China to Create Largest Mega City in the World with 42 Million People
January 26th, 2011Via: Telegraph:
China is planning to create the world’s biggest mega city by merging nine cities to create a metropolis twice the size of Wales with a population of 42 million.
City planners in south China have laid out an ambitious plan to merge together the nine cities that lie around the Pearl River Delta.
The “Turn The Pearl River Delta Into One” scheme will create a 16,000 sq mile urban area that is 26 times larger geographically than Greater London, or twice the size of Wales.
The new mega-city will cover a large part of China’s manufacturing heartland, stretching from Guangzhou to Shenzhen and including Foshan, Dongguan, Zhongshan, Zhuhai, Jiangmen, Huizhou and Zhaoqing. Together, they account for nearly a tenth of the Chinese economy.
Over the next six years, around 150 major infrastructure projects will mesh the transport, energy, water and telecommunications networks of the nine cities together, at a cost of some 2 trillion yuan (£190 billion). An express rail line will also connect the hub with nearby Hong Kong.
Consumer Watchdog Wants Investigation Into Google’s Relationships with NSA, Other U.S. Federal Agencies
January 26th, 2011Via: PC World:
Consumer Watchdog, an advocacy group largely focused in recent years on Google’s privacy practices, has called on a congressional investigation into the Internet giant’s “cozy” relationship with U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration.
In a letter sent Monday, Consumer Watchdog asked Representative Darrell Issa, the new chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, to investigate the relationship between Google and several government agencies.
The group asked Issa to investigate contracts at several U.S. agencies for Google technology and services, the “secretive” relationship between Google and the U.S. National Security Agency, and the company’s use of a U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration airfield in California.
Federal agencies have also taken “insufficient” action in response to revelations last year that Google Street View cars were collecting data from open Wi-Fi connections they passed, Consumer Watchdog said in the letter.
$20 Billion in Counterfeit U.S. Government Bonds Confiscated in Italy
January 26th, 2011There’s some confusion with the currency specified. The headline indicates 20 billion euros and the body states 20 billion dollars.
I’m not able to find much more one this so far.
Via: AP:
Italy confiscates euro20 billion in fake US bonds
Carabinieri on travel break nab 6 carrying counterfeit US bonds worth euro20 billion
On Wednesday January 26, 2011, 10:15 am
Italian authorities have confiscated $20 billion in counterfeit U.S. government bonds.
Authorities say the bonds were of a quality that theoretically could have defrauded financial institutions.
But a stop at a highway rest area where a group of Carabinieri military police were taking a break proved to be the undoing of the group.
A Carabinieri statement said officers did a routine search of the vehicles after the “suspicious” behaviour of the men and found “to their surprise” a briefcase with 40 bonds each valued at $500 million.
Officials said Wednesday that U.S. officials confirmed the bonds were counterefeit. The six men are under investigation for receiving stolen goods.
Related:
Two Japanese Carrying $134 Billion in Fake Bonds
2011 DEFICIT TO HIT $1.5 TRILLION
January 26th, 2011Via: AP:
A new estimate predicts the federal budget deficit will hit almost $1.5 trillion this year, a stunning new record.
The latest figures from the Congressional Budget Office are up from previous estimates because Congress and President Barack Obama teamed up in December on bipartisan legislation to extend Bush-era tax cuts that were due to expire. The new estimates will only add fuel to a raging debate over cutting spending and looming legislation that’s required to allow the government to borrow more money.
New-Home Sales in 2010: Lowest in 47 Years
January 26th, 2011Via: AP:
Buyers purchased the fewest number of new homes last year on records going back 47 years.
The Commerce Department says sales for all of 2010 totaled 321,000, a drop of 14.4 percent from the 375,000 homes sold in 2009. It was the fifth consecutive year that sales have declined after hitting record highs for the five previous years when the housing market was booming.
Postal Service Could Close Thousands of Post Offices
January 26th, 2011Via: Wall Street Journal:
Now, with the red ink showing no sign of stopping, the postal service is hoping to ramp up a cost-cutting program that is already eliciting yelps of pain around the country. Beginning in March, the agency will start the process of closing as many as 2,000 post offices, on top of the 491 it said it would close starting at the end of last year. In addition, it is reviewing another 16,000—half of the nation’s existing post offices—that are operating at a deficit, and lobbying Congress to allow it to change the law so it can close the most unprofitable among them.
Research Credit: Matt
Bank of England: Standard of Living to Plunge at Fastest Rate Since 1920s
January 26th, 2011Via: Telegraph:
Households face the most dramatic squeeze in living standards since the 1920s, the Governor of the Bank of England warned, as he reacted to the shock disclosure that the economy was shrinking again.
Families will see their disposable income eaten up as they “pay the inevitable price” for the financial crisis, Mervyn King warned.
With wages failing to keep pace with rising inflation, workers’ take- home pay will end the year worth the same as in 2005 — the most prolonged fall in living standards for more than 80 years, he claimed.
