Prince Andrew Is Named in Underage Sex Lawsuit
January 3rd, 2015Via: Washington Post:
Prince Andrew was named this week in an ongoing lawsuit brought by a group of women who claim they were trafficked to the world’s rich and powerful as part of an alleged underage “sex slave” ring run by American investment banker Jeffrey Epstein.
The allegation, found in a court filing this week, prompted Buckingham Palace to issue an unusual statement to the Guardian, noting that the allegation surfaced in “long-running and ongoing civil proceedings in the United States to which the Duke of York is not a party.” The statement continues: “As such we would not comment in detail. However, for the avoidance of doubt, any suggestion of impropriety with underage minors is categorically untrue.”
As part of a 2008 plea deal with prosecutors, Epstein spent 13 months in prison on a state charge of soliciting prostitutes. According to unsealed documents pertaining to that deal, Epstein was the subject of a federal investigation probing allegations that the powerful figure abused dozens of underage girls at his Palm Beach mansion. The deal effectively allowed him to avoid potential federal charges stemming from the investigation.
The lawsuit, filed in 2008 by two anonymous alleged victims, charges federal prosecutors with violating a statute by not consulting with them before finalizing the plea deal. The latest filing is a motion to expand that existing case to include the allegations of two more women.
Those women named Prince Andrew, Alan Dershowitz and other powerful associates of Epstein as participants in the alleged sexual abuse ring.
Japan 2014 Births Fall to Lowest on Record
January 2nd, 2015Via: Financial Times:
Deaths outnumbered births in Japan last year by the widest margin on record, underscoring the scale of the challenge facing the government as it tries to ensure a dwindling pool of workers can support growing ranks of pensioners.
The urgency of getting the country’s finances in order was highlighted this week as preliminary figures indicated that Japan’s population fell by a record 268,000 in 2014.
…
If the current nationwide fertility rate of 1.4 stays unchanged, a task force warned in November, then Japan’s population of 127m would drop by almost a third by 2060 and by two-thirds by 2110.
Even if the fertility rate were to rapidly rise to the replacement level of 2.07 by 2030 and then stay there, the population would keep falling for another 50 years before stabilising at a little less than 100m.
Relaxing the nation’s relatively strict controls on immigration could provide some relief, but Mr Abe has made it clear that he is “flatly opposed to opening the door”, said Masatoshi Kikuchi, a strategist at Mizuho Securities in Tokyo.
Sugar as a Source of Disease
January 2nd, 2015Here’s an excerpt from an email to my sister:
As for us being weird by American standards: We’re weird by NZ standards too. For example, we go to almost no birthday parties for other children because people are drinking Pepsi and eating baked atrocities with sprinkles on top. MSG sausages, etc.
One of Owen’s friends had her birthday party and Becky decided to try to go.
We did ok until the cake came out (it was bright green with some sort of candy dots on top) and Becky just grabbed everything and we fled like Mexicans on the freeway signs in San Diego.
One of our other friends (also homeschooling) was there with her children and they eat like we do. She also immediately packed up and took off when she saw that cake.
haha
Besides avoiding refined sugar, the fact that we don’t eat bread or pasta is too much to try to explain to people. It’s easier to just stay home.
Via: Medical Xpress:
Is sugar making us sick? A team of scientists at the University of California in San Francisco believes so, and they’re doing something about it. They launched an initiative to bring information on food and drink and added sugar to the public by reviewing more than 8,000 scientific papers that show a strong link between the consumption of added sugar and chronic diseases.
The common belief until now was that sugar just makes us fat, but it’s become clear through research that it’s making us sick. For example, there’s the rise in fatty-liver disease, the emergence of Type 2 diabetes as an epidemic in children and the dramatic increase in metabolic disorders.
…
Added sugars, Schmidt said, are sugars that don’t occur naturally in foods. They are found in 74 percent of all packaged foods, have 61 names and often are difficult to decipher on food labels. Although the U.S. Food and Drug Administration requires food companies to list ingredients on packaging, the suggested daily values of natural and added sugars can’t be found.
