Eeyores news and view

Green homeowner hit with noise abatement order because 40ft wind turbine is driving his neighbours mad
When Stephen Munday spent £20,000 on a wind turbine to generate electricity for his home, he was proud to be doing his bit for the environment.
He got planning permission and put up the 40ft device two years ago, making sure he stuck to strict noise level limits.
But neighbours still complained that the sound was annoying - and now the local council has ordered him to switch it off.
Officials declared that the sound - which Mr Munday says is 'the same pitch as a dishwasher and quieter than birdsong' - constituted a nuisance, and issued a Noise Abatement Order.
This is despite the turbine being more than 164ft from the nearest neighbour's house, as ordered by the planners. The ruling could have serious implications for the Government's drive to promote wind power and the use of renewable domestic energy if repeated across the country.
Electrician Mr Munday, 55, and his wife Sandra, a veterinary nurse, challenged the decision by the Vale of White Horse district council in Oxfordshire.
But Didcot magistrates rejected their appeal and they were left to pick up the £5,392 court costs as well.
The turbine generated five kilowatts of electricity a day - the equivalent of boiling 300 kettles - and provided two-thirds of the family's energy needs. It also saved them an average of £500 a year in electricity costs.
Sandra Munday said she and husband Stephen have been slapped with a £5,000 fine after the turbine caused a spate of complaints
Mr Munday, of Stanford in the Vale, near Abindgon, said: 'I am very disappointed.
'We were trying to cut down on our electricity bills and help the environment but have been clobbered for doing so.
'Everyone is encouraged to be environmentally friendly and we wanted to do our bit. We never dreamed that going green would land us in court and £25,000 out of pocket.'
More...Losing the plot... Gardener's fury as he is thrown off his allotment for not growing enough veg
The Government planning inspector granted planning permission on the condition that the turbine did not make more than five decibels of noise above that of the 'prevailing background'.
It stands in a paddock 230ft from the Mundays' four-bedroomed detached house.
Stephen Munday claims the hum emitted by the turbine is softer than birdsong or dishwasher
But five neighbours complained about the noise after the turbine began generating power in February 2007.
Patrick Legge, team leader of the council's environmental protection team, said: 'We accept that the noise did not breach the conditions in the planning application but it was decided that the character of the noise was a nuisance.
'There are no strict overall noise limits but each case is examined by their independent circumstances.'
Michael Stigwood, an independent noise and nuisance adviser to the council, told the court that the noise affected people's ability to 'rest and relax'.
'The noise was continual,' he said. 'It's irritating and gets under your skin and is intrusive.'
Neighbour Virginia Thomasson, 49, said: 'I can hear it inside and outside my house - at night, in the daytime, all the time.
'I cannot sleep with the window open.
'I am a tolerant person but with this noise it superimposes itself over everything I hear.'
Another resident, Michael Brown, 49, added: 'The rhythmic mechanical noise is very irritating and incessant.'
Chairman of the bench Liz Holford told the Mundays, who represented themselves in court, that the council's order was 'reasonable and necessary'.
Now their only option is to appeal to the High Court - but they cannot afford to do so.
According to the BWEA, the wind industry trade body, more than 10,000 small wind turbines have been set up since 2005 and an estimated 600,000 could be installed by 2020.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1187936/Green-homeowner-hit-noise-abatement-order-40ft-wind-turbine-driving-neighbours-mad.html

You need to call me first, then the lawyer (or lair, as friend calls them)
Won the Lottery? First, Call Your Lawyer
While the odds are against you if you play the lottery, you might get lucky and win the jackpot. But if you do, your first call shouldn’t be to friends or family to tell them of your good fortune. It should be to your lawyer.
Once you tell others of your winnings—or they learn about it in the newspaper or on television—they’ll congratulate you. But then, they’ll come to you looking for a handout. Long-lost friends will appear out of nowhere, likewise requesting assistance. Financial experts will contact you and offer their assistance in helping you invest your newfound monies. And of course, the taxman will want his share as well.
However, if you can keep your mouth shut, you can keep the entire matter private. Once you learn that you’ve won the lottery (or received a large inheritance, etc.) simply call your lawyer.
That’s what the winner of a recent US$144 million Powerball jackpot in Maryland did. Instead of accepting the funds directly, he set up a limited liability company (LLC) and named his lawyer as the LLC’s registered agent. Then, he sent the lawyer to collect the check.
This wise winner will never see his in the headlines or on television. Neither will any legal or personal “parasites.”
In this manner, our anonymous Powerball winner will avoid the fate of past lottery winners such as William "Bud" Post, who won US$16.2 million in the Pennsylvania lottery in 1988. He now lives on a social security paycheck and food stamps.
Once word got out of Mr. Post’s good fortune, his former girlfriend sued him for a share of the winnings. She won the lawsuit. Next, his brother hired a hit man to kill him, hoping to inherit the winnings, or at least part of them. Other family members harassed Post until he invested in their pet businesses. All of them failed, resulting in more financial losses. Today, Post says, “"I wish it never happened. It was totally a nightmare."
Naturally, our anonymous Powerball winner will need to take other precautions to enjoy his newfound fortune without falling victim to the common foibles of lottery winners. He might want to avoid casinos and drugs, for instance. Both have been the downfall of numerous lottery winners. And if he’s smart, he’ll invest the bulk of the money outside the United States, where prospective litigants won’t be able to track it. (Of course, he’ll need to make a full accounting to the IRS of his offshore earnings.)
Our Powerball winner should avoid conspicuous consumption as well—at least in his own name. If he wants to live in a new luxury home, fine—but he should have his attorney make arrangements to purchase it through an appropriate structure that doesn’t compromise his identity. Ditto for any luxury vehicles he might want to drive.
Ultimately, if you find yourself the recipient of an unexpected windfall, take a deep breath before you do something stupid. Then, call a lawyer!
Copyright © 2009 by Mark Nestmann
http://nestmannblog.sovereignsociety.com/

China warns Federal Reserve over 'printing money'
China has warned a top member of the US Federal Reserve that it is increasingly disturbed by the Fed's direct purchase of US Treasury bonds.
Richard Fisher, president of the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank, said: "Senior officials of the Chinese government grilled me about whether or not we are going to monetise the actions of our legislature."
"I must have been asked about that a hundred times in China. I was asked at every single meeting about our purchases of Treasuries. That seemed to be the principal preoccupation of those that were invested with their surpluses mostly in the United States," he told the Wall Street Journal.
His recent trip to the Far East appears to have been a stark reminder that Asia's "Confucian" culture of right action does not look kindly on the insouciant policy of printing money by Anglo-Saxons.
Mr Fisher, the Fed's leading hawk, was a fierce opponent of the original decision to buy Treasury debt, fearing that it would lead to a blurring of the line between fiscal and monetary policy – and could all too easily degenerate into Argentine-style financing of uncontrolled spending.
However, he agreed that the Fed was forced to take emergency action after the financial system "literally fell apart".
Nor, he added was there much risk of inflation taking off yet. The Dallas Fed uses a "trim mean" method based on 180 prices that excludes extreme moves and is widely admired for accuracy.
"You've got some mild deflation here," he said.
The Oxford-educated Mr Fisher, an outspoken free-marketer and believer in the Schumpeterian process of "creative destruction", has been running a fervent campaign to alert Americans to the "very big hole" in unfunded pension and health-care liabilities built up by a careless political class over the years.
"We at the Dallas Fed believe the total is over $99 trillion," he said in February.
"This situation is of your own creation. When you berate your representatives or senators or presidents for the mess we are in, you are really berating yourself. You elect them," he said.
His warning comes amid growing fears that America could lose its AAA sovereign rating.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/financialcrisis/5379285/China-warns-Federal-Reserve-over-printing-money.html

It is all about media bias and politics, 6 months ago this headline (or at least the article) would have vastly different. President Bush, would have been heralded with failed policies and look at the dead and think of the families and how could this heartless President do this and so on. What a shame...
May: U.S. troop deaths up in Iraq; 20 killed
May is already the deadliest month for U.S. troops in Iraq since September.
This month's death toll reached 20 when the military reported a soldier was killed by a roadside bomb Wednesday. The total is due in part to an unusually large number of non-combat deaths, including a mass shooting at a Baghdad military base. An American soldier has been charged in that case.
Still, the spike in fatalities has coincided with a spurt of violence in Iraq in recent months. Militant groups such as al-Qaeda in Iraq have stepped up their campaign of suicide bombings and assassinations at a time when U.S. troops are preparing to withdraw from urban areas by June 30 per a deal with the Iraqi government.
Gen. Ray Odierno, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, has said that he would be willing to stay longer in hot spots, such as Mosul, if asked by the Iraqi government. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has said that he expects all U.S. troops to withdraw as scheduled.
"There needs to be some flexibility in the disposition of these forces," said James Phillips, a Middle East analyst at the Heritage Foundation in Washington. "I understand why the Iraqi government would want to stick to its public pronouncement, but the reality on the ground might force the need for adjustment."
Even with the recent surge in violence, the American death toll remains relatively low compared with 2006-2007, when a fierce insurgency raged through parts of the country, often killing more than 100 U.S. troops per month.
The 20 deaths for May include five servicemembers fatally shot May 11 at a mental health clinic at Camp Liberty in Baghdad. Army Sgt. John Russell has been charged by the military with murder in that incident.
Eight of the U.S. troop deaths this month have been combat-related, according to the U.S. military, a number in line with recent months. There have been 4,303 U.S. troops killed in Iraq since the start of the war in 2003.
Phillips said that it's likely Americans will increasingly be targeted in the weeks and months ahead as the U.S. military reduces its presence.
He said that it's also concerning that the Iraqi government has failed to pay thousands of members of the Awakening movement, Sunni militiamen who turned against al-Qaeda in Iraq and allied with U.S. forces.
"The consequences could be of major concern if the Iraqi government continues to backpedal from its commitments," he said.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2009-05-27-iraqtroops_N.htm

Just to get it off my chest, this flap about the pick for the Supreme Court and her radical comment. If she would have been picked by a republican president and would have been white and either male or female, the Democrats and the press would have hounded them. It would have been in the papers everyday as a headline and all the Democrats would have been talking about it none stop.

