The Human Genome Contains a Million Years Worth of Population Data
July 14th, 2011Via: io9:
Our genes don’t just help determine who we are — they also preserve an incredibly ancient record of who our ancestors were. Our genomes can actually reveal human population sizes dating all the way back to before humans even existed.
Richard Durbin of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and Heng Li of the Broad Institute examined the handful of complete human genome sequences. Specifically, they examined how the differences between how particular genes from mothers and fathers were expressed — many differences in gene expression would suggest the family lines diverged a long time ago, while relatively few differences would indicate the two were closely related in the recent past.
Gold at Record, Make or Break
July 13th, 2011Warning: This is not a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any financial instrument.
Update: Pivot Established Above Previous Record High
Intraday support at $1577.46, above previous record high of 1575.41. Bullish.
Spot Gold, 30 Minute Interval
—End Update—
It’s trying to break out. Immediate term, beware of a double top off the May 2 high.
Spot Gold, Daily Interval
Drama: Obama Says He Cannot Guarantee Social Security Checks Will Go Out on August 3
July 13th, 2011Those checks will go out. If they don’t, it’s a Zombie Apocalypse.
Via: CBS:
President Obama on Tuesday said he cannot guarantee that retirees will receive their Social Security checks August 3 if Democrats and Republicans in Washington do not reach an agreement on reducing the deficit in the coming weeks.
“I cannot guarantee that those checks go out on August 3rd if we haven’t resolved this issue. Because there may simply not be the money in the coffers to do it,” Mr. Obama said in an interview with CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley, according to excerpts released by CBS News.
The Obama administration and many economists have warned of economic catastrophe if the United States does not raise the amount it is legally allowed to borrow by August 2.
‘Emergency’ Declared in Arizona Town Over Corruption Allegations
July 13th, 2011Arizona: Woman Arrested for Speaking at City Council Meeting
Via: AP:
The far western Arizona town of Quartzsite was in a state of upheaval Monday after the town council ousted the mayor from power and declared a state of emergency, all over an online video that shows a woman being arrested.
Mayor Ed Foster told The Associated Press on Monday that the town council held a last-minute meeting that was closed to the public Sunday night, declaring a state of emergency in the 3,600-person town just east of the California city of Blythe.
The council’s declaration put police Chief Jeff Gilbert in charge, making Foster the “deputy chief executive of nothing right now,” he said. It also allows the five-member council to meet without public notice and suspend all public comment at the meetings until they declare the state of emergency over.
“I’m going to tell you frankly, this council is out of control,” Foster said. “The chief has been out of control for some time and I’ve asked the state government to help a number of times,” to no avail.
Foster described the government and Gilbert as corrupt and abusive of their power, and said all their recent actions are frantic efforts to cover up millions of dollars of money from lining some of their pockets.
Both Gilbert’s and the town hall’s phone numbers rang busy most of the day Monday, and all five council members and the town manager did not immediately return email requests for comment.
Research Credit: minerva
Samsung Netbook NP-NC215-A01US with Built In Solar Panel
July 13th, 2011This might be of interest to the many Cryptogon readers who, shall we say, have no fixed address. Since grabbing an unauthorized charge can result in a jail sentence, this is just one more way to avoid a potential encounter with the filth.
This netbook will ship in August.
Via: Amazon:
Samsung NP-NC215-A01US 10.1-Inch Netbook
More: Engadget
EMERGENCY EU MEETING: POSSIBILITY OF GREEK DEFAULT
July 12th, 2011Via: Reuters:
European Union leaders are poised to hold an emergency summit after finance ministers acknowledged for the first time that some form of Greek default may be needed to cut Athens’ debts and stop contagion to Italy and Spain.
“There will be an extra summit this Friday,” a senior euro zone diplomat told Reuters, suggesting policymakers have been seized with a new sense of urgency after markets started targeting Italian assets.
JP Morgan Uses Field-Programmable Gate Array Supercomputer to Cut Credit Risk Analysis from 8 Hours to 12 Seconds
July 12th, 2011Via: ComputerworldUK:
JP Morgan is now able to run risk analysis and price its global credit portfolio in near real-time after implementing application-led, High Performance Computing (HPC) capabilities developed by Maxeler Technologies.
The investment bank worked with HPC solutions provider Maxeler Technologies to develop an application-led, HPC system based on Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) technology that would allow it to run complex banking algorithms on its credit book faster.
…
“Being able to run the book in 12 seconds end-to-end and get a value on our multi-million dollar book within 12 seconds is a huge commercial advantage for us,” Stephen Weston, global head of the Applied Analytics group in the investment banking division of JP Morgan, said at a recent lecture to Stanford University students.
“If we can compress space, time and energy required to do these calculations then it has hard business values for us. It gives us ultimately a competitive edge, the ability to run our risk more frequently, and extracting more value from our books by understanding more fully is a real commercial advantage for us.”
