Eeyore's News and View

Unseen dark comets 'could pose deadly threat to earth'
The comets, of which there could be thousands, are not currently monitored by observatories and space agencies.
Most comets and asteroids are monitored in case they start to travel towards earth.
But Bill Napier, from Cardiff University, said that many could be going by unnoticed.
"There is a case to be made that dark, dormant comets are a significant but largely unseen hazard," he said
Scientists estimate that there should be around 3,000 comets in the solar system, but only 25 have so far been identified.
"Dark" comets happen when the water on their surface has evaporated, causing them to reflect less light.
Astronomers have previously spotted comets heading towards earth just days before they passed.
In 1983 a comet called IRAS-Araki-Alcock passed at a distance of just 5 million kilometres, the closest of any comet for 200 years, but it was noticed just a fortnight beforehand.
Tests on another comet, called Comet Borrelly, in 2001 revealed it to have large dark patches across much of its surface.
Steve Larson of the University of Arizona's Catalina Sky Survey in Tucson, which monitors comets, said the idea of an unknown number of "dark" comets circling earth had "merit".
But Clark Chapman from the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, said that such comets "would absorb sunlight very well" and so could be detected by the heat they emit, reports New Scientist magazine.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/science/space/4592130/Unseen-dark-comets-could-pose-deadly-threat-to-earth.html

67 computers missing from nuclear weapons lab
By JOAN LOWY
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Los Alamos nuclear weapons laboratory in New Mexico is missing 67 computers, including 13 that were lost or stolen in the past year. Officials say no classified information has been lost.
The watchdog group Project on Government Oversight on Wednesday released a memo dated Feb. 3 from the Energy Department's National Nuclear Security Administration outlining the loss of the computers.
Kevin Roark, a spokesman for Los Alamos, on Wednesday confirmed the computers were missing and said the lab was initiating a monthlong inventory to account for every computer. He said the computers were a cybersecurity issue because they may contain personal information like names and addresses, but they did not contain any classified information.
Thirteen of the missing computers were lost or stolen in the past 12 months, including three computers that were taken from a scientist's home in Santa Fe, N.M., on Jan. 16, and a BlackBerry belonging to another employee was lost "in a sensitive foreign country," according to the memo and an e-mail from a senior lab manager.
The e-mail was also released by the watchdog group.
The theft of the three computers in January triggered the inventory and a review of the lab's policies regarding home use of government computers, Roark said.
Only one of the three computers stolen from the employee's home was authorized for home use, which raised concerns "as to whether we were fully complying with our own policies for offsite computer usage," he said.
Roark said computers with classified information are "kept completely separate from unclassified computing."
"None of these systems constitute a breach of a classified system," he said.
The e-mail from Los Alamos senior manager Stephen Blair to lab co-workers said the missing computers and Blackberry were "garnering a great deal of attention with senior management as well as (nuclear security administration) representatives."
The security administration memo said the "magnitude of exposure and risk to the laboratory is at best unclear as little data on these losses has been collected or pursued given their treatment as property management issues."
The lab, located in Los Alamos, N.M., employs about 10,000 people.
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On the Net:
Los Alamos National Laboratory: http://www.lanl.gov
Project on Government Oversight: http://pogo.org
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20090212/D969S4M80.html

Zoorotica program at Binder Park Zoo
BATTLE CREEK, Mich. (NEWSCHANNEL 3) - Chocolate and flowers are nice, but this Valentine's Day why not take your honey for a walk on the wild side?
"We're going to talk about animal reproduction, the different animals here at Binder Park Zoo and their little quirks, different things that get them going to help them reproduce," said Jenny Parnett of Binder Park Zoo.
It's a Valentine's Day date that's sure to ruffle some feathers.
Binder Park Zoo says love birds are flocking to sign up for the Zoorotica program. From frolicking frogs to the love-lives of leopards, this will give you an intimate look at animal mating rituals.
The R-rated show lets you go where no zoo guests have gone before.