Eeyore's News and View

I saw this reported a little over a week ago and was going to blog it on Sunday. But it just sticks in my craw, that we go ther and our forces die for them and they can't put up with us just a little.
What do they think of us now, we hold no convictions, at all.
U.S. military destroys soldier's Bibles
The U.S. military is confirming that it has destroyed some Bibles belonging to an American soldier serving in Afghanistan.
Reuters News says the Bibles were confiscated and destroyed after Qatar-based Al Jazeer television showed soldiers at a Bible class on a base with a stack of Bibles translated into the local Pashto and Dari languages. The U.S. military forbids its members on active duty -- including those based in places like Afghanistan -- from trying to convert people to another religion.
Reuters quotes Maj. Jennifer Willis at the Bagram Air Base, north of Kabul, who said "I can now confirm that the Bibles shown on Al Jazeera's clip were, in fact, collected by the chaplains and later destroyed. They were never distributed."
According to the military officials, the Bibles were sent through private mail to an evangelical Christian soldier by his church back home. Reuters says the soldier brought them to the Bible study class where they were filmed.
The Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, told a Pentagon briefing Monday that the military's position is that it will never "push any specific religion."
http://www.wmal.com/UniversalSearch.asp?ZIPCODE=20015&index=t&WHERETOLOOK=web&LOOKFOR=military+burning+bibles

Bogus Trend of the Week: Raising Backyard Chickens
The press lays dozens and dozens of eggs.
In all of God's sweet aviary there exists no bird more diabolical and ruthless than the egg-laying chicken. Despite the darkness of this clucking beast's heart, our nation's press has gone on a rampage insisting that more and more citizens everywhere in the United States are choosing to board and feed these creatures in their urban and suburban backyards so they can harvest the eggs.
It is a trend, the press claims. But we know better, don't we? To begin with, keeping chickens is a filthy, time-consuming, and expensive way to keep the pantry filled with eggs. And as this continuing feature has taught its loyal readership, too many of the "trends" reported by the press are actually bogus trends, hyped up by a reporter or her editors to get a lame story into print.
See Jack Shafer's bogus trend stories about the booms in "ceco-migration," shoplifting, church attendance, kids with bombs, dudes with cats, Ivy League women, teenage hookers, teens shopping at the mall, obese teens, and online sales losing "steam." In a July 2008 grab bag, he attacked stories about the rise in locally grown food, the uptick in video conferencing, and an increase in motorcyclers. In 2008, L.E. Leone told the bloody truth about urban farming.Flaunty bogusity in this morning's (May 14) Washington Post Home section feature, "Hot Chicks: Legal or Not, Chickens Are the Chic New Backyard Addition," which claims to have discovered the "vanguard of a resurgent interest in backyard chicken keeping, especially in distinctly nonrural settings." But the closest the Post comes to actually counting chickens is reporting the press run of Backyard Poultry magazine, a bimonthly: It is 100,000. The Jan. 2 USA Today, which reports a "growing number of city dwellers across the country choosing chickens as pets," measures the hen-keeping renaissance by enumerating the size of the BackYardChickens.com community: It is 19,000 worldwide.
For more all-feather, no-bone journalism, see the May 10 Chicago Tribune Magazine, where "Chicken Chic: The Backyard Bird Is Back in Style" claims that chicken keeping is a "craze," is "[w]ay in," and is "a fresh fad." The piece insists that "[m]any an ordinary citizen of many an ordinary neighborhood owns an actual chicken," but never assigns a number to the "many." This is the paper's second example of crying chicken in recent months. The Dec. 15, 2008, Trib discovers "[s]igns of the burgeoning urban chick movement" in the mere publication of Backyard Poultry magazine, the existence of the urbanchickens.net blog, and the fact that a local workshop on raising your own birds sold out in 48 hours.
A bogus trend isn't a bogus trend unless the New York Times has signed on. The Dec. 7, 2008, Westchester Weekly section of the paper contributes "Chicken-Raising Trend Takes Hold in County." The well-to-do folks of that region have been sharing chicken-raising stories, the newspaper reports. It also publicizes the claim that a "growing number of people" are cultivating the birds as an easy way to connect with nature. Then, the story soberly acknowledges that "it is difficult to know just how many households are tapping into the chicken-raising trend." In other words, it's a trend for which there are no numbers. The May 9 Arizona Republic makes similar pumped-up claims about chicken mania in "Urban Chickens the Latest Healthful-Living Trend" before deflating the premise with the admission that it "is hard to know exactly how many people are raising urban chickens."
And so it continues throughout the land. "Urban Chicken Movement Taking Roost in KC Area" (May 11, Kansas City Star) compiles chicken-raising anecdotes and regulatory issues but never puts a number to the alleged trend. "Hot Chicks: More Raising Own Fowl" from the May 10 Providence Journal-Bulletin cites a growing demand for spring chicks but supplies no numbers. The Oregonian (May 14) backs the trend with a story that marvels at how quickly baby chicks are selling out all over town. But don't chick sellers manage their inventory to sell out quickly? If you're in the business of selling chicks, you don't want to over-order and end up with a bunch of unsold adolescent birds playing video games and smoking cigarettes in the store, right? An April 17 Associated Press story datelined Union, Mo., opens with an exciting scene-setter of 1,200 baby chicks peeping and cheeping at the Clearview Feed and Seed store. But the actual story—titled "More Suburbanites, Hobbyists Raise Chickens" on Nexis—undercuts the headline. "Mostly farm families wait to pick up the chicks," the story reports.
If backyard hen keeping is indeed a trend, it constitutes such a long-standing trend that it has ceased to be one. On March 29, 2002, the Wall Street Journal ran a piece about the "McMansion" coops some chicken owners were building for their birds. The April 5, 2004, Arizona Daily Star noted the high attendance drawn by Kim Fox at her chicken-raising speeches in Tucson: "About 50 people attended her last discussion," the Daily Star reported. The Sept. 14, 2003, Seattle Times explored the world of the city's backyard chicken farmers. In the summer of 2003, both USA Today and Newsday profiled the author of Keep Chickens! Tending Small Flocks in Cities, Suburbs, and Other Small Spaces. "We sold 2,000 laying hens last year," the owner of a downtown Houston feed store told the Houston Chronicle for its March 30, 1993, edition. Dialing the Nexis machine back even earlier, we find a syndicated Martha Stewart piece in the April 23, 1986, San Diego Union-Tribune oddly titled "Home-Grown Eggs—Can't Beat 'Em."
Before you place your Web order for chicks, consider the wisdom shared by experienced chicken-owner Jean Moore with the Albuquerque Journal for its July 26, 2003, article about the art of raising egg-layers in the city.
"On the warmth and entertainment scale," Moore said, "they're better than a snake, but not as good as a cat."
Don't raise chickens to save money, advises the Dec. 15, 2008, Chicago Tribune story "Chickens Earn Keep in Chicago Backyards: More Urbanites Have the Critters for Eggs—and Companionship." One chicken-lover says the coop, chicken wire, and feeders set him back $500. A 50-pound bag of organic feed costs $22. You have to secure the coop to keep out raccoons, dogs, and cats. A hawk or a teenager with a Wrist Rocket can waste a free-ranging chicken in a flash. Generally speaking, urban veterinarians don't know how to treat sick chickens. Hens don't start dropping eggs until about 20 weeks, the Denver Post reports, on average three hens will produce two eggs a day, and the birds reach their peak production at two years. There's no way around shoveling the chicken shit, and who the hell likes eggs, anyway? Twitter sounds like something a mutant chicken would say, right? Send poultry recipes via e-mail to slate.pressbox@gmail.com. (E-mail may be quoted by name in "The Fray," Slate's readers' forum; in a future article; or elsewhere unless the writer stipulates otherwise. Permanent disclosure: Slate is owned by the Washington Post Co.)
http://www.slate.com/id/2218390/?from=rss

H1N1 flu deaths and cases edge higher - WHO
H1N1 flu cases rise to 10,243, death toll rises to 80
* Number of new cases in Japan rises to 210
GENEVA, May 20 (Reuters) - The number of confirmed cases of the new Influenza A (H1N1) flu has risen to 10,243 and the death toll has edged up to 80, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Wednesday.
Most of the new cases are in the United States, which has seen 5,469 outbreaks of the virus so far, the WHO said as it focuses on the H1N1 virus that has brought the world to the brink of a pandemic.
Another 51 cases have also been reported in Japan, bringing the total number of cases there to 210 and potentially making it more likely that the WHO will declare a full pandemic after it raised its pandemic alert last month to 5 on a 6-level scale.
Health ministers and experts at this week's WHO annual assembly have been discussing how to fight the virus with vaccines and drugs as well as what criteria the WHO should consider when deciding whether to raise the alert level.
Under WHO rules, signs the disease is spreading in a sustained way in a second region of the world outside its North American epicentre would prompt a declaration that a full pandemic is under way.
Ministers have urged the WHO to consider other factors such as the severity of the virus before moving to the highest alert.
Forty countries have confirmed cases of the new strain and nearly all of those who have died were in Mexico, but most patients globally have had relatively mild symptoms.
http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idUSLK94712420090520

This is the real danger behind the Swine Flu (at least at the present time)and it will only get worse, and when the services start to suffer for lack of attendance at work and the police, fire and water services start to fail, then you will see real panic.
Hospitals swamped amid flu fears
Reporting from Washington -- On Long Island, N.Y., hospitals are scrambling to bring extra workers in to handle a 50% surge in visitors to emergency rooms. In Galveston, Texas, the local hospital ran out of flu testing kits after being overwhelmed with patients worried about having contracted swine flu.
At Loma Linda University Medical Center near San Bernardino, emergency room workers have set up a tent in the parking lot to handle a crush of similar patients. In Chicago, ER visits at the city's biggest children's hospital are double normal levels, setting records at the 121-year-old institution.
So far, few of the anxious patients have had more than runny noses. But the widening outbreak of swine flu, also known as H1N1 flu, is exposing a potentially critical hole in the nation's defenses.
Across the country, emergency care facilities are straining at the seams even though the outbreak is relatively small and the federal government has launched a mammoth disease-control effort -- dispatching antiviral drugs to states, attempting to contain the limited number of cases and beginning to develop a vaccine against it.
"It is a major Achilles' heel in our state of readiness," said Dr. Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University. "If we get a situation that is really out of hand with large numbers of people affected, I fear that our hospital and healthcare facilities simply won't have the materials or even the staffing to respond," he said.
Redlener and others are quick to point out that the outbreak is still a long way from such a critical stage.
Of the 136 cases of H1N1 flu authorities had confirmed in the United States as of Thursday night, only a handful required hospitalization.
By contrast, the Department of Health and Human Services' moderate pandemic influenza model, based on the last flu pandemic in 1968, envisions 90 million Americans becoming infected and 865,000 requiring hospitalization.
"If the outbreak stays in what I would characterize as its present mild form, I think we're in great shape," said James Bentley, senior vice president at the American Hospital Assn. "The key question becomes how many people at any one time have the flu, and how many people have it severely."
Prompted by the global SARS and avian flu outbreaks this decade, federal health officials and hospitals nationwide have been working to beef up preparations for possible disease outbreaks, helped by more than $2 billion in federal grants.
Hospitals have increased their supplies of staples such as face masks, and many have trained employees to care for patients out in the field.
In the last three years, California has spent more than $400 million to upgrade its readiness, including purchasing three fully equipped mobile hospitals and nearly 7,200 ventilators to respond to an outbreak of respiratory illness.
... The rest of the story can be read at
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-swineflu-hospitals1-2009may01,0,6976867.story

