and respect for the dead person, as a well as being a means of helping survivors to cope with their grief.''
  As some conference attendees compare culturally acceptable categories of human consumption with nefarious cases of cannibal serial killers, other conference presenters will pick apart the presence of cannibals in pop culture, such as the episode of revenge cannibalism in the animated sitcom South Park, the blockbuster popularity of the vampire romance novel series Twilight and the emergence of the Call Of Duty: Zombies video game.
  With talk titles like ''Flesh-Eaters in London: Cosmopolitan Cannibals in Late 19th-Century Fiction and the Press,'' ''Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? Inside the Mind of the Cannibal Serial Killer,'' and ''Bon Appetit! A Concise Defense of Cannibalism,'' one can only hope the conference canap(C)s are vegetarian.
  Subscribe now for more of Smithsonian's coverage on history, science and nature.
Thread: The message of Boston
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Source: Dave Winer's linkblog feed
  Fri, 26 Apr 2013 09:34
  This post was written quickly.
  It was an interesting week to be in Boston, as in the Chinese proverb about living in interesting times. But not for the reasons people think.
  I learned this last night, in a big way, at the Berkman Thursday meetup. We had about 15 people there, some original people from the old days, and some new people who totally fit in. Having new people there makes sense, because the Thursday group was like that. Every week we'd have a fair number of returning friends, and always a healthy number of newbies.
  One man, whose name I didn't catch, said something that I found surprising at first. He said that the press got the story of Boston wrong. The people weren't cowering in fear in their houses as was reported on TV and on Twitter. That was a lie. I admit I found it irrational. Boston is probably about the size of Queens, in geography and in population. If someone was holed up in Astoria, people in Flushing probably wouldn't be too worried. It wouldn't make sense. It would be like worrying that you'd get hit by a bus on any given day. There are a lot of days when no one gets hit by a bus. And even so, the chances of you being that person, well, it's not a smart thing to spend a lot of time worrying about. (Though please, look first before you step out into a street!)
  Everyone in the room who was from Boston immediately agreed, enthusiastically. They didn't like that they were being portrayed that way by the media. So we explored the actual story, what was really going on among the people of Boston. The answer was, they were working together to make their city safe. The city hadn't shut down on the Tuesday or Wednesday after the bombing. But on Thursday night, when the bombers were on the run, the police asked everyone to stay off the street. And the people did what they were asked to do, because that's what people do.
  One person explained it this way: The police wanted to take all the pieces off the board. So if the bomber started moving he would stand out.
  This goes back to one of the themes of my talk on Wednesday night at the Boston Globe. People feel a need to be part of the world they live in. Most of us feel like we're on the sidelines, spectators, consumers, eyeballs, credit card numbers, and that's not what we want. We want meaning. We want to make a contribution. We want do do good and have that good make a difference. If you look at what people actually do, not the stories you read in the paper or hear on CNN, this is obvious. The bombings not only worried people, for a short time when the scope of the danger was unknown, but people also saw the opportunity to get some of the precious stuff, meaning and relevance.
  Why was this a theme of my talk at the Globe? Because the news industry has the ability to offer people exactly what they want, but they won't do it. Their view of the world is that we're out there and they're inside. They talk, we listen. They are relevant, their lives have meaning. The meaning of our lives is not important to them. As long as they view it that way, people will continue to be frustrated by them, as long as they pay any attention. And more and more they're chosing to not pay attention.
  This week the people of Boston learned something about the press because they told a big lie not just about a handful of them, but all of them, collectively. This presents a unique opportunity for a whole city to wake up and take over. I suggested at dinner that the people of Boston buy the Boston Globe, and give it a new direction. You know a city the size of Boston could buy the Globe. And you know what, it's actually for sale. :-)
Movie Link to "Djoker" and the Boston Bombing. Who knew this was all a PR stunt?
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Source: What Mel Cooley is saying.
  Fri, 26 Apr 2013 09:15
  IFC FilmsA teenager comes from a Muslim country to live in the Northeastern U.S. He goes to school here, enjoys a measure of success and moves in with his American girlfriend. But he feels the lure of radical Islam in the post-9/11 U.S. and embraces a kind of jihadism. When an act of terror erupts, he quickly becomes the government's prime suspect.
  The Reluctant Fundamentalist is not an instant docudrama about Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the elder and deceased suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings. Mira Nair's movie, an adaptation of Mohsin Hamid's 2007 novel, had its world premiere eight months ago at the Venice Film Festival. The picture also is less specifically connected to recent events, and carries a much less incendiary kick, than does Four Lions, Christopher Morris's 2010 pitch-black comedy about a quartet of addled Pakistani-English jihadists plotting to set off bombs during the London Marathon. Still, Nair's tense, thoughtful film has a piquant pertinence to current anxieties in Boston and beyond '-- for it dramatizes the tug-of-wills in the mind of a young Muslim between American values and the fundamentalist imperative.
  (READ: Richard Corliss's review ofFour Lions)
  Set in Pakistan and New York City, William Wheeler's screenplay traces the turbulent evolution of Changez (Riz Ahmed), the son of a Punjab poet (Om Puri), from Princeton grad and go-getter in a Bain-like company (run by Kiefer Sutherland) to a radical teacher and possible terror advocate back in Lahore. An American professor has been kidnapped, and a journalist (Liev Schreiber) urgently wants to know what Changez knows. The viewer gets the reluctant fundamentalist's life story in flashbacks, as the figurative time bomb attached to the kidnap victim tick-tick-ticks.
  On his arrival at Princeton, Changez (the Pakistani transliteration of Genghis, as in Khan) sees America as the true Promised Land. ''God bless America,'' he apostrophizes. ''God bless its level playing fields. God bless winning.'' His rapid rise through in a Wall Street firm stokes his ambitions for a political career back home: ''In 25 years I'm going to be the dictator of an Islamic republic with nuclear capability.'' The souring of his love for America comes less from the conniving intricacies of capitalism than from his affair with the boss's niece, Erica (Kate Hudson), an aspiring artist who expresses her devotion to him by exposing some of his vulnerabilities in her photo art. That, we are led to infer, is why Changez changes into a true believer who urges his followers to ''wipe the blood of invaders from our sword.''
  (READ: Alex Perry's profile of Mira Nair)
  The Erica affair is the least engaging element in a movie whose probing, disturbing questions are meant to test America's conscience. Can one admire the strategic genius of the 9/11 attack while deploring the deaths it created? Does a free society have the right to strip-search any model citizen who happens to be Pakistani, and to kill hundreds of thousands of civilians in a country that harbored al Qaeda? Is terrorism just America's word for an insurgency of the kind that gave birth to the United States?
  Like her protagonist, Nair is an amalgam of two clashing cultures. India-born and Harvard-educated, she has directed films set in her homeland (Salaam Bombay!, Kama Sutra, Monsoon Wedding), in the U.S. (The Perez Family, Hysterical Blindness, Amelia) and in Britain (Vanity Fair). Twice before, Nair investigated the displacement felt by (C)migr(C)s from the subcontinent when they come to America. The 1991 Mississippi Masala posed a Romeo-and-Juliet romance between a new arrival (Anglo-Indian actress Sarita Choudhury) and a local tradesman (the young Denzel Washington). The Namesake, in 2006, portrayed two generations of an Indian family that has settled in New York City.
  (READ: Richard Corliss's review of The Namesake)
  Nair sleekly manages the story's thriller aspects, especially the kidnapping. But this is a character study, and she has found some superb actors to fill it. The reunion of Puri and Shabana Azmi, two great lights of Indian cinema, as Changez's parents would be sufficient reason for celebration. Sutherland and Schreiber give full force to America's role in economic and political imperialism. And Turkish theater legend Haluk Bilginer steals his scene as a publisher of poetry (including works by Changez's father) whose house is about to be shuttered by a company that the young man's conglomerate has acquired.
  This, though, is Ahmed's show. A Brit of Pakistani heritage, an Oxford scholar and rap artist (his ''Post 9/11 Blues'' was banned by the BBC for being ''politically sensitive''), he first attracted filmgoers' attention in 2006 as one of the detainees in Michael Winterbottom's The Road to Guantanamo. He also starred as the leader of the slapstick jihadis in Four Lions. Handsome, seductive and pensive, straddling the First and Third Worlds, Ahmed keeps viewers guessing as to what makes Changez run. The 30-year-old gets a starmaking role in a movie imposing in its breadth and depth. For American viewers right now, the contradictions that wage war within this reluctant fundamentalist are haunting and, quite possibly, terrifying.
Big Brother Has A New Face, And It's Your Boss
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Source: Set You Free News
  Fri, 26 Apr 2013 09:11
  By Paul Hsieh | Forbes
  Recently, the CVS Caremark Corporation began requiring employees to disclose personal health information (including weight, blood pressure, and body fat levels) or else pay an annual $600 fine. Workers must make this information available to the company's employee ''Wellness Program'' and sign a form stating that they're doing so voluntarily.
  CVS argues this will help workers ''take more responsibility for improving their health.'' At one level, this makes a certain sense. Because the company is paying for their employees' health insurance, they naturally prefer healthier workers.
  But at a deeper level, CVS' action demonstrates a growing problem with our current system of employer-provided health insurance. If our bosses must pay for our health care, they will inevitably seek greater control over our lifestyles.
  Although most Americans take it for granted that they receive health insurance through the workplace, this is an artifact of federal tax rules from World War II. When the U.S. government imposed wartime wage controls, employers could no longer compete for workers by offering higher salaries. Instead, they competed by offering more generous fringe benefits such as health insurance.
  In 1943, the IRS ruled that employees did not have to pay tax on health benefits provided by employers; in 1954, the IRS made this permanent.
  The federal government thus distorted the health insurance market in favor of employer-based plans. If a company paid $100 for health insurance with pre-tax dollars, the employee enjoyed the full benefit. But if the employee received that $100 as salary, he could only purchase $50-70 of insurance after taxes.
  Over time, this tax disparity helped employer-based health insurance dominate the private insurance market. In 2008, over 90% of non-elderly Americans with private insurance received it through their workplace.
  Read Full Article
Teenage password security
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Source: Phys.org - latest science and technology news stories
  Fri, 26 Apr 2013 09:10
  Teenage password securityJavascript is currently disabled in your web browser. For full site functionality, it is necessary to enable Javascript. In order to enable it, please see these instructions.just addedMany of us are sharing increasing amounts of personal information through online social media sites, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and others. However, according to Charlott Lorentzen, Markus Fiedler and Henric Johnson of the Blekinge Institute of Technology, School of Computing, in Karlskrona, Sweden, many of us are side-stepping apparently laborious security measures and putting our data at risk of being hijacked and used in identity theft and other fraud.
  Writing in the International Journal of Communication Networks and Distributed Systems, the Swedish team points out that there are also more subtle risks associated with the carefree sharing of personal information, such as compromising situations potentially arising in both our private and professional lives should our data or the site on which it is hosted be accessed by malicious third parties.