The FDA is considering a proposal to require food manufacturers to list information on sugars in the same way they do for fats, cholesterol, sodium, carbohydrates and protein. But because so much added sugar is dumped into so many products, one average American breakfast of cereal would likely exceed a reasonable daily limit.
“SugarScience shows that a calorie is not a calorie but rather that the source of a calorie determines how it’s metabolized,” said pediatric endocrinologist Robert Lustig, a member of the SugarScience team and the author of “Fat Chance: Beating the Odds Against Sugar, Processed Food, Obesity, and Disease.” Lustig said that more than half of the U.S. population is sick with metabolic syndrome, a group of risk factors for chronic diseases such as heart disease, diabetes and liver disease that are directly related to the excessive consumption of added sugars in the Western diet.
More: SugarScience
Ten Warning Signs of a Market Crash in 2015
January 2nd, 2015As a group, Cryptogon readers probably have pretty low exposure to stocks, but just in case…
Via: Telegraph:
Professional investors are already making for the exit. The Bloomberg smart money flow index tracks the market movements at the end of the trading day on the Dow Jones, when professional investors tend to make their move. The index showed heavy buying activity from 2009 onwards as professional investors followed central banks’ money into the markets, achieving record gains during the past five years. That trend was reversed from the beginning of 2014 and the smart money is now making for the exit, as the S&P 500 carries on rising to new record highs.
Jeb Bush Resigns All Board Memberships
January 1st, 2015Via: International Business Times:
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s office announced Wednesday that he has resigned from all of his corporate and nonprofit board memberships, effective Dec. 31, ahead of what seems like an increasingly likely presidential bid in 2016.
The disclosure, which came in an email from a Bush aide to the Washington Post, also revealed that Bush is reviewing his involvement in other businesses in which he is a principal or part owner, including consulting firm Jeb Bush & Associates, and Britton Hill Partnership, a business advisory group.
Spokesperson Kristy Campbell told The Associated Press that Bush’s review of his business interests is “a natural next step as he turns his focus to gauging whether there is support for a potential candidacy.”
The move comes after Bush announced earlier this month that he was “actively exploring” a bid for the presidency, and that he would be forming a leadership PAC in January 2015. Bush had announced that he was stepping down from roles with other organizations, including Barclays Plc. and Tenet Healthcare earlier this week.
The Rise of The 1099 Economy: More Americans Are Becoming Their Own Bosses
December 31st, 2014Via: Forbes:
While the economy has been miserable for small business, and many larger ones as well, the ranks of the self-employed have been growing. According to research by Economic Modeling Specialists International, the number of people who primarily work on their own has swelled by 1.3 million since 2001 to 10.6 million, a 14% increase.
This rise is partially reflective of hard times, and many of the self-employed earn only modest livings in fields such as childcare and construction. However the shift to self-employment is likely to accelerate in the future, and into higher-paying professions, for reasons including the ubiquity of the Internet, which makes it easier for some types of business to use independent contractors, as well as the reluctance of large firms to hire full-time employees with benefits.
Urban analyst Bill Fulton, who has looked into this issue, concludes we may be seeing a fundamental change in how the economy operates. “Even though there may not be jobs in the conventional sense, there is still work,” Fulton notes. “That’s the whole idea of the 1099 economy. It’s just a different way of organizing the economy.”
Nearly Half of Brits on Prescription Drugs
December 31st, 2014Via: Russia Today:
Nearly half of all Britons are taking prescription medication on a regular basis according to new figures produced by the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC)
According to the HSCIC, 50 percent of women and 43 percent of men are taking specialised drugs to combat physical and mental illnesses, with cholesterol-lowering statins and anti-depressants being among the most common drugs taken by Brits.
According to the HSE report, doctors issued on average 18.7 prescriptions per person in England during 2013, costing the NHS more than £15bn per year.
While the report does not count issuing of contraceptives and anti-smoking medication, nearly a third of the prescriptions were related to regulating blood pressure, with more than 65 million being issued in one year alone.