Better tighten up you security, in good and bad times people will always steal for drugs, but as the economy gets worse it will get worse.
Man reportedly took school's solar panels to buy drugs
OROVILLE -- A man who took dozens of solar panels from the roof of a Chico school stole them to buy drugs, according to his attorney.
Christopher Bess, 32, of Chico entered into a surprise plea bargain in court Tuesday.
He pleaded no contest to a single charge of receiving stolen property. He admitted having a prior "strike" on his record relating to a 1999 assault conviction, which increases his maximum potential sentence to seven years in prison.
He was already awaiting sentencing on a drug charge at the time of the plea bargain.
Prosecutors agreed to dismiss six additional stolen-property counts against Bess related to other items recovered with some of the missing solar panels from a Chico storage shed in March.
It was learned Tuesday that Bess was initially identified on surveillance videos taken near Little Chico Creek School, where 46 roof-top solar panels valued at nearly $50,000 were removed in mid-February.
Prosecutors said Bess was being held in jail on the unrelated drug charge, when guards covertly recorded a telephone call he made to another man asking him to move the solar panels out of two rented storage units on Highway 32.
Chico police then recovered 17 of the panels from the storage facility, along with other stolen items, including more than $100,000 in property taken from a nonprofit veterans group in Chico, according to the prosecutor.
A second man, who was videotaped standing next to a truck with Bess near the elementary school, has reportedly been asked to help police recover the remaining solar panels, according to Bess' attorney, Tracy Tully-Davis.
She said Bess chose to accept the plea bargain rather than risk as much as 15 years in prison if convicted at trial on all counts.
The defense attorney agreed there was strong evidence linking Bess to the stolen solar panels.
Based on the school surveillance videos, police initially arrested Bess on a felony drug-transportation charge, to which he subsequently pleaded guilty, according to deputy district attorney Robert Thomas III.
Bess was being held on the drug charge in the Butte County Jail when he was recorded placing a telephone call to a man in Nevada and telling him to "empty out" the Highway 32 storage sheds, where slightly less than half of the solar panels were later recovered by police.
In the storage units, which were being rented under the name of Bess' girlfriend, were bicycles stolen from Chico State University and lawn-care equipment taken from a Nord Avenue apartment, according to Chico police reports.
Also recovered was miscellaneous property, much of it cold-weather gear, stolen in February from Caring Veterans, Inc. on Rio Lindo Avenue, a non-profit group in Chico that assists military veterans.
Tully-Davis said Bess was stealing to support a drug habit.
"What was found in the storage shed, his behavior, is indicative of a drug addict going on a run," the suspect's lawyer observed.
http://www.chicoer.com/news/ci_12409050