  At the forefront of the problem is the issue of using secure passwords. While no password can ever be 100 percent secure, annual surveys reveal that far too many users rely on simplistic names, dates, anniversaries and even plain dictionary words, like "password", and strings of numbers "123456" as their passwords because it is easier to remember. This, of course, provides a false sense of security when accessing some sites in which a simple brute-force attack on logins would quickly and easily expose the weakness in such passwords.
  The Swedish team has surveyed teenage users of social media sites, the so-called digital natives born after the initial emergence into the mainstream of the internet, mobile computing and social media sites. They surveyed two groups: one at a secondary school and compared their password use with staff members at a technology institute. They also asked the teenagers about their perception of online safety and risk. The passwords and attitudes of 67 male and 70 female teenagers were analysed and data correlated with the students studying commerce, hotel and restaurant, natural science, and technology.
  The team found that students on more technically oriented courses tended to have more sophisticated passwords, as one might expect, but few students used the same password for their Facebook and email accounts, which is a promising development compared with earlier surveys that showed many students use the same password on all systems. Previous surveys showed 75% of users duplicated passwords whereas the Swedish results suggest this is now about 40%. For staff at the Institute, duplication was 17%. "The order of magnitudes of all figures may suggest that many users do not prioritise their personal security on Facebook, and that more awareness would be needed to improve this situation," the team says.
  "Our results indicate that bad password strategies may be 'taught away', or that there would be a point in having good password strategies and online safety taught in primary or secondary school to increase security awareness," the team concludes.
  More information: "On user perception of safety in online social networks" in Int. J. Communication Networks and Distributed Systems, 2013, 11, 77-91.
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  (C) Phys.org' 2003-2013
  Teenage password securityJavascript is currently disabled in your web browser. For full site functionality, it is necessary to enable Javascript. In order to enable it, please see these instructions.just addedMany of us are sharing increasing amounts of personal information through online social media sites, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and others. However, according to Charlott Lorentzen, Markus Fiedler and Henric Johnson of the Blekinge Institute of Technology, School of Computing, in Karlskrona, Sweden, many of us are side-stepping apparently laborious security measures and putting our data at risk of being hijacked and used in identity theft and other fraud.
  Writing in the International Journal of Communication Networks and Distributed Systems, the Swedish team points out that there are also more subtle risks associated with the carefree sharing of personal information, such as compromising situations potentially arising in both our private and professional lives should our data or the site on which it is hosted be accessed by malicious third parties.
  At the forefront of the problem is the issue of using secure passwords. While no password can ever be 100 percent secure, annual surveys reveal that far too many users rely on simplistic names, dates, anniversaries and even plain dictionary words, like "password", and strings of numbers "123456" as their passwords because it is easier to remember. This, of course, provides a false sense of security when accessing some sites in which a simple brute-force attack on logins would quickly and easily expose the weakness in such passwords.
  The Swedish team has surveyed teenage users of social media sites, the so-called digital natives born after the initial emergence into the mainstream of the internet, mobile computing and social media sites. They surveyed two groups: one at a secondary school and compared their password use with staff members at a technology institute. They also asked the teenagers about their perception of online safety and risk. The passwords and attitudes of 67 male and 70 female teenagers were analysed and data correlated with the students studying commerce, hotel and restaurant, natural science, and technology.
  The team found that students on more technically oriented courses tended to have more sophisticated passwords, as one might expect, but few students used the same password for their Facebook and email accounts, which is a promising development compared with earlier surveys that showed many students use the same password on all systems. Previous surveys showed 75% of users duplicated passwords whereas the Swedish results suggest this is now about 40%. For staff at the Institute, duplication was 17%. "The order of magnitudes of all figures may suggest that many users do not prioritise their personal security on Facebook, and that more awareness would be needed to improve this situation," the team says.
  "Our results indicate that bad password strategies may be 'taught away', or that there would be a point in having good password strategies and online safety taught in primary or secondary school to increase security awareness," the team concludes.
  More information: "On user perception of safety in online social networks" in Int. J. Communication Networks and Distributed Systems, 2013, 11, 77-91.
  More from Physics Forums - General Engineering
  Related StoriesSplashData's annual list shows people still using easy-to-guess passwords Oct 25, 2012
  (Phys.org)'--In what has become an annual tradition, SplashData, a company that makes productivity applications for smartphones, has released a list of passwords it claims are the most commonly used to access online applications. ...
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  Competing pathways affect early differentiation of higher brain structuresSand-dwelling and rock-dwelling cichlids living in East Africa's Lake Malawi share a nearly identical genome, but have very different personalities. The territorial rock-dwellers live in communities where ...
  Reassigning cells to fight infectionJust as a uniform helps distinguish a soldier from a police officer, scientists use proteins that immune cells wear on their surfaces to determine their job in the body. T cells, for example, that display ...
  (C) Phys.org' 2003-2013
Lethality of Roundup 'Weedkiller' Extends Beyond Plants To Humans, Study Suggests
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Source: Activist Post
  Fri, 26 Apr 2013 09:08
  Sayer JiActivist PostA shocking new study finds that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup herbicide, "... may be the most biologically disruptive chemical in our environment," capable of contributing to a wide range of fatal human diseases.
  A new report published in the journal Entropy links the active ingredient in Roundup herbicide known as glyphosate with a wide range of fatal diseases.[i]
  Glyphosate is the world's most popular herbicide and is designed to kill all but genetically modified "Roundup Ready" plants, such as GM corn, soy, beet, cottonseed and canola. Over 180 million pounds of the chemical are now applied to US soils each year,[ii] and while agrichemical manufacturers and government regulators have considered it 'relatively safe,' an expanding body of biomedical research indicates that it may cause over 30 distinct adverse health effects in exposed populations at far lower concentrations than used in agricultural applications.
  The new report, authored by Stephanie Seneff, a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Anthony Samsel, a retired science consultant from Arthur D. Little, Inc., brings to the forefront concerns voiced by an outspoken minority that Roundup and related glyphosate herbicide formulations are contributing to diseases as far-ranging as inflammatory bowel disease, anorexia, cystic fibrosis, cancer, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease, and infertility. In fact, the authors propose that glyphosate, contrary to being essentially nontoxic, "... may be the most biologically disruptive chemical in our environment."
  The researchers identified the inhibition and/or disruption of cytochrome P450 (CYP) enzymes as a hitherto overlooked mechanism of toxicity associated with glyphosate exposure in mammals.CYP enzymes are essential for detoxifying xenobiotic chemicals from the body. Glyphosate therefore enhances the damaging effects of other food borne chemical residues and environmental toxins.
  The researchers also showed how interference with CYP enzymes acts synergistically with disruption of the biosynthesis of aromatic amino acids by gut bacteria (e.g. tryptophan), as well as impairment in serum sulfate transport, a critical biological system for cellular detoxification (e.g. transulfuration pathway which detoxifies metals).
  These effect, according to the researchers, can contribute to causing or worsening "... most of the diseases and conditions associated with a Western diet which include gastrointestinal disorders, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, depression, autism, infertility, cancer and Alzheimer's disease."
  This new report may help to explain why over 30 adverse health effects associated with Roundup herbicide exposure have been identified in the peer-reviewed and published literature so far. The full report in PDF form can be obtained here. Please help us spread this information, as well as our Roundup Toxicity Research and GMO Research pages, by sharing them with other concerned individuals and groups.
  Resources:[i] Samsel A, Seneff S. Glyphosate's Suppression of Cytochrome P450 Enzymes and Amino Acid Biosynthesis by the Gut Microbiome: Pathways to Modern Diseases. Entropy. 2013; 15(4):1416-1463.
  [ii] Huffingtonpost.com, Roundup, An Herbicide, Could Be Linked To Parkinson's, Cancer And Other Health Issues, Study Shows
  This article first appeared at GreenMedInfo. Please visit to access their vast database of articles and the latest information in natural health.
  BE THE CHANGE! PLEASE SHARE THIS USING THE TOOLS BELOW
LUNCH WITH THE FT - A FORMER HEAD OF MOSSAD
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Source: aangirfan
  Fri, 26 Apr 2013 09:06
  I meet my guest, a former head of Mossad, at the Clonegal Castle restaurant in Dublin.'Reuben' prefers that we do not use his real name.For a starter, I order Dublin Bay prawns with truffle sabayon and prawn bisque.
  Reuben says the prawns may be radioactive and orders chopped herring fillet with pickled onion and salad in sour dressing.
  "So," I ask, "who did Boston?""The Irish," says Reuben.I am relieved to hear it wasn't Mossad.
  Cardinal Spellman, also known as Franny, was reportedly fond of boys and worked for the CIA. Reuben begins to list some of the spooky people who have Irish origins. William Joseph "Wild Bill" Donovan, the father of the CIA.CIA bosses John Brennan, William Casey and Michael Hayden.Kennedy, Nixon, Reagan, Bush and a number of others.Ann Dunham, Walt Disney, Henry Ford...William Casey, CIA Director 1981 - 1987
  "William Casey set up the Jamestown Foundation," explains Reuben, "and we now know that Tamerlan Tsarnaev attended one of their workshops."
  I suppose that is a Boston connection.
  Reuben reminds me about Iran-Contra.
  Just hours before Casey was due to give evidence before Congress about Iran-Contra, he was rushed off to hospital and mysteriously disappeared.
  "Casey knew all about the CIA's pedophile rings," says Reuben, as he finishes off the last pickled onion. "Casey was a friend of Roy Cohn." Our milk-fed lamb, with glazed turnips, wild garlic and bog oak sauce, is delivered to our table
  William Casey: Co-founded the Jamestown Organization with Zbigniew Brzezinski, Dick Cheney, and Frank Carlucci. He used P2 to destabilise countries. He used the BCCI bank to fund Islamist terrorists. I ask Reuben: "Who did 9 11?""The Irish," replies Reuben.
  He explains that it was William Casey who organised the setting up of 'the mad Moslems' in Afghanistan.
  Casey had them recruited, trained and armed.I suggest that not all the CIA people are Irish, but Reuben responds that most of the key people in the CIA are Catholics.George Tenet, Leon Panetta and John McCone were among the Catholics occupying top positions in the CIA.Reuben then reminds me of some of the people linked to the Catholic Knights of Malta, such J. Edgar Hoover, Allen Dulles, and Oliver North.We pause our conversation as the waiter brings us our Tarte Tatin, pressed apple terrine and pain d'(C)pice ice cream.
  I ask Reuben if the Irish are still as powerful as before.He points out that Obama chose John Brennan, from Roscommon, to head the CIA."Brennan is going to retire to Ireland, according to his family," explains Reuben.
  Over coffee, I bring up the subject of the USS Liberty.
  "President Lyndon Johnson and the CIA could see that Nasser was increasingly pro-Soviet," says Reuben. "Johnson decided to topple Nasser. As part of Operation Cyanide, the USS LIBERTY was sent to operate off the Sinai coast, in order for it to be sunk."
