Saturday, July 11, 2009

Eeyores news and view

Tests reveal some pet supplements skimp on meds
July 9, 2009 - 2:21pm
In this June 25, 2009 photo, Nicole Albino poses for a photograph with her pug Chakka at her home in New York. Albino said Chakka was constantly chewing and licking his knees until her veterinarian recommended glucosamine and chondroitin. (AP Photo/Tina Fineberg) By MARILYNN MARCHIONE AP Medical Writer
(AP) - Arthritis supplements bought by millions of pet owners for their dogs, cats and horses sometimes skimp on the ingredients the makers claim can help aching paws and aging joints, and some contain high amounts of lead, an independent laboratory found.
Four of the six joint supplements for animals tested by ConsumerLab.com lacked the amounts of glucosamine or chondroitin promised on their labels or had other flaws, such as lead. Wider testing by a trade group of 87 brands found that one-quarter fell short.
Over-the-counter dietary supplements for humans do not have to be proven safe or effective before they are sold, and pills for pets get even less scrutiny.
"There is and there always has been" a quality problem, although many companies do a good job, said Mark Blumenthal of the American Botanical Council, which tracks research on herbal products.
Even when these supplements contain what they claim, there is little evidence that they work, veterinary experts say. A large government study of people with arthritis found that glucosamine and chondroitin did no better than dummy pills in easing mild pain. Testing these supplements on pets is more difficult.
"You can't ask a dog or a cat to give you a subjective impression of how they're feeling after taking the product for several days. They can't say, 'On a scale of 1 to 5, I feel better or worse,'" Blumenthal said.
Giving supplements to an ailing pet can make its owner feel better, though. "The owner shelled out money for the pills and wants to believe they are helping," Blumenthal said.
Up to one-third of dogs and cats in the U.S. are given supplements, a government report estimates. Sales of pet supplements have roughly doubled since 2003, to nearly $1 billion a year in the United States, according to the Nutrition Business Journal. These supplements are sold over the Internet and at pet supply stores and some groceries.
Many pet owners believe they make a difference.
Nicole Albino, who lives in New York City, said her dog Chakka was constantly chewing and licking his knees until her veterinarian recommended glucosamine and chondroitin.
After taking the pills for a year, "he's definitely been licking his knees a lot less," she said. The dog resumed when she ran out of the stuff for a few weeks. "It just seems to help," Albino said.
Few high-quality studies have tested the effectiveness of animal supplements. The Food and Drug Administration says these products are not bound by quality rules for human ones.
In 2007, the FDA asked an expert panel to look into three popular pet supplements _ lutein, evening primrose oil and garlic _ but the group could not agree on a safe upper limit.
"Many people presume that supplements are safer than drugs, but the reality is that there is very limited safety data on dietary supplements for horses, dogs, and cats," the panel concluded.
That same year, 2007, pet food tainted with melamine sickened and killed thousands of cats and dogs. Melamine can mimic protein in some lab tests, and protein costs much more than melamine.
Similarly, certain substances can fool tests for chondroitin, an expensive joint-supplement ingredient, said Dr. Tod Cooperman, president of ConsumerLab.com. The company tests supplements for manufacturers that want its seal of approval, and publishes ratings for subscribers.
Chondroitin usually comes from pig and cow cartilage, though shark and chicken cartilage also can be used, as well as algae. Glucosamine usually comes from the shells of crabs. It is also sold in chemical forms _ something that might surprise people who think of these as "natural" products.
ConsumerLab.com's most recent tests of human joint supplements, released this week along with the pet pill results, found that five out of 21 brands failed to meet quality standards, usually because of too little chondroitin. Four of the six pet supplements tested also failed. One contained only 17 percent of the promised chondroitin.
The National Animal Supplement Council, a trade group in suburban San Diego, found that 28 percent of the 87 brands it tested in April did not contain what was claimed, said council president, William Bookout. The group doesn't name names, but uses the results to help members improve quality control.
"Sometimes a company doesn't even realize they have a problem, or a company can make an honest mistake," Bookout said.
He warns consumers not to expect too much from a pill: "There isn't any magic bullet out there. It is not hip replacement in a bottle."
Dr. Babette Gladstein, a vet who makes house calls for dogs and cats in New York City, said she uses alternative methods but not supplements, because there is not enough proof they work. For overweight pets with bad knees, she advises healthy diets and weight loss.
"I teach the clients how to massage their animal, how to stretch their animal, how to get better range of motion" Gladstein said.
For people who do give pets joint supplements, experts suggest:
_Check with a vet beforehand to see if it is safe.
_Look for a seal of approval by an independent lab or organization.
_Keep a log of your pet's behavior, such as its ability to go up and down stairs, before and after supplement use so you can tell if it helps.
_Don't exceed recommended doses. Too much can cause loose stools and gas pains.
_Watch for shellfish allergies if using glucosamine derived from seafood.
_Avoid versions in salt form (NaCl, or sodium chloride on the label) if the animal has high blood pressure.
_Do not use glucosamine or chondroitin with blood thinners, such as heparin or aspirin, unless a vet advises it. Some breeds, such as Doberman pinschers, are predisposed to bleeding problems.
___
On the Net:
National Academy of Sciences report on supplements for animals:
http://tinyurl.com/clmfff
American Botanical Council: http://tinyurl.com/lddnqq
National Animal Supplement Council: http://www.nasc.cc

Here is a combo of three articles that was on Survival Blog yesterday. Tamiflu does not appear to be the panacea that it was first reported to be. Back on July 4th i blogged about a case in Hong Kong being resistant to Tamiflu.
Canada: Tamiflu Resistance In Saskatchewan
http://www.recombinomics.com/News/07080902/H274Y_SK.html
Tamiflu Resistance in San Francisco
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/07/08/MNG318KL8K.DTL
Tamiflu Resistance in Hong Kong, Japan, and Denmark http://www.who.int/csr/disease/swineflu/newsbriefs/h1n1_antiviral_resistance_20090708/en/index.html
US State Department under cyberattack for fourth day
The US State Department said Thursday its website came under cyberattack for a fourth day running as it tried to prevent further attacks.
"I'm just going to speak about our website, the state.gov website. There's not a high volume of attacks. But we're still concerned about it. They are continuing," State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters.
"We are taking measures to deal with this and any potential new attacks," Kelly added.
According to computer security experts, a dozen US government websites, including those of the White House, Pentagon and State Department, were targeted in a coordinated cyberattack which also struck sites in South Korea.
South Korean lawmakers were quoted as saying Wednesday that South Korea's intelligence service believes North Korea or its sympathizers may have staged the attack.
But Kelly added: "I have no information... of North Korean involvement. I have... nothing that I can confirm."
He said that the site based at the US embassy in Seoul, South Korea was not shut down and was not materially affected by any of these attacks.
Kelly has said the US computer emergency readiness team is working with State Department experts, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and other government agencies to try to resolve the problem.
DHS is leading the probe, Kelly said.
The Department of Homeland Security confirmed earlier that US government and private sector websites had come under so-called "distributed denial of service" attack but declined to identify any of the targeted sites.
A denial of service attack attempts to paralyze a website by flooding it with traffic from an army of malware-infected computers known as a "botnet."
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.a6c27e3843e8f645f9e395649a3a85e5.c51&show_article=1