Eeyore's News and view

This is the final installment of Jerry's Story, did not i tell you it was good stuff, enjoy.
Man! It Is Cold Outside! – Chapter 3
Mike made a few inquiries in Springfield and found out that Amanda had been treated and released after the intentional hit-and-run accident outside of Springfield. It made him wonder about things.He didn’t wonder much. He was starting to get more and more responses from the contacts he’d made. Among the various ongoing terrorist scares, impending pandemics, the whole gamut of natural disasters, not to mention serious tensions between China and the United States over Taiwan, the severity of the weather was becoming a more and more mentioned topic.Most of those seeking the shelter of the facility were looking at it for short term protection. But not all. One dentist, who’d made a fortune in the stock market decided to retire to the facility for the foreseeable future. He’d honor his contract to furnish dental services for free, for his time in the facility. Plus a hefty membership fee.Others weren’t ready to take up residence, but with the facility more an ongoing process now, they were ready to buy their way in, with entry to the facility at a later date.Out of the blue one day, Sara, who besides some cyber work-at-home activity for the legal firm she was associated with, was taking care of the reception desk during regular business hours, helping coordinate the deliveries of incoming supplies and equipment.Word of mouth had spread to the local communities, and people were showing up hoping for jobs at the facility. Though Mike wasn’t hiring people that weren’t going to live on site, he did find one or two retired people that were living on pensions and wanted something to do. He found a couple of ladies that were willing to take care of the communal kitchen for their room and board, keeping their retirement income for pocket money. They were exempted from the need to be armed.The one retired farmer that showed up one day wasn’t. He was an elderly gentleman, but he had lots of experience with Ozark hills farming and working with draft animals. He was a welcome addition to the family, giving the former students real hands-on experience in running a working animal farm.Though it was the middle of summer now, which was obvious in the Ozarks, Canada was having a rough time of it. There were areas where the snow had not melted by late July and a few areas it looked like it wouldn’t melt even into August.The Weather Channel and National Weather Service were now talking climate change due to global warming, with the effect being highly variable weather with extremes of both summer weather and winter weather. The federal governments of several nations were launching inquiries, especially the northern governments, including Canada and much of Europe.Mike was beginning to wonder when they would catch on that this wasn’t a simple extreme in the weather. Now that the place was up and running, he was tempted to tempt fate and go public with what he knew. But reading the preparedness forums on a daily basis there were already people crying Ice Age. They weren’t getting any more attention than anyone else. He’d just be considered a kook. He had no real proof. His sister was dead and buried almost three years. Whoever had wanted her work suppressed would have had plenty of time to do a good job of it. But there was Amanda Trotter. Apparently not all of FEMA was in on the information suppression.It took quite a while to track her down in the Agency. In fact, it was in the middle of the worst winter on record since the Little Ice Age days of the 14th century to the mid-19th century. Those at the facility were glad they were there. The green houses were producing fruits and vegetables, and the old Ozarks farmer had taken over the butchering chores of the animals, with the cooks handling the meat from there, to provide a good table at every meal.Their were three entertainment rooms, along with game rooms in the second dome, where people could relax together, if they didn’t want to stay in their own quarters and entertain themselves there.The Ozarks were getting what Iowa used to get. Iowa was like Canada, and the Artic had taken up residence in Canada.Mike saw to it that the facility road was kept clear with the road grader, D-8 dozer, and 966 front end loader, but the county was unable to keep up with the snow for a while. The facility was snowed in at that time.Though several had brought cars to the facility, which were nice and safe in the earth-sheltered garage, they didn’t even think about using them in the weather they were having. When the roads were passable any activity of the property was done in the small fleet of four-wheel-drive vehicles Mike had provided for the facility.There were patches of snow on the ground on the shaded north sides of things at the facility into April. In Jefferson City, Missouri the shaded north sides of building held snow until July. Only in late July and Early August did everything completely melt. It was worse the further north you went.Those already at the facility were glad they were there. Others were making their preparations to get there.Mike called Amanda in late August. “It’s Mike Buncie. I’ve something to tell you,” Mike said when Amanda picked up the phone on her end and identified herself.“Go ahead,” she said.“Not on the telephone. Especially considering your accident. They never found the perps, did they?”“As a matter of fact, no. I think you are being ridiculous, but perhaps there is an element of justification to your mistrust. I’m quite able to travel. I’ll be there in a couple of days.”“Watch your back.”“I’ll have a couple of people with me to help.”It didn’t dawn on Mike for a few seconds after he hung up that she might mean Number One and Number Two. They might have got to her and turned her to their side. He told himself it was just his paranoia. Aloud he said, “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.”Mike checked the P-14 and made a mental note to keep it handy the next few days. As he’d been wearing his most of the time, a few of the others in the facility had begun going armed, too. That included many of those working outdoors with the animals and for other reasons.Part of the reason Mike had chosen the spot he had, and had developed it the way he had, was because they were in a natural defensive zone. Other than the good access road, and the marginal road that was their back door, all of the surrounding area was heavily wooded. That meant quite a few people could get up to a few hundred yards of them, but nothing powered, except perhaps a dirt bike or ROKON.All the structures were earth-sheltered, with parapet walls extending six feet above the roofs. A backing wall with cantilevered roof projecting over the walkway by the parapet would protect anyone manning the parapets from the weather. Anyone approaching from the forest would be an easy target for riflemen on the parapets. It would take an overwhelming force of people to work their way through the forest and a massive charge to take the facility. No place was invulnerable.A handful of men might, using stealth, get to the buildings. But part of the contract was a no bargaining clause. Anyone caught and used for hostage had an obligation to aid any attempt to free them using force. And force would be used. There would be no negotiations.Mike put it out of his mind. He’d just see what developed when Amanda showed up.Between incoming supplies and equipment, which Mike felt he should personally check, since he’d ordered everything, and people showing up and others applying for membership, he was kept busy. He’d made sure to make his schedule flexible for the day she was scheduled to arrive. He also made sure Sara was going to be elsewhere. In fact, she was part of the team taking vehicles to Springfield for an auction. Several people had decided to sell their personal vehicles and rely on the facilities fleet.Mike breathed a slight sigh of relief when Amanda showed up with two men, neither of which was Number One or Number Two. She told them to wait in the lobby area while she went with Mike up to his office. She was using a cane to support herself.“Do you wear a gun on you all the time?” Amanda asked as soon as Mike had shown her to her seat. “Does everyone?”“Not everyone. But most. Part of the contract for living here is a commitment to defend the place.” Mike responded in a conversational tone. He could tell that Amanda was badly stressed.“You don’t look well,” he said. “Are you up to this?”Amanda sighed. “I have to be. I’ve been tasked with finding out what is going on.”“So you admit that something is going on?”This time Amanda frowned. “Yes. There is a problem. One we are trying to correct before anyone else gets hurt. You act as though you’ve known for some time.”“Well, I can tell you one thing. Three years ago I knew something was going on. Apparently so did my sister. I think she was killed for having that knowledge.”Amanda’s face fell. “I hate to say this, but we are beginning to believe that may be the case. But we don’t have any hard evidence. And we don’t know exactly why.”“Because she knew an Ice Age was coming. A little slowly at first, then more rapidly. With glaciation to 38 degrees North Latitude.”“So it is true…” Amanda’s words faded away.“Yes. She told me on that last phone call. Before she was killed. I don’t know if it was done on board, or if it was after they made port. I do know the ship made port. They say she was killed in an accident aboard the ship, but I’m thinking they found out what they wanted to know from her research and then killed her and just said it was an accident. That was what the inquest said. That it was an accident. I doubted it from the first.“Then, when Number One and Number Two questioned me about that last phone call… their attitudes… demanding. Wanting to come right out and ask about an Ice Age, but talking around it. And then Jeremiah, actually trying to put the words in my mouth. They had orders to keep the coming Ice Age quiet. They were working for someone. Not themselves. Though they did seem to enjoy it immensely. Someone, I think within FEMA, has been trying to keep it quiet for as long as they could.”“I don’t suppose I should tell you this, but FEMA has come to the same conclusion. We don’t have the proof that your sister apparently had, but with the way the weather has been, and some of the modeling our meteorologists have been doing are saying the same thing. That an Ice Age is coming, and coming quickly.“The person we think was responsible for the men you’ve referred to as Number One and Number Two, Tom Harris and Billy Bonestall, has been arrested and is being questioned in Washington. He seems to have been working with a group outside of FEMA. We still don’t know who. And it seems it was only the three. We’ve not found any connection with anyone else in FEMA to account for your Jeremiah. But there is the link outside the agency.“It appears that this outside group had plans to use the Ice Age to ‘Cleanse the earth of Undesirables,’ as it was put by Oliver Blackwood. He’s the FEMA agent we’ve arrested. We’re still looking for Harris and Bonestall. We’ll add the murder of your sister to their list of crimes. I don’t know if we’ll be able to prove it, but we’ll add it. We don’t know where they are at the moment. Some agency equipment, including a helicopter, is missing from inventory. I think they are the ones that tried to kill me by causing my accident.”“I agree,” said Mike. “And I think they may try again.”“Well, I have two US Marshals with me to try and prevent that. I’d like to get you some protection, but even with what you have told me, I don’t think it’ll happen. This is being kept very hush, hush. Very low profile.”“I understand. I can’t deny that part of the reason I go armed is on the off chance I run into Number One and Number Two again. We have a few differences of opinion to settle.” Mike’s face was grim.“Don’t do something silly, Mr. Buncie. FEMA is working on the problem with the help of the Marshals Service and the FBI. We’ll find them and bring them to justice.”Mike waved it away. “What about the population? Are they going to get the word? An organized evacuation of points north needs to be started before it is too late.”“I’m afraid it is already too late for some,” Amanda said softly. “I don’t have the power to bring it to the world’s attention. That will be up to my superiors. To be honest, I think they will. Seems everyone is speculating on just such a theory, now anyway. They’ll just take the speculation away.”She adjusted herself in the chair. Amanda was obviously in some pain from her injuries resulting from the hit and run accident. “If there isn’t anything else you can tell me, I’ll be on my way.”“No. That was it. Just my suspicions and what my sister had told me.”Amanda nodded and began to get up from the chair. The thought just occurred to Mike and he decided to ask. “Is this Ice Age the natural progression from global warming, or is it man-made. By the population cleansing people?”Her reaction was so normal to the question that Mike was sure it had come up before. She didn’t deny the possibility. “We don’t know. We simply don’t know,” Amanda said.She switched the cane to her left hand, held out her right and Mike shook it.“Be careful,” they both said, almost simultaneously. With a laugh, a nice one, Mike noted, Amanda transferred the cane back to her right hand and Mike escorted her down to her Marshals.“Quite a set up, you’ve got here, according to a couple of the residents,” one of the men said. “You taking applications?” Mike gave him a business card. The other Marshal laughed, but it had a hollow ring to it.Mike slowly followed them outside. He looked up, shading his eyes with his hands. It was hard to believe that an Ice Age was coming on this beautiful sunny summer day in the Ozarks. When Sara got back and found out Amanda had been there Mike thought she seemed angry. And couldn’t figure out why.It was no longer a beautiful sunny summer day in the Ozarks, Mike thought, remembering his thought that day. It was September and there was snow on the ground and more coming. A line of vehicles was coming up the road. The President had gone on the air two days previously and announced the discovery that an Ice Age was in the process of occurring. People in the northern latitudes would be evacuated as places to house them were found. There was already fighting on the Mexican boarder where the Mexican army was trying to stop the minor invasion of Northerners headed for warmer climes.Ever since the announcement, a stream of people that knew about the facility had been calling, and then showing up. People were offering huge sums of money for entrance. Mike was taking it, when it was a person he would have brought in anyway. He knew many of them would leave the next summer, when things looked better and the government’s warning was ignored. The payment was non-refundable.There were guards out, very obviously carrying weapons. So far, only those invited were showing up. There was a chance that some of the locals, now that they knew of the place, might come up and try to get in.When April rolled around, a full quarter of those that had come in upon the government’s announcement left, sheepishly. Some demanded their money back. None got it. The contract had been very specific. A tiny handful announced that they were only going home to tie up a few loose ends and would be back before winter set in again. Mike found that more than acceptable.He was very pleased with the way the facility had run at 50% capacity for those few weeks. All the bugs had been worked out of the systems, few that there had been. He expected to still be able to get supplies for a while, though much was being devoted to the evacuations.The national plan wasn’t going that well. Like some of the residents of the facility, many in the northern latitudes, around the world, refused to believe the information and warnings. Mike had everyone required to bear arms practicing on a regular basis. The following winter, Mike was thinking, would not be as easy as the first. He knew his sister very well. How her mind worked. The two years of slow build up had occurred, four years ago. Mike figured this would be the year it really got bad.He topped fuel tanks, and packed all the supplies he could into the regular above ground storage rooms. The basements of all the structures had been filled first. Mike had nearly a million dollars left. He converted nine-tenths of it to gold, silver, and diamonds. The rest would pay for the rest of the supplies that might be obtained.The world turned, as it was want to do, and fall fell. Winter was right on its heels. And it was, indeed, a bad one. People began to return to the facility. That’s what it was referred to as, now. The Facility. Mike was selective as to who he let in. The county had begun stationing an SUV with two deputies at the entrance of The Facility for a while when Mike was regularly calling in people demanding entrance he didn’t want in. Some of them were local. They seemed to take it harder than those that had traveled some distance to get there. The government had not mentioned the 38th parallel. Mike didn’t know why.Mike was being conservative on the personnel he was allowing in. He was going to cut the occupancy off at 85%. There would need to be room for the population to grow. After.And as the world is wont to do, it continued to turn. A short spring, and a summer, even at 38 degrees. The snow on the north side of the capital building in Jefferson City, Missouri from the previous winter was still there when it started to snow again there in July. Mike let a select few more people in during July and August. The roads were impassible to most vehicles by then. Definitely only four-wheel-drive vehicles were moving on the highways. Mike gave the message to quit plowing the road in to the facility.He retired to his office for the afternoon. All the security monitors were on. He was dozing when a call wakened him. “Sir, I have clandestine movement near the out road.” The ‘out’ road was the commonly used name for the poorly maintained logging road that was also known as the back door to the place.Mike moved over to the monitors mounted along the wall of his office and studied them for a few moment. Yes. There it was. Movement. And it wasn’t the direct movement of someone wanting to be seen. One of Mike’s concerns had been security without massive fences. It had been obvious that shortly into the Ice Age, where they were located, there wasn’t going to be much in the way of risk. They were on the edge of survivalbility.He’d had experts tell him how experienced people would attack the place if one came. It had been as he’d thought. Other than an army and an air force, only mass attack out of the woods, or a small group using modern stealth techniques could approach the facility, as long as a careful watch was maintained. Someone seemed to know what they were doing. You had to know it was happening to see it. The computer software that scanned video for motion was the best on the market. It had alerted the guard before the men had moved more than a few feet out of the forest.Mike knew the path they would take. It was the only reasonable one and had been left as an enticement. He touched the P-14 on his belt and lifted the telephone. “Scramble Squad. Meet me at the front doors.”He slipped into his jacket and met the six person team of former police and military. Including one ex-US Marshal. “Follow me. Cover me, but stay behind. I want to see who these guys are.”It took only a few moments to deploy. Mike stood waiting in the shadows as the men continued to work their way toward the dome. More quickly now that they were out of range of the cameras. One of the men would have commented on the lax security had they not been on silent mode.When they were a few feet away, Mike worked a remote control device, lighting up the area. The men behind him made their presence known. The two men slowly dropped their rifles and raised their hands. It was still hard to see their faces with their coat hoods up.“Drop the hoods,” Mike said, his P-14 held in a classic Weaver stance. When their faces could be seen, Mike softly said, “Well if it isn’t Number One and Number Two.”“What?” asked Number one, venom in his tone. Number Two looked wary.“Harris and Bonestall,” Mike said, the weapon steady, pointed between the two men.“I told you she would tell him,” Harris hissed at Bonestall.A touch more loudly now, Mike asked the simple question, “Which one of you killed my sister?”Harris, Number One, just stared at him with hate filled eyes. Mike was watching Bonestall, Number Two. Mike saw Bonestall’s eyes flick toward Harris a fraction of an instant before Harris spoke.Mike shifted his stance slightly and squeezed the trigger of the P-14. A neat .45 caliber hole appeared in Harris’ forehead. Harris fell silently. The men behind Mike tensed.Looking at Bonestall, Mike flatly said shifting his aim, “That means you gave the order.” He squeezed the P-14’s trigger again. Bonestall fell dead beside his partner. “Clean it up,” Mike said to his people. They were looking at him with shock on their faces. This was one hard man.Mike safed the P-14 and re-holstered it. He turned and walked back to the main entrance doors, leaving the people behind to take care of business. There was a procedure for handling deaths. He’d seen to it.He was a little surprised to see a vehicle in the parking area when he got to the doors. It was a black Suburban. A touch tense, he entered the lobby. When he saw Amanda he relaxed. She hurried over to him as fast as she could. “Mike! They’re coming after you. Harris and Bonestall. I came out to warn you.” Sara was watching silently.“Not any more,” Mike said. They’re both dead.”“Guns,” she said softly. Mike nodded. “Maybe they are needed, sometimes.” It was a huge admission for her.Obviously tired, Amanda moved to one of the lobby chairs and sat down. Sara moved out of the way but continued to watch. “We caught the others. They have a place much like this one. Harris and Bonestall got away. Harris was yelling that you were a dead man. I was so frightened for you. You’ve been such a big help. The evacuations aren’t going well and the weather is getting worse. I don’t know what to do.”They looked out the door. All they could see was snow.Mike glanced at Sara, standing there silently, and looked down at Amanda. He had his hand on her shoulder to comfort her. Life was going to be very interesting for him.
Man! It Is Cold Outside! – Epilog
Life went on in the areas that weren’t under the newly forming glaciers. Wars were fought for the possession of warm, safe, areas. Mexico, by force of arms, was made a part of the United States. Canada ceased to exist as a nation. For over five hundred years Mike’s descendants from both lines, ruled The Facility as a Benevolent Monarchy. In 2525 the snow melted away completely before it snowed again on the site of the former Jefferson City, Missouri capitol building. Life began to head north again.
End ********Copyright 2005
Jerry D Young