  I ask about Israel's role."We were asked to give a little help to the Pentagon," says Reuben, with a hint of a smile.
SIM31 SIM63 BPSK31 download new HAM RADIO new digimode main page for use on HF and VHF/UHF
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Thu, 25 Apr 2013 22:35
  Les modes digitaux, suite
  Le nouveau digimode SIM31/63 :Retrouvez les adeptes du programme sim-psk31 maintenant sur facebook
  Octubre 2012 : Nacimiento del nuevo modo digital SIM-PSK31Traducci"n per Francisco Lara, EA5GVJ & ON6LP
  Octobre 2012 - Naissance du nouveau digimode : sim-psk31article publi(C) dans le CQ-QSOOktober 2012 - Geboorte van nieuwe digimode: sim-PSK31artikel in de CQ-QSOBilingue Fran§ais / n(C)erlandais - tweetalig Frans / Nederlands
  Attention :Utilisez toujours la version la plus r(C)cente Actuellement :SIM_PSK31_v6469 Nouvelle version avec codage r(C)vis(C)
  AVIS: Ceci concerne votre site-web .Comme vous le savez, SIM-PSK31 (C)volue chaque jour .Certains OM's d(C)sirent promouvoir ce digimode en pla§ant sur leurs pages web, un lien vers le bouton de t(C)l(C)chargement du SIM-PSK31, mais ce lien est actualis(C) chaque nouvelle version !Donc, ne dirigez pas vos visiteurs vers le bouton du programme t(C)l(C)charger ! Cr(C)ez plut´t un lien vers la page d'acc¨s au mode SIM, lien : www.on4nb.be/sim.htm . Ceci vous (C)vitera d'avoir des liens p(C)rim(C)s sur vos pages web !
  Les derni¨res nouvelles - 2013-04-10
  Le SIM31 / SIM63 par rapport au PSK-31/63:
  Nouveau ! digimode bas(C) sur le varicode BPSK
  Qu'est-ce que le SIM ?Apr¨s le mode PSK d(C)j d(C)crit dans ces pages (DIGIPAN), voici qu'un nouveau mode digital a fait son entr(C)e dans les programmes freeware con§us pour et par des radioamateurs.Il s'agit du SIM31 / SIM63 (Structured Integrated Message BPSK31 )Performances :En 6 mois, ce gratuiciel a d(C)j beaucoup (C)volu(C), il est encore en phase de tests mais des tests comparatifs ont d(C)montr(C) qu'il fonctionne tr¨s bien sur les bandes HF, VHF et UHF dans les modes ssB et FM.Mode QSO automatique :SIM-PSK31 poss¨de maintenant un "mode QSO automatique", tr¨s utile pour les tests, l'(C)tude de la propagation, mais aussi et surtout pour l'OM d(C)butant, qui peut ainsi observer le fonctionnement du programme, sans avoir intervenir dans le d(C)roulement du QSO.Vitesse / performances :Pour augmenter la fiabilit(C) et la vitesse de transmission, le programme inclut des "macros" qui poss¨dent leur propre varicode, que l'on peut s(C)lectionner de mani¨re pr(C)programmer chaque (C)tape d'un contact.Mode "CHAT" :Le mode (T)chat permet de discuter en envoyant du texte libre. Il peut donc servir transmettre des informations non pr(C)vues dans les macros, ou de discuter entre amis, MAIS chaque caract¨re (C)tant encod(C) s(C)par(C)ment, vous perdez l'avantage de la vitesse produite par les mots et / ou phrases poss(C)dant leur propre varicode ; par cons(C)quent le mode chat diminue aussi la robustesse du code face aux interf(C)rences.Choix de la langue de transmission :C'est le seul programme avec lequel vous pouvez transmettre dans votre langue, des messages qui seront re§us par votre correspondant, dans la langue de son choix ( parmi les langues pr(C)programm(C)es dans le software )... Choix automatique du mode :Derni¨rement, le programme a re§u (C)galement un onglet permettant le "choix automatique du mode d(C)coder". Cet onglet ne doit ªtre utilis(C) que pour le d(C)codage.Si vous lancez un appel ne cliquez pas sur cet onglet ! Choisissez vous-mªme le mode SIM par l'onglet pr(C)vu.Concepteur :Le concepteur de ce logiciel, Nizar Ben Rejeb, est un (SWL) Tunisien . Plusieurs OM's contribuent activement aux tests, au d(C)bogage et la distribution via ce site.
  Il s'agit de Bernard, ON2TSF - Didier, ON5DVO - Michel, ON7TV - Paco, EA5GVJ (ON6LP) et votre serviteur, Dany ON4NB...
  Mais pourquoi utiliser un nouveau mode ?
  A l'(C)coute ce mode semble assez proche du PSK, et en effet il s'agit d'un varicode BPSK enti¨rement modifi(C) . Donc pour pouvoir le reconna®tre et commencer un QSO, il a (C)t(C) n(C)cessaire de lui adjoindre en d(C)but de transmission, un signal permettant de le rep(C)rer parmi les autres modes. Nous avons choisi de transmettre le signal "SIM" en CW .Ce signal sonore peut ªtre d(C)sactiv(C) en cours de QSO.Vous l'avez compris, le but de ce nouveau mode n'est pas de faire la mªme chose que le PSK, mais de rendre le d(C)codage plus robuste, plus performant lorsque la r(C)ception est faible, ou alt(C)r(C)e par des conditions de propagation difficiles ( QRN, QRM, QSB'... ) .Ce but est atteint puisque des tests ont d(C)montr(C) que ce software r(C)ussit surpasser la sensibilit(C) des autres programmes connus, avec une fiabilit(C) de d(C)codage renforc(C)e par l'int(C)gration de messages poss(C)dant leur propre varicode .Tout ceci permet donc de transmettre plus rapidement et avec moins de risques d'erreurs .
  Ce mode devrait donc convenir particuli¨rement pour les QSO en QRP et pour le DX.Le programme est maintenant disponible ainsi qu'un historique des am(C)liorations. Cliquez sur le cot(C) orange du bouton pour charger directement le fichier ex(C)cutable, ou du cot(C) vert si votre antivirus pose probl¨me quand vous t(C)l(C)chargez un fichier ex(C)cutable.
  Voici en d(C)tails comment est n(C) le SIM-PSK, article (pdf) (C)crit pour le CQ-QSO
  Derni¨re version : SIM_PSK31_v6469
  Activit(C) SIM en temps r(C)el / SIM-activity in realtime
  Merci Nizar pour cet excellent travail !
  ------------------------------------------------
  New ! New digimode based on PSK 31 - 63
  Warning :Use only the last release :SIM_PSK31_v6469 Currently : New version with SIM_PSK31_v6469 revised coding
  Notice: this concerns your website. As you know, our software SIM-PSK31 is improving every day.Some OM's wish to promote this digimode by placing on their web pages, a link to the download button SIM-PSK31, but this link is updated with each new release !So do not put a direct link to the "download" button!Instead, place a link to this addressLink: www.on4nb.be/sim.htm . This will prevent obsolete links on your web pages...
  Last news - 2013-04-10
  SIM31 / SIM63 versus PSK-31/63:
  New digimode based on BPSK varicode.
  What is the SIM mode?After PSK mode, already described in these web pages with the program "DIGIPAN",for a few months, a new digital mode has made its coming into the freeware programs designed by and for hams.This is the SIM31 / SIM63 (Integrated Structured Message BPSK31)performances:In six months, this freeware has evolved a lot, it is still in testing phase, but comparative tests have shown that it works very well on HF, VHF and UHF, in SSB and FM.automatic QSO mode :SIM-PSK31 has now a "automatic QSO mode ", very useful for testing, the study of the propagation, but also and especially for the beginners, because they can observe how to use the software, without having to intervene during the QSO.Speed / performance :To increase the reliability and speed of transmission, the program includes "macros" that have their own varicode and that can be selected to define each stage of a contact.CHAT mode :The "chat mode" allows sending free text. It can therefore be used to send informations not included into the macros, or to chat with friends, BUT in this case, each character is encoded separately, so you lose the advantage of speed obtained by the words and / or phrases having their own varicode ! Therefore the chat mode also reduces the robustness of code against interferences.Language selection :SIM-PSK31 is the only software by which you can communicate in your own language, and allowing your opposite number to receiving in the language of its choice (among the languages programmed in the software) ...Automatic selection mode :Recently, the program received a new tab, allowing to choose an "automatic selection mode"This tab should be used only for decoding, in reception.If you initiate a call do not use this tab ! select the button "SIM mode" provided.Designer:The designer of this software, Nizar Ben Rejeb is a Tunisian SWL. Several OM's are actively contributing to help him by testing, debugging, and distributing via this website.They are : Bernard ON2TSF - Didier ON5DVO - Michel ON7TV - Paco EA5GVJ (ON6LP) and yours truly, Dany ON4NB ...
  But why use a new digimode?
  When listening this mode, it seems close enough of the PSK mode, and indeed it is a BPSK varicode completely modified. So to be able to recognize and begin a QSO, it was necessary to add at the beginning of transmission, a signal to recognize it among other modes.We chose to transmit the signal "SIM" in CW.This morse code can be disabled during QSO.You guessed it, the goal of this new mode is not to do as the PSK, but to make the decoding more robust, more efficient when reception is weak or distorted by difficult propagation conditions (QRN, QRM, QSB ...).This goal is achieved since tests have shown that this software is able to surpass the sensitivity of other known programs, thanks to an enhanced decoding, and a better reliability by giving each integrated macro, its own varicode.All this makes it possible to transmit more quickly and with less risks of errors.This method should be particularly suitable for any QSO in QRP mode and for DX.The program is now available and also an history of improvements.
  Click on the (orange) side of the button to load directly the executable file , or click the green side if your antivirus doesn't accept it.
  Here's a pdf file relating how was born SIM mode - Translation of an article I wrote for the CQ-QSO , (pdf) read article
  Thanks to Nizar for this excellent job !
  SIM 31 / SIM 63 can be downloaded hereunder
  Last release in download : SIM_PSK31_v6469
  Activit(C) SIM en temps r(C)el / SIM-activity in realtime
  ABCompteur : compteur gratuit
Unemployment in Spain passes six-million mark for the first time.
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Source: WT news feed
  Thu, 25 Apr 2013 22:14
  The ranks of the unemployed in Spain climbed above six million for the first time ever as the jobless rate hit an unprecedented 27 percent in the first quarter of the year, this despite an easing of the recession in the period.
  According to the National Statistics Institute's Active Population Survey (EPA) for the period January-March, the number of people out of work rose by 237,400 from the previous three months to 6.202 million as the unemployment rate jumped from 26.02 percent to 27.16 percent, the highest level since the current series began to be compiled in 1976, just after the death of dictator Francisco Franco.
  The deterioration in the labor market occurred despite the Bank of Spain estimating earlier this week that the contraction in output in the first quarter slowed to 0.5 percent on a quarterly basis from 0.8 percent at the end of 2012.