Tickets are sold out, but there is a waiting list. Just call the zoo office to add your name.
http://www.wwmt.com/articles/wild_1358922___article.html/park_flowers.html

Ireland to take control of banks, while plans for Fortis are rebuffed
Ireland moved toward greater government control of its financial system Wednesday by bailing out its two largest lenders, while shareholders in Fortis, once the biggest bank in Belgium, derailed state-led plans to sell the nationalized business to BNP Paribas of France.
Together, the moves suggested that Europe - like the United States - was still struggling to find the right template for stabilizing its banks, one that could soothe jittery markets and an increasingly incensed public.
The Irish government, meeting Wednesday night, approved a capital injection of €3.5 billion, or $4.5 billion, each for Allied Irish Banks and Bank of Ireland, a Finance Ministry official said. Bloomberg News reported later Wednesday night that the ministry confirmed the move in an e-mail message.
That made Ireland the first European Union country to take de facto control of all of its most important banks. Last month, the government stepped in to nationalize the teetering Anglo Irish Bank, which was No.3.
In Brussels, the vote by Fortis shareholders left the bank's Belgian operations in government hands while BNP Paribas decided whether to go to court or take its money - nearly €7 billion - and walk away.
U.S. bailout chief tries again to ease concern over strategy
Since the financial crisis deepened in September, policy makers in Europe and in the United States have tried various approaches to stabilize banks, ranging from loan guarantees to capital injections, forced mergers and breakups and most recently commitments to create institutions to acquire tainted assets.
The ad hoc approach has not settled investors, who continue to shun bank shares. Markets dived again after the announcement Tuesday of a new plan to bail out U.S. banks. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's plan, which included creating a so-called bad bank, was seen as too vague and ineffective in combating the worsening financial crisis.
Major U.S. market indicators were little changed Wednesday afternoon.
The fundamental problem is that almost no one knows what is on the balance sheets of most banks, and as the recession deepens, even once solid lenders are being dragged down by uncertainty and investor nerves. Some analysts say it may be time for policy makers to do what they have been studiously trying to avoid: full-scale nationalization, at least in certain countries.
"Make it simple, make it clean, make it rough, but please - make it," said Charles Wyplosz, director of the International Center of Money and Banking Studies at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva.
"There's a deep ideological and political issue here about using the word 'nationalization,"' he added. "Perhaps it's better if we can call it something else, like 'rationalization."'
During the crisis, few banks have actually been fully nationalized outside of Iceland. Two examples are Northern Rock in Britain and Anglo Irish. Instead, governments have often sought to use capital injections using preferential shares, which still leaves private shareholder equity and operational control with a board.
But some of those deals have unraveled. Last month, the British government revised the terms of its bailout of Royal Bank of Scotland, exchanging its preference shares for common equity and raising its stake in the bank to 70 percent from 58 percent.
Brian Lucey, an associate professor of finance at Trinity College Dublin, said the rescue Wednesday of the two Irish lenders would not be enough to fix their problems.
He projected the main Irish banks would need at least €25 billion in total to plug the huge write-downs on the €150 billion that he estimated they loaned to developers and other related projects in Ireland and Britain in recent years before the collapse of their property markets.
"Injecting the first €7 billion is a de-facto nationalization," he said. "And nationalization of the whole Irish banking system is a strong probability."
A central problem, analysts say, is that there is no rule book. But many point to the contrasting examples of Sweden and Japan.
During the 1990s, as its banks were sinking under the weight of bad debts, Sweden carved off all the banking industry's troubled assets and put them into a "bad bank," where they could be sold over time.
With the banks effectively bankrupt, the government wiped out existing shareholders, but then, instead of shutting the banks down, it used taxpayers' money to provide enough capital to allow the banks to resume normal lending.
Many former Swedish officials have said that the only way to avoid the conundrum is for the United States and some European governments to be prepared to take full ownership - temporarily - of some big banks.