The following is from a quote from the following article
“The administration and Congressional anti-gunners have declared war on gun rights,” Gottlieb said. “The press seems deliberately blind to the statements from Pelosi and Holder, who blame our gun rights for their incompetence in dealing with crime. More than 90 million gun owners haven’t hurt anybody, and they are tired of being treated like criminals.”
I would say more like "deliberately in agreement and support to the satements from Pelosi and Holder"then blind, but that is just my 2 cents (6 dollars when adjusted for inflation, this year)
Pelosi: 'We Want Registration'; Holder: 2A Won't 'Stand in the Way'; SAF: 'Gloves Are Off'
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Pelosi-We-Want-Registration-bw-14883186.
BELLEVUE, Wash.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on April 7 acknowledged that gun registration is on her agenda, days after Attorney General Eric Holder told reporters in Mexico that the Second Amendment would not “stand in the way” of administration plans to crack down on alleged gun trafficking to Mexico.“These are alarming remarks from Speaker Pelosi and Attorney General Holder,” said Second Amendment Foundation founder Alan Gottlieb. “It appears that the Obama administration and Capitol Hill anti-gunners have dropped all pretences about their plans for gun owners’ rights, and it looks like the gloves are coming off.”Pelosi’s revelation came during an interview on ABC’s Good Morning, America. While insisting that Congress “never denied” the gun rights of American Citizens, Pelosi told Roberts, “We want them registered. We don’t want them crossing state lines…” Gottlieb noted that citizens’ rights do not stop at state lines.“But that doesn’t really matter,” he observed. “History has shown that around the world, registration has always led to confiscation.”In Mexico, according to the Wall Street Journal, Holder was asked if the administration might encounter constitutional issues as it tries to crack down on alleged gun trafficking. His response: “I don’t think our Second Amendment will stand in the way of efforts we have begun and will expand upon.”“These comments belie administration promises and Democrat rhetoric that party leaders respect the rights of law-abiding Americans to own the firearm of their choice,” Gottlieb said. “They imposed registration of semi-autos in Pelosi’s California and it led to a ban, but it certainly didn’t disarm criminals, like the convicted felon who killed four Oakland police officers last month. We know from Holder that the Obama administration wants to renew the nationwide ban on such firearms, but that won’t prevent crime, either.“The administration and Congressional anti-gunners have declared war on gun rights,” Gottlieb said. “The press seems deliberately blind to the statements from Pelosi and Holder, who blame our gun rights for their incompetence in dealing with crime. More than 90 million gun owners haven’t hurt anybody, and they are tired of being treated like criminals.”The Second Amendment Foundation (www.saf.org) is the nation’s oldest and largest tax-exempt education, research, publishing and legal action group focusing on the Constitutional right and heritage to privately own and possess firearms. Founded in 1974, The Foundation has grown to more than 600,000 members and supporters and conducts many programs designed to better inform the public about the consequences of gun control.
http://frc4u.org/phpbb/index.php?topic=815.msg1445#msg1445

Inventor turns cardboard boxes into eco-friendly oven
When Jon Bohmer sat down with his two little girls for a simple project they could work on together, he didn't realize they'd hit upon a solution to one of the world's biggest problems for just $5: A solar-powered oven.
Inventor Jon Bohmer with the oven he has made out of a cardboard box.
The ingeniously simple design uses two cardboard boxes, one inside the other, and an acrylic cover that lets in the sun's rays and traps them.
Black paint on the inner box, and silver foil on the outer one, help concentrate the heat. The trapped rays make the inside hot enough to cook casseroles, bake bread and boil water.
What the box also does is eliminate the need in developing countries for rural residents to cut down trees for firewood. About 3 billion people around the world do so, adding to deforestation and, in turn, global warming.
By allowing users to boil water, the simple device could also potentially save the millions of children who die from drinking unclean water.
Bohmer's invention on Thursday won the FT Climate Change Challenge, which sought to find and publicize the most innovative and practical solution to climate change.
"A lot of scientists are working on ways to send people to Mars. I was looking for something a little more grassroots, a little simpler," Bohmer said Thursday.
Bohmer's contest win notwithstanding, solar cooking with a cardboard oven isn't new. Two American women, Barbara Kerr and Sherry Cole, were the solar box cooker's first serious promoters in the 1970s. They and others joined forces to create the non-profit Solar Cookers International -- originally called Solar Box Cookers International -- in 1987.
Further, the organization's executive director, Patrick Widner, said that the plans for a solar box cooker were found in a book published by the Peace Corps in the 1960s.
"We are pleased that Mr. Bohmer has taken up the cause and interest of the 95 member organizations and 160 individuals of the Solar Cookers Worldwide Network," Widner said. "It would be a pleasure to work with Mr. Bohmer in Kenya where we have been promoting the use of solar cookers for ten years."
Bohmer, a Norwegian-born entrepreneur based in Kenya, said he also had been looking at solutions "way too complex, for way too long."
"This took me about a weekend, and it worked on the first try," Bohmer said. "It's mind-boggling how simple it is."
The contest was organized by the Forum for the Future -- a sustainable development charity -- and the Financial Times newspaper. Among the judges were British business magnate Richard Branson and environmentalist Rajendra Pachauri. The public also voted on the finalists.
Bohmer's invention beat about 300 other entries, including a machine that turns wood and other organic material into charcoal, wheel covers that make trucks more fuel efficient by reducing drag, and a feed supplement for livestock that reduces the methane they emit by 15 percent.
Bohmer named his invention the Kyoto Box, after the international environmental treaty to reduce global warming.
The box can be produced in existing cardboard factories. It has gone into production in a factory in Nairobi, Kenya, that can churn out about 2.5 million boxes a month.
Bohmer has also designed a more durable version, made from recycled plastic, which can be produced just as cheaply.
He envisions such cardboard ovens being distributed throughout rural Africa.
"In the West, we cook with electricity, so it's easy to ignore this problem," he said. "But half the world's population is still living in a stone age. The only way for them to cook is to make a fire.
"I don't want to see another 80-year-old woman carrying 20 kilos of firewood on her back. Maybe we don't have to."
http://us.cnn.com/2009/TECH/04/09/solar.oven.global.warming/index.html

Eeyore's News and view

If you were smart you would be learning Spanish,
Almost 1 of 2 new Americans in 2008 was Latino
WASHINGTON – Hispanics made up nearly half of the more than 1 million people who became U.S. citizens last year, according to a Hispanic advocacy group.
The National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials said the number of Latinos who became Americans in fiscal year 2008 more than doubled over the previous year, to 461,317. That's nearly half of the record 1,046,539 new citizens overall in 2008, a 58 percent increase from 2007.
"Latinos who naturalize are eager to demonstrate their commitment to America by becoming full participants in our nation's civic life," said NALEO president Arturo Vargas, whose nonpartisan group works to improve the citizenship process and increase Latino participation in civic activities.
NALEO based its findings on Homeland Security Department data on the number of new citizens last year who immigrated from predominantly Spanish-speaking countries.
In a report released in March, the agency attributed the record number of new citizens to the nearly 1.4 million citizenship applications it received in 2007. Most were from people who wanted to beat a $265 increase in the citizenship application fee, from $330 to $595.
But the department also credited "special efforts" by Hispanic media, community groups and a union with high immigrant membership, all of which urged eligible permanent residents to pursue citizenship.
In fiscal year 2008, 231,815 people originally from Mexico became citizens, up almost 90 percent from 2007. Increases in citizenship among Latino immigrants from other countries were: 39,871 from Cuba, up 160 percent from the previous year; 35,796 from El Salvador, up 109 percent; 17,954 from Nicaragua, up 120 percent; and 17,087 from Guatemala, a 109 percent rise.
Most of last year's new Hispanic citizens lived in California, followed by Florida.
Vargas cited the data to encourage the Obama administration and Congress to ease the cost of applying for immigration benefits.
"Despite the record number of naturalizations, there are still millions of eligible legal permanent residents who have not yet applied for U.S. citizenship or who encounter barriers in the naturalization process," Vargas said.
On the Net:
National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials: http://www.naleo.org
Homeland Security Department statistical reports: http://www.dhs.gov/ximgtn/statistics/

I heard one commentator say we need to be using "contractors" for this kind of stuff.
US warship arrives as pirates' options dwindle
April 9, 2009 - 8:46am
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) - A U.S. destroyer kept watch Thursday on a drifting lifeboat where Somali pirates were holding an American ship captain hostage, a day after bandits hijacked a U.S.-flagged vessel for several hours before 20 crew members overpowered them.
The pirates took Capt. Richard Phillips as a hostage as they escaped the Maersk Alabama into a lifeboat in the first such attack on American sailors in around 200 years. Negotiations were believed to be under way, a relative of the captain said, but it was not clear who was conducting them.
Kevin Speers, a spokesman for the ship company Maersk, said the pirates have made no demands yet to the company. He said the safe return of the abducted captain is now its top priority.
The USS Bainbridge had arrived off the Horn of Africa near where the pirates were floating near the Maersk, he said.
"It's on the scene at this point," Speers said of the Bainbridge, adding that the lifeboat holding the pirates and the captain is out of fuel.
"The boat is dead in the water," he told AP Radio. "It's floating near the Alabama. It's my understanding that it's floating freely."
The U.S. Navy has sent up P-3 Orion surveillance aircraft and has video footage of the scene.
One senior Pentagon official, speaking on grounds of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation, described the incident now as a "somewhat of a standoff."
Though officials declined to say how close the Bainbridge is to the site, one official said of the pirates: "They can see it with their eyes." He spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of talking about a military operation in progress.
The Bainbridge was among several U.S. ships that had been patrolling in the region when the 17,000-ton U.S.-flagged cargo ship and its 20 crew were captured Wednesday.
Phillips' family was gathered at his Vermont farmhouse, anxiously watching news reports and taking telephone calls from the U.S. State Department to learn if he would be freed.
"We are on pins and needles," said Gina Coggio, 29, half-sister of Phillips' wife, Andrea, as she stood on the porch of his one-story house Wednesday in a light snow. "I know the crew has been in touch with their own family members, and we're hoping we'll hear from Richard soon."
Phillips surrendered himself to the pirates to secure the safety of the crew, Coggio said.
"What I understand is that he offered himself as the hostage," she said. "That is what he would do. It's just who he is and his response as a captain."
Coggio said she believed there were negotiations under way, although she didn't specify between whom.
With one warship nearby and more on the way, piracy expert Roger Middleton from London-based think tank Chatham House said the pirates were facing difficult choices.
"The pirates are in a very, very tight corner," Middleton said. "They've got only one guy, they've got nowhere to hide him, they've got no way to defend themselves effectively against the military who are on the way and they are hundreds of miles from Somalia."
The pirates would probably try to get to a mothership, he said, one of the larger vessels that tow the pirates' speedboats out to sea and resupply them as they lie in wait for prey. But they also would be aware that if they try to take Phillips to Somalia, they might be intercepted. And if they hand him over, they would almost certainly be arrested.
Other analysts say the U.S. will be reluctant to use force as long as one of its citizens remains hostage. French commandos, for example, have mounted two military operations against pirates once the ransom had been paid and its citizens were safe.
The Maersk Alabama, en route to neighboring Kenya and loaded with relief aid, was attacked about 380 miles (610 kilometers) east of the Somali capital of Mogadishu. It was the sixth vessel seized in a week.
Many of the pirates have shifted their operations down the Somali coastline from the Gulf of Aden to escape naval warship patrols, which had some success in preventing attacks last year.
International attention focused on Somali pirates last year after the audacious hijackings of an arms shipment and a Saudi oil supertanker. Currently warships from more than a dozen nations are patrolling off the Somali coast but analysts say the multimillion-dollar ransoms paid out by companies ensure piracy in war-ravaged, impoverished Somalia will not disappear.
The attacks often beg the question of why ship owners do not arm their crew to fend off attacks. Much of the problem lies with the cargo. The Saudi supertanker, for example, was loaded with 2 million barrels of oil. The vapor from that cargo was highly flammable; a spark from the firing of a gun could cause an explosion.
There is also the problem of keeping the pirates off the ships _ once they're on board, they will very likely fight back and people will die.
Pirates travel in open skiffs with outboard engines, working with larger ships that tow them far out to sea. They use satellite navigational and communications equipment, and have an intimate knowledge of local waters, clambering aboard commercial vessels with ladders and grappling hooks.
Any blip on an unwary ship's radar screens, alerting the crew to nearby vessels, is likely to be mistaken for fishing trawlers or any number of smaller, non-threatening ships that take to the seas every day.
It helps that the pirates' prey are usually massive, slow-moving ships. By the time anyone notices, pirates will have grappled their way onto the ship, brandishing AK-47s.
http://wtop.com/?nid=387&sid=1645156