  ''The pace of the increase is surprising given that we were supposed to be in a softer phase of the recession,'' Ricardo Santos, a euro-area economist at BNP Paribas in London, told Bloomberg. ''We could now end the year at 28-percent unemployment and we may see a downward revision of first-quarter growth.''
  The jobless rate has already reached the 27-percent level the IMF predicted would happen by the end of this year. The multilateral agency expects the domestic economy to contract by 1.6 percent this year after declining 1.4 percent in 2012.
  The conservative Popular Party (PP) government of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy is due on Friday to present its revised economic scenario for the next three years, as well as a new battery of reform measures. Economy Minister Luis de Guindos said earlier this week that the measures would seek to marry reducing the public deficit while stimulating economic growth.
  Youth unemployment has risen to a record 57.2 percent
  Spain is in the throes of its second recession in barely four years. Since the crisis broke, the number of people out of work has climbed by four million, while the jobless rate has increased by some 20 percentage points. The jobless rate was also boosted by a fall in the active population of 85,000 from the previous three months and by 235,300 from the same period a year earlier to 22.837 million as a result of immigrants returning home and Spaniards moving abroad in search of work.
  The National Statistics Institute said earlier this week that the total population at the start of this year fell by 205,788 from a year earlier to 47.1 million, the first overall decline since 1996. The number of immigrants leaving the country was 216,125. The unemployment rate for foreign workers stands at 39.21 percent, 14.1 points higher than for Spanish workers.
  The number of people in work fell by 322,300 to 16.634 million, the lowest rate since 2002. The drop in the public sector was 71,400 as a result of the government's austerity drive, while the private sector shed 251,000 jobs.
  The number of households with all of its members out of a job climbed 72,400 from the previous EPA quarterly survey, and 177,700 from a year earlier to 1.906 million. The number of unemployed people under 25 years rose by 30,200 in the quarter to 960,000 with the jobless rate for this segment of the labor market climbing by 0.2 points to a new record of 57.2 percent.
  Unemployment fell practically across all of Spain's regions, with the biggest increases coming in Andalusia, Valencia and the Balearic Islands.
  The number of people out of work in the quarter increased by 170,500 in the services sector, by 66,800 in industry, 60,900 and agriculture, and by 24,200 in construction.
  Prospects for a turnaround in the situation anytime soon are dim. While the economy is forecast to return to growth in 2014, the pace of the recovery is expected to be insufficient to start creating jobs again.
Ukrainian Rutgers student arrested taking two IEDs into New York just a week before Boston Marathon bombing | Mail Online
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Thu, 25 Apr 2013 22:11
  Eight days before the Boston Marathon bombing, police in New Jersey arrested a man traveling into New York with two homemade devicesRutgers student Mykyta Panasenko lived in Jersey City, but was originally from the UkraineHe has been ' recklessly creating widespread risk of injury or damage'His arrest only became public knowledge on Wednesday after appeared in courtBy Paul Thompson In Boston, James Nye and David Mccormack
  PUBLISHED: 20:00 EST, 25 April 2013 | UPDATED: 20:09 EST, 25 April 2013
  Just eight days before three people were killed and more than 260 people were injured in the Boston Marathon bombing, a Ukrainian student was arrested in New Jersey carrying two homemade devices.
  Rutgers student Mykyta Panasenko, 27, was arrested in Hoboken on April 7 aboard a NJ Transit train bound for Suffern, New York. He was carrying two improvised explosive devices, according to police.
  Jersey City Police Deputy Chief Peter Nalbach said Thursday that authorities also found material at Panasenko's home 'that may have been used to make an explosive device.'
  Scroll down for video
  Just days before the Boston Marathon, Rutgers student Mykyta Panasenko, 27, was arrested with two devices aboard a NJ Transit train bound for New York
  According to a criminal complaint, Panasenko is charged with having 'two destructive devices, specifically improvised explosive devices (IEDs) constructed from a cylinder containing Pyrodex (black powder)' on April 5, the criminal complaint says.
  He is also charged with 'recklessly creating widespread risk of injury or damage to a building which normally contains 25 or more persons by constructing the explosive devices,' reports the Jersey Journal.
  The charges were filed by the FBI and the Port Authority Police Department.
  According to Panasenko's Facebook page, he lived in Jersey City but is originally from Kiev, Ukraine.
  And according to Pansasenko's LinkedIn page, he attended Rutgers University in New Brunswick, and lists his current job as a mathematician at Mahwah-based High 5 Games, a game creator in the casino industry.
  Originally from the Ukraine, Panasenko has been charged with 'recklessly creating widespread risk of injury or damage to a building which normally contains 25 or more person.'
  His arrest wasn't reported by authorities at the time, but became public after he appeared in Hudson County Court on Wednesday.
  News of the arrest comes after revelations that the Tsarnaev brothers, the two suspects in the Boston bombings, had also planned to set off bombs in Manhattan.
  New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg confirmed on Thursday that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, told the FBI that he and his older brother Tamerlan intended to travel to New York from Boston on Friday- targeting the thousands of tourists and revelers in the city's Times Square.
  Speaking at an afternoon press conference, Bloomberg said that despite the city having heightened security following the marathon attacks, 'We don't know if we would have been able to stop the terrorists had they arrived here from Boston.'
  The startling revelations added pressure onto U.S. authorities who are coming under fire for their handling of the case.
  Especially how the FBI dealt with warnings from Russian intelligence over Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his visits to terrorist hotbed, Dagestan.
  New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, (left), and Mayor Michael Bloomberg hold a news conference, Thursday, April, 25, 2013 in New York where they revealed the Boston Marathon bombing suspects intended to blow up their remaining explosives in Times Square
  New York Police Department Commissioner Ray Kelly (left) speaks as Mayor Bloomberg watches during a news conference to discuss the Boston Marathon bombing suspects plan
  Dzhokar Tsarnaev, pictured in November of 2012 in Times Square with friends - the FBI is in touch with a number of the individuals in this photograph
  Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly announced that the two men accused of carrying out last week's bombing of the Boston Marathon, planned an additional bomb attack on New York's Times Square
  Boston suspects planned attack on Times Square
  Praising the work of law enforcement in Boston in apprehending and catching the Tsarnaev brothers, Bloomberg said that New York was 'lucky' it never had to find out.
  Both Mayor Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly spoke at the briefing where they revealed that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev told Boston investigators from his hospital bed that he and his brother had discussed going to New York to detonate their remaining explosives.
  'Last night we were informed by the FBI that the surviving attacker revealed that New York Citywas next on their list of targets,' Bloomberg said at New York City Hall.
  'He and his older brother intended to drive to New York and detonate those explosives in Times Square.'
  Kelly confirmed to reporters the two suspects had a pressure cooker bomb and five pipe bombs they wanted to set off to kill and maim in New York City.
  While they haven't had the opportunity to speak to the teenager, both men confirmed that Dzhokhar told law enforcement that the plan was 'spontaneously' arranged after they had hijacked a black Mercedes SUV in Boston late on Thursday evening.
  However, it was also claimed that the two terror suspects aborted their adrenaline fuled plan when they realized they had no gas.
  Stopping to collect some, the owner of the car they were holding hostage managed to escape and alert police - who then engaged the pair in a ferocious gun battle which led to Tamerlan's death and Dzhokhar evading authorities for a further 21 hours.
  While the investigation into these new developments continues, Bloomberg said that Dzhokhar visited Times Square in April 2012 and November of the same year.
  Three people died and over 260 were wounded in the 15th April Boston attack.
  In 2010, Times Square was targeted with a car bomb that never went off. Pakistani immigrant Faisal Shahzad had planted a bomb in an SUV, but street vendors noticed smoke and it was disabled. Shahzad was arrested as he tried to leave the country and was sentenced to life in prison.
  Other plans: New information suggests that Tamerlan, right, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, left, may have been planning to attack New York next
  Authorities do not know if Dzhokhar's visits were connected to his and his brother's planned terror attacks on New York City.
  Christina DiIorio-Sterling, a spokeswoman for U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz in Boston, would not comment on whether authorities plan to add charges based on alleged plan to attack New York.
  For Ray Kelly today's admission of an avoided terror attack on New York city represented a complete 180 degree on his statements yesterday.
  On Wednesday he said that Tamerlan and Dzhokhar were headed to the Big Apple to 'party' - but now officials know that the two brothers had at least discussed the possibility of carrying out another terror attack on American soil.
  Dzhokhar was interrogated in his hospital room over a period of 16 hours without being read his constitutional rights.
  He immediately stopped communicating after a magistrate judge and a representative from the U.S. Attorney's office entered the room and gave him his Miranda warning, according to a U.S. law enforcement official and others briefed on the interrogation.
  Today unnamed officials issued a cautionary note that the Tsarnaev's plan was underdeveloped - with one senior official describing the plan as 'aspirational at most' to NBC News.
  This harrowing confirmation suggests that the duo behind the Boston Marathon bombings were not finished, and were headed to New York City with additional bombs.
  But their plans were abandoned as police caught up with them, engaging the Tsarnaev brothers in a wild shootout in which 26-year-old Tamerlan was killed.
  Times Square 2010: In this handout image provided by the New York Poice Department, a surveillance image of a dark SUV, is the vehicle with a bomb that was discovered before it could be detonated in Times Square on May 2nd, 2010
  Dzhokhar, 19, was seriously wounded in the gun-battle and is currently recovering in a Boston hospital.
  The startling information that a New York attack was real reportedly came from the Chinese man who was carjacked by the suspects early on Friday morning.
  He told investigators that the men did not speak English but he recognized the word 'Manhattan' in their conversation.
  CBS' John Miller reported that the information 'tripped a lot' of alarm for authorities, who reacted by cutting Amtrak train service from Boston to New York and searched trains on Friday.
  Miller additionally reported that the NYPD activated 'license plate readers at all bridges and tunnels coming into the city' with the hope of intercepting the suspects before they reached the Big Apple.
  On the run: A man thought to be 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev enters a gas station in Cambridge, Massachusetts, wearing a gray hoodie and carrying snacks on Thursday evening. He appears to be followed by her brother Tamerlan in a beige cap
  He was arraigned on Monday and has reportedly confessed his role in the bombings to federal investigators.
  However, it has now been reported that since he was read his Miranda Rights he has become less co-operative with authorities.
  On Tuesday, images were released that showed suspected bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev with his arms full of snacks and soda as he and his brother Tamerlan attempt a getaway after becoming prime terror suspects.
  Dressed in a grey hoodie, the surveillance footage is believed to show 19-year-old Dzhokhar as he enters a gas station in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
  The man following him into the store in the beige cap appears to be 26-year-old Tamerlan.
  In another image, Dzhokhar is seen wearing a beige flat cap pulled low at an ATM machine, withdrawing $800.
  The card was stolen from a man taken hostage by the alleged terrorists after he was car-jacked last Thursday during the bombers' chilling but futile plan to travel to New York.
