Miracle-Gro for Pot Growers
June 14th, 2011Via: Wall Street Journal:
In an unlikely move for the head of a major company, Scotts Chief Executive Jim Hagedorn said he is exploring targeting medical marijuana as well as other niches to help boost sales at his lawn and garden company.
“I want to target the pot market,” Mr. Hagedorn said in an interview. “There’s no good reason we haven’t.”
Fukushima: 34,000 Children to Wear Radiation Dosimeters Around the Clock for Three Months
June 14th, 2011This is a giant, open air radiation experiment. Human subjects, in vivo, in situ.
Government issued dosimeters? Oh sure. I wonder what will happen to the data…
Via: AFP:
Japan’s Fukushima city said on Tuesday it would hand radiation dosimeters to 34,000 children to gauge their exposure from the crippled nuclear power plant about 60 kilometres (40 miles) away.
The city will hand the measuring devices to all children aged between four and 15 for three months from September so that they can wear them around the clock, an official at the city’s education board told AFP.
The city is outside the government’s 20-kilometre (12-mile) evacuation and no-go zone around the tsunami-hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, but many residents are concerned about radiation, he said.
“There have been fixed-spot radiation measurements but parents and citizens are concerned about individual exposure,” said the official.
“We also believe the distribution of dosimeters will help ease parents’ worries if they confirm their children’s exposure does not pose health risks.”
He added that radiation in the city had been below the official threshold for health risks, and said the children’s dosimeters would be read out once a month to assess cumulative radiation exposure.
Japanese Schools Asked to Map Fallout Contamination
June 14th, 2011Via: Reuters:
Fukushima is estimated to have released just 15 percent of the radiation at Chernobyl, but a complicated software modeling system created by the government to predict where the radiation would drift proved useless.
Under pressure to provide a more accurate picture of the contamination, the Ministry of Education has promised to complete a detailed survey of the evacuated area by October.
Since last week, local governments have been enlisted to provide daily reports of radiation.
More than 1,000 public schools in Fukushima were equipped with dosimeters in late May and teachers were asked to record hourly radiation readings to help create a contamination map.
But some experts say even these added steps are far from enough. “We need a new and more comprehensive system for monitoring radiation,” said Takumi Gotoh, a Nagoya-based cancer specialist. “The system that exists now is not sufficient.”
Saudi Oil Spare Capacity Shrinking Fast
June 14th, 2011Via: Reuters:
Saudi Arabia’s cushion of spare oil capacity is thinning far faster than widely believed, threatening to trigger price spikes in the months ahead, energy industry experts warned at the Reuters Global Energy and Climate Summit on Monday.
Concerns are growing over the kingdom’s ability to pump more oil beyond an anticipated summer boost, leaving the world exposed to any further unexpected disruptions. The world’s top exporter promised to produce as much oil as the market needs after the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries last week failed to reach a deal.
Saudi newspaper al-Hayat reported Saudi Arabia would boost output to 10 million barrels per day (bpd) in July, which Goldman Sachs’ global head of commodities research Jeff Currie said would leave only 500,000 bpd spare. Currie and his team have warned for months about overstated Saudi output capacity.
“If you get up to (10 mln bpd), you start to really create a very tight market relative to spare capacity,” he told the Reuters Global Energy and Climate Summit in London.
“But the question that’s more appropriate is when do you get to 9.5, when do you get to 10? Because when you start to look out over the horizon, their ability to create more flexibility in spare capacity increases tremendously.”
Egypt Debt Buoyed by Obama Guarantee for $1 Billion Eurobonds
June 14th, 2011How many houses of cards are being held up by the U.S. Dollar regime??? The thing is insidious. It has crept into most countries. This is why I’ve always maintained that it’s going to be impossible to determine the implications of a hard U.S. Dollar collapse.
Via: Bloomberg:
President Barack Obama’s guarantee on $1 billion of Egyptian Eurobonds is poised to reduce the country’s borrowing costs, helping the transition to democracy after six decades of autocratic rule.
The support that Obama pledged last month may cut yields on the five-year debt by 200 basis points, or the equivalent of $100 million, according to the median estimate of five fund managers surveyed by Bloomberg. Yields on Egypt’s one-year bills jumped to the highest level since November 2008 following the uprising that ousted President Hosni Mubarak in February. The country last sold international debt in April 2010.