I remember during the Olympics, China was disparaged in the press about shooting stuff in the atmosphere, to try and clear the smog. Here we are doing the same thing and yet it is ok for us to do it.
Obama to Look at Climate Engineering
WASHINGTON -- The president's new science adviser said Wednesday that global warming is so dire, the Obama administration is discussing radical technologies to cool Earth's air.
John Holdren told the Associated Press in his first interview since being confirmed last month that the idea of geoengineering the climate is being discussed. One such extreme option includes shooting pollution particles into the upper atmosphere to reflect the sun's rays. Mr. Holdren said such an experimental measure would only be used as a last resort.
"It's got to be looked at," he said. "We don't have the luxury of taking any approach off the table."
Mr. Holdren outlined several "tipping points" involving global warming that could be fast approaching. Once such milestones are reached, such as complete loss of summer sea ice in the Arctic, it increases chances of "really intolerable consequences," he said.
Twice in a half-hour interview, Mr. Holdren compared global warming to being "in a car with bad brakes driving toward a cliff in the fog."
At first, Mr. Holdren characterized the potential need to technologically tinker with the climate as just his personal view. However, he went on to say he has raised it in administration discussions.
Mr. Holdren, a 65-year-old physicist, is far from alone in taking geoengineering more seriously. The National Academy of Science is making climate tinkering the subject of its first workshop in its new multidiscipline climate challenges program. The British parliament has also discussed the idea.
The American Meteorological Society is crafting a policy statement on geoengineering that says "it is prudent to consider geoengineering's potential, to understand its limits and to avoid rash deployment."
Last week, Princeton scientist Robert Socolow told the National Academy that geoengineering should be an available option in case climate worsens dramatically.
But Mr. Holdren noted that shooting particles into the air -- making an artificial volcano as one Nobel laureate has suggested -- could have grave side effects and would not completely solve all the problems from soaring greenhouse gas emissions. So such actions could not be taken lightly, he said.
Still, "we might get desperate enough to want to use it," he added.
Another geoengineering option he mentioned was the use of so-called artificial trees to suck carbon dioxide -- the chief human-caused greenhouse gas -- out of the air and store it. At first that seemed prohibitively expensive, but a re-examination of the approach shows it might be less costly, he said.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123920773503201665.html


Lightning may predict hurricane intensity
Scientists have discovered a link between increased lightning and the strongest winds in hurricanes, a study reports online this week in the British journal Nature Geoscience.
Lead author Colin Price of Tel Aviv University in Israel and colleagues found a significant increase in lightning about a day before the most intense winds in the hurricanes they studied. The authors say this bit of advance warning could lead to better intensity forecasts.
Price and his team tracked the wind speeds of all Category 4 and 5 hurricanes, typhoons and cyclones around the world from 2005 to 2007 and compared them with global lightning data. (Category 4 storms have sustained wind speeds of 131 mph and above.) "Of the 58 hurricanes analyzed, only two showed no significant correlation between lightning and wind speed," the authors report.
Though hurricane track predictions have become significantly more accurate in recent decades, the accuracy of hurricane intensity forecasts have remained about the same.
"One of our biggest challenges is in providing skillful intensity prediction in our one- to five-day forecasts," Chris Landsea, science and operations officer at the National Hurricane Center in Miami, said in an e-mail. "So any method for assisting NHC in these predictions is welcome."
Price says real-time lightning data have become far more accessible in recent years and can now be monitored continuously at any location around the globe.
Other scientists agree that the study has merits but say additional research is needed to determine whether a link exists. "Can the authors' observations be translated into improved forecasts of hurricane intensity? Perhaps, but not without much more work," meteorologist John Brown of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder, Colo., said in an e-mail.
Joe Golden, also an NOAA meteorologist, agrees: "This study is heavy on statistics and weak on the physical linkages between lightning and hurricanes."
http://www.usatoday.com/weather/research/2009-04-08-hurricane-lightning_N.htm

You need to ask first, i think the days of getting it free are over, but ask first or go to jail. It is a good thing trying to get grease for making bio-diesel, but ask first.
Duo accused of trying to steal restaurant grease April 8, 2009 - 9:22pm
WESTLAND, Mich. (AP) - Two Detroit-area men face larceny and trespassing charges after authorities say they tried to steal used restaurant grease. Westland police Sgt. Steve Borisch said 52-year-old Christopher Kind and 44-year-old Richard Tallent were arrested early Tuesday at a restaurant in the city 10 miles west of Detroit.
Borisch said an employee of a business that collects and recycles grease under contract with area restaurants had blocked the two with his truck. He told police 1,000 pounds of grease worth about $160 had been drained from a nearby eatery's grease tank.
The Detroit News and Detroit Free Press said Kind and Tallent are free on bond.
Borisch didn't immediately return a message asking if the suspects had attorneys.
http://wtop.com/?nid=456&sid=1645640

Eeyore's News and Views

Iran tests first nuclear plant
Iran was testing its long-delayed first nuclear power plant on Wednesday as it pressed ahead with its controversial atomic drive despite international sanctions.
The head of the Russian nuclear agency Sergei Kiriyenko, who is visiting Iran for the so-called pre-commissioning phase, said construction of the Russian-built plant at the Gulf port of Bushehr was now complete.
"The construction stage of the nuclear power plant is over, we are now in the pre-comissioning stage, which is a combination of complex procedures," Sergei Kiriyenko told reporters.
Iran is carrying out comprehensive tests of various equipment at the 1,000-megawatt plant which officials said involve "virtual fuel," not nuclear fuel rods.
Iran and Russia are also set to announce a date for the plant to go operational during the pre-commissioning ceremony, the official IRNA news agency had reported on Tuesday.
Tehran's ambitious nuclear drive has triggered a row with Western governments which suspect it is seeking to covertly build atomic weapons, a charge Iran strongly denies.
Russia took over construction at Bushehr in 1995 but completion of the plant was delayed for a number of reasons, in particular the nuclear standoff between and Iran and the international community.
Iran insists its nuclear drive is for peaceful purposes only and has rejected repeated UN Security Council calls for a halt to uranium enrichment, despite a three sets of sanctions being imposed for its defiance.
Enrichment is the process that makes nuclear fuel for power plants but can also be diverted to make the fissile core of an atomic bomb.
The start-up of the plant will be a leap forward in Iran's efforts to develop nuclear technology but is likely to further unnerve Western powers, which were rattled by the launch this month of an Iranian satellite into space on a home-built rocket.
Kiriyenko said on February 5 that the actual "technical launch" of the Bushehr plant was possible before the end of 2009 if there were no delays caused by "unforeseen circumstances."
The project was first launched by the US-backed shah of Iran in the 1970s using contractors from German company Siemens but was shelved after the Islamic revolution until Russia became involved.
The UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, said last week it had been informed by Tehran that the loading of fuel into the reactor was scheduled to take place during the second quarter of 2009.
The fuel, supplied by Moscow, is currently under IAEA seal.
All the main equipment at Bushehr -- which has been installed by Russian contractor Atomstroiexport.
"Virtual fuel which does not have uranium will be loaded in the core of the reactor," the deputy head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation, Mohammad Saeedi, told state television.
"The main units, especially the primary circuit, back-up systems and sub-units are tested to remove any failure that could happen in the commissioning stage," he said.
The IAEA, which has been investigating Iran's nuclear activities for six years, said in a report issued last Thursday that Tehran is continuing to enrich uranium, but has slowed down the expansion of its enrichment activities.
In all, IAEA inspectors had been able to verify that Iran has accumulated 839 kilogrammes (1,846 pounds) of low-enriched uranium. And Iran had told the IAEA that it had added another 171 kilogrammes this month.
Estimates vary, but analysts calculate that anywhere between 1,000-1,700 kilogrammes would be needed to convert into high-enriched uranium suitable for one bomb.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.ae2111b6fea6365feac3355561e7d261.111&show_article=1

Powerful alternatives on display at NYC convention
February 24, 2009 - 3:42pm
Evan Haning, wtop.com
WASHINGTON - Unexpectedly high electric bills are showing up at many homes in the Washington region, but cheaper power is on the way as New York's Greener Gadgets Convention hopes to demonstrate, when it opens Feb. 27.
New prototypes and products on display will include:
SunCat solar batteries recharge by soaking up sunlight. They are wrapped in flexible photovoltaic panels -- solar panels.
Samsung's Blue Earth phone has a full solar panel on its back which can generate enough power to recharge its battery. No more plugging in the cell phone at night. The Power Hog piggybank is an energy-saving teaching tool. This little piggybank plugs in the wall, and kids plug their TV or video game in its nose. It supplies all the power they need -- as long as they keep feeding it their coins.
The RITI Coffee Printer uses the grounds from your Breakfast Blend to make ink for your printer.
Flexible computer screens are very thin, and Hewlitt-Packard says they're indestructible.
Conference organizer Jill Fehrenbacher says heat pumps aren't the only things that run up your electric bill. "Electronics are responsible for 25 percent of home energy use."
http://wtop.com/?sid=1609488&nid=108

'Wonder gas' from cows cuts farm's fuel consumption
February 25, 2009 - 9:49am
UNDATED - New energy sources are being sought everyday in this country, but there's one, smelly energy source that a California dairy is now taking advantage of.
A California dairy farm has converted a pair of 18-wheelers to run on biomethane produced from cow manure, creating what is believed to be the nation's first cow pie-powered truck.
The dairy will use manure from 10,000 cows to generate 226,000 cubic feet of biomethane daily. That's enough to reduce the diesel fuel consumption on Rob Hilarides' farm by 650 gallons per day.
How in the world do you fill up a tractor-trailer truck with cow-pucky? The manure is flushed into holding tanks where bacteria breaks it down, then methane is pumped out to a refinery that removes the impurities. The methane is then pressurized and ready to pump.
Converting cow manure to biomethane, which some are even calling "wonder gas," cuts greenhouse gases in two ways. Burning biomethane methane produces less pollution. Also, producing biomethane cuts down on the methane released in the atmosphere by the manure itself.
Hilarides received a $600,000 grant from the California Air Resources Board's Alternative Fuel Incentive Program for his biomethane project. He now plans to convert five pick-up trucks to use the same fuel.
http://wtop.com/?nid=456&sid=1610180