  Chilling: Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, now wearing a beige cap, captured on camera using an ATM card hours before a police shoot-out where his brother and accomplice died
  The victim was able to jump out of the car and flee while the alleged terrorists went to buy snacks.
  From interviews with the staff at both gas stations and court records, MailOnline has been able to piece together the frantic events of the early hours of last Friday.
  The terrifying sequence of events began when Tamerlan carjacked a Mercedes SUV car at gun point barely 40 minutes after MIT campus police officer Sean Collier was killed as he sat in his patrol car.
  Tamerlan jumped into the passenger seat of the Mercedes and told the driver: 'Did you hear about the Boston explosion... I did that.'
  Dzhokhar was caught on a CCTV camera entering an all night garage with his face partially hidden by a grey hooded sweatshirt.
  But he left empty handed after his brother Tamerlan hammered on the glass front door of the gas station kiosk saying: 'We've got to go.'
  His intervention came after the victim of the carjacking managed to escape and run across to another all night gas station across the street where he pleaded with the cashier for help.
  Trapped: With his head down and wearing a cap, the suspected terrorist withdraws money from the machine hours after a surveillance picture of him had been beamed around the world
  Escape: The two bombing suspects pulled up at the Shell gas station to use a stolen ATM card from a man they had taken hostage. He managed to escape to the Mobil gas station across the street and call for help (right)
  The images were released on Tuesday as Dzhokhar told investigators that his brother orchestrated the attacks because he 'wanted to defend Islam from attack'.
  In scrawled notes from his hospital bed, the 19-year-old told Guantanamo Bay interrogators that he and his brother were not linked to any Islamic terrorist groups.
  According to CNN, Dzhokhar said his older brother, Tamerlan, 26, was the ringleader in the attacks that shook the nation a week ago, but that the pair were working alone.
  On the run: One of the alleged bombers enters a store last Thursday as a huge manhunt got underway which led to his capture
  After the shootout: Investigators take a look at a car driven by the Boston Marathon bombing suspects after they exchanged gunfire on a residential street in Watertown
  The dramatic escape of the carjacking victim was the beginning of the end for the alleged bombers as they were found by police and involved in a fierce gun battle.
  Tamerlan was shot multiple times, while his brother was later found cowering in a covered-up boat and taken into custody.
  After encountering Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the terrified victim was shown a gun and forced into the passenger seat.
  After picking up his brother, and transferring guns and bombs into the trunk, the car spend off.
  Tamerlan was driving and his 19-year-old brother was in the rear passenger seat. The victim was in the front passenger seat.
  After being forced to hand over $45, they drove to an ATM where $800 was withdrawn from the victim's account.
  All three headed towards an all night Shell garage on Memorial Drive in Cambridge where Tamerlan pulled up alongside one of the gas pumps.
  Dzhokhar went inside - and was captured on the CCTV camera at the front of the store.
  The photograph was released by the FBI hours after the impromptu stop and gave law enforcement and members of the public a much clearer view of the alleged bomber.
  The image with Dzhokhar wearing a hoodie was clearer than those released earlier by the FBI which been taken prior to the bombs going off at the finish line of the marathon.
  Mohammed Malah, 46, was working the night shift but paid little attention to the customer who headed to the row of fridge where the drinks were stored.
  Last stand: A police officer points his rifle in Watertown, Massachusetts, as authorities hunt for the Boston bombing suspects
  Deadly shootout: In a gun battle where over 200 shots were fired, 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev was hit multiple times
  He only realized he had been with the alleged bomber when the FBI swarmed into garage in the early hours of the morning last Friday.
  They had been alerted to the garage stop by the carjacking victim who had managed to escape and run across the road to a neighboring Mobil garage.
  Call of duty: Police from several different agencies responded after MIT police officer Sean Collier was gunned down as he sat in his cruiser
  FBI agents recovered footage from the security camera at the entrance to the first garage.
  Owner Alan Mendick:'The police came and we went through the CCTV footage.
  'Yes, one of them came in here, but I am told before he could buy anything his brother came and hammered on the window and told him they had to go.
  Hunt: The events in the early morning hours of April 19 set a massive police search in place that resulted in the capture of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19
  'He had some stuff in his hands but he just put it down and left. There are reports that he was shoplifting, but that's not true.'
  'His brother called him to come out before he could do anything.
  'My cashier who was on duty is scared. He is really shaken up by it all.'
  Malah's colleague Brahim Asseban,37, said: 'The manager was called and they told him to close the station down.
  'They took the CCTV footage .The picture of the Tsarnaev in the grey hoodie was from the camera at the front door. Everyone who comes in is filmed,it is part of the security you have when open all night.
  'Mohammed is a bit shaken up by it all. He said it was very busy that night, and he does not really remember him coming in.
  'Lots of people come in late at night but it has shaken him up.'
  Terror Attack: The two detonations went off near the finish line of the 117th Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013 - returning the specter of terrorism to the United States for the first time since 9/11
  This image, taken from a surveillance camera shows Dzhokhar Tsarnaev climbing out of the boat on Friday evening after the climatic police gun battle
  Wounded: Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, seen here moments after he was pulled from the boat where he was hiding, suffered a throat wound and a leg wound
  'He said one of the brothers, the younger one came in and looked at the Red Bull and candy bars.
  The victim told FBI agents he managed to escape while Tamerlan became distracted as his brother was in the store shopping.
  Neither brother made any attempt to kill the carjacking victim.
  After speeding away along Memorial Drive the stolen car was spotted by police in Watertown having been given its licence plate and description.
  They gave chase and in an ensuing gun battle where over 200 shots were fired 26 year old Tamerlan was hit multiple times.
  He was run over by his brother who fled in the stolen SUV, later abandoning it and taking refuge in a covered up boat, where he later surrendered.
  Silence then applause: Boston remembers bombing victims
Switzerland re-imposes curbs on EU workers.
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  Source: WT news feed
  Thu, 25 Apr 2013 21:50
  BRUSSELS - Switzerland is imposing quotas on work permits for EU citizens despite objections from Brussels.
  The federal government said on Wednesday (24 April) it will give just 2,180 five-year residency permits over the next 12 months to people from eight eastern European countries, such as Poland and Slovakia.
  It is planning to give 53,700 permits to people from 17 remaining, wealthier EU counties. Bulgaria and Romania are covered by a separate migration regime until 2016.
  Short-stay permits for up to one year will not be affected.
  A government statement said it has the right to set limits under a "safeguard clause" in its 1999 EU agreement on free movement because it is seeing up to 80,000 extra arrivals each year.
  It said some nice things about EU migrants.
  It noted that the 1.2 million EU citizens who already live in the 8-million-strong country have "had a positive impact '... in particular in terms of consumer spending and on the construction industry."
  But amid pressure for action by far-right politicians, it added that the curbs are needed to "make immigration more acceptable to society."
  It also hinted that some EU migrants are welfare cheats who gobble up "affordable housing" and who overburden Swiss infrastructure.
  "It is '... important to consistently combat abuses in the area of immigration law and social security," it said.
  "It's a fact that there is unease among the population, and it's necessary to take this unease seriously," Swiss justice minister Simonetta Sommaruga told press.
  For her part, EU foreign relations chief Catherine Ashton rebuked Bern, saying she "regrets" the move and underlining the "great benefits" of EU-Swiss work mobility.
  She noted that the split in permit quotas between the EU8 and EU17 groups is illegal because the 1999 agreement does not allow it to differentiate between EU countries.
  The Swiss decision is the second year in a row it has invoked the safeguard clause for the EU8.
  The clause will expire once and for all in May 2014.
Now officials claim Boston bombing suspect was NOT armed in boat showdown - despite police account of firefight and him 'shooting himself'.
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  Archived Version
  Source: WT news feed
  Thu, 25 Apr 2013 21:49
  Officials now claim that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was unarmed as he hid in boat in WatertownContradicts Boston Police Commissioner's account of hour-long firefight with TsarnaevNew York Times said M4 rifle had been found on boatPolice sources suggested Tsarnaev shot himself onboardBy Associated Press and Daily Mail Reporter
  PUBLISHED: 20:53 EST, 24 April 2013 | UPDATED: 03:23 EST, 25 April 2013
  Two unnamed U.S. officials have told the Associated Press that the surviving suspect in the Boston bombings was unarmed when police captured him hiding inside a boat in a neighborhood back yard.
  The report contradicts the Boston police department's own account of Dzhokar Tsarnaev's capture on Friday - after commissioner Ed Davies described a firefight between him and officers before the terror suspect was captured.
  The New York Times also said an M4 rifle had been found on the boat - another claim contradicted by the latest revelations.
  Officers had originally said they had exchanged gunfire with Tsarnaev for more than one hour Friday evening before they were able to subdue him.
  But on Wednesday, the law enforcement officials told the AP that no gun was found aboard the vessel.
  Scroll down for video
  Hidden: Authorities say that Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was not armed as he hid in this boat in a Watertown, Massachusetts backyard
  Hideout: Dzhokhar was found hiding in this boat in Watertown on Friday following a massive manhunt
  Apprehended: Dzhokhar is searched and given medical attention after he is found hiding on Friday evening
  It also contradicts many media accounts of Tsarnaev's final moments of freedom.
  The New York Timesreported that an M-4 carbine rifle - similar to the weapon used by American troops fighting in Afghanistan - was found aboard the boat and that officials had recovered two handguns and a bb gun used by the two brothers.
  The throat wound sustained by Tsaernev was also said by numerous law enforcement sources to be self inflicted.
  Sources told Newsday that Tsarnaev's bullet wound looked to be self-inflicted, due to the location of Tsarnaev's wound and the trajectory of the bullet.
  And Reuters reported that the suspect was shot through the mouth by a round that exited through his neck.
  Dozens of bullet holes were seen on the exterior of the boat in photos taken shortly after the final standoff in the Watertown backyard.
  The officials told the AP that say investigators only recovered a 9 mm handgun believed to have been used by Tsarnaev's brother, Tamerlan, from the site of a gun battle Thursday night, which injured a Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority officer.
  Thermal imaging shows Dzhokhar's final moments before arrest
  Trawl: On Monday, a police forensics team examined the boat where Dzhokhar was found hiding
  Scene: He was found cowering in the boat after its owner realized its straps had moved on Friday evening
  Dzhokhar was believed to have been shot before he escaped.
  The officials tell The Associated Press that no gun was found in the boat.
  Investigators have said the brothers appeared to have been radicalized through jihadist materials on the Internet and have found no evidence tying them to a terrorist group.
  Dzhokhar told the FBI that they were angry about the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the killing of Muslims there, officials said.
  How much of those conversations will end up in court is unclear.
  Rip: An FBI officer stands in front of the boat where Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings, was hiding inside
  The FBI normally tells suspects they have the right to remain silent before questioning them so all their statements can be used against them.
