Saturday, 28 September 2013

The European Union Times

Limitless ceiling? US debt doomsday approaches

Posted: 27 Sep 2013 03:10 PM PDT

With the US debt ballooning to a new record of $16.7tln and the deadline to fix the ‘debt ceiling’ expiring on October 1, a default threat looms over the world’s largest economy. Experts agree the government will broaden its borrowing limit.
The latest warning to Congress comes from the International Monetary Fund, who urged the US Congress to reach an agreement to raise its debt ceiling and avoid a federal government shutdown.
“This is important for the continuation of the recovery in the US and beyond that in the global economy,” IMF spokesman Gerry Rice told reporters in Washington DC Thursday.
As of September 25, the US Treasury reported its federal debt at $16,699,396,000,000.00 in their daily treasury statement, a figure which has been reported for 130 days straight, situating spending about $25 billion shy of the legal limit of $16,699,421,095,673.60.
Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew calculated the US would run out of money by October 17 and have less than $30 billion cash in hand if Congress fails to pass its spending bill by October 1, when the new fiscal year starts.
If the US authorities don’t agree to raise its ‘debt ceiling’- the maximum amount of money the US can borrow – the country will need to admit it can’t pay its bills. While a default of the world’s biggest economy is highly unlikely in practice, in theory it would result in the deepest crisis ever, Igor Nikolaev, director of the strategic analysis department at PKF, a Moscow-based auditing firm, told RT in an interview.
“Should the US default, global trading will come to a halt, with absolute uncertainty hanging over the global economy,” said Nikolaev.
Regardless of the depth of the US debt abyss, the country has never officially violated its ‘debt ceiling’, that’s been in place for almost a century. And that’s simply because the country’s policymakers have always raised the affordable limitations, insisting it was legal.
“The United States can pay any debt it has, because we can always print money to do that. So there is zero probability of default,” Alan Greenspan said on NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’ in August.
In another argument, experts say the Federal Reserve itself is the second biggest holder of US public debt, which means it can easily relieve the overall burden on the part it holds.
The US most recently raised the debt ceiling to $16.699 trillion in May 2013, keeping the economy a safe distance from the so-called ‘fiscal cliff’.
“The country needs to smell smoke to make the country do something about their massive debt. Maybe when the ratio of their debt to GDP nears 100 percent, they’ll start thinking over the ways to cut the burden,” said Nikolaev.
‘Debt ceiling’ and political floors
The fiscal issue has now turned into a political fight, with President Obama taking on Republicans in negotiations over how to tackle the country’s $16.9 trillion in amassed debt.
Republicans and Democrats are using the debt ceiling debate as a platform to discuss and negotiate larger budget issues- what programs the government can – and cannot – afford to keep.
Senator Ted Cruz, a Republican, delivered a 21 hour, 19 minute filibuster tirade against Obama’s Affordable Health Care Act on Wednesday. The debt ceiling is not an economic debate, but rather a political arena for Congress to re-visit past and future legislation.
In short, it’s a political gambit for Republicans who don’t like Obama’s healthcare program, which they claim costs American jobs and must be defunded.
The harebrained antics of Congress are likely to play out until the Republicans get enough from Obama to quell their calls to ‘shut down Washington’.
In 2011, the debt ceiling limit extension was stipulated on the condition it include ‘sequestration cuts’ – an automatic ‘haircut’ that reduces the budget deficit and is heavy-handed on defense spending.
If sequestration cuts are re-approved, discretionary spending would be capped at $967bn in 2014, instead of the $1.058 trillion the Democrats want.
Democrats, who hold the majority in the Senate and seem to think they have enough votes in the House, are “almost across the board,” on their position not to allow sequestration this time around.
Americans are almost split down the middle on raising the debt limit, with 46 percent for and 43 percent against, according to a Washington Post poll.
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Afternoon naps can boost children’s brain power