Google’s Gmail service crashes across world
Google’s web-based email service, Gmail, has crashed this morning, leaving millions of users from Britain to Australia unable to send and receive messages.
The email service went offline at around 10.25am GMT, and the outage appears to have affected users throughout the UK as well as across Europe, and even as far afield as Australia and India.
It appears that only web-based Gmail access is affected, and users can continue to send and receive messages using other devices, such as mobile phones and third-party mail clients.
Google could not confirm what had caused the outage. “A number of users are having difficulty accessing Gmail,” said the company in a statement. “We are working to resolve the problem. We know how important Gmail is to users, so we take issues like this very seriously, and we apologise for the inconvenience.
“We are posting status updates about the problem at mail.google.com/support.”
Bloggers and Twitter users were quick to flag up issues with the service. Google’s web-based email system is usually fairly robust, and suffers little downtime, so many internet users were left baffled by the problems and at a loss as to what to do. Many Twitter messages offered workarounds to the problem, such as using mobile email applications, while other Gmail users said they would simply down tools and make a cup of tea and wait for the issue to be resolved.
Several major companies, including Telegraph Media Group and The Guardian, have switched to using the Google Apps suite in place of conventional desktop email. Google Apps allows users to work collaboratively on documents via the web, as well as share calendars, and provides instant messaging and chat alongside Gmail email services.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/technology/google/4797727/Googles-Gmail-service-crashes-across-world.html

Senator echoes Tea Party rally cry
'People have to show that they're not going to take it anymore'
February 24, 2009 10:05 pm Eastern
By Drew Zahn © 2009 WorldNetDaily
Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., a staunch opponent of the federal government's increase in size and spending legislated by President Obama's stimulus package, has issued a call for Americans to stand up – literally – and take back their freedom.
"I would think it's time to start thinking about peaceful demonstrations," DeMint said in an interview with Georgia's Augusta Chronicle. "The power of the people is there. Freedom is in the people's hands right now, and it's about to slip through."
DeMint lobbied his fellow Senators to resist the $787 billion stimulus package's new federal regulations in the areas of education, medicine, welfare spending and other arenas – all to no avail, as three of his fellow Republicans joined all the Democrats in the Senate to approve the massive spending bill by a vote of 60-38.
Disappointed by the outcome on Capitol Hill, DeMint is now calling on the common people to resist government actions he sees overflowing constitutional bounds.
"Really, I think the hope right now is not in Congress to make the right decision, because they're not," DeMint says. "It's just whether or not the American people are going to stand up and say enough is enough."
DeMint told the Chronicle despite the economic times that are pressing people into advocating the massive federal expansion, he still sees those that value their freedom over the government's handout, a group of people he called a "remnant."
"That's all it is," he concludes. "But that's all it takes. … Freedom is in our hands; it always has been. We've entrusted it to people in Washington, and increasingly they have picked our pockets and pulled power from us."
"People don't need to look to Washington," DeMint continued. "It's the people's government. And the people are going to have to take it back. They can do it with their voices and with their votes – and they may have to do it with their legs. People are going to have to show that they're not going to take it anymore."
What exactly, does DeMint advocate the "remnant" do? Apparently, make a noise in the government's seats of power.
"I think some of these folks," DeMint said, "might think twice if they had several hundred people standing outside one of their state offices asking, 'What in the world are you thinking?'"
DeMint's comments, as it happens, come at a time when many Americans are responding to a remarkably similar rally cry: the call to a new American Tea Party.
As WND reported, CNBC analyst Rick Santelli became a YouTube sensation after he spoke out against President Obama's proposed $275 billion deficit-financed homeowner bailout plan and other massive spending measures with a call for a new "tea party" from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.
In a nearly three-minute rant that drew approving hoots and comments from nearby traders, Santelli said the Obama administration's promotion of bad behavior must be causing the Founding Fathers to roll over in their graves.
"We're thinking of having a Chicago Tea Party in July," Santelli told CNBC "Squawk Box" co-anchor Joe Kernan. "All you capitalists who want to show up at Lake Michigan, I'm going to start organizing."
And while White House press secretary Robert Gibbs responded by downplaying Santini's argument, saying that "the verdict is in on that" and offering to buy Santelli a cup of coffee, "decaf," a wave of Americans have decided to take a page out of U.S. history's account of the Boston Tea Party and take Sentelli up on his suggestion.
An group called Top Conservatives on Twitter, for example, is planning protest "tea parties" for this Friday in Los Angeles, St. Louis, Trenton, N.J., and Lansing, Mich.
According to WND columnist Andrea Shea King, TCOT is planning additional Friday rallies and demonstrations in Washington, D.C., Fayetteville, N.C., Pittsburgh, Penn., San Diego, Calif., Fort Worth, Texas, Tulsa, Okla., Oklahoma City, Orlando, Fla., Omaha, Neb., Atlanta, Ga., and elsewhere in Missouri, with more cities joining in every day.
Floridians Unite is looking down the road and planning an Orlando Tea Party for March 21.
"This will be a peaceful rally to unite our voices and express the love that we have for our great nation and the principles it was founded on," states the Floridians Unite website. "We want to make our politicians hear loud and clear that we are tired of the bailouts, the wasteful Washington spending and the push towards the socialization of this country! We want less government! We want to decide where our hard-earned money goes instead of the elitist politicians in Washington taking it and using it to buy votes, doling it out to special interest groups and pork barrel projects! We want our constitutional rights preserved and protected, not trampled on!"
At the Pennsylvania Tea Party on April 11, organizers are inviting people to help them reenact the Boston Tea Party of Dec. 16, 1773, by bringing one tea bag each to Point State Park in Pittsburgh with plans of actually tossing the tea into the Alleghany, Monongahela and Ohio rivers.
"Somebody in our government needs to finally pay attention," said Fox News Channel host Glenn Beck on his radio program last week. "It is what I've been talking about that was coming for a very long time, and that is disenfranchisement, which will turn into anger and then turn into God knows what."
For Sen. Jim DeMint, he's hoping it will turn into "peaceful demonstrations."
Rick Santelli is hoping those demonstrations will result in real change.
During the televised segment where Santelli revived the term "tea party," CNBC panelist Wilbur Ross, chairman and CEO of WL Ross & Co., interjected, "Rick, I congratulate you on your new incarnation as a revolutionary leader."
"Somebody needs one," Santelli responded. "I'll tell you what, if you read our Founding Fathers, people like Benjamin Franklin and Jefferson, what we're doing in this country now is making them roll over in their graves."
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=89942

Eeyore's News and View

Solar dish may revolutionize energy production
Inventors: Dish is 'user-friendly, user-friendly, so anybody can build it
A new type of solar energy collector concentrates the sun into a beam that could melt steel. Researchers say the device could revolutionize global energy production.
The prototype is a 12-foot-wide mirrored dish was made from a lightweight frame of thin, inexpensive aluminum tubing and strips of mirror. It concentrates sunlight by a factor of 1,000 to produce steam.
"This is actually the most efficient solar collector in existence," said Doug Wood, an inventor based in Washington state who patented key parts of the dish's design — the rights to which he has signed over to a team of students at MIT.
To test the prototype this week, MIT mechanical engineering Spencer Ahrens put a plank of wood in the beam and generated an almost instant puff of smoke.
The thing does more than burn wood, of course. At the end of a 12-foot aluminum tube rising from the center of the dish is a black-painted coil of tubing that has water running through it. When the dish is pointing directly at the sun, the water in the coil flashes immediately into steam.

David Chandler / LiveScience Team leader Spencer Ahrens fastens mirrors in place using wire and plastic washers.

Ahrens and his teammates have started a company, RawSolar, to hopefully mass produce the dishes. They could be set up in huge arrays to provide steam for industrial processing, or for heating or cooling buildings, as well as to hook up to steam turbines and generate electricity, according to an MIT statement. Once in mass production, such arrays should pay for themselves within two years or so with the energy they produce, the students figure.
Wood, the inventor, said the students built the dish and improved on his design.
"They really have simplified this and made it user-friendly, so anybody can build it," he said.
Wood said small dishes work best because it requires much less support structure and costs less for a given amount of collection area.
"I've looked for years at a variety of solar approaches, and this is the cheapest I've seen," said MIT Sloan School of Management lecturer David Pelly, in whose class the project first took shape last fall. "And the key thing in scaling it globally is that all of the materials are inexpensive and accessible anywhere in the world."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25285030/

Nearly 40K job cuts announced as weakness persists
NEW YORK - This is the point in the recession where one round of job cuts leads to another.
Employers announced a total of nearly 40,000 job cuts Friday, almost all of them related to problems in other parts of the economy.
Circuit City Stores Inc. said it is liquidating, closing all its U.S. stores and cutting 30,000 jobs after being hobbled, in part, by declining consumer spending.
Rental car company Hertz Global Holdings Inc. is eliminating 4,000 jobs worldwide as families and business travelers forgo trips. Insurer WellPoint Inc. is cutting about 1,500 jobs, with rising unemployment leading to fewer people with health insurance.
For the moment, every economic action seems to precipitate a negative reaction. Consumers made nervous by job cuts, tumbling home prices and swooning stocks aren't spending. That's hurt retailers and manufacturers, who have closed stores, cutting their employees' jobs or hours, which has made workers more nervous, so they spend less. And the spiral continues.
Even falling gas prices will have hurt some workers. Petroleum company ConocoPhillips said Friday it will cut about 1,300 jobs, or 4 percent of its work force.
"There does seem to be a painful cycle emerging," said Dana Saporta, U.S. economist at investment bank Dresdner Kleinwort in New York. "Halting this cycle will require very aggressive fiscal and monetary policy."
Touring a factory in Ohio on Friday, President-elect Barack Obama promoted an $825 billion stimulus plan unveiled by House Democrats a day earlier.
"It's not too late to change course _ but only if we take dramatic action as soon as possible," Obama said. "The first job of my administration is to put people back to work and get our economy moving again."
With unemployment at a 16-year high of 7.2 percent in December and about 11 million Americans out of work, many economists expect worse news to come. Some say the unemployment rate could be headed for 10 percent _ or higher _ by year's end.
Some companies laying off workers also are cutting pay and stopping contributions to retirement accounts. Those steps typically decrease spending and investing by their remaining employees.
Advanced Micro Devices Inc. announced its third round of layoffs in a year Friday and will slash pay for top managers by 15 percent, other salaried workers by 10 percent and hourly workers' salaries by 5 percent.
In retail, Saks Inc. said Thursday it is slashing 1,100 jobs. The luxury retailer also eliminated merit raises in 2009, suspended matching contributions to its 401(k) plan for at least one year and suspended benefit accruals for workers who remain in the company's pension plan.
"Our financial performance is increasingly being challenged by some of the most difficult economic conditions our company has faced in its 84-year history," Steve Sadove, the company's chairman and chief executive officer, said in a statement. "It is our expectation that the economic environment will remain extremely challenging through 2009, if not beyond."
Cuts this week have come in nearly every sector. In consumer products, mobile phone company Motorola Inc. said Wednesday it will eliminate 4,000 jobs, its second round of layoffs in four months, because of dropping sales. When the latest cuts are complete, Motorola's work force will have shrunk by 18 percent from its 2007 level.
Other companies announcing job cuts Friday include: Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, Honda Motor Co. and scientific instrument maker Varian Inc. Drug company Pfizer Inc. may cut as many as 2,400 sales jobs, according to a various media reports.
Also announcing layoffs this week were paper and plastics maker MeadWestvaco Corp., software company Autodesk Inc., Textron Inc.'s Cessna Aircraft Co., hard-disk drive maker Seagate Technology and engine maker Cummins Inc.
Even Internet search leader Google Inc., which seemed impervious to the economy's troubles, earlier this week said it will close three engineering offices and cut 100 recruiters.
"Given the state of the economy, we recognized that we needed fewer people focused on hiring," Laszlo Bock, a Google vice president, wrote in a blog posting announcing the layoffs.
The cycle will stop when housing prices stabilize and some economic confidence returns, said David Wyss, Standard & Poor's chief economist.
"People cut back on spending on things they don't need, but there are always thing they do need," Wyss said. "Eventually, they use up the last light bulb in the closet and they have to buy some more. It takes a while."
http://www.onenewsnow.com/Headlines/Def ... ?id=388276