  Under pressure from Congress, however, the Department of Justice has said investigators may wait until they have gathered intelligence about other threats before reading those rights in terrorism cases.
  The American Civil Liberties Union has expressed concern about that.
  Regardless, investigators have found pieces of remote-control equipment among the debris and were analyzing them, officials said.
  One official described the detonator as 'close-controlled,' meaning it had to be triggered within several blocks of the bombs.
Honoring a 'red line' in Syria over chemical weapons - The Washington Post
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  Thu, 25 Apr 2013 21:15
  THREE MAJOR U.S. allies '-- Britain, France and Israel '-- have now concluded that the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad has very likely used chemical weapons, not once but on multiple occasions. This would cross a ''red line'' drawn by President Obama. An Israeli general said Tuesday that ''the regime used lethal chemical weapons against gunmen in a series of incidents in recent months,'' including a March 19 attack near Aleppo where a ''sarin-type'' substance was employed. The British and French governments reported to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon that they had corroborating evidence, including soil samples, of chemical-weapon use in three instances since December.
  Though his policy on Syria has been weak and muddled, Mr. Obama has been very clear that the United States ''will not tolerate the use of chemical weapons against the Syrian people,'' as he put it last month. He has said that such use would be a ''game-changer.''
  Yet the administration now declines to join the analysis of its close allies. Perhaps it is the case, as White House spokesman Jay Carney said Monday, that ''conclusive evidence'' is still lacking. Administration officials point out that the British, French and Israelis are not saying they are certain. No one wishes to repeat the mistake of intervening in Iraq on the basis of faulty intelligence.
  But another danger is that the Assad regime will conclude that Mr. Obama's warnings were never serious. Many analysts believe the relatively limited use of chemical weapons until now was intended to test international reaction. If there is no response, Damascus may decide that it is free to use its chemicals on a larger scale.
  Mr. Assad suggested something like that this week in a meeting with a Lebanese delegation. According to a Lebanese newspaper report, he said, ''The Americans have been pragmatic from the very beginning and never pursued any course to its logical conclusion. They would eventually side with the victor.''
  In truth, Mr. Obama has been inching toward more decisive action. At a meeting of opposition supporters last weekend, Secretary of State John F. Kerry announced a doubling of U.S. aid for the opposition to $250 million, including direct funding for rebel forces.
  Yet U.S. support for the rebels remains far below what would be necessary to accelerate the downfall of the Assad regime. Syrians are furious at the United States and increasingly supportive of an al-Qaeda militia that has won a string of battlefield victories. If Mr. Obama waffles or retreats on the one clear red line he drew, U.S. credibility across the region will be severely damaged.
  With Syria blocking a U.N. investigation and few assets on the ground, it can be difficult to determine what happened in the reported chemical-weapons attacks. But it is important that the United States reach a conclusion, and soon.
U.S. council warns of threat of cyber attacks, market runs
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Source: Reuters: Technology News
  Thu, 25 Apr 2013 20:48
  A man types on a computer keyboard in Warsaw in this February 28, 2013 illustration file picture.
  Credit: Reuters/Kacper Pempel/Files
  By Emily Stephenson and Douwe Miedema
  WASHINGTON | Thu Apr 25, 2013 5:59pm EDT
  WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Regulators should guard against runs on the shadow banking system and watch out for cyber attacks on banks in coming months, the top U.S. financial stability group said on Thursday.
  The Financial Stability Oversight Council, which was set up after the 2007-2009 crisis to watch for developing threats to the financial system, also urged a reform of market benchmarks after a global rate-rigging scandal hit the Libor interbank rate.
  "Technological failures, natural disasters, and cyberattacks can emanate from anywhere, at any time," the report said. "Preparation and planning to address these potential situations are essential to maintain the strength and resilience of our financial system."
  The FSOC, a powerful body chaired by Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, voted on Thursday to adopt its annual report, which includes a set of recommendations to other regulatory agencies. The heads of those agencies are members of the council.
  Regulators need to keep a close eye on operational risks, the FSOC said, after a year in which a hurricane disrupted stock exchanges and cyber attacks hit banks such as JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo.
  The council also pointed to technological malfunctions plaguing the initial public offerings of BATS Global Markets and Facebook.
  Short-term funding markets for banks remain susceptible to bank runs, singling out money market funds and the so-called triparty repo market -- jointly often referred to as the shadow banking market, the group said.
  "We need to strengthen markets that may be susceptible to destabilizing runs and fire sales," Lew said at an open meeting of the council to consider the report.
  The FSOC in the past has used its authority to take on the issue of a reform of money market funds, urging the Securities and Exchange Commission to come up with a plan after the securities watchdog failed last year to agree on new rules.
  The council also urged overhauling the housing finance system in its report and said America should work with foreign regulators to improve benchmark rates such as Libor, which have been proven prone to manipulation in recent years.
  The group repeated a call to Congress to raise the U.S. legal borrowing limit, which it said was more of a concern to markets than the combination of deep spending cuts and tax increases known as the fiscal cliff that was largely averted this year.
  "The inability of the Treasury to borrow might cause an interruption of principal and interest payments on U.S. sovereign debt, which financial markets regard as one of the safest assets," the report said.
  The group also warned about potential financial risks from ultra-low interest rates, with signs of an erosion in corporate borrowing standards and covenants, and greater issuance of risky, high-yielding bonds. These conclusions mirrored similar findings from the International Monetary Fund last week.
  (Reporting by Douwe Miedema and Emily Stephenson; additional reporting by Anna Yukhananov; Editing by Andrea Ricci and Leslie Adler)
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What happened to the European dream?
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Source: Global Geopolitics
  Thu, 25 Apr 2013 19:31
  The European Union no longer exists, at least not as we know it. And the question is not what will be the form of the new Union, but rather why this Europe, which was the focus of so many of our dreams no longer exists. The answer is simple: today, all of the pillars that served to build and justify the existence of the European Union have collapsed.
  Chief among these was the memory of the Second World War. A survey of German secondary school students in the 14-16 age bracket, which was published a little over a year ago, showed that a third of these young people did not know who Hitler was, and 40 per cent were convinced that human rights had been respected to an equal degree by every German government since 1933. This in no way implies that there is a nostalgia for fascism in Germany. No, it simply means that we now have to contend with a generation that has nothing to do with this history. Today the conviction that the EU continues to derive legitimacy from its roots in the war is in an illusion.
  The second element that facilitated the geopolitical emergence of to the Union was the Cold War: once again, a phenomenon that no longer exists. Today, the EU does not have '' and cannot have '-- an enemy that can justify its existence in the same manner as the post-1949 USSR. In short, allusions to the Cold War can in no way contribute to the resolution of the EU's problems of legitimacy.
  The third pillar that has crumbled is prosperity. The EU continues to be very rich '' even if this observation does not apply to countries like Bulgaria. However, 60 per cent of Europeans believe that their children will not live as well as they do. With this in mind, the problem is not how we live today, but what kind of life can we expect in the future. The positive prospect constituted by faith in a better future, which was a powerful source of legitimacy, has also disappeared.
  '...
  First and foremost, there is the distinction between Eurozone countries and other states. Very often, when they speak of the EU, the French, the Germans and the Spanish are really thinking about the Eurozone. However, this division will remain irrelevant while strategically important countries like Sweden, Poland and the UK are not included in the euro. The other major division is the one that exists between creditor and debtor countries. When Greece wanted to organise a referendum on the country's bailout, Berlin made the following objection: ''You want to hold a referendum about our money!'' There is some sense to this remark '... No country should be held hostage by the Eurozone. But that is precisely the problem when you have a currency without a common policy.
  Full article:What happened to the European dream? (Presseurop)
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Hyundai Suicidal Ad - YouTube
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Thu, 25 Apr 2013 19:24
BBC News - Hyundai suicide bid car advert pulled after complaints
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Thu, 25 Apr 2013 19:24
  25 April 2013Last updated at18:58 ETCarmaker Hyundai has apologised and pulled an online advert that depicted a man attempting to kill himself with exhaust fumes in its new model.
  Hyundai said it "sincerely apologises for the offensive viral video".
  The advert, highlighting the car's "100% water emissions", attracted complaints on social media sites.
  Holly Brockwell, whose father killed himself inside a car in 1990, blogged about how she had felt "empty" and "sick" on seeing the advert.
  On the blog, published as an open letter to Hyundai and Innocean, the advertising agency which made the video, she said: "When your ad started to play... I began to shake.
  "I shook so hard that I had to put down my drink before I spilt it. And then I started to cry."
  The 27-year-old, of Streatham, south London, recalled how it had brought back memories of her father Geoff's death when she was five years old.
  'Wanted dad'"I remembered looking out of the window to see the police and ambulance, wondering what was happening," she wrote.
  "I remember mum sitting me down to explain that daddy had gone to sleep and would not be waking up, and no, he wouldn't be able to take me to my friend's birthday party next week.
  "No, he couldn't come back from heaven just for that day, but he would like to if he could. I remember finding out that he had died holding my sister's soft toy rabbit in his lap."
  Continue reading the main storyThe intention of the viral video was to employ hyperbole to dramatise a product advantage, culminating in a positive outcome. Clearly, we were mistaken, and we sincerely apologise''
  End QuoteInnocean EuropeAdvertising agencyShe added: "Surprisingly, when I reached the conclusion of your video, where we see that the man has in fact not died thanks to Hyundai's clean emissions, I did not stop crying.
  "I did not suddenly feel that my tears were justified by your amusing message. I just felt empty. And sick. And I wanted my dad."
  In a statement, Hyundai said it "deeply and sincerely apologises for the offensive viral video".
  It added: "The video was created by an affiliate advertising agency, Innocean Europe, without Hyundai's request or approval.
  "It runs counter to our values as a company and as members of the community. We are very sorry for any offense or distress the video caused.
  "More to the point, Hyundai apologises to those who have been personally impacted by tragedy. Hyundai Motor UK has had no involvement with the video."
  In its statement, Innocean Europe said it deeply regretted any offence or distress the video had caused.
  It said: "The intention of the viral video was to employ hyperbole to dramatise a product advantage, culminating in a positive outcome.
  'Strong family values'"Clearly, we were mistaken, and we sincerely apologise. As a company that espouses strong family values, Innocean would never intentionally set out to cause distress.
  "The video has been removed from all channels. It will not appear again."
  Miss Brockwell, who is a freelance advertising creative, told BBC News she was yet to hear directly from either Hyundai or Innocean.
  She said her job involved coming up with ideas for adverts, but "it would never cross my mind to go to these depths".
  "I want them to see what it does to people, what they have done to me," she said.
'Barack Obama' targets 'climate deniers' in Congress for ignoring overwhelming science
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  Archived Version
  Source: Twitchy » US Politics
  Thu, 25 Apr 2013 19:18
  We know that tweets are limited to 140 characters, but the email sign-up page to which Organizing for Action links isn't, so OFA is leveling a pretty serious charge there by accusing hundreds in Congress of being ''climate deniers.'' Obviously OFA is beginning to ramp up its campaign to take back the House in 2014, but if ''Barack Obama'' wants to turn his laser focus back to global warming, by all means, be our guest.