Posted: 27 Sep 2013 02:45 PM PDT

A new study conducted by the American researchers suggests that children’s afternoon short sleep grants them to have better learning power.
The new study shows that naps are critical for memory consolidation and early learning among the kids particularly for those ones who are three to-five-year-olds.
Sleep researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amhers say an hour-long nap after lunch boosts brain power and memory in preschool children.
As the children napped, they experienced increased activity in brain spots linked with learning and integrating new information, according to the findings published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“Our study shows that naps help the kids better remember what they are learning in preschool,” the research psychologist Rebecca Spencer explained.
Spencer and her colleagues observed 40 children from six preschools across western Massachusetts and analyzed their learning power in two conditions, with nap and without nap opportunity.
While each child took part in two conditions, researchers taught children a visual-spatial task similar to the game “Memory” in the mornings.
According to the game, kids see a grid of pictures and have to remember where different pictures are placed.
The results indicated that when children took daily nap (about 70 minutes) performed significantly better.
Children forgot more item locations on the memory test when they had not taken a nap (65 percent accuracy), compared to when they did nap (75 percent accuracy).
“That means that when they miss a nap, the child cannot recover this benefit of sleep with their overnight sleep. It seems that there is an additional benefit of having the sleep occurs in close proximity to the learning,” researchers clarified.
“While older children would naturally drop their daytime sleep, younger children should be encouraged to nap,” Spencer emphasized.
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Seymour Hersh: Bin Laden Raid “One Big Lie”

Posted: 27 Sep 2013 02:34 PM PDT

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh says that the raid which killed Osama Bin Laden in 2011 is “one big lie” and that “not one word” of the Obama administration’s narrative on what happened is true.
In a wide-ranging interview published today by the Guardian, Hersh savages the US media for failing to challenge the White House on a whole host of issues, from NSA spying, to drone attacks, to aggression against Syria.
On the subject of the Navy Seal raid that supposedly resulted in the death of the Al-Qaeda terror leader, Hersh remarked, “Nothing’s been done about that story, it’s one big lie, not one word of it is true.”
Hersh added that the Obama administration habitually lies but they continue to do so because the press allows them to get away with it.
“It’s pathetic, they are more than obsequious, they are afraid to pick on this guy [Obama],” Hersh told the Guardian.
The raid that supposedly led to Bin Laden’s death has been shrouded in mystery for over two years. Speculation that the Obama administration may have embellished or outright lied about the true account of what happened has persisted, mainly because the White House has refused to publicly release images of Bin Laden’s body.
Although the White House said the corpse was immediately “buried at sea” in line with Islamic tradition, it quickly emerged that this was not standard practice.
Numerous analysts have claimed that Bin Laden had in fact been dead for years and that the raid on his alleged compound in Pakistan was little more than a stunt.
Other questions also persist, such as why the narrative and timeline of the raid has changed multiple times, why the White House initially claimed that “situation room” photos showed Obama watching the raid live when in fact there was a blackout on the live feed, and why neighbors in the immediate area surrounding the compound said with absolute certainty that they had never seen Bin Laden and that they knew of no evidence whatsoever to suggest he lived there.
During the rest of the Guardian interview, which is well worth reading in its entirety, Hersh lambastes the corporate press and particularly the New York Times, which he says spends “so much more time carrying water for Obama than I ever thought they would.”
Hersh’s solution is to shut down news networks like NBC and ABC and fire 90% of mainstream editors, replacing them with real journalists who are outsiders and not afraid to speak truth to power.
“The republic’s in trouble, we lie about everything, lying has become the staple,” concluded Hersh.
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Two thirds of Scots consider their nationality as ‘Scottish only’

Posted: 27 Sep 2013 02:15 PM PDT

Latest Census results show that nearly two thirds of Scots identify themselves as “Scottish only”.