Citibank Top Donor to Obama Inauguration
Thursday, January 15, 2009 11:43 AM
By: Jim Meyers Article Font Size
Employees of Citibank, which received $45 billion in rescue funds in the federal bailout, have contributed the most to Barack Obama’s inauguration fund — at least $113,000 as of Wednesday.
And the bank is lobbying behind the scenes for more money from the second $350 billion installment of federal bailout funds, according to The New York Times.
Among the contributions from Citibank executives is $50,000 from Ray McGuire, the bank’s co-head of global investment banking, and $50,000 from Louis Susman, the recently retired vice chairman of Citigroup, the Huffington Post reports.
Susman also bundled $300,000 in donations for the inaugural committee, according to Politico.com.
Bundlers are fundraisers who collect checks from friends and associates and deliver them to a campaign or committee.
Citigroup employees also gave $586,000 to Obama during the 2008 election cycle.
“No doubt many donors give simply because they want to be part of history,” said Craig Holman, a campaign finance lobbyist for the non-partisan watchdog group Public Citizen.
“But donors and bundlers who represent special interests with business pending before the government and who dole out five-figure checks to the inaugural committee usually want a seat at the table with the new administration.”
Other bailed-out banks that have contributed to the inauguration fund include Goldman Sachs ($44,500) and JPMorgan Chase ($30,600).
Nearly 80 percent of the $35 million raised by Obama’s inaugural committee has come from just 211 bundlers, according to Public Citizen.
And as Newsmax reported last week, 378 donors had at that point contributed the maximum $50,000 allowed by Obama, raising almost 70 percent of the total.
http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/citi ... 71703.html

Obama team weighs government bank to ease crisis
Saturday January 17, 2009, 4:28 pm EST
By Tim Ahmann
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The incoming Obama administration is considering setting up a government-run bank to acquire bad assets clogging the financial system, a person familiar with the Obama team's thinking said on Saturday.
The U.S. Federal Reserve, Treasury and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp have been in talks about ways to ease a banking crisis that is once again deepening -- and a government-run "aggregator bank" is among the options.
Outgoing Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair both said on Friday a government bank was one of a number of ideas U.S. regulators had been discussing.
The source said advisers to President-elect Barack Obama, who takes office on Tuesday, were also considering the idea of an aggregator bank among a range of options that could be pursued.
David Axelrod, a top adviser to Obama, told Reuters the new administration would have something to say about a fresh approach to the financial crisis in "the next few days."
"I'm not going to get into the structure of how we're going to approach the revamped financial rescue package," Axelrod said after speaking to a conference of mayors in Washington.
"What we have to do is approach this with a lot more transparency on the front end."
In addition to steps to bolster banks, Obama officials want to aggressively attack the underlying causes of the credit crisis: the sharp downturn in the U.S. housing market and the related deterioration in mortgage-related assets.
"There are a range of things we're going to have to do to stabilize the financial community and part of it is going to involve housing, and part of it is going to involve how we approach this issue generally," Axelrod said.
BACK TO THE FUTURE
In outlining the idea of an aggregator bank on Friday, Bair and Paulson said the government could use money from the Treasury-administered $700 billion financial rescue fund to capitalize a new institution that would be able to absorb toxic assets now weighing down bank balance sheets.
The hope would be that taking these bad assets off the hands of banks would allow the banks to attract badly needed private capital and renew lending, the original intention behind the bailout fund known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).
"I think the key thing is assets purchases, and if you buy something, you have to put it somewhere," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com.
A surge in U.S. mortgage defaults led to a global credit crisis that has raged since the summer of 2007. Last week, Goldman Sachs estimated that losses worldwide could mount to $2 trillion, about double what has been realized so far.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown told the Financial Times on Saturday that banks need to reveal the true size of their losses as a step toward moving past the crisis.
While officials have been discussing leveraging money from the U.S. bailout fund, it is not clear whether the fund is large enough for the task at hand.
"They may very well have to come back to ask (Congress) for TARP Two," Zandi said.
ACTIONS NEEDED
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said on Tuesday it was critical to bolster the banking system as a complement to the effort underway in Washington to enact a huge package of tax cuts and spending to lift the recession-mired economy.
"Fiscal actions are unlikely to promote a lasting recovery unless they are accompanied by strong measures to further stabilize and strengthen the financial system," Bernanke said, laying out three possible ways to aid ailing banks.
The government could buy the assets, perhaps through so-called reverse auctions, as originally planned, but analysts said that is an extremely complicated endeavor and it no longer seems to have traction among policy-makers.
Bernanke also said the government could offer guarantees against losses on assets that would be ring-fenced but remain on bank balance sheets, a tactic the government has used to help Citigroup and Bank of America.
The third option would be to set up bad banks with government cash, an approach similar to the U.S. Resolution Trust Corp, which liquidated almost $400 billion in assets from more than 700 insolvent savings and loans institutions from 1989 to 1995.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Obama-team-weighs-government-rb-14091318.html

China reports two new cases of bird flu, one dead
18 Jan 2009 16:30:34 GMT
Source: Reuters
(Recasts with state media saying a woman had died)
By Ian Ransom
BEIJING, Jan 18 (Reuters) - A woman in eastern China has died and a two year-old girl is critically ill in northern China after becoming infected with bird flu, state media said on Sunday.
The 27-year-old woman from Jinan, capital of China's Shandong province, died on Saturday after falling ill on Jan. 5, Xinhua said, citing an unnamed official with the provincial health department. It gave her surname as Zhang.
The two-year-old girl, surnamed Peng, was found ill on Jan. 7 in central Hunan Province and taken to a hospital in her home province of Shanxi on Jan. 11, Xinhua news agency said, citing an unnamed official with the provincial health department.
After not reporting a single human infection in almost a year, China has now confirmed three cases in two weeks.
Health authorities said earlier this month a woman infected with bird flu had died in Beijing after buying ducks at a market in Hebei province, which surrounds the Chinese capital, sparking emergency checks of local poultry markets.
Experts said the case was not unexpected as the virus is more active during the cooler months between October and March, but pointed to holes in surveillance of the virus in poultry.
China's Agriculture Ministry said last week it had found no bird flu cases among poultry in Beijing or other areas surrounding the city during checks after the woman's death.
The H5N1 virus remains largely a disease among birds but experts fear it could change into a form that is easily transmitted among humans, and spark a pandemic that could kill millions of people worldwide.
With the world's biggest poultry population and hundreds of millions of backyard birds, China is seen as critical in the fight to contain bird flu.
GIRL CRITICAL
The national disease prevention and control center on Sunday confirmed Zhang, the 27-year-old woman, had been infected with bird flu, Xinhua said, but provided no other details.
China's Health Ministry said in a statement on its website (www.moh.gov.cn) that authorities had confirmed on Saturday that the two-year-old girl had been infected with the virus.
The statement did not say how the girl had become infected. There have not been any reports of outbreaks of the virus among birds in Hunan since May 2007.
"Currently, the girl's condition is critical. Shanxi health departments are currently fighting to save her with the guidance of a team of health experts," the Health Ministry said.
"All people who have had close contact with her are under strict medical observation," it said. It added that the World Health Organisation (WHO), and health authorities in Hong Kong, Macau and some other countries had been notified.
Calls placed to health departments in Shanxi province went unanswered.
WHO said China's Health Ministry had notified them of the toddler's infection, but could not provide more details. "We are staying in close contact with the Health Ministry," a spokeswoman from WHO's China office told Reuters.
Since the H5N1 virus resurfaced in Asia in 2003, it has infected 391 people, killing 247 of them, according to WHO figures released in mid-December.
The toddler's infection brings China's total to 33 human bird flu cases, of which at least 22 people have died. (Additional reporting by Lu Jiansheng; editing by Myra MacDonald)
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/LI541582.htm

Venezuela's Chavez urges tear gas against protests
Sun Jan 18, 2009 2:19am GMT
CARACAS, Jan 17 (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez ordered police on Saturday to use tear gas on anti-government protests that block roads, heating up a campaign for a referendum that could allow him to run for re-election.
Venezuelans will vote next month on a proposed change to the constitution that would allow Chavez, a foe of the United States, to seek re-election when his term ends in four years.
In 2007, voters rejected a package of political reforms that would have allowed him to run again for the top office.
Small groups of students in gas masks and wielding plastic shields protested the proposal this week. They threw stones at police, blocked a highway and were accused of setting fire to a national park. Chavez said police on his orders used tear gas to disperse the protest.
Chavez said the protest was part of a U.S.-backed plan to destabilize the oil-exporting nation ahead of the referendum.
On Saturday, he told security forces to use gas and water cannons at the first sign of trouble.
"Interior Ministry, spray them with gas and dissolve any disturbance. We cannot begin showing weakness as a government," Chavez said during a campaign meeting at a historic Venezuelan battleground.
Popular for raising the living standards of poor Venezuelans, Chavez has governed for a decade but says he needs 10 more years to extend social reforms in one of the United States' main oil suppliers.
Polls last month showed the new proposal had about 40 percent support, although pollsters expect that to rise.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/oilRpt/idUKN1731625820090118