  By the way, that vote to declare climate change a hoax was actually a vote on an amendment proposed in 2011 by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) that read: ''Congress accepts the scientific findings of the Environmental Protection Agency that climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for public health and welfare.'' That vote revealed those 240 global warming heretics who must be purged.
Sunil Tripathi, Student at Brown, Is Found Dead
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Source: NYT > Home Page
  Thu, 25 Apr 2013 19:16
  The family of Sunil Tripathi, a Brown University student who disappeared last month '-- and was briefly misidentified as a suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings '-- confirmed Thursday that his body had been found by the authorities near Providence, R.I.
  ''On April 23, our beloved Sunil was discovered in the waters off India Point Park in Providence,'' his family wrote in a statement.
  Mr. Tripathi, 22, was taking a leave of absence from Brown when he left his apartment near campus on March 16, leaving his wallet, identification and bicycle at home. He did not return, setting off a round-the-clock search by his relatives, who temporarily moved to Providence and worked with the police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to try to find him.
  ''He's very quiet, he's very private, he's very intellectual,'' Mr. Tripathi's mother, Judy, said in an interview last week. ''He admitted to some depression, but he said that he could figure it out, he could handle it.''
  His disappearance mystified the authorities and his family, who said they had been in daily communication with him before he left.
  Last Thursday, shortly after the F.B.I. released grainy surveillance photographs of the two men they believed were the Boston bombers, some Internet users began to speculate that Mr. Tripathi might be one of them. They began posting messages suggesting as much on the Facebook page the family used to raise awareness about their search for Mr. Tripathi. As the policed pursued the two suspects on a fiery chase through the Boston area, the rumor spread, leading news vans to stake out the Tripathis's family home in Bryn Mawr, Pa., and reporters to make dozens of calls to the Tripathi family's cellphones.
  ''It was absolutely horrible,'' said Ms. Tripathi, who said her family knew immediately that neither of the men in the photographs was her son '-- a man who they said literally would not hurt a fly, choosing instead to set insects free outside.
  By last Friday morning, investigators had released the suspects' names '-- Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev '-- absolving Mr. Tripathi of any connection to the case. Apologies began to pour in to the Tripathi family '-- including one from the online forum Reddit, where users had doggedly pursued the rumor '-- who began a new social media campaign they hoped would persuade Sunil to come home.
  The authorities used dental records to identify the body as Mr. Tripathi's, but did not immediately determine the cause of his death.
  ''Be open to letting someone in when it is you who is faltering,'' read the Tripathi family's statement. ''Lend your hand. We need it. The world needs it.''
U.S. Halts Largest HIV Vaccine Trial on Treatment Failure
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Source: BlackListedNews.com
  Thu, 25 Apr 2013 19:16
  The largest and most advanced study under way of a vaccine to prevent HIV infection was stopped by U.S. government researchers after an interim look at the data showed it was unlikely to help recipients.
  The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said it will no longer give the injection, a combination of a DNA-based vaccine to prime the immune system and a booster shot with a weakened virus carrying genetic material that expressed HIV antigens. The vaccine didn't prevent HIV infection or reduce the amount of virus in those who became infected, the agency said in a statement.
  The vaccine was developed by the agency's Vaccine Research Center. Volunteers who received the active vaccination unexpectedly had higher rates of HIV than those given a placebo, though the difference wasn't large enough to rule out a chance finding, the agency said. The researchers will follow those who participated in the trial, which started in 2009, to see if other differences develop.
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WELCOME TO THE WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENTS' ASSOCIATION' WEB SITE
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  Thu, 25 Apr 2013 19:09
  The WHCA' represents the White House press corps in its dealings with the administration on coverage-related issues.
  A nine-member board of directors, elected by correspondents, addresses access to the chief executive; coverage arrangements; work space arrangements; logistics and costs for press travel to accompany a president on the road. Information about our OFFICERS and BOARD MEMBERS is available on our site.
  The association also holds an ANNUAL DINNER to raise money for WHCA' SCHOLARSHIPS and honor the professional recipients of the WHCA's JOURNALISM AWARDS. The next WHCA' dinner is scheduled for April 27, 2013. Proceeds from the White House Correspondents' Association annual dinner go toward scholarships and awards that recognize aspiring and accomplished journalists. Auctions and raffles of WHCA' dinner tickets designed to raise money for other organizations or for commercial purposes are against the policy of the WHCA' .
  SCHOLARSHIPS for promising journalism students play an important part in the associations' mission. Read about the talented recipients who were honored and learn about our expanded scholarship program.
  We are proud to sponsor several prestigious professional journalism AWARDS that highlight our colleagues' significant accomplishments in the field. A CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS goes out in January, and awards are presented in the spring at the annual dinner. The 2012 recipients are listed on our AWARDS page.
  Learn about the HISTORY of the WHCA' . Over the years, many of our association's activities have been documented by C-SPAN, which is hosting a video archive of the White House Correspondents' Association' dinners and related historical footage.
  To qualify for regular MEMBERSHIP, a correspondent must be employed on the editorial staff of a newspaper, magazine, wire service, radio, TV, cable TV, or other broadcast organization or news gathering organization that regularly reports on the White House. His or her principal journalistic assignments must involve White House coverage with such activities as attending briefings or participating in the in-town pool rotation.The applicant must have permanent White House press credentials. There is also a non-voting associate membership. Read the WHCA' BY-LAWS to determine your eligibility. If you are interested in joining, download a MEMBERSHIP APPLICATION. If you are already a member, visit the membership page for additional information about MEMBERSHIP RENEWALS.We are posting PRESS RELEASES and links to some representative NEWS BLOGS produced by our members, to help keep you up-to-date on the most pressing issues of the day.
  We're usually the ones asking questions, but you may have a few for us. If so, please CONTACT THE WHCA' . We'd enjoy hearing from you.
  White House press briefing, photo/Doug Mills, New York Times
  2013 JOURNALISM AWARDS
  To be announced
  2012 JOURNALISM AWARDS
  White House Correspondents' Association' announces ABC's Jake Tapper, The Washington Post's Scott Wilson and teams at Politico and the Associated Press are winners of its 2012 journalism awards
  The White House Correspondents' Association' is pleased to announce the winners of its 2012 JOURNALISM AWARDS. Ten journalists have been chosen as the winners of three prestigious awards, along with two honorable mentions. Two of the winning submissions underscore the importance of teamwork in achieving journalistic excellence. The WHCA' looks forward to honoring the talented recipients at our annual scholarship dinner at the Washington Hilton on April 28, 2012. The WHCA' congratulates the winners and we thank everyone who submitted applications for the awards.
  2013 WHCA' SCHOLARSHIPS
  To be announced
  2012 WHCA' SCHOLARSHIPS
  Since 1991, the WHCA' has awarded nearly $600,000 in scholarships. The success of this dinner allows members of the White House press corps to give back to the next generation of reporters. READ MORE about this year's scholarships.
  Prime Movers is an intensive journalism mentoring program based at George Washington University that sends interns from the School of Media and Public Affairs and professional journalists into urban high schools to start and support media programs. This year they are working with 10 DC public high schools. In 2012, WHCA' dramatically expanded its Prime Movers partnership role, increasing its financial support ($30,000) and more than quadrupling the number of events and correspondent-volunteers.
  President Barack Obama speaks at a press conference in the White House on June 24, 2009. Official White House Photo/ Chuck Kennedy2013 WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENTS' ASSOCIATION' DINNER
  Late night star Conan O'Brien to headline 2013 White House Correspondents' Dinner
  WASHINGTON -- Team Coco is coming back to Washington.
  Conan O'Brien, the Emmy award-winning comedian and late night talk show host, will headline the annual White House Correspondents' Association's annual dinner on April 27, 2013, it was revealed Wednesday by association president Ed Henry.
  "Conan is one of television's most innovative and influential talents and I am absolutely thrilled that he has agreed to be this year's featured act," said Henry. "As social media has changed all aspects of the media business, Conan has embraced this shifting landscape to become a creative force both online as well as in the traditional television model. We are grateful that Conan will be also be using that creativity to bring more attention to the WHCA's commitment to helping needy journalism students." READ MORE
  2012 WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENTS' ASSOCIATION' DINNER
  Photos/Mike Theiler
  C-SPAN videos of the President's remarks and Jimmy Kimmel's presentation at the 2012 WHCA' dinner.
  To view red carpet arrivals and the full program, visit C-SPAN's WHCA' page.
  Use the sidebar links at the right to view earlier WHCA' dinners, scholarships, and awards presentations.
  President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama walk down Pennsylvania Avenue en route to the White House, Monday, Jan. 21, 2013. Photo/Doug Mills, New York Times
  Conan O'Brien, the Emmy award-winning comedian and late night talk show host, will headline the annual White House Correspondents' Association's annual dinner on April 27, 2013, it was revealed Wednesday by association president Ed Henry.
  "Conan is one of television's most innovative and influential talents and I am absolutely thrilled that he has agreed to be this year's featured act," said Henry. "As social media has changed all aspects of the media business, Conan has embraced this shifting landscape to become a creative force both online as well as in the traditional television model. We are grateful that Conan will be also be using that creativity to bring more attention to the WHCA's commitment to helping needy journalism students." READ MORE
  The White House Correspondents' Association' is presenting three major journalism awards at the annual dinner on April 27, 2013 to recognize distinguished reporting. The awards are among the most prestigious in our field. Prizes range from $1,000 to $2,500. You are encouraged to review your 2012 reporting and consider entering the competition. The three contests are open to print and broadcast journalists.
  DOWNLOAD THE APPLICATION AND READ MORE ABOUT THESE AWARDS.
  President: Ed Henry, Fox
  Vice President: Steven Thomma, McClatchy Newspapers
  Secretary: Carol Lee, Wall Street Journal
  Treasurer: Michael Scherer, Time
  Doug Mills, New York Times
  Christi Parsons, Tribune Newspapers
  April Ryan, American Urban Radio Network
  Ari Shapiro, NPR
  Margaret Talev, Bloomberg News
  C-Span's comprehensive coverage of the guest arrival from the red carpet area starting at about 6:30 pm, and their full coverage of the dinner program may be viewed on TV or online at C-SPAN.ORG's White House Correspondents' Dinner hub.
  MSNBC also will be carrying the dinner live at about 9:30 pm.