Additionally, more than one in 10 women said they were taking medication to do with mental health issues, with 17 percent of women from low income backgrounds taking anti-depressants, compared to 7 percent of women in higher income brackets.
Research Credit: almaverdad2
New Solar Power Material Converts 90 Percent of Captured Light Into Heat
December 31st, 2014Via: Physorg:
A multidisciplinary engineering team at the University of California, San Diego developed a new nanoparticle-based material for concentrating solar power plants designed to absorb and convert to heat more than 90 percent of the sunlight it captures. The new material can also withstand temperatures greater than 700 degrees Celsius and survive many years outdoors in spite of exposure to air and humidity. Their work, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s SunShot program, was published recently in two separate articles in the journal Nano Energy.
By contrast, current solar absorber material functions at lower temperatures and needs to be overhauled almost every year for high temperature operations.
“We wanted to create a material that absorbs sunlight that doesn’t let any of it escape. We want the black hole of sunlight,” said Sungho Jin, a professor in the department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering. Jin, along with professor Zhaowei Liu of the department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Mechanical Engineering professor Renkun Chen, developed the Silicon boride-coated nanoshell material. They are all experts in functional materials engineering.
The novel material features a “multiscale” surface created by using particles of many sizes ranging from 10 nanometers to 10 micrometers. The multiscale structures can trap and absorb light which contributes to the material’s high efficiency when operated at higher temperatures.
Oil Set for Biggest Slump Since 2008 as OPEC Battles U.S. Shale
December 31st, 2014Via: Bloomberg:
Oil headed for the biggest annual decline since the 2008 global financial crisis as U.S. producers and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries cede no ground in their battle for market share amid a supply glut.
Futures slid as much as 1.1 percent in New York, bringing losses for 2014 to 46 percent. U.S. guidelines allowing overseas sales of ultralight oil without government approval may boost the country’s export capacity and “throw a monkey wrench” into Saudi Arabia’s plan to curb American output, according to Citigroup Inc. U.S. crude inventories are forecast to rise to the highest level for this time of the year in three decades.
Monsanto’s Roundup and Autism
December 30th, 2014Via: The Complete Patient:
Correlations are not causation, but when they plot out as clearly as Stephanie Seneff has plotted them out with regard to autism and glyphosate, the key ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup weed killer, they are impossible to ignore.
Seneff is a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) who has been running around the country showing a fairly dense slide show about the correlations attached to ghyphosate. On Thursday evening, she was in Groton, MA, at a special panel presentation about GMOs, sponsored by Groton Wellness and its founder, food rights activist and holistic dentist Jean Nordin-Evans. I was one of the panelists at the presentation, but as far as the audience was concerned, Seneff was the main act, in large measure because of the correlations she demonstrated, and the discomfort she aroused.
Once she had completed her presentation, all of the 70 or so people in attendance were squirming, likely because they now had serious misgivings about serving their kids, or themselves, anything with corn or soy, which are nearly all genetically modified (GMO) and thus tainted with Roundup and its glyphosate. (These GMO crops are bred to resist damage from Roundup, which destroys the weeds around them.)
If glyphosate is as harmful as Seneff’s correlations suggest, then its poisonous effects extend nearly everywhere–to all soft drinks and candies sweetened with corn syrup and all chips and cereals filled with soy, not to mention cattle and chicken fed soy. But it isn’t just corn and soy, it is wheat as well, since it is nearly all sprayed with Roundup just prior to being harvested, according to Seneff….which means all non-organic bread is tainted.
Not surprisingly, Monsanto argues that glyphosate is safe; it has a page linking to denials and assertions at its web site that glyphosate isn’t harming people.
The key slide in Seneff’s presentation is the one above, showing the uncanny correlation between heavy use of glyphosate (via Roundup), begun in 1990 and increased sharply each year following, and the explosion of autism, such that we have gone from one in 5,000 children being diagnosed back in 1975 to one in 68 today.
“At today’s rate, by 2025, one in two children will be autistic,” Seneff said Thursday. Presumably, if Roundup and glyphosate accelerate their spread in the U.S. and around the world, the predicted one-in-two autism cases could happen even sooner.