UFO Club allows sighters to share without scorn
July 10, 2009 - 9:45am By RICARDO LOPEZ The Virginian-Pilot
VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (AP) - Mae Burdette knows that when she mentions UFOs and extraterrestrials, her statements often fall on skeptical or even deaf ears.
But at the second meeting of a newly formed UFO Club, Burdette found an audience willing to listen with an open mind.
She told a group of 20 people Wednesday night at the Princess Anne Area Library about her experiences with alien abductions, mysterious men in dark suits and her ability to foresee events, such as a neighbor's house fire.
"The club is about bringing people together and putting their experiences into perspective," said Burdette, 64, who lives in Chesapeake.
Cameron Pack, 25, created the UFO Club so people like Burdette can share their experiences and connect with others who have felt marginalized after speaking about peculiar events.
He began to advertise the club through fliers distributed at local holistic healing stores and in a classified ad. About a dozen people attended that first meeting.
"People have been wanting to have this for a long time," said Pack, a Virginia Beach resident.
Pack, who works part time in retail, is a local field investigator for the Mutual UFO Network. He became interested in UFOs after seeing a triangular object in the sky with many bright lights in 2003.
Pack is passionate about his investigative work. He receives assignments to look into UFOs from his director. He interviews witnesses, collects any evidence and updates the network's nationwide database with a completed report.
Pack carries a briefcase packed with reports, a camera and a field manual on how to conduct inquiries. He is not paid for his work, even though it takes up a lot of his time.
In a little more than a month on the job, he's worked on about 25 cases.
"Cameron is new, but he's very good," said, Susan Swiatek, the network's state director. "We're glad to have him aboard. He writes well, and he writes copious quantities in his reports."
Most of the sightings are reported directly to Mutual UFO Network on its Web site, but some are forwarded by Virginia Beach police dispatch, a practice that began in the 1970s.
A 1976 letter from the Advance Research of UFO Organization to then-Chief of Police William Davis requested that the Police Department forward UFO sighting reports to the organization. Shortly after, an internal memo sent to dispatchers instructed them to take reports and then call UFO Central to relay the information.
An officer is rarely sent out to investigate, said Sue Frazier, a dispatch supervisor.
Several dozen reports have come in to dispatch since then, and most people never figure out an object and keep silent, Swiatek said.
"When you experience something like that, what you believe to be alien spacecraft, you really start to question yourself," said Terrell Copeland, a Marine veteran who reported seeing a huge triangle-shape craft floating over a Suffolk shopping center in 2005. "You're just lost."
Copeland said people aren't open to talking about their experiences because they don't want to strain their relationships with coworkers, family or friends.
"This club was necessary because there's nothing like it in the area," Copeland said.
Wednesday's meeting included a diverse group _ 20-somethings, senior citizens, a married couple _ and all showed genuine interest in hearing Burdette's experiences.
When a pair of men in dark suits approached her at work in 1973 in downtown Norfolk, Burdette said, they knew her husband, where he worked, how many children she had and other personal information. They questioned her, but she became spooked and asked them to leave. They returned a few days later, she said, and requested that she not tell anyone about them.
"Then I saw the movie 'Men in Black,' and I made the connection," she told the group. "I still don't know who they were to this day, but I knew something was suspicious."
___
Information from: The Virginian-Pilot, http://www.pilotonline.com

Friday, July 10, 2009

Eeyores news and view

Netanyahu adviser raises "MAD" nuclear scenario
JERUSALEM, July 9 (Reuters) - Israel must have "tremendously powerful" weapons to deter a nuclear attack or destroy an enemy that dares to launch an atomic strike, a senior adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was quoted on Thursday as saying.
National security adviser Uzi Arad, in comments to Haaretz newspaper, appeared to allude to what is widely believed to be Israel's own nuclear arsenal and a standing policy of "mutually assured destruction" (MAD). He warned other countries they could bring about their own devastation if they launched an attack.
Israel has never confirmed it has atomic arms.
In excerpts on Haaretz's English-language website of an interview to be published on Friday, Arad said he feared that if Iran became a nuclear power, five or six other states in the Middle East would follow suit. He called such a prospect a "nightmare" for Israel.
"The defensive might we have must be improved and become tremendously powerful, and create a situation in which no one will dare to realise the ability to harm us," Arad said.
"And if they do dare, we will exact a full price, so that they too will not survive."
Israel has three German-made submarines that are widely assumed to carry nuclear missiles.
One of the submarines sailed from the Mediterranean, via the Suez Canal, to Israel's Red Sea port of Eilat last week, in what officials called a signal to Iran of the long reach of its arsenal.
Israel and its Western allies fear that Iran is enriching uranium with the aim of producing nuclear weapons. Iran says it is pursuing only a nuclear power generation programme.
In a 2006 Reuters interview, then-vice premier Shimon Peres, currently Israel's president, said Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has called for Israel to be wiped off the map, should bear in mind his country also could be destroyed.
"They want to wipe out Israel ... Now when it comes to destruction, Iran too can be destroyed (but) I don't suggest to say an eye for an eye," Peres said. (Writing by Jeffrey Heller, Editing by Alastair Macdonald)
http://alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L9623800.htm

Hundreds protest in Iran, defy crackdown vow
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Hundreds of young men and women chanted "death to the dictator" and fled baton-wielding police in the capital Thursday as opposition activists sought to revive street protests despite authorities' vows to "smash" any new marches.
For days, supporters of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi have been calling for new protests in Tehran and other cities on Thursday, their first significant attempt to get back on the streets since security forces crushed massive demonstrations nearly two weeks ago in Iran's post-election turmoil.
Tehran Gov. Morteza Tamaddon warned that any new march Thursday would meet the same fate.
"If some individuals plan to carry out any anti-security actions by listening to calls by counterrevolutionary networks, they will be smashed under the feet of our aware people," he said, according to the state news agency IRNA in a report late Wednesday.
Thursday afternoon, a stepped-up number of uniformed policemen along with plainclothes Basiji militiamen stood at intersections all along Revolution Street and at nearby near Tehran University, some of the sites where protests were called.
Still, a group of around 300 young people gathered in front of Tehran University and began to chant, "Death to the dictator," witnesses said. Many of them wore green surgical masks, the color of Mousavi's movement.
Police charged at them, swinging batons, but the protesters fled, then regrouped at another corner and resumed chanting, the witnesses said. Police chased them repeatedly as the protesters continued to regroup, the witnesses said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they feared government retribution.
Within an hour, the number of protesters grew to about 700 and marched toward the gates of Tehran University, the witnesses said. A line of policemen blocked their path, but they did nothing to disperse the gathering as the protesters stood and continued to chant, the witnesses said.
At another location, on Valiasr Street, around 200 protesters gathered, and police fired tear gas to disperse them, but the demonstrators sought to regroup elsewhere, the witnesses said.
It was the first such protests in 11 days, since the crackdown — though it did not compare to the hundreds of thousands who joined the marches that erupted after the June 12 presidential election, protesting what the opposition said were fraudulent results.
The calls for a new march have been circulating for days on social networking websites and pro-opposition websites. Opposition supporters planned the marches to coincide with the anniversary Thursday of a 1999 attack by Basij on a Tehran University dorm to stop protests in which one student was killed.
Mousavi and his supporters say he won the election, which official results showed as a landslide victory for incumbent hard-liner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declared the results valid after a partial recount and warned that unrest would not be tolerated.
In the crackdown since the election, at least 20 protesters and 7 Basijis were killed.
Police have said 1,000 people were arrested and that most have since been released. But the state-run English language news network Press TV quoted prosecutor-general Qorban-Ali Dorri Najafabadi saying Wednesday that 2,500 people were arrested and that 500 of them could face trial. The remainder, he said, have been released.
Among those still being held are top figures in the country's reform movement, including a former vice president and former Cabinet members. Arrests have continued over the past week, with police rounding up dozens of activists, journalists and bloggers.
Ahead of Thursday's planned march, authorities appeared to have taken a number of other steps to prevent participation. SMS mobile phone messaging was down Thursday for a third straight day — a step believed to be aimed at thwarting protesters' communications. A similar cutoff took place from the election until a week ago, amid the height of the protests.
The government also closed down universities and called a government holiday on Tuesday and Wednesday, citing a heavy dust and pollution cloud that has blanketed Tehran and other parts of the country this week. Many saw the move as aimed at keeping students away from campuses where protests could be organized. Thursday is a weekend day in Iran, and many people used the surprise long holiday to travel to other cities where weather was better.
Iranian authorities have depicted the post-election turmoil as instigated by enemy nations aiming to thwart Ahmadinejad's re-election, and officials say some of those detained confessed to fomenting the unrest. Opposition supporters say the confessions were forced under duress.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2009-07-09-iran-protests_N.htm

Parts of Britain "near an H1N1 epidemic"; 14 dead
LONDON (Reuters) - Fourteen Britons who had contracted H1N1 flu have died and the rapid spread of infection in two areas of the country is close to epidemic level, health officials said on Thursday.
The Department of Health said Britain now had 9,718 laboratory-confirmed cases, the third most in the world behind the United States and Mexico.
Britain's Chief Medical Officer Liam Donaldson said the actual number of cases was likely to be higher.
All 14 who have died had underlying health issues and it was not clear in how many cases the patients had died as a direct result of the virus, known as swine flu.
"In London and the West Midlands we are getting pretty close to epidemic levels. We've seen big surges there," Donaldson told
BBC TV.
"For the country as a whole, the average is about the level of the flu season but in some parts of the country the levels are getting pretty big."
The World Health Organization declared on June 11 that the outbreak of the virus was a pandemic and more than 94,500 cases have been reported worldwide.
Health Minister Andy Burnham said last week the government was projecting more than 100,000 new cases a day of the flu by the end of August.
While most people who have caught the infection have suffered mild symptoms, in a small minority it has proven more severe.
The Department of Health said that 335 people in Britain were currently in hospital after contracting the infection, with 43 of those described as critical.
Donaldson said there were no signs the virus was becoming more virulent, although he warned it could mutate.
"It does tend to affect people with underlying illnesses quite severely and a small number of healthy adults can get the severe complications of flu but the majority of them get a mild illness," he said. (Reporting by Michael Holden; Editing by Louise Ireland and Steve Addison)
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE5685ER20090709?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&rpc=22&sp=true