“The American backing is a complete game changer,” Michael Cirami, who helps manage $12 billion in assets for Boston-based Eaton Vance Corp., said in a telephone interview. “There may be a spill-over effect that it’s going to reduce the risk premium of their non-guaranteed debt and help them re-enter the market eventually on their own.”
Secret Grand Jury Looking Into Atrocities at Abu Ghraib
June 14th, 2011Unless Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld wind up behind bars, it’s just another distraction. Come to think of it, even if they were thrown in prison, the other members of the Project for a New American Century would still be free to kill again.
Via: Time:
It has been nearly a decade since Manadel al-Jamadi, an Iraqi prisoner known as “the Iceman” — for the bungled attempt to cool his body and make him look less dead — perished in CIA custody at Abu Ghraib. But now there are rumbles in Washington that the notorious case, as well as other alleged CIA abuses, could be returning to haunt the agency. TIME has learned that a prosecutor tasked with probing the CIA — John Durham, a respected, Republican-appointed U.S. Attorney from Connecticut — has begun calling witnesses before a secret federal grand jury in Alexandria, Va., looking into, among other things, the lurid Nov. 4, 2003, homicide, which was documented by TIME in 2005.
TIME has obtained a copy of a subpoena signed by Durham that points to his grand jury’s broader mandate, which could involve charging additional CIA officers and contract employees in other cases. The subpoena says “the grand jury is conducting an investigation of possible violations of federal criminal laws involving War Crimes (18 USC/2441), Torture (18 USC 243OA) and related federal offenses.”
Vietnam Holds Live-Fire Exercises as Territorial Dispute with China Escalates
June 14th, 2011Via: Guardian:
China has warned other countries not to become involved in an escalating sea border dispute with Vietnam that reflects concern over Beijing’s increasing international power and confidence.
Experts say the stand-off between China and Vietnam – two of the six powers laying claim to a number of islands and their surrounding waters in the South China Sea – is the worst for more than two decades. Vietnam held live-fire exercises off its coast on Monday, in what analysts said was a response without precedent.
The complex dispute over sovereignty in the 1.2m square miles of sea has been simmering for decades, but has grown increasingly fractious in the past few years. Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Taiwan also lay claim to parts of the sea.
As much as a third of the world’s trade passes through the Malacca Strait. Countries are also competing to tap the sea’s energy resources and exploit its fish stocks.
Burzynski: Cancer Is Serious Business
June 14th, 2011Via: burzynskimovie.com:
Firewall for Medical Implants
June 14th, 2011Via: MIT News:
Millions of Americans have implantable medical devices, from pacemakers and defibrillators to brain stimulators and drug pumps; worldwide, 300,000 more people receive them every year. Most such devices have wireless connections, so that doctors can monitor patients’ vital signs or revise treatment programs. But recent research has shown that this leaves the devices vulnerable to attack: In the worst-case scenario, an attacker could kill a victim by instructing an implantable device to deliver lethal doses of medication or electricity.
At the Association for Computing Machinery’s upcoming Sigcomm conference, researchers from MIT and the University of Massachusetts-Amherst (UMass) will present a new system for preventing such attacks. The system would use a second transmitter to jam unauthorized signals in an implant’s operating frequency, permitting only authorized users to communicate with it. Because the jamming transmitter, rather than the implant, would handle encryption and authentication, the system would work even with existing implants.
Kitco Named By Revenue Quebec In Massive Tax Fraud Investigation, Seeks Receivership
June 14th, 2011I meant to post this a couple of days ago, but it was stuck in ‘draft’ status.
Via: Jesse’s Café Américain:
Here is a translation of the Revenue Quebec press release from The Financial Post.
The Post has also reported that Kitco has asked the court to appoint a receiver.
“Kitco Metals Inc. has never participated in any tax fraud, nor has it ever carried out any fictitious transactions. In all respects, Kitco vigorously contests all aspects of Revenu Québec’s investigation,” it said.
The company said it has asked Superior Court of Québec to appoint an interim receiver so that it may continue normal operations under the supervision of the accounting firm RSM Richter. The action was taken “to allow for the time required to vigorously contest Revenu Québec’s unfounded claims.”
It will be interesting to see if Kitco gets the receivership they have requested, and how this affects the settlements, if any, of their unallocated pools of gold and silver.
There may be more to this than appears on the surface based on the company’s request for the court to appoint a receivership so that it may “continue normal operations.”