  Washington, DC Friday, April 27, 2012 Students receiving scholarships from the White House Correspondents' Association' attend a lunchon where they will hear from a panel of White House reporters and from White House Press Secretary Jay Carney. Jay Carney, who served in the Vice President's Office before being named Press Secretary, was Time magazine's Washington Bureau Chief from 2005-2008. Moderated by Julie Mason of SiriusXM, the panel will discuss access and transparency in their coverage of the President and includes Jake Tapper of ABC News, Ben Feller of AP, Carol Lee of the Wall Street Journal, and Jackie Kucinich of USA Today. Last year, the Correspondents' Association distributed scholarships to 18 students, totaling nearly $100,000, according to its website. The students are undergraduate and graduate students from selected institutions. The White House Correspondents' Association' officially announces scholarship recipients at the Annual Dinner, which takes place on Saturday. WATCH ON C-SPAN AT 1:00 PM FRIDAY
  White House Correspondents' Association' announces ABC'S Jake Tapper, The Washington Post's Scott Wilson and teams at Politico and the Associated Press are winners of its 2012 journalism awards
  The White House Correspondents' Association' is pleased to announce the winners of its 2012 journalism awards. Ten journalists have been chosen as the winners of three prestigious awards, along with two honorable mentions. Two of the winning submissions underscore the importance of teamwork in achieving journalistic excellence. The WHCA' looks forward to honoring the talented recipients at our annual scholarship dinner at the Washington Hilton on April 28, 2012. READ MORE
  LAUNCH THE 2012 SLIDESHOW
  Late-night comic Jimmy Kimmel to headline White House Correspondents' Association' Dinner
  WASHINGTON - The White House Correspondents' Association' is pleased to announce that Jimmy Kimmel, host of the ABC late-night talk show ''Jimmy Kimmel Live!'' will headline the WHCA's 98th annual dinner on Saturday, April 28, 2012.
  "Jimmy's humor is sophisticated and edgy while appealing to a wide audience," said Caren Bohan, a Reuters journalist and president of the White House Correspondents' Association. "We are thrilled that Jimmy has accepted our invitation to be the featured comedian at our annual dinner."
  The WHCA' dinner is traditionally attended by the President and First Lady as well as many other senior government officials and members of the press corps. Proceeds from the dinner go toward scholarships and awards aimed at supporting aspiring journalists and recognizing excellence in the profession.
  Only WHCA' members and their organizations are eligible to purchase tickets for the annual dinner. Please visit the MEMBERSHIP PAGE of our site to review eligibility requirements.
  Proceeds from the White House Correspondents' Association annual dinner go toward scholarships and awards that recognize aspiring and accomplished journalists. Auctions and raffles of WHCA' dinner tickets designed to raise money for other organizations or for commercial purposes are against the policy of the WHCA' .
  White House Correspondents' Association' ANNOUNCES RECIPIENTS OF THE 2011 AWARDS
  Four reporters have been named winners of three of journalism's most prestigious awards, and will be honored at the White House Correspondents' Association' dinner on April 30 at the Washington Hilton. At the annual dinner, the association also gives out more than $100,000 in scholarships for journalism students.
  READ ABOUT THE 2011 JOURNALISM AWARD WINNERS.
  WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENTS' ASSOCIATION' ANNOUNCES RECIPIENTS OF2011 SCHOLARSHIPS$103,000 to be awarded as part of White House Correspondents' Association' Dinner Weekend
  Students honored at Annual Scholarship Luncheon on Friday, April 29.READ ABOUT THE 2011 SCHOLARSHIPS
  View approximately 300 images of the 2010 dinner by photographer Paul Morse. Slideshow is available in Flash and non-Flash formats.
  2010 WHCA' DINNER REPORT
  2010 JOURNALISM AWARDS
  Watch a FLASH SLIDESHOW with over 200 images of the WHCA' reception and dinner.2009 WHCA' DINNER REPORT
  TRANSCRIPT OF THE PRESIDENT'S REMARKS
  The Merriman Smith Award for presidential coverage under deadline pressure, the Aldo Beckman award for sustained excellence in White House coverage, and the Edgar A. Poe Award for excellence in coverage of news of national or regional significance.
  2009 JOURNALISM AWARDS
  READ THE WINNING ENTRIES
  The 2008 WHCA' DINNER took place on April 26 at the Washington Hilton hotel. Visit the 2008 WHCA' DINNER PAGE for coverage of the event. C-SPAN televised the event and has posted STREAMING VIDEO OF THE WHCA' DINNER on their web site.
  WATCH A FLASH SLIDESHOW of the 2008 reception and awards dinner. Flash and a java-enabled web browser are required to view the show.
  A SLIDESHOW of the 2007 reception and dinner remains online
  A number of videos featuring past dinners dating back to the early '90s, including Presidential remarks, awards and scholarship presentations, interesting historical footage, and political humor are available on C-SPAN.ORG.
  Read about WHCA' scholarships and learn more about the2010 SCHOLARSHIP RECIPIENTS.
  Read about WHCA' scholarships and learn more about the2009 SCHOLARSHIP RECIPIENTS.2008 SCHOLARSHIPS | 2007 SCHOLARSHIPS
  THE SCHOLARSHIP ARCHIVE contains information about earlier recipients and links to additional information about these awards.Visit the AWARDS PAGE sidebar for quick links to prior coverage of journalism awards, winning entries, and press releases dating back to 2000.For recent White House Correspondents' Association news, visit the
Join TC In DC On Friday For Our White House Correspondents Dinner Weekend Party | TechCrunch
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Thu, 25 Apr 2013 19:07
  As partygoers decend into DC for the annual White House Correspondents Dinner, TechCrunch wanted to remind the nation's policy wonks of the startups that are keeping America on the cutting edge of innovation. So, we're inviting proud geeks to party with us at the swanky new headquarters of startup incubator, 1776.
  On Friday, April 26th from 8pm-11pm, Aol founder Steve Case co-hosts the 1776 grand opening with patriotic-themed desserts, a full bar, and a (brief) thoughtful discussion on immigration, Internet taxes, and startups with Congressman Darrell Issa''after which there will be a rocking band and a lot of great friends who geek out over both open source and open government.
  It turns out that the technology industry is kind of the cool kid in the nation's capitol. Word got out about the event before this announcement and it was so popular, we sold out of our initial round of 600 tickets in 48 hours. So, we're opening up a few hundred more. Go to 1776.Eventbrite.com and sign up as quickly as you can or you'll miss out.
  Thanks to Sponsors Steve and Jean Case, AT&T, and the Consumer Electronics Association.
White House Correspondents' Dinner 2013: Beltway media, Hollywood elites suffering mutual fatigue - Washington Times
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Thu, 25 Apr 2013 19:06
  Enlarge Photo
  FILE - Lindsay Lohan at the 2012 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner ... more >This weekend, ''distinguished celebrity delegates'' attending the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner and related events in Washington are invited to raid a ''Thank You Lounge'' offering free loot from luxury jewelry, watch and perfume brands, as well as the St. Regis Bora Bora.
  Yes, you read that correctly. Though denounced by the White House Correspondents' Association, the gifting lounge is one of the many Hollywood-style happenings in honor of the annual event, which has evolved into what veteran Washington journalist Chuck Conconi calls ''a poor man's version of Oscar Night.''
  Ironically, national job search website CareerCast.com just ranked ''newspaper reporter'' the ''Worst Job of 2013'' '-- making it more stressful than ''oil rig worker'' and more thankless than ''meter reader.''
  The public will undoubtedly disagree when they hear about those poor newspaper reporters hobnobbing with President Barack Obama and celebrities like Scarlett Johansson, Sofia Vergara, and Kevin Spacey during the official dinner at the Washington Hilton on Saturday and exclusive parties in the days before and after.
  The White House Correspondents' Association, which will celebrate its 100th anniversary next year, began hosting the dinners in 1920 to help overworked reporters let their hair down and build stronger relationships with sources over dinner and entertainment, often comedy at the expense of politicians in attendance. (This year's comedy headliner is late night host Conan O'Brien, who previously did the honors at the 1995 dinner.) But increasingly, even legitimate White House correspondents find tickets to the ''Nerd Prom'' difficult to obtain as media outlets compete to fill their tables with the most buzzworthy celebrities.
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  Kim Kardashian was among the guests providing celebrity glitter at the 2012 ... more >Mr. Conconi '-- who attended several of the dinners during his 13 years as a style and gossip columnist for the ''Washington Post'' and 14 years as editor-at-large at the Washingtonian magazine '-- noticed the shift beginning in the Reagan Administration, when in 1987 the late Michael Kelly, then a Baltimore Sun reporter, created a frenzy by bringing Oliver North's secretary Fawn Hall, who famously confessed to shredding documents in the Iran-Contra affair. The following year, Mr. Kelly squired Donna Rice, the model who had an affair with Democratic presidential primary candidate Gary Hart.
  Stuffy sources were out '-- and ''it girls'' with sex tapes and criminal records were in. Fox News commentator Greta Van Susteren, for example, has recently escorted Kim Kardashian and Lindsay Lohan to the event.
  The 2012 dinner reached a new level of absurdity, with George Clooney, Charlize Theron, Diane Keaton, Reese Witherspoon, and the stars of ''Glee'' and ''Modern Family'' among the unprecedented number of celebrities joining Miss Kardashian and Miss Lohan as guests of media outlets for the dinner and full weekend of parties. (The Washington Times boasted perhaps the most popular guest: Uggie, the four-legged star of ''The Artist.'')
  After the event, NBC's Tom Brokaw announced on ''Meet the Press'' that it's ''time to rethink the event'' and the focus on ''Cristal champagne, taking over the Italian Embassy, who had the best party, who got to meet the most people.''
  Responding in a radio interview, White House Correspondents' Association President and Fox News Chief White House Correspondent Ed Henry defended the dinner, which raises over $100,000 for journalism scholarships, though he agreed that ''it sometimes looks too much like a celebrity fest.''
  It's unfortunate that E! News chose this year to livestream the red carpet arrivals at the Washington Hilton for the first time, because it seems the love affair is cooling. Washington journalists enjoy being the popular kids for an evening, and celebrities relish the attention. But after a while, what could they possibly talk about over their overcooked chicken?
  Some politically active A-list stars who frequent the dinner, such as Mr. Clooney, Miss Theron and Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner, are missing this year. Though Barbara Streisand, Nicole Kidman, and ''House of Cards'' cast members are among those expected to attend, the media seems to have made an effort to invite more reasonable sources, ranging from House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew at the Wall Street Journal table, to representatives from the National Security Council and U.S. Secret Service at the Yahoo! table, to numerous CEOs at the ''Politico'' table.
  And Miss Lohan must not have been such a great date, because Ms. Van Susteren will not be attending the dinner this year.
  Regarding that gifting lounge, Politico reported that the White House Correspondents' Association's lawyer sent a four-page letter to GBK PR, the Los Angeles public relations firm promoting it, threatening legal action if they continued their unauthorized use of the name of the association or dinner. (GBK PR reportedly apologized and worked with the lounge's co-sponsor, entertainment industry advocacy group the Creative Coalition, to fix the situation.)
  Will more reporters follow the lead of television journalist John McLaughlin who, after nearly 20 years of hosting the must-attend morning-after event at the Hay-Adams, removed his name from the former ''McLaughlin Brunch'' this year?
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