In Japan, by contrast, officials allowed the situation to slide for years after growth slumped with the bursting of the asset price bubble in 1990. Eventually, toward the end of the decade, the government established a "bridge bank" to assume bad assets from the commercial banks and sell them off. Weak lenders were closed or merged.
But analysts say the delay exacerbated the situation and the economy has not recovered its buoyancy since.
"We don't have much experience, but we know Sweden worked and Japan didn't," Wyplosz said.
At a meeting in Brussels Tuesday, Joaquín Almunia, the European Union's monetary affairs commissioner, said guidelines for government programs to restructure banks would be produced soon.
The document also suggested that governments might have to require banks to participate to avoid uncertainty in the markets.
In the last five months, the Irish government has already staked a claim over most of the Irish banking territory.
In late September, the government advanced a state guarantee for all the €440 billion liabilities of six banks based in Dublin after a run on deposits threatened the collapse of Anglo Irish.
Last month, the government stepped in to nationalize Anglo Irish following disclosures that its former chairman and chief executive, Sean FitzPatrick, had deliberately hidden personal loans of over €120 million for the last eight years from regulators and auditors.
The Irish Financial Regulator is also investigating Anglo Irish in at least two other cases, including the circumstances surrounding the sale of a 25 percent stake of Anglo Irish shares last July.
Late Tuesday, the Financial Regulator disclosed it was also investigating huge deposits, one of about €4 billion, moved into Anglo Irish by a rival bank, Irish Life & Permanent last September, around the time that the Irish government announced its state guarantee of all Irish lenders.
As Ireland was stepping in, Belgium was having trouble extricating itself from the snap nationalization of Fortis assets last October.
Angry shareholders of Fortis, who went to court to force a vote on the government's actions, voted against the sale of the Dutch banking and insurance units to the Netherlands, and Belgium's move to take control of banking unit Fortis Bank. Both deals had already been agreed on by the banks and governments, although the shareholder vote would likely prompt legal appeals for damages.
The acting Fortis chairman Jan-Michiel Hessels said it made no sense to proceed to the third and final part of the carve-up - BNP Paribas's purchase of 75 percent of Fortis Bank and a stake in the Belgian insurance operations from Fortis, Reuters reported.
BNP Paribas, the largest bank in France, now faces a decision on whether to pursue the purchase in court or to abandon the acquisition. In a brief statement, BNP Paribas noted its original offer was valid through the end of this month, but did not elaborate on its next step.
The BNP Paribas chief executive, Baudouin Prot, warned last weekend that he was ready to walk away if the sale was not wrapped and said he was not prepared to make more concessions.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/02/11/business/eire.php

Chavez: Bigger threat to U.S. than Osama?
Authors of new book say Venezuelan dictator has desire, power to bring America to its knees
Posted: February 10, 2009
8:08 pm Eastern © 2009 WorldNetDaily
WASHINGTON – Authors of a new book who were sympathetic to Hugo Chavez's 1998 presidential bid to "eradicate poverty" in Venezuela now say he is a greater threat to America's national security than Osama bin Laden and has the means and motive to bring the U.S. to its knees.
In "The Threat Closer to Home: Hugo Chavez and the War Against America," Douglas E. Schoen and Michael Rowan say the U.S. is oblivious to Chavez's intentions to use oil as an asymmetric weapon of war, as well as terrorism, in attacks that could rival 9/11 in their impact on the economy and infrastructure of the nation.
Venezuela's oil reserves are second only to Saudi Arabia, they point out, and Chavez has demonstrated a willingness and the ability to manipulate the foreign import market.
"Prior to the summer of 2008, Chavez personally shorted the oil market of 3 million barrels a day," they write. "Leading OPEC (the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries), he had every producing nation but Saudi Arabia following suit."
They blame Chavez for worsening the economic downturn of 2008, "which may be the worst since the Great Depression."
"Hugo Chavez is implementing a sophisticated oil war against the United States," the authors write. "To understand this, you have to look back to 1999, when he asked the Venezuelan Congress for emergency powers and got them, whereupon he consolidated government power to his advantage."
He took full control of the national oil company, replacing its directors with military and political loyalists.