Nearly two thirds of Scotland’s population identify themselves as “Scottish only”, latest Census results show.
According to results of the 2011 survey on national identity released on Thursday, 62.4 percent of Scotland’s 5.3 million residents feel they are “Scottish only”, compared with 18.3 percent who consider themselves to be “Scottish and British only”.
“While 62% of people feel Scottish only, a further 21 per cent of the population share their Scottish connection with another identity – the highest claim to a resident national identity anywhere in the UK,” said Scottish government’s culture secretary Fiona Hyslop.
The data also revealed that the proportion of Scotland’s population who are from non-white ethnic minority groups doubled from two to four percent between 2001 and 2011.
Earlier this month, tens of thousands of people took part in a “Yes to Scotland” rally in the capital city of Edinburg, bringing thousands of blue and white Scottish flags onto the streets demanding independence from the UK.
British Prime Minister David Cameron and Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond have signed an agreement to hold a referendum in 2014 on Scottish independence, which could result in breaking up of the UK after 300 years.
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NASA rover Curiosity finds water in Mars soil

Posted: 27 Sep 2013 02:06 PM PDT

The rover Curiosity has discovered water in fine-grained soil on the surface of Mars, NASA confirmed Thursday in a series of papers published in the journal Science.
Each cubic foot of Martian soil contains about two pints of liquid water, though the molecules are bound to other minerals in the soil.
Curiosity first landed on Mars in August 2012 on Gale Crater, near the equator of the planet. Its aim was to circle and scale Mount Sharp, in the middle of the crater, a five-kilometer-tall mountain that will help NASA understand the history of Mars.
NASA scientists released the first detailed, peer-reviewed results of Curiosity’s experiments done during its first four months on Mars in a series of five papers published in Science.
“We tend to think of Mars as this dry place — to find water fairly easy to get out of the soil at the surface was exciting to me,” said Laurie Leshin, dean of science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and lead author on the Science paper that verified existence of water in the surface soil.
“If you took about a cubic foot of the dirt and heated it up, you’d get a couple of pints of water out of that — a couple of water bottles’ worth that you would take to the gym,” she said, according to the Guardian.
Curiosity found about 2 percent of the soil, by weight, was water by scooping dirt samples under its wheels and depositing them into an oven in a centralized compartment called Sample Analysis at Mars.
“We heat [the soil] up to 835C and drive off all the volatiles and measure them,” said Leshin. “We have a very sensitive way to sniff those and we can detect the water and other things that are released.”
The rover also found sulphur dioxide, carbon dioxide and oxygen as soil and minerals collected decomposed with increased temperature.
A main aim of Curiosity’s missions is to find out whether Mars was ever hospitable to life. Scientists believe water was once abundant on the surface of the planet, but it has since almost completely disappeared.
“The rocks and minerals are a record of the processes that have occurred and [Curiosity is] trying to figure out those environments that were around and to see if they were habitable,” Peter Grindrod, a planetary scientist at University College London who was not involved in the analyses of Curiosity data, told the Guardian.
The other papers published in Science included x-ray diffraction images of the soil in an attempt to examine the crystalline structure of the minerals on Mars’ surface, and analysis of a volcanic rock called “Jake_M,” named after a NASA engineer. The findings show the rock was similar to a type found on Earth known as mugearite, often found on ocean islands and in rift zones.
The published results of Curiosity’s experiments are the beginning of insights into Mars expected to come in the next few years.
“It’s the first flexing of Curiosity’s analytical muscles,” Grindrod said. “Curiosity spent a long time checking out the engineering, instruments and procedures it was going to use – these papers cover just that engineering period. The targets here weren’t chosen because of their science goals as such but as good targets to test out the instruments.”
Leshin said in addition to the excitement of exploring a new planet, the findings will help planning for any human mission in the future.
“I do think it’s inevitable that we’ll send people there and so let’s do its as smartly as we can. Let’s get as smart as we can before we go,” she said.
The soil on Mars also showed the existence of a chemical called perchlorate, which can be toxic to humans.
“It’s only there at a 0.5% level in the soil but it impedes thyroid function,” she said. “If humans are there and are coming into contact with fine-grained dust, we have to think about how we live with that hazard. To me it’s a good connection between the science we do and the future human exploration of Mars.”
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FBI releases haunting video of armed Aaron Alexis prowling through DC Navy Yard