Akron police investigate teen mob attack on family
Akron police say they aren't ready to call it a hate crime or a gang initiation.
But to Marty Marshall, his wife and two kids, it seems pretty clear.
It came after a family night of celebrating America and freedom with a fireworks show at Firestone Stadium. Marshall, his family and two friends were gathered outside a friend's home in South Akron.
Out of nowhere, the six were attacked by dozens of teenage boys, who shouted ''This is our world'' and ''This is a black world'' as they confronted Marshall and his family.
The Marshalls, who are white, say the crowd of teens who attacked them and two friends June 27 on Girard Street numbered close to 50. The teens were all black.
''This was almost like being a terrorist act,'' Marshall said. ''And we allow this to go on in our neighborhoods?''
They said it started when one teen, without any words or warning, blindsided and assaulted Marshall's friend as he stood outside with the others.
When Marshall, 39, jumped in, he found himself being attacked by the growing group of teens.
His daughter, Rachel, 15, who weighs about 90 pounds, tried to come to his rescue. The teens pushed her to the ground.
His wife, Yvonne, pushed their son, Donald, 14, into bushes to keep him protected.
''My thing is,'' Marshall said, ''I didn't want this, but I was in fear for my wife, my kids and my friends. I felt I had to stay out there to protect them, because those guys were just jumping, swinging fists and everything.
''I'm lucky. They didn't break my ribs or bruise my ribs. I thank God, they concentrated on my thick head because I do have one. They were trying to take my head off my spine, basically.''
After several minutes of punches and kicks, the attack ended and the group ran off. The Marshalls' two adult male friends were not seriously hurt.
''I don't think I thought at that moment when I tried to jump in,'' Rachel Marshall said. ''But when I was laying on the ground, I was just scared.''
Marshall was the most seriously injured. He suffered a concussion and multiple bruises to his head and eye. He said he spent five nights in the critical care unit at Akron General Medical Center.
The construction worker said he now fears for his family's safety, and the thousands of dollars in medical bills he faces without insurance.
''I knew I was going to get beat, but not as bad as I did,'' Marshall said. ''But I did it to protect my family. I didn't have a choice. There was no need for this. We should be all getting along. But to me, it seems to be racist.''
Akron police are investigating. Right now, the case is not being classified as a racial hate crime. There were no other reports of victims assaulted by the group that night.
The department's gang unit is involved in the investigation, police said.
''We don't know if it's a known gang, or just a group of kids,'' police Lt. Rick Edwards said.
The Marshalls say they fear retaliation at home or when they go outside. They are considering arming themselves, but they're concerned about the possible problems that come with guns.
For now, they are hoping police can bring them suspects. They believe they can identify several of the attackers.
''This maks you think about your freedom,'' Marshall said. ''In all reality, where is your freedom when you have this going on?''
http://www.ohio.com/news/50172282.html

Thursday, July 9, 2009

Eeyores news and view

Copyright laws threaten our online freedom
By Christian Engström Published: July 7 2009 18:10 Last updated: July 7 2009 18:10
If you search for Elvis Presley in Wikipedia, you will find a lot of text and a few pictures that have been cleared for distribution. But you will find no music and no film clips, due to copyright restrictions. What we think of as our common cultural heritage is not “ours” at all.
On MySpace and YouTube, creative people post audio and video remixes for others to enjoy, until they are replaced by take-down notices handed out by big film and record companies. Technology opens up possibilities; copyright law shuts them down.
EDITOR’S CHOICE
Curb on content threatens France Telecom - Jul-07.E-retailers find big brands hard to touch - Jul-07..This was never the intent. Copyright was meant to encourage culture, not restrict it. This is reason enough for reform. But the current regime has even more damaging effects. In order to uphold copyright laws, governments are beginning to restrict our right to communicate with each other in private, without being monitored.
File-sharing occurs whenever one individual sends a file to another. The only way to even try to limit this process is to monitor all communication between ordinary people. Despite the crackdown on Napster, Kazaa and other peer-to-peer services over the past decade, the volume of file-sharing has grown exponentially. Even if the authorities closed down all other possibilities, people could still send copyrighted files as attachments to e-mails or through private networks. If people start doing that, should we give the government the right to monitor all mail and all encrypted networks? Whenever there are ways of communicating in private, they will be used to share copyrighted material. If you want to stop people doing this, you must remove the right to communicate in private. There is no other option. Society has to make a choice.
The world is at a crossroads. The internet and new information technologies are so powerful that no matter what we do, society will change. But the direction has not been decided.
The technology could be used to create a Big Brother society beyond our nightmares, where governments and corporations monitor every detail of our lives. In the former East Germany, the government needed tens of thousands of employees to keep track of the citizens using typewriters, pencils and index cards. Today a computer can do the same thing a million times faster, at the push of a button. There are many politicians who want to push that button.
The same technology could instead be used to create a society that embraces spontaneity, collaboration and diversity. Where the citizens are no longer passive consumers being fed information and culture through one-way media, but are instead active participants collaborating on a journey into the future.
The internet it still in its infancy, but already we see fantastic things appearing as if by magic. Take Linux, the free computer operating system, or Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Witness the participatory culture of MySpace and YouTube, or the growth of the Pirate Bay, which makes the world’s culture easily available to anybody with an internet connection. But where technology opens up new possibilities, our intellectual property laws do their best to restrict them. Linux is held back by patents, the rest of the examples by copyright.
The public increasingly recognises the need for reform. That was why Piratpartiet – the Pirate party – won 7.1 per cent of the popular vote in Sweden in the European Union elections. This gave us a seat in the European parliament for the first time.
Our manifesto is to reform copyright laws and gradually abolish the patent system. We oppose mass surveillance and censorship on the net, as in the rest of society. We want to make the EU more democratic and transparent. This is our entire platform.
We intend to devote all our time and energy to protecting the fundamental civil liberties on the net and elsewhere. Seven per cent of Swedish voters agreed with us that it makes sense to put other political differences aside in order to ensure this.
Political decisions taken over the next five years are likely to set the course we take into the information society, and will affect the lives of millions for many years into the future. Will we let our fears lead us towards a dystopian Big Brother state, or will we have the courage and wisdom to choose an exciting future in a free and open society?
The information revolution is happening here and now. It is up to us to decide what future we want.
The writer is the Pirate party’s member of the European parliament
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/87c523a4-6b18-11de-861d-00144feabdc0.html

U.S. mortgage fraud 'rampant' and growing-FBISAN FRANCISCO, July 7 (Reuters) - U.S. mortgage fraud reports jumped 36 percent last year as desperate homeowners and industry professionals tried to maintain their standard of living from the boom years, the FBI said on Tuesday.
Suspicious activity reports rose to 63,713 in fiscal year 2008, which ended last September, from 46,717 the year before. California and Florida, centers of the housing bust, had the highest numbers of suspicious reports as foreclosures jumped, the stock market dropped and credit dried up.
"These combined factors uncovered and fueled a rampant mortgage fraud climate fraught with opportunistic participants desperate to maintain or increase their current standard of living," the Federal Bureau of Investigation said in its report.
"Industry employees sought to maintain the high standard of living they enjoyed during the boom years of the real estate market and overextended mortgage holders were often desperate to reduce or eliminate their bloated mortgage payments," it said.
http://www.reuters.com/article/bondsNews/idUSN0751853920090707

White House among targets of sweeping cyber attack
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The powerful attack that overwhelmed computers at U.S. and South Korean government agencies for days was even broader than realized, also targeting the White House, the Pentagon and the New York Stock Exchange.
An early analysis of the malicious software used in the attack found its targets also included the National Security Agency, Homeland Security Department, State Department, the Nasdaq stock market and The Washington Post. Many of the organizations appeared to successfully blunt the sustained attacks.
The Associated Press obtained the target list from security experts analyzing the attack. It was not immediately clear who might be responsible or what their motives were.
The attack was remarkably successful. Some of the affected government Web sites -- such as the Treasury Department, Federal Trade Commission and Secret Service -- were still reporting problems days after it started during the July 4 holiday.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Government-Web-sites-attacked-apf-1342411279.html?x=0&.v=5