Huga Chavez
In addition, through his support of guerrillas in FARC (the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), he has worked to maximize cocaine sales to the United States, as a means of undermining the cohesiveness of the American culture.
Chavez has used Venezuela's vast oil resources to support the government of Iran – and specifically its nuclear ambitions, they say. He also has permitted the largest jihadist terror organization in the world, Hezbollah, to maintain permanent bases in Latin America and recruit Venezuelans.
The book begins with a quote from Otto Reich, ambassador to Venezuela from 1986 through 1989 and assistant secretary of state for western hemisphere affairs from 2001-2002: "America is very naïve about the threat Chavez poses. Today Chavez is at least as dangerous as bin Laden; he's preparing his attack; he's even implementing the attack, but too many of America's leaders are still ignoring him. This could be a tragedy bigger than 9/11."
In 2003, WND reported that high-level Venezuelan military defectors said Chavez gave $1 million to al-Qaida shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the United States.
Air Force Maj. Juan Diaz Castillo, formerly a pilot for the Venezuelan leader, came to the U.S. to warn of ties to terrorism in collaboration with Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.
"I must warn America about Chavez," Diaz said. "He is a danger, not just to his own people but to the whole region."
Diaz said Chavez transferred $1 million to the Taliban through Venezuelan Ambassador Walter Marquez in New Delhi, designating $900,000 to al-Qaida for its relocation efforts and $100,000 to the then-Afghan government for food and clothing, according to MilitaresDemocraticos.com.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=88401

Tool of His posted this very interesting artcle, wish i lived in one of those states
Four Southern states — Texas, South Carolina, Oklahoma and Arkansas — are considering legislation that would allow people to carry handguns openly in a holster.
These generally Second Amendment-friendly states are among the last six holdouts against open carrying of guns. Openly carrying handguns is legal in most states, even those that ban concealed firearms. New York and Florida also bar openly carrying handguns.
The four other states that ban so-called open carry "are extremely gun-friendly. They understand the individual-rights aspect. Yet for whatever reason, the carry laws in these states are restrictive," says John Pierce, a co-founder of OpenCarry.org, which promotes gun rights.
Most states have strict laws governing concealed weapons. Illinois and Wisconsin ban carrying them entirely, according to the National Rifle Association. Concealing a weapon "was seen in the early days of our nation as something of an unwholesome act. People would bear arms openly," Pierce says.
Says Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, which opposes open-carry laws: "We don't want more people carrying guns either openly or concealed because the more guns you have in a situation, the more likely you are to get gun violence."
Grass-roots movements supporting open carry have emerged via Internet and e-mail campaigns, Pierce says. The online Texas petition now has more than 55,000 signatures. OpenCarry.org raised $25,000 through online donations to pay for advertising in Texas, says OpenCarry.org co-founder Mike Stollenwerk.
Legislation is getting varying degrees of traction:
• In South Carolina, Republican Rep. Dan Cooper sponsored a bill endorsed by 36 other legislators to allow anyone who legally owns a handgun to carry it openly.
• In Oklahoma, Republican Rep. Mike Ritze is the sole sponsor of a bill filed Feb. 2 that would allow open carry.
• In Arkansas, a legislator is moving forward with a similar bill, Stollenwerk says.
• In Texas, Ian McCarthy, a student who chairs the Texas Open Carry Work Group, started the online petition in late 2007. He says a concealed gun is uncomfortable during hot Texas summers, takes longer to draw in self-defense and won't deter a criminal.
"If a criminal sees you're armed, he's not going to mess with you," McCarthy says.
Texas Republican Rep. Debbie Riddle has asked the state's legislative council to draft an open-carry bill. She wants to see how other gun-rights bills fare, particularly one to allow concealed weapons on college campuses."
Republican state Sen. Jeff Wentworth, who sponsored the college campus bill, opposes open carry. "I think that's harkening too far back to the Wild West," he says.
http://frc4u.org/phpbb/index.php?topic=148.0;topicseen