The faster processing times means that JP Morgan can now respond to changes in its risk position more rapidly, rather than just looking back at the risk profile of the previous day, which was produced by overnight analyses.
The speed also allows the bank to identify potential problems and try to deal with them in advance. For example, JP Morgan can now run potential scenarios to assess its exposure to problems such as the Irish or Greek bank problems, which Weston said “wouldn’t have even been thinkable” before.
…
The project took JP Morgan around three years, and the bank is now looking to push it into other areas of the business, such as high frequency trading.
Ahmed Wali Karzai, Brother of Afghan President, Killed by Trusted Guard
July 12th, 2011Update: Bodyguard Who Killed Karzai’s Brother Was Trusted CIA Contact
Via: Independent:
The bodyguard who assassinated President Hamid Karzai’s brother had been working closely with US Special Forces and the CIA before he was recruited by the Taliban, raising fears over the Islamist movement’s increasingly sophisticated intelligence apparatus which has managed to threaten the inner circles of power in Afghanistan.
Sardar Mohammad, who shot Ahmed Wali Karzai at his home in Kandahar City on Tuesday, also held regular meetings with British officials, and had two brothers-in-law serving in a CIA-run paramilitary unit, the Kandahar Strike Force, the Washington Post reported yesterday.
—End Update—
I don’t know if this assassination has anything to do with Ahmed Karzai’s links to heroin trafficking, but here’s an excerpt from a 2008 New York Times piece that’s pretty interesting:
When Afghan security forces found an enormous cache of heroin hidden beneath concrete blocks in a tractor-trailer outside Kandahar in 2004, the local Afghan commander quickly impounded the truck and notified his boss.
Before long, the commander, Habibullah Jan, received a telephone call from Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of President Hamid Karzai, asking him to release the vehicle and the drugs, Mr. Jan later told American investigators, according to notes from the debriefing obtained by The New York Times. He said he complied after getting a phone call from an aide to President Karzai directing him to release the truck.
Two years later, American and Afghan counternarcotics forces stopped another truck, this time near Kabul, finding more than 110 pounds of heroin. Soon after the seizure, United States investigators told other American officials that they had discovered links between the drug shipment and a bodyguard believed to be an intermediary for Ahmed Wali Karzai, according to a participant in the briefing.
The assertions about the involvement of the president’s brother in the incidents were never investigated, according to American and Afghan officials, even though allegations that he has benefited from narcotics trafficking have circulated widely in Afghanistan.
Via: Washington Post:
The half-brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai was assassinated by a trusted local security official Tuesday, a political killing that was immediately claimed by the Taliban and makes grimly clear the vulnerability of Afghan officials as the United States prepares to reduce its military presence.
Ahmed Wali Karzai — head of Kandahar’s provincial council and widely considered the most powerful man in southern Afghanistan — was meeting with tribal elders and politicians in his heavily fortified home in downtown Kandahar city Tuesday morning, according to two people at the house at the time.
Sardar Mohammad, a longtime confidant and commander of the police post near Karzai’s ancestral home, arrived and requested a private discussion, officials said. Karzai and Mohammad left for another room, and soon three gunshots rang out.
Agha Lalai Destegeri, the deputy provincial council chief, said he rushed in to find Karzai shot in the head, chest and hand.
Karzai’s other guards entered the room and shot and killed Mohammad, officials said. A bleeding Karzai was driven by his entourage a short distance across town to Mirwais Hospital, but he did not survive, Destegeri and other Afghan officials said.
Recovery: Cisco to Cut as Many as 10,000 Jobs
July 12th, 2011Via: Bloomberg:
Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO), the largest networking-equipment company, may cut as many as 10,000 jobs, or about 14 percent of its workforce, to revive profit growth, according to two people familiar with the plans.
The cuts include as many as 7,000 jobs that would be eliminated by the end of August, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the plans aren’t final. Cisco is also providing early-retirement packages to about 3,000 workers who accepted buyouts, the people said.
‘Vaccination Program’ in Pakistan Was a CIA Covert Operation
July 12th, 2011The parts about Bin Laden are random gibberish in my opinion. For me, the key information is: CIA ran a vaccination program as a covert operation. Full stop.
How many other doctors around the world take CIA bribes to run ‘vaccination programs’?
Questions, questions.
Via: Guardian:
The CIA organised a fake vaccination programme in the town where it believed Osama bin Laden was hiding in an elaborate attempt to obtain DNA from the fugitive al-Qaida leader’s family, a Guardian investigation has found.
As part of extensive preparations for the raid that killed Bin Laden in May, CIA agents recruited a senior Pakistani doctor to organise the vaccine drive in Abbottabad, even starting the “project” in a poorer part of town to make it look more authentic, according to Pakistani and US officials and local residents.
The doctor, Shakil Afridi, has since been arrested by the Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) for co-operating with American intelligence agents.