Two Canada hog workers hit by new non-pandemic flu
SASKATOON, Saskatchewan, July 7 (Reuters) - Two farm workers in Western Canada have become infected with a new flu virus, health officials said on Tuesday, stressing the strain was not related to the H1N1 pandemic.
The two workers, both employees at a hog barn operation in the province of Saskatchewan, have fully recovered. A third case is under investigation.
The new virus contains genes from a seasonal human H1N1 flu strain and a flu virus common in the swine population called triple reassortant H3N2, said Dr. Greg Douglas, Saskatchewan's chief veterinary officer.
The virus is not connected to the H1N1 strain, sometimes referred to as swine flu, that has killed more than 400 people worldwide. That strain is believed to have begun in Mexico and has been labeled a pandemic by the World Health Organization.
There are no signs of increased illness in the hog herd, Douglas added.
"This is a human health issue," he said. "Saskatchewan pork continues to be safe ... This is not a food safety issue at all."
Concern about the issue of pigs becoming infected with the H1N1 flu has been heightened in Canada since a herd in Alberta became infected in April. A human worker who had visited Mexico was initially suspected as the source but was later ruled out.
The Saskatchewan farm is not under quarantine, but the owner has agreed not to move the pigs, said Dr. Frank Plummer, chief science adviser for the Public Health Agency of Canada.
The virus would likely not have been detected at all if not for heightened influenza testing as a result of the pandemic, Plummer said.
"Any time there's a new influenza A strain, we have to be concerned about it, but these events occur and are almost always dead ends," he said.
All workers on the hog farm are being vaccinated. Douglas said he expects the hogs will eventually go to slaughter as they normally would.
The workers have been in Saskatchewan for about one year and had not recently traveled, said Dr. Moira McKinnon, Saskatchewan's chief medical officer.
Plummer said the new virus was likely transmitted from the pigs to the workers, but said the source of transmission of the pandemic H1N1 virus on the Alberta hog farm, which was quarantined in April, was probably human.
More than a dozen countries have banned Canadian hogs or pork since the quarantine.
Bob Harding, executive director of the Canadian Swine Health Board, said there is concern that markets could misinterpret the new virus's connection to swine.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N08342126.htm

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Eeyores news and view

Two-thirds of State Attorneys General File Amicus Brief Supporting Second Amendment Incorporation
Fairfax, Va. – Two-thirds of the nation’s attorneys general have filed an amicus brief asking the U.S. Supreme Court to grant certiorari in the case of NRA v. Chicago and hold that the Second Amendment applies to state and local governments through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. This bi-partisan group of 33 attorneys general, along with the Attorney General of California in a separate filing, agrees with the NRA’s position that the Second Amendment protects a fundamental individual right to keep and bear arms in the home for self-defense, disagreeing with the decision recently issued by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.
“The historical record clearly shows that the Second Amendment was intended to apply to every American in every state in the country,” said Chris W. Cox, NRA chief lobbyist. “As the Supreme Court said clearly in last year’s landmark Heller decision, the Second Amendment protects an individual right that ‘belongs to all Americans’. Two-thirds of America’s state Attorneys General agree.”
The Seventh Circuit claimed precedent bound it from holding in favor of incorporation of the Second Amendment. However, it should have followed the lead of the recent Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision in Nordyke v. King, which found that those cases don't prevent the Second Amendment from applying to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause. The Seventh Circuit opinion upholds current bans on the possession of handguns in Chicago and Oak Park, Illinois.
California attorney general Edmund G. Brown Jr. is filing a separate brief arguing that the Supreme Court should take up NRA’s appeal and hold that the Second Amendment is incorporated against the States.
“It is fundamentally wrong to violate the civil rights of any law-abiding person based on their zip code,” Cox concluded. “The fundamental right of self-defense must be respected by every jurisdiction throughout our country.”
http://www.nraila.org/News/Read/NewsReleases.aspx?ID=12654

Microsoft warns of serious computer security hole
Microsoft warned users Monday about yet another serious security flaw related to its Internet Explorer browser for which there is no fix.
Security firm Symantec said the vulnerability, which affects PCs using Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 operating software, is already being taken advantage of by cybercriminals.
It can allow hackers to remotely take control of victims' machines. The victims don't need to do anything to get infected except visit websites infected with a tiny bit of code that taps into the security hole.
Dean Turner, director of Symantec Security Response, says a cybercriminal group has corrupted an estimated several hundred legitimate Web pages with such infections since July 1. The criminals most likely are sending out e-mail spam to trick victims into clicking to the corrupted pages.
Symantec researchers caught part of the malicious code moving across the Internet in a computer, called a honey pot, set up to receive infections. But they have not captured any samples of the e-mail trickery.
"This is not that uncommon," Turner says. "But this kind of exploit in the wild, with no security patch yet available, has the potential to affect hundreds of thousands of people."
A flurry of similar attacks on Internet Explorer took place in 2007 and 2008, but have slowed. Attackers in 2008 began to gravitate to security holes in popular applications, such as Microsoft Word.
And in the past few months, the most widely attacked program has been Adobe Acrobat Reader, says Roel Schouwenberg, senior researcher at Kaspersky Lab.
The so-called zero day vulnerability disclosed by Microsoft affects a part of its software used to play video. The problem arises from the way the software interacts with Internet Explorer, which opens a hole for hackers to tunnel into.
Microsoft urged vulnerable users to disable the problematic part of its software, which can be done from Microsoft's website, while the company works on a "patch" — or software fix — for the problem.
Once the attacker gains access to a PC, the machine most often is used in a network of other compromised PCs, called bots, to spread spam and steal data. Bots are also widely used to spread promotions for fake anti-spyware subscriptions and to hijack cash from online banking accounts.
A Microsoft advisory says the company is working on a patch, which will be distributed "when it has reached an appropriate level of quality for broad distribution."
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/computersecurity/2009-07-06-microsoft-security_N.htm

Banks get stingy on credit; new cards down 38%
Despite massive government efforts to bolster the credit market, banks are pulling back severely on card lending.
In the first four months of the year — the latest data — banks issued 9.8 million new credit cards, a 38% drop from the same time last year, according to Equifax credit bureau data. Low-risk borrowers can still get credit, but they're getting less than before. The average limit on a new card, after rising during the recession, slipped 3% so far this year to $4,594.
That's discouraging for those who want to see banks pumping liquidity into the economy. "The credit engine needs a tuneup," says Jim Powers, an Equifax assistant vice president.
While it's not surprising that banks are pulling back on unsecured loans as card defaults and delinquencies surge, "what's remarkable is the very sharp decline in lending," says Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com.
The drop signals a shift in mind-set by issuers, which historically have raised credit card limits through booms and busts.
The government has tried to stimulate overall lending by funding securities backed by assets such as credit cards and mortgages. It's also injected billions of aid into banks in return for preferred stock.
But in the credit card market, policymakers are working at "cross purposes," Zandi says. President Obama recently signed a law imposing far-reaching restrictions on cards, mostly starting in February 2010. Those will likely lead to even fewer cards being issued, Zandi says.
Still, if this trend means issuers are "doing better underwriting, that could be a positive thing," says Lauren Zeichner Bowne of Consumers Union, the publisher of Consumer Reports. What worries consumer groups, Bowne says, is that issuers are closing inactive cards and slashing limits even for responsible consumers.
http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/credit/2009-07-06-banks-credit-cards_N.htm

Germany's biggest bank admits spying on staff: spokesman
Germany's biggest bank, Deutsche Bank, admitted Monday it had spied on a former member of its supervisory board, suspected of disclosing 2001 third quarter results before their official publication.
A bank spokesman said the target was Gerald Herrmann, who represented the union Verdi on the board that year.
German magazine Der Spiegel had reported over the weekend that the bank hired detectives to spy on its employees including a member of its supervisory board, managers and a shareholder.
The bank launched an internal inquiry at the end of May into potential breaches of data privacy law in connection with the affair, Spiegel said.
The spokesman confirmed the investigation and said the financial market regulator Bafin had also been contacted.
Herrmann told the Handelsblatt business newspaper on Monday Deutsche Bank informed him of the case a couple of days ago.
He denied the allegations against him and said he suspected he was spied on because Deutsche Bank did not appreciate his criticism of a redundancy compensation scheme.
The bank apologised to Hermann but the union member said he wanted a personal apology from chief executive Josef Ackermann who promised a "zero tolerance" approach over the affair at an annual general meeting of the bank.
According to Der Spiegel detectives "kept an eye on the movements of these people, and made inquiries as to who they were meeting and when".
In 2006, managers were spied on because of their suspected links to media mogul Leo Kirch, who was involved in a legal battle with Deutsche Bank, the magazine said.
Spiegel also said minority shareholder Michael Bohndorf, a lawyer living in Ibiza, Spain, was spied on.
Several detective agencies may have been involved in the affair.
Among the agencies is one led by a former agent of the Stasi, the notorious secret police in the former East Germany, who was also implicated in a scandal at German phone giant Deutsche Telekom.
Deutsche Bank even used "female bait" to find "personal weaknesses of certain shareholders", the magazine added.
Scandals over violations of privacy law have rocked the German corporate world in recent months, notably at railway company Deutsche Bahn and Deutsche Telekom.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.b1bda39889783bf24189b0a92f01fc43.1a1&show_article=1