Posted: 26 Sep 2013 10:01 AM PDT

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has released a short surveillance video of Aaron Alexis entering and sneaking through the Washington DC Navy Yard last week armed with a shotgun just prior to killing 12 people.
The 31-second video, spliced together from CCTV images captured on the morning of September 16, show Alexis’ blue rental car driving into a parking garage across from Building #197 at 7:53 am EST. He then entered Building #197 on foot carrying a backpack, taking the elevator to the fourth floor, according to a timeline also released by the FBI on Wednesday.
Alexis, 34, shot the first victim at 8:16, seven minutes after he went into the bathroom and just over an hour before police shot and killed the former government contractor on the third floor.
Valerie Parlave, the assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Washington field office, told the Washington Post Alexis was involved in a workplace dispute the Friday before the shooting though there was no evidence he specifically targeted “anyone he worked for or worked with” in the shooting. Upon later examination, information on Alexis’ phone and laptop indicated he was “prepared to die during the attack and that he accepted death as the inevitable consequence of his actions.”
The FBI also published photos of the sawed-off Remington 870 shotgun Alexis used in the shooting. Etchings on the sides of the firearm receiver read “Better off this way,” “My ELF weapon,” and “Not what yall say.” An etching on the barrel of the weapon said “End to the torment!”
While FBI officials have said they will continue to examine the mental delusions that set Alexis on his “pathway to violence,” the etchings and data on his laptop prove that Alexis thought his mind was being manipulated by extremely low frequency (ELF) electromagnetic waves. The Navy has studied the signals in the past but such technology is often found at the center of anti-government conspiracy theories, the FBI said. However
“Ultra-low frequency attack is what I’ve been subject to for the last three months,” Alexis is quoted saying in one message, “and to be perfectly honest that is what has driven me to this.”

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Russia warns Japan over disputed Kurile Islands

Posted: 26 Sep 2013 09:44 AM PDT

Russia has threatened to forbid visa-free travel for Japanese officials to the disputed Kurile Islands if Tokyo goes on making statements assuming ownership of the islands.
“If for some reason Japanese politicians cannot refrain from making public statements on the subject of the islands after a visit to Russian territory, we reserve the right to limit their participation in such trips,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement released on Thursday.
Moscow and Tokyo have long been involved in a dispute over islands north of Hokkaido, which are called the Southern Kuriles in Russia and referred to as the Northern Territories in Japan.
The statement added that that the current visa-free regime for Japanese officials is a “humanitarian act” that permits them to visit the graves of their ancestors.
The Russian Foreign Ministry pointed to a statement made by Japanese minister of state for Okinawa and Northern Territories Affairs during a visit to the islands.
Ichita Yamamoto has said that the trip reinforced his view of “the need to return (northern Japanese) territories.”
In 2010, Russia’s then President Dmitry Medvedev made the first visit by a Russian leader to the disputed islands. He also vowed to boost investment in the region. The move intensified the dispute.
Japan’s Kyodo News Agency reported on July 28 that Tokyo was reluctant to accept a Russian offer to participate in joint projects on the disputed islands since it would indicate Japanese recognition of Russian sovereignty over the archipelago and undermine Japan’s claim to the territory.
“Participation of Japanese companies in joint development projects under Russian law would amount to recognition of Russian sovereignty [over the islands],” the report quoted an unnamed Japanese diplomat as saying.
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Archbishop Chrysostomos of Cyprus: “ELAM and Golden Dawn have many positive children”

Posted: 26 Sep 2013 09:34 AM PDT

While some of the clergy speak against Golden Dawn, there are also those of the clergy who examine things honestly and objectively, and as a result speak in favor of Golden Dawn.
Archbishop Chrysostomos is an Archbishop from Cyprus who made such a statement in favor of Golden Dawn.
“When these young people began to appear, I called for them to come see me at the archdiocese and saw many positive elements about them as well as negative. The negative aspects I do not agree with, I told them that we live in a democracy and should not be stacking more problems on top of the ones we already have. However I agreed with them when they said that we must prosecute illegal aliens.“
“They asked me then what the Bible says and I told them that the Gospel says to love. Love them these outsiders, but they must go home.“
“It is not racist, our very own people are starving, we will have others to help after our people in need are helped, they should be helped with everything in their own homeland, and embrace their compatriots, their government and not our own government, “
The archbishop said that he has no relation with the children of ELAM or Golden Dawn, but said that going against the positive things they do for the Greeks is not right.
This really is a slap in the face to all the liars and hypocrites out there who try to slander Golden Dawn, as anyone can plainly see the horrible things the indigenous Greek people are going through right now.
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Interpol issues alert for British suspect in Nairobi mall siege