Research Credit: neverwas
Building a Super Robust Robot Hand
January 26th, 2011Click through for photos.
Via: IEEE Spectrum:
German researchers have built an anthropomorphic robot hand that can endure collisions with hard objects and even strikes from a hammer without breaking into pieces.
In designing the new hand system, researchers at the Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics, part of the German Aerospace Center (DLR), focused on robustness. They may have just built the toughest robot hand yet.
The DLR hand has the shape and size of a human hand, with five articulated fingers powered by a web of 38 tendons, each connected to an individual motor on the forearm.
The main capability that makes the DLR hand different from other robot hands is that it can control its stiffness. The motors can tension the tendons, allowing the hand to absorb violent shocks. In one test, the researchers hit the hand with a baseball bat—a 66 G impact. The hand survived.
…
The hand has a total of 19 degrees of freedom, or only one less than the real thing, and it can move the fingers independently to grasp varied objects. The fingers can exert a force of up to 30 newtons at the fingertips, which makes this hand also one of the strongest ever built.
Another key element in the DLR design is a spring mechanism connected to each tendon. These springs give the tendons, which are made from a super strong synthetic fiber called Dyneema, more elasticity, allowing the fingers to absorb and release energy, like our own hands do. This capability is key for achieving robustness and for mimicking the kinematic, dynamic, and force properties of the human hand.
During normal operation, the finger joints can turn at about 500 degrees per second. By tensioning the springs, and then releasing their energy to produce extra torque, the joint speed can reach 2000 degrees per second. This means that this robot hand can do something few others, if any, can: snap its fingers.
At Least 11 Cops Shot in 24 Hours
January 25th, 2011There aren’t many national headlines about the nonstop crimes committed by the police around the U.S.
But, for our purposes, the number of cops that wind up dead on an annual basis (as a result of shootings and other assaults) is a fairly simple collapse metric to track, and I have been doing that. So far, the data is unremarkable. As collapse accelerates, though, more armed and desperate people are going to wind up in deadly confrontations with police.
Whether or not 2011 will represent a sort of “break out” in the data remains to be seen.
I use the numbers published by Officer Down Memorial Page in my research. I’d suggest keeping an eye on this. It’s a simple (and brutal) indicator of America’s move into collapse.
Via: MSNBC:
A spate of shooting attacks on law enforcement officers has authorities concerned about a war on cops.
In just 24 hours, at least 11 officers were shot. The shootings included Sunday attacks at traffic stops in Indiana and Oregon, a Detroit police station shooting that wounded four officers, and a shootout at a Port Orchard, Wash., Wal-Mart that injured two deputies. On Monday morning, two officers were shot dead and a U.S. Marshal was wounded by a gunman in St. Petersburg, Fla.
On Thursday, two Miami-Dade, Fla., detectives were killed by a murder suspect they were trying to arrest.
“It’s not a fluke,” said Richard Roberts, spokesman for the International Union of Police Associations. “There’s a perception among officers in the field that there’s a war on cops going on.”
Egypt Simmering as Protests Spread; Regime Blocks Access to Twitter
January 25th, 2011Via: Christian Science Monitor:
Egypt’s protests today appear to be the largest public call for democratic reform and an end to the Mubarak regime for years.
The scope of Egypt’s protests today, calling for greater freedom and downfall of strongman President Hosni Mubarak, is unprecedented.
Though tens of thousands took to the streets of Cairo in 2005 calling for democratic reform, today’s protests are far beyond the action in the capital. Reporters and activists on the scene in Cairo say there was a spirit of anger and defiance in the crowds and there were protests of varying sizes in at least a half-dozen Egyptian cities.
By late afternoon, thousands of protesters converged in Tahrir Square, not far from the US embassy, the Interior Ministry and the five-star hotels looming over the Nile. Police water cannons and tear gas barrages did little to deter them.
For now, it’s hard to imagine the aging Mr. Mubarak and the apparatus of the state being swept from power in the same way that President Ben Ali was chased from Tunis. Egyptian mIlitary spending is much higher than in Tunisia and the circle of people who have everything to lose if the system is upended much wider.
But the riveting images beamed into millions of Egyptian homes of the Tunisian uprising appear to have led to a shift in the public consciousness, at least for today. A small group of leftists and democracy activists have been trying to organize protests like today’s for years, but have generally failed to get large numbers out on the streets. Average Egyptians, mired in poverty and afraid of the consequences of participating in protests they suspect are doomed to failure, have stayed away.
That clearly changed today. Activists were reporting on their twitter feeds (until twitter service was shut down in Egypt at about 3:30 pm local time) that thousands from working class neighborhoods like Shubra, a warren-like neighborhood with millions of mostly poor residents, joined the protest marchers as they passed, and joined in shouts for Mubarak, his son and presumed heir Gamal, and Interior Minister Habib el-Adly to be driven from power.