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Eeyores news and view

Patriots wage war on Obama socialism
States line up to 'opt out' of government health care
Citizen protest movements against taxes, deficit spending and wildly escalating federal social welfare programs under President Obama are gaining momentum, despite attempts by the administration and their supporters to ridicule such movements, Jerome Corsi's Red Alert reports.
With a new round of tea party tax protests held during the Independence Day holiday, Arizona has added a new dimension to the revolt against Obama's policies by passing a law designed to opt the state out of any universal health care insurance plan the administration manages to get passed through Congress.
Republican Nancy Barto, state representative in Arizona, has been responsible for advancing though the Arizona legislature a bill that would amend the state constitution so that no resident would be required to participate in any public health care program.
"HCR2014 is proactive and will protect patients' fundamental rights," Barto told the Examiner. "We are a front-line battle state to stop momentum of this powerful government takeover of your health care decisions. Health care by lobbyists thwarts your rights and can be stopped here."
Known as "Arizona's Heath Care Freedom Act," the initiative will be on the 2010 Arizona ballot.
Indiana, Minnesota, New Mexico, North Dakota and Wyoming are all considering similar legislation to opt out of "Obamacare," the current effort by the administration to pass a government-funded universal health care insurance bill.
Meanwhile, tea party organizers are fighting back against Obama administration supporters who derisively used "tea bagging" in reference to certain homosexual practices.
Organizers of the Texas Tea Party invited actress Janeane Garofolo to join them in Texas on July 4 and posted a video of their invitation on YouTube.
Garofalo, an actress on Fox television's drama "24," called tea partiers "a bunch of tea-bagging rednecks," adding "this is about hating a black man in the White House. This is racism straight up."
According to the Tenth Amendment Center, at least 70 percent of the states have launched provisions to exert state sovereignty based on the 10th Amendment to the Constitution, which stipulates that "powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited to it by the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
"What we are trying to do is to get the U.S. Congress out of the state's businesses," said Oklahoma Republican State Sen. Randy Brogdon, lead sponsor of the Oklahoma version of the sovereignty bill.
Brogdon is currently running for governor in Oklahoma in 2010.
WND's June 2009 issue of the Whistleblower magazine, entitled "Don't Tread on Me: Rebellion in America's Heartland," also covers the move by several states to exempt guns from federal regulation.
The state of Montana has drawn a land in the sand, challenging the federal government to decide whether guns and ammo made, sold and used in Montana require federal registration.
Following Montana's lead, Utah Rep. Carl Wimmer has prepared a bill that would gain new protections for gun owners by asserting the state's sovereignty under the Ninth and 10th amendments.
WND has reported that Wimmer intends his legislation to exempt from federal gun regulations any Utah resident seeking to own a firearm made in Utah.
"What is clear is that millions of Americans are getting increasingly turned off by the Obama administration's move to increase dramatically the size and control of the federal government," Corsi wrote. "With no end of trillion dollar deficits anywhere in sight under President Obama, average Americans are saying 'no more' to escalating taxes and programs such as 'Obamacare.'"
In writing "The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality," Corsi predicted that Barack Obama was a Saul Alinsky radical who would rule from the far left, not from the political center.
"With President Obama's rating dropping and the global recession deepening, this is the time we need to fight back by returning to the principles of limited government espoused by our founders," Corsi wrote. "Now is the time to defeat the Obama administration cap-and-trade bill in the Senate and to fight the Obama health care plan in the House."
Before 2009 is over, the Obama administration plans to introduce to Congress yet another version of the "shamnesty" bill, euphemistically packaged as "comprehensive immigration reform," says Corsi.
Having twice defeated the Kennedy-McCain version of that bill, Red Alert believes American patriots will once again reject "guest worker programs" and "pathways to citizenship" on the call to secure U.S. borders and enforce our existing immigration laws.
"The time to save America from Obama socialism is running short," Corsi noted, "but the battle has only just begun."
Red Alert's author, whose books "The Obama Nation" and "Unfit for Command" have topped the New York Times best-sellers list, received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in political science in 1972. For nearly 25 years, beginning in 1981, he worked with banks throughout the U.S. and around the world to develop financial services marketing companies to assist banks in establishing broker/dealers and insurance subsidiaries to provide financial planning products and services to their retail customers. In this career, Corsi developed three different third-party financial services marketing firms that reached gross sales levels of $1 billion in annuities and equal volume in mutual funds. In 1999, he began developing Internet-based financial marketing firms, also adapted to work in conjunction with banks.
In his 25-year financial services career, Corsi has been a noted financial services speaker and writer, publishing three books and numerous articles in professional financial services journals and magazines.
For financial guidance during difficult times, read Jerome Corsi's Red Alert, the premium, online intelligence news source by the WND staff writer, columnist and author of the New York Times No. 1 best-seller, "The Obama Nation."
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=103208

Social Security number code cracked, study claims
WASHINGTON (AP) — For all the concern about identity theft, researchers say there's a surprisingly easy way for the technology-savvy to figure out the precious nine digits of Americans' Social Security numbers.
"It's good that we found it before the bad guys," Alessandro Acquisti of Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh said of the method for predicting the numbers.
Acquisti and Ralph Gross report in Tuesday's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that they were able to make the predictions using data available in public records as well as information such as birthdates cheerfully provided on social networks such as Facebook.
For people born after 1988 — when the government began issuing numbers at birth — the researchers were able to identify, in a single attempt, the first five Social Security digits for 44 percent of individuals. And they got all nine digits for 8.5 percent of those people in fewer than 1,000 attempts.
For smaller states their accuracy was considerably higher than in larger ones.
Acquisti said in a telephone interview that he has sent the findings to the Social Security Administration and other government agencies with a suggestion they adopt a more random system for assigning numbers.
Social Security spokesman Mark Lassiter said the public should not be alarmed by the report "because there is no foolproof method for predicting a person's Social Security number."
"The suggestion that Mr. Acquisti has cracked a code for predicting an SSN is a dramatic exaggeration," Lassiter said via e-mail.
However, he added: "For reasons unrelated to this report, the agency has been developing a system to randomly assign SSNs. This system will be in place next year."
The researchers say their report omits some details to make sure they aren't providing criminals a blueprint for obtaining the numbers.
The predictability of the numbers increases the risk of identity theft, which cost Americans almost $50 billion in 2007 alone, Acquisti said.
A problem in the battle against identity thieves is that many businesses use Social Security numbers as passwords or for other forms of authentication, something that was not anticipated when Social Security was devised in the 1930s. The Social Security Administration has long cautioned educational, financial and health care institutions against using the numbers as personal identifiers.
"In a world of wired consumers, it is possible to combine information from multiple sources to infer data that is more personal and sensitive than any single piece of original information alone," he said, warning against providing too much data on social network sites.
Acquisti, who researches the economics of privacy, said he got interested in what could be learned from easily available by looking at social networks, which he termed "a great experiment in self-revelation."
People were willing to include their date of birth and hometown, he said, and he already knew that was part of the information used in issuing Social Security numbers.
So the researchers turned to the SSA's "Death Master File," which lists the numbers of people who have died. The purpose of making that file public is to prevent impostors from assuming the Social Security numbers of deceased people.
But by plotting the data for people listed on the file between 1973 and 2003 the researchers were able to develop patterns for number issuance.
"I was surprised by the accuracy of certain predictions," Acquisti said.
The system can produce a range of possibilities for the last four numbers, making it easier for a computer to test the possibilities until the correct number is found for an individual, Acquisti explained.
In addition, "attackers can exploit various public- and private-sector online services, such as online "instant" credit approval sites, to test subsets of variations to verify which number corresponds to an individual with a given birth date.
While it was well known that the numbers have a geographic component, past studies have used the patterns plus other data to estimate when and where a specific number may have been issued.
"Our work focuses on the inverse, harder, and much more consequential inference: it shows that it is possible to exploit the presumptive time and location of SSN issuance to estimate, quite reliably, unknown SSNs," Acquisti said.
The research was supported by the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Army Research Office, Carnegie-Mellon University and the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center.
___
On the Net:
PNAS:
http://www.pnas.org
http://newsok.com/social-security-number-code-cracked-study-claims/article/feed/55257?custom_click=rss