Posted: 26 Sep 2013 09:18 AM PDT

Fake South African passport of Samantha Lewthwaite

Interpol has issued an arrest notice for a British woman who has allegedly been involved in a deadly siege on a shopping center in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi.
According to Interpol statement, the “red notice” or internationally wanted person alert for Samantha Lewthwaite was issued at the request of Kenya over charges of being in possession of explosives and conspiracy to commit a felony dating back to December 2011.
“By requesting an Interpol Red Notice, Kenya has activated a global ‘tripwire’ for this fugitive,” Interpol Secretary General Ronald K. Noble said, adding that the alert was issued to aware the 190 member countries of the danger posed by the woman.
The 29-year-old woman who uses the alias “Natalie Webb” was previously only wanted at national level for possession of a fake South African passport.
The British woman labelled the “white widow” after her marriage to Jermaine Lindsay, one of bombers in the London 7/7 attack, in which at least 52 people were killed and hundreds were injured.
Dozens of men armed with guns and grenades attacked the Westgate Mall in Nairobi on Saturday, 21 September and targeted people discriminating against non-Muslims, killing at least 62 people and injuring many others.
Lewthwaite is believed to be a member of the Somali-based al-Shabaab militant group, which claimed responsibility for the attack.
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Universal influenza vaccine on its way

Posted: 26 Sep 2013 07:06 AM PDT

Scientists have reached a breakthrough in their pursuit of a universal vaccine for flu, which includes even future deadly strains. The answer lay within the human body itself, after eluding specialists for decades.
The foundations for a possible revolutionary flu vaccine were discovered as part of a UK study following the 2009 swine flu pandemic.
Scientists monitored the health condition of over 300 students and staff at the Imperial College London throughout the pandemic. What they found, was a naturally occurring immune response in the form of the CD8T cells, whose function it is to battle viruses.
The Sunday results were published in the journal Nature Medicine, detailing how those who avoided being bed-ridden by the flu had a stronger presence of CD8T cells in their blood at the start of the pandemic.
The Imperial College London’s Professor at the Heart and Lung Institute, Ajit Lalvani, who led the study, expanded on the crucial difference between existing methods of prevention and the so-called ‘Holy Grail’ of vaccines he believes is on the way:
“The immune system produces these CD8 T cells in response to usual seasonal flu… Unlike antibodies, they target the core of the virus, which doesn’t change, even in new pandemic strains. The 2009 pandemic provided a unique natural experiment to test whether T cells could recognize, and protect us against, new strains that we haven’t encountered before and to which we lack antibodies,” Lalvani said, cited by The Independent.
The trouble with existing vaccines is that the antibodies they dispatch to fight viral infection only target the surface characteristics of the infection, which are prone to adapting and mutating. The result is newer, more devious strains and the need to constantly upgrade the vaccine.
According to the professor, “new strains of flu are continuously emerging, some of which are deadly, and so the Holy Grail is to create a universal vaccine that would be effective against all strains of flu.”
The health world is already heralding the development as the next step in protecting the human population from deadly future strains of flu, a disease which already kills between 250,000 and half a million people annually, according to the World Health Organization. The 2009 swine flu epidemic affected millions worldwide. Flu pandemics have had a historical trend of being devastating every time, with the Spanish flu outbreak of 1918 causing tens of millions of deaths across the globe.
News of the breakthrough comes just as the world braces itself for another possible outbreak – the new bird flu strain, H7N9, which made the transition from birds to humans in February of this year, killing a fifth of the people it infected in its native China.
However, Professor Lalvani forecasts a bright future: “We already know how to stimulate the immune system to make CD8 T cells by vaccination…Now that we know these T cells may protect, we can design a vaccine to prevent people getting symptoms and transmitting infection to others. This could curb seasonal flu annually and protect people against future pandemics.”
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