This is part of the why the NAACP whats to declare martial law
15-year-old girl becomes fifth victim
GAFFNEY — A teenage girl on Saturday became the fifth victim of a suspected serial killer terrorizing this small S.C. town, further darkening a day planned for celebrations.
Abby Tyler, 15, died about 11:15 a.m. at a Spartanburg hospital after fighting for her life for two days, Cherokee County Coroner Dennis Fowler said.
She was wounded and her father was killed Thursday as they worked to close the family’s furniture and appliance store near downtown Gaffney.
Abby Tyler, 15, died about 11:15 a.m. at a Spartanburg hospital after fighting for her life for two days, Cherokee County Coroner Dennis Fowler said. Photo provided by the Gaffney Ledger.
Gallery: Gaffney memorial services 07.05.09
“A lot of (people) are bad scared. They’re keeping their doors locked,” said Ed Bolton, who sells fireworks from a trailer on S.C. 11 near Gaffney.
He said customers are subdued and more consumed with talk of the killings — and the killer at-large — than they were with July 4th festivities.
Investigators released few new details about the case Saturday, readying for a long night of responding to calls from people who mistake fireworks for the sound of gunshots.
Authorities told The Associated Press they can’t afford to let any lead in the case slip by.
“Every tip that comes in, we are sending out investigators and following any lead,” Gaffney Police Chief Rick Turner said at a news conference Saturday.
In addition to the Tylers, an 83-year-old mother and her daughter were shot to death Wednesday, and a 63-year-old peach farmer was found dead at his home a week ago.
County Sheriff Bill Blanton said investigators believe the killings are linked, and the search is on for a man is in his 40s, with salt and pepper hair, about 6-foot-2, and roughly 200 pounds.
Blanton said all the victims were shot, but he would not say how the deaths were linked. The shootings all occurred within about 10 miles of each other.
On Saturday, police cruisers filled the streets, as officers from across the state descended on the rural county of 54,000 people set amid peach orchards and farms.
Police set up checkpoints throughout the county and stopped any vehicle that looked remotely like the silver 1991 to 1994 model Ford Explorer that authorities believe the killer is driving.
Hundreds of officers are on the case, working as hard as they can even though they are physically drained, Turner told the AP.
"Some have been out here for well over 24, 48 hours, maybe even longer than that, with very little cat naps here and there,” Turner said.
Some residents canceled Independence Day holiday plans, and some were arming themselves. The sheriff has warned door-to-door salesmen to stop knocking and anyone who breaks down on the county’s rural roads to wait instead of walking to a house for help because he worries “people are going to start shooting at shadows.”
Wendy Phillips was afraid to go to work Saturday at Hardees, where she works the counter. When she got there, she was greeted by a poster on the door with a sketch of the killer, offering a reward.
“When I came to work I was a nervous wreck. I was shaking,” said Phillips, 33, who had been an elementary school student of Gena Parker, one of the killer’s victim.
Phillips wondered if she had served the man food — and worried that she still might.
The killings began a week ago Saturday when the wife of 63-year-old peach farmer Kline Cash found him dead in their home. Then last Wednesday, relatives found 83-year-old Hazel Linder and her 50-year-old daughter, Gena Linder Parker, bound and shot to death in a separate shooting at Linder’s home.
Dozens of local, state and federal investigators were assigned to the case. But a day later, the killer struck again, less than a half-mile from the sheriff’s office serving as the headquarters for the investigation, killing 48-year-old Stephen Tyler and mortally wounding his daughter.
Abby Tyler’s death heightened the mourning in Cherokee County. She would have been a junior at Gaffney High School.
Friends and relatives gathered Saturday at the Tylers’ home, a brick ranch in an affluent section east of Gaffney.
“The family is hurting,” said Ashley Wilson, 20, an acquaintance of Abby’s.
She described Abby as a nice girl: “She went to church and everything. She had a good life.”
The killings have also sparked anger. One man said he had a surprise for the killer: “It’s got a bang but it’s not a firecracker.”
Mostly though, people just want the killer caught.
“We’re knee-deep in the investigation,” Blanton said. “There’s fear and concern here and there should be concern.”
http://www.thestate.com/local/story/852063.html

Residents say Internet down in Xinjiang riot city
BEIJING, July 6 (Reuters) - Internet users have not been able to go online in Urumqi, the northwestern Chinese city hit by ethnic violence that killed at least 140 people, residents said on Monday.
Locals took to the streets on Sunday, some burning and smashing vehicles and confronting ranks of anti-riot police. Over 800 people were injured and police have arrested "several hundred" participants, the official Xinhua news agency said. [ID:nSP491283]
"Since yesterday evening I haven't been able to get online," store owner Han Zhenyu told Reuters by telephone.
"No Internet here, friends said they cannot log on, either," said a mobile phone seller who gave only his surname, Zhang.
News of the apparent outage was also spread by messages on social networking services like Twitter and its Chinese competitors.
"The incident has largely subsided, but armoured cars were still in town this morning. Internet in Urumqi is still down, someone said it would last for 48 hours," one user, who said he was in Urumqi, wrote on domestic site fanfou.com.
China has previously shut down communications in parts of Tibet where ethnic unrest had erupted or was feared.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/PEK335819.htm

Monday, July 6, 2009

Eeyores news and view

For the last 6 years or so have gone to a certain camp in adjoining State and watched fireworks display, i would have to say this year was as good as it has been. Here are a few pictures.













The pictures were actually taken by my daughter this year, timing is hard but she got it. The ones from last years blog were mine.

North Korea fires 7 missilesSEOUL (AP) — North Korea launched seven ballistic missiles Saturday into waters off its east coast in a show of military firepower that defied U.N. resolutions and drew global expressions of condemnation and concern.
The salvo, confirmed by the South Korean government, also appeared to be a slap at the United States as Washington moves to enforce U.N. as well as its own sanctions against the isolated regime for its May 25 nuclear test.
The launches came on July 4, which is U.S. Independence Day. The display was similar to one that took place three years ago, also while Americans celebrated the Fourth of July during another period of tensions over Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program.
The number of missiles was the same, though in 2006 North Korea also launched a long-range rocket that broke apart and fell into the ocean less than a minute after liftoff.
South Korea said Saturday's missiles likely flew more than 250 miles, apparently landing in waters between the Korean peninsula and Japan.
South Korea and Japan both condemned the launches, with Tokyo calling them a "serious act of provocation." Britain and France issued similar statements.
Russia and China, both close to North Korea, expressed concern over an "escalation of tension in the region," the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement after a meeting in Moscow.
In Washington, the White House had no immediate comment. But two senior officials in President Obama's administration, speaking in advance of the launches, said any reaction was likely to be muted to avoid giving attention to Pyongyang or antagonize it. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
North Korea has engaged in a series of acts this year widely seen as provocative. It fired a long-range rocket it said was a satellite in early April, and in late May it carried out its second underground nuclear test following the first in late 2006.
The country has also stoked tensions with rival South Korea and last month threatened "thousand-fold" military retaliation against the U.S. and its allies if provoked.
In addition, North Korea convicted two American journalists last month and sentenced them to 12 years hard labor for illegally entering the country. It is also holding a South Korean worker for allegedly denouncing its political system.
The secretive communist country is believed undergoing a political transition in which 67-year-old leader Kim Jong Il appears to be laying the groundwork to transfer power to one of his sons. Kim himself took over from his late father, the country's founder.
South Korean officials said Saturday's launches came throughout the day and were part of military exercises. The North, which had warned ships to stay away from waters off the east coast through July 10, also fired what are believed to have been four short-range cruise missiles Thursday.
Speculation had been building for weeks that the launches were coming. The key question has been whether the North might fire an intercontinental ballistic missile, as it vowed to do in late April.
Despite a Japanese newspaper report last month that one might be launched toward Hawaii in early July, U.S. officials have noted no such preparations, which are complex, usually take days and are often observable by spy satellites. Still, that hasn't stopped Washington from boosting missile defenses as a precaution.
South Korea's Yonhap news agency suggested launch activity may be winding down, at least for now. It reported late Saturday, citing an unidentified military official, that the North was pulling personnel from its missile launch site and allowing ships to sail again off the coast. The Defense Ministry said it could not confirm the report.
North Korea's state news agency did not mention the launches, so it was hard to grasp Pyongyang's true intentions. Officials and analysts, however, said they showed the country remains happy to stand up to the international community and appears unwilling to give in to efforts to punish it.
"I think it's a demonstration of their defiance and rejection of the U.N. Security Council Resolution 1874, for one thing, and to demonstrate their military power capabilities to any potential adversaries" as well as potential customers for its weapons, said Daniel Pinkston, a Seoul-based analyst for the International Crisis Group think tank.
Pinkston also said that there was "certainly a political aspect connected" to the launches and that July 4 was perhaps a "symbolic date," suggesting the timing was not a coincidence.
Resolution 1874, which was approved last month and which condemned the North's nuclear test, was the third to be passed by the U.N. Security Council against the country since 2006. All three ban North Korea from launching ballistic missiles.
A senior official in South Korea's presidential office said that while the launches were part of military exercises, "North Korea also appeared to have sent a message to the U.S.," though he did not elaborate.
Analysts have said North Korea's saber rattling is partially aimed at pressuring Washington to engage in direct negotiations. North Korea is believed to desire diplomatic relations and a peace treaty to formally end the 1950-53 Korean War.
Obama's administration has offered dialogue, but it says North Korea must return to stalled international talks on its denuclearization and stop engaging in what Washington sees as provocative behavior threatening allies South Korea and Japan.
Paik Hak-soon, an expert on North Korea at the Sejong Institute, a think tank near Seoul, rejected the idea that the North chose July 4 to confront or annoy the U.S. on its national day.
He said the launches were more likely a warning to the international community against enforcing U.N. sanctions, which call for searches of North Korean ships suspected of carrying banned items, such as nuclear or missile parts.
He said North Korea will continue to carry out more missile and nuclear tests in the future, as long as relations with the U.S. and South Korea remain tense.
"The structure of confrontation is there, intact," he said.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2009-07-03-nkorea-missiles_N.htm

Venezuela assumes control of Spanish-owned bank
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) - President Hugo Chavez's government assumed control of Venezuela's third-largest bank on Friday - making the state the largest player in the nation's banking system.
The purchase of the Spanish-owned Banco de Venezuela gives Chavez's socialist government control over more than one-fifth of bank deposits as he tightens his grip over the economy.
The acquisition will "strengthen the public banking system," which favors sectors including agriculture, energy, housing and tourism, Finance Minister Ali Rodriguez said in a statement.
In May, the Venezuelan government agreed to pay Spain's Grupo Santander $1.05 billion for the bank, ending months of stalled negotiations.
At the time, Banco de Venezuela had 3.2 million clients, 10 percent of the country's deposits and 6,000 employees.
Combined with other state banks, the government will now control about 21 percent of deposits and 16 percent of loans, a payroll of 15,000 employees and 651 bank branches.
The deal went into effect on Friday with an initial payment of $630 million. The rest will be paid in two equal installments in October and December.
Like the rest of the economy, Venezuela's banking sector is already highly regulated, with the government dictating interest rates and commissions.
Under Chavez, Venezuela has nationalized major players in the steel, electricity and other sectors, including four major oil projects, since 2007.
The Venezuelan consulting firm Ecoanalitica calculates those nationalizations have cost Chavez's government some $23 billion.
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20090704/D997DI2G1.html



GBPPR Tech Bulletin #9 - Nuclear Electromagnetic Pulse (NEMP) Survival

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This was originally going to be a big long article on some myths/facts of nuclear electromagnetic pulse (NEMP) effects on modern communication gear. Well, it's just going to be some ramdom quotes and comments for awhile.

Excerpt from Gary, KE4ZV


>On the contrary, an EMP will not really affect people, but it will do
>a good job of destroying most unprotected transistor circuitry. Old
>tube technology is pretty much immune.


That's the myth, but it has been pretty well discredited. For a normal low air burst or ground burst detonation, the EMP effects reach no further than the flash burn and blast effects, IE roughly 30 miles for the typical "city buster" bomb. In other words, if it cooks your radio, it'll cook you too.

For a very high altitude detonation, EMP effects can spread over a wide area outside the range of flash burn and blast effects. But to be damaged, electronic equipment needs to be connected to fairly long unprotected exposed conductors in order for enough voltage to be induced to cause breakdown. The ARRL published tests on a number of amateur radios, tested in a military EMP simulator, to see what would typically happen in such a case. Battery powered VHF/UHF equipment using a "rubber ducky" antenna was immune to damage. Equipment connected to unprotected mains power suffered power supply damage. And HF equipment connected to unprotected outside antennas suffered receiver front end damage. For solid state equipment, this damage was to the first RF stage transistor, for tube equipment, it was damage to the first stage grid resistor. No transmitters suffered damage.

And there is effective EMP protection available. EMP can be considered merely as a fast risetime form of nearby lightning strike. In both cases, an induced surge enters the equipment via a long exposed conductor. If you are using good lightning surge protection with fast risetime protectors, such as the EMP rated units sold by Polyphaser (and others), and have practiced the kind of station layout I've preached about here many times, there should be no more cause for concern about EMP damage than from lightning surge damage.

Thanks to inverse square effects, an EMP detonation at a 200 mile altitude, the ideal height to maximize EMP effects, has a field strength at your antenna about equivalent to a lightning strike at 7 miles. But the effect on very long exposed conductors, like the power grid or the telephone grid, is as if there were simultaneous lightning strikes 7 miles from *every* point of the grid. This causes a huge voltage to develop on these extended grids, and can cause severe damage to them. Your radio and antennas don't represent such a widespread grid, so they are only subjected to the equivalent of a single lightning surge.

In any case, if you were to suffer EMP damage, the receiver and mains power supplies would be the most likely candidates for damage. CW transmitters offer you no advantage in either of those cases since you still need a working receiver and power source to establish communications regardless of operating mode.

And frankly, for some time (perhaps years) after a massive exchange of nuclear weapons, HF would be useless thanks to disruption of the ionosphere. Only VLF would work for long range communications, which is why the military operates VLF stations for nuclear command and control. VHF+ would continue to work for short range communications. Since neither typically uses Morse, Morse knowledge would be virtually useless after a nuclear exchange.


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Excerpt from Phil, KA9Q

No, not HF CW. Try LF packet radio. Have you heard of the Ground Wave Emergency Network (GWEN)? It is specifically designed to work after the Big One is dropped.

You have to admit that for this application, packet has some nice advantages over CW. For example, it'll keep working after all the humans on the planet (yes, this includes all of the CW operators) have been killed off by radiation. (Remember "On the Beach"?)

I may not think much of the doomsday thinking that led to the construction of GWEN. But I must admit to being glad to have it around because I can use it to annoy the heck out of the "CW, vacuum tubes, blood and guts forever" types who keep insisting that they'll have a complete monopoly on communications after a nuclear war has toasted all of the more modern electronics... :-)


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Excerpt from Gary, KE4ZV

According to the ARRL test data in the Navy's NEMP simulator, that's not the case. The real hazard is to radios connected to long exposed unprotected conductors, IE mains power or HF antennas. In the tests, tube type HF rigs sustained damage to the front end coil assemblies. Battery powered VHF solid state radios sustained no damage. HF radios, solid state or tube, protected by suitable NEMP suppression (properly installed) suffered no damage. And no disconnected radio suffered any damage.

The high impedance of tube equipment tends to make it more susceptable to flashovers in the input circuitry. Since that's harder to change than a tube, the advantage of tubes is moot. NEMP protection is available today, and with that properly installed, there is no reason to fear NEMP.


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Excerpt from QST August 1986, "EMP and the Radio Amateur"

... condensed from NCS TIB 85-10 "EMP threat testing of protection devices for amateur / military affiliate radio systems equipment". I quote "The electric field strength remains fairly constant in the 10 kHz to 1 MHz band; it decreases by as factor of 100 in the 1 to 100 MHz band and continue to decrease at a faster rate for frequencies greater than 100 MHz" So, it appears that EMP field strength decreases by at least an order of magnitude for each decade of frequency above 1 MHz. So. Your quarter inch vent will resonate and allow radio wave to pass above about the 10 GHz range. 10 GHz is 4 decades above 1 MHz so:

The electric field strength transmitted through a quarter inch hole will be less than one ten thousandth the electric field strength in open air.


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Excerpt from the Nuclear Weapons FAQ

5.5 Electromagnetic Effects

The high temperatures and energetic radiation produced by nuclear explosions also produce large amounts of ionized (electrically charged) matter which is present immediately after the explosion. Under the right conditions, intense currents and electromagnetic fields can be produced, generically called EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse), that are felt at long distances. Living organisms are impervious to these effects, but electrical and electronic equipment can be temporarily or permanently disabled by them. Ionized gasses can also block short wavelength radio and radar signals (fireball blackout) for extended periods.

The occurrence of EMP is strongly dependent on the altitude of burst. It can be significant for surface or low altitude bursts (below 4,000 m); it is very significant for high altitude bursts (above 30,000 m); but it is not significant for altitudes between these extremes. This is because EMP is generated by the asymmetric absorption of instantaneous gamma rays produced by the explosion. At intermediate altitudes the air absorbs these rays fairly uniformly and does not generate long range electromagnetic disturbances.

The formation EMP begins with the very intense, but very short burst of gamma rays caused by the nuclear reactions in the bomb. About 0.3% of the bomb's energy is in this pulse, but it lasts for only 10 nanoseconds or so. These gamma rays collide with electrons in air molecules, and eject the electrons at high energies through a process called Compton scattering. These energetic electrons in turn knock other electrons loose, and create a cascade effect that produces some 30,000 electrons for every original gamma ray.

In low altitude explosions the electrons, being very light, move much more quickly than the ionized atoms they are removed from and diffuse away from the region where they are formed. This creates a very strong electric field which peaks in intensity at 10 nanoseconds. The gamma rays emitted downward however are absorbed by the ground which prevents charge separation from occurring. This creates a very strong vertical electric current which generates intense electromagnetic emissions over a wide frequency range (up to 100 MHZ) that emanate mostly horizontally. At the same time, the earth acts as a conductor allowing the electrons to flow back toward the burst point where the positive ions are concentrated. This produces a strong magnetic field along the ground. Although only about 3x10^-10 of the total explosion energy is radiated as EMP in a ground burst (10^6 joules for 1 Mt bomb), it is concentrated in a very short pulse. The charge separation persists for only a few tens of microseconds, making the emission power some 100 gigawatts. The field strengths for ground bursts are high only in the immediate vicinity of the explosion. For smaller bombs they aren't very important because they are strong only where the destruction is intense anyway. With increasing yields, they reach farther from the zone of intense destruction. With a 1 Mt bomb, they remain significant out to the 2 psi overpressure zone (5 miles).

High altitude explosions produce EMPs that are dramatically more destructive. About 3x10^-5 of the bomb's total energy goes into EMP in this case, 10^11 joules for a 1 Mt bomb. EMP is formed in high altitude explosions when the downwardly directed gamma rays encounter denser layers of air below. A pancake shaped ionization region is formed below the bomb. The zone can extend all the way to the horizon, to 2500 km for an explosion at an altitude of 500 km. The ionization zone is up to 80 km thick at the center. The Earth's magnetic field causes the electrons in this layer to spiral as they travel, creating a powerful downward directed electromagnetic pulse lasting a few microseconds. A strong vertical electrical field (20-50 KV/m) is also generated between the Earth's surface and the ionized layer, this field lasts for several minutes until the electrons are recaptured by the air. Although the peak EMP field strengths from high altitude bursts are only 1-10% as intense as the peak ground burst fields, they are nearly constant over the entire Earth's surface under the ionized region.

The effects of these field on electronics is difficult to predict, but can be profound. Enormous induced electric currents are generated in wires, antennas, and metal objects (like missiles, airplanes, and building frames). Commercial electrical grids are immense EMP antennas and would be subjected to voltage surges far exceeding those created by lightning, and over vastly greater areas. Modern VLSI chips are extremely sensitive to voltage surges, and would be burned out by even small leakage currents. Military equipment is generally designed to be resistant to EMP, but realistic tests are very difficult to perform and EMP protection rests on attention to detail. Minor changes in design, incorrect maintenance procedures, poorly fitting parts, loose debris, moisture, and ordinary dirt can all cause elaborate EMP protections to be totally circumvented. It can be expected that a single high yield, high altitude explosion over an industrialized area would cause massive disruption for an indeterminable period, and would cause huge economic damages (all those damaged chips add up).

A separate effect is the ability of the ionized fireball to block radio and radar signals. Like EMP, this effect becomes important with high altitude bursts. Fireball blackout can cause radar to be blocked for tens of seconds to minutes over an area tens of kilometers across. High frequency radio can be disrupted over hundreds to thousands of kilometers for minutes to hours depending on exact conditions.

Links

Radio Frequency Weapons and Proliferation: Potential Impact on the Economy

PolyPhaser Nuclear EMP Protection Devices

GWEN Ground Wave Emergency Network

The Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Contains a few errors, good overall

Engineering and Design - Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) and Tempest Protection for Facilities Proponent: CEMP-ET Straight from the U.S. Army. (Text)

Single Channel Ground and Airborne Radio System (SINCGARS) Radios designed to survive in a nuclear environment

SINCGARS Datasheet (1.2M PDF)

The Electromagnetic Bomb - A Weapon of Electrical Mass Destruction (909k PDF)

Bell System Nuclear Design Criteria (1969)
Notes

Atmospheric NEMP burst tend to be vertically polarized.

The Effects of Nuclear War, Office of Technology Assesment, OTA-NS-89, May 1979.

NEMP has a pulse shape corresponding to the NCS TIB-85-10.

Solid state electronics are more power efficient than legacy tube-type equipment, making for easier portable battery operation.
GBPPR HERF / EMP Projects

GBPPR Microwave Oven Experiments

GBPPR HERF Device

GBPPR Electromagnetic Pulse Experiments - Part 1

GBPPR Electromagnetic Pulse Experiments - Part 2

GBPPR Electromagnetic Pulse Experiments - Part 3

GBPPR 2.45 GHz Magnetron to Coax Assembly

http://www.qsl.net/n9zia/emp.html

Iran judiciary told to confront hostile satellite TV
TEHRAN (Reuters) - The head of Iran's judiciary called on Sunday for the prosecution of people working for increasingly influential anti-establishment satellite TV channels and websites, state television reported.
"The daily growth of anti-regime satellite channels and ... websites needs serious measures to confront this phenomenon," it quoted a circular issued by Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi-Shahroudi as saying.
Iran accused Western powers of interfering in its affairs, after the announcement that hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had won a landslide victory in the June 12 election prompted protests in which at least 20 people were killed.
The circular, addressed to branches of the judiciary, called for judicial personnel to be assigned to deal with such violations.
"Those who cooperate with such websites and television channels will face prosecution," Hashemi-Shahroudi said.
For the first time in Iran, foreign-based satellite TV channels, particularly the BBC's Persian TV, and blogs played a big part in providing news and comment about the election.
Iranians are more used to hearing political messages blared through loudspeakers on small trucks, seeing gaudy posters and being herded to campaign rallies.
The BBC launched its Persian TV service in January, funded with 15 million pounds ($25 million) a year of British government money. The BBC increased the number of satellites carrying the service after Iran interfered with transmission during the election.
Iran expelled the BBC's correspondent in Tehran because of the broadcaster's election coverage, and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has called Britain the "most treacherous" of Iran's enemies.
Popular social networking and content-sharing site Facebook was blocked in Iran on May 23, joining political and human rights websites which had already been blocked. More than 150,000 Iranians are Facebook members.
More than 23 million of Iran's 70 million people have access to the Internet, and over 45 million have mobile phones.
Two losing contenders in the presidential election have unleashed fierce attacks on the official outcome of the vote.
Moderate former prime minister Mirhossein Mousavi and reformist cleric Mehdi Karoubi also say the government wants to force Iranians to rely on state-run media, which they say favour Ahmadinejad.
Both men issued statements on their websites saying Ahmadinejad's new government would be "illegitimate" -- even though Khamenei, the Islamic Republic's ultimate arbiter, has upheld the result and thrown his weight behind the president.
http://in.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idINIndia-40815420090705

The call for a Global currency is broadening.
India Joins Russia, China in Questioning U.S. Dollar Dominance
July 4 (Bloomberg) -- Suresh Tendulkar, an economic adviser to Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, said he is urging the government to diversify its $264.6 billion foreign-exchange reserves and hold fewer dollars.
“The major part of Indian reserves is in dollars -- that is something that’s a problem for us,” Tendulkar, chairman of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council, said in an interview yesterday in Aix-en-Provence, France, where he was attending an economic conference.
Singh is preparing to join leaders from the Group of Eight industrialized nations -- the U.S., Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy, Canada and Russia -- at a summit in Italy next week which is due to tackle the global economy. China and Brazil will also send representatives to the summit.
As the talks have neared, China and Russia have stepped up calls for a rethink of how global currency reserves are composed and managed, underlining a power shift to emerging markets from the developed nations that spawned the financial crisis.
“There should be a system to maintain the stability of the major reserve currencies,” Former Chinese Vice Premier Zeng Peiyan said in a speech in Beijing yesterday, highlighting China’s concerns about a global financial system dominated by the dollar.
Fiscal and current-account deficits must be supervised as “your currency is likely to become my problem,” said Zeng, who is now the head of a research center under the government’s top economic planning agency. The People’s Bank of China said June 26 that the International Monetary Fund should manage more of members’ reserves.
Russian Proposals
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has repeatedly called for creating a mix of regional reserve currencies as part of the drive to address the global financial crisis, while questioning the dollar’s future as a global reserve currency. Russia’s proposals for the Group of 20 major developed and developing nations summit in London in April included the creation of a supranational currency.
“We will resume” talks on the supranational currency proposal at the G-8 summit in L’Aquila on July 8-10, Medvedev aide Sergei Prikhodko told reporters in Moscow yesterday.
Singh adviser Tendulkar said that big dollar holders face a “prisoner’s dilemma” in terms of managing their holdings. “That’s why I’m telling them to do this,” he said.
He also said that world currencies need to adjust to help unwind trade imbalances that have contributed to the global financial crisis.
“The major imbalances which led to the current situation, the current account surpluses and deficits, have to be addressed,” he said. “Currency adjustment is one thing that suggests itself.”
Emerging-Market Dependence
For all the complaints about the dollar, emerging markets such as India remain dependent on the currency of the U.S., the world’s largest economy and a $2.5 trillion export market. The IMF said June 30 that the share of dollars in global foreign- exchange reserves increased to 65 percent in the first three months of this year, the highest since 2007.
Tendulkar said that the matter needs to be taken up in international talks, and that it emphasizes the need for those talks to go beyond the traditional G-8.
“They can meet if they want to,” he said. “The G-20 has a wider role, has representation of the countries that are likely to lead the recovery process.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aR7yfqUwTb4M