Nigeria Considering $250 Million Halliburton Offer to Keep Cheney Out of Prison
December 14th, 2010Maybe Halliburton said they could have him for $500 million?
Via: Reuters:
Nigeria’s anti-corruption police said on Tuesday it may drop bribery charges against former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney and oil services firm Halliburton after the company offered to pay a fine. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) said it met with officials representing Cheney and Halliburton in London last week after filing 16-count charges at a federal high court in Abuja in a case dating back to the mid-1990s.
Halliburton, which has said the Nigerian charges have no legal basis, could not immediately be reached to comment on the outcome of the meeting. But EFCC spokesman Femi Babafemi said an offer had been made to pay fines totalling up to $250 million.
“They have made offers of fines to be paid in penalties. They offered to pay $120 million in addition to the repatriation of $130 million trapped in Switzerland,” Babafemi said.
“It will need to be ratified by the government and we expect a decision by the end of the week,” he said.
Sunscreen Chemicals Absorbed Into Body, Found in 85 Percent of Human Milk Samples
December 14th, 2010Via: Natural News:
…the investigation, conducted by a Swiss National Research Program called Endocrine Disrupters: Relevance to Humans, Animals and Ecosystems, found UV filters, which are common in cosmetics and sunscreens, were present in 85 percent of human milk samples tested. What does this mean for adults, much less babies taking in this contaminated milk? The alarming truth is, no one knows.
For the study, during the fall and summer of 2004, 2005 and 2006, human milk was sampled from mothers who had given birth at the University Women’s Hospital in Basel, Switzerland. The research participants also answered detailed questionnaires in order to document their use of different types of cosmetic products and sunscreens.
When the women’s breast milk was analyzed, tests revealed the milk samples contained a huge list of chemicals including persistent organic pollutants (POPs), synthetic musk fragrances, pesticides, phthalates, parabens, flame retardants (polybrominated diphenylethers), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) — and cosmetic UV filters. What’s more, the UV filter chemicals were surprisingly widespread; they were comparable in concentrations to PCBs, which have long been known to contaminate the environment.
“Research on the effects of endocrine disrupters (chemicals interfering with hormone actions) has shown that it is of utmost importance to obtain information on simultaneous exposure of humans to different types of chemicals because endocrine active chemicals can act in concert. Information on exposure is particularly important for the developing organism at its most sensitive early life stages. Human milk was chosen because it provides direct information on exposure of the suckling infant and indirect information on exposure of the mother during pregnancy,” research team leaders Margret Schlumpf and Walter Lichtensteiger said in a media statement.
The analyzed data of the milk samples obtained from individual mothers were then compared with the information collected through the questionnaire about cosmetic and sunscreen use. While exposure patterns differed between individuals, Dr. Schlumpf, who is a scientist at the University of Zurich, pointed out that the total reported use of products containing UV filters was significantly correlated with the presence of those chemicals in breast milk.
Ireland: Safe Sales Soar as Worried Bank Customers Keep Money at Home
December 14th, 2010Via: Independent:
SAFE sales are soaring as more and more worried bank customers stash their cash at home.
AIB said last month that the amount of money on deposit at the bank has fallen by €13bn since the start of the year — although it blamed most of the reduction on withdrawals by companies and financial institutions.
Another reason for the increased use of home security safes is a growing fear of burglaries because of the recession.
The AllSafes.ie company, one of the largest suppliers in the country, said its sales of home safes had increased by 80pc over the past three months compared with the same period last year.
British Household Debts Reach Record High
December 14th, 2010Via: Independent:
More than half of households are struggling to repay credit cards and loans, a Bank of England survey suggested today.
A total of 51% of respondents reported that their unsecured debts were a “burden” – a record high for the annual study.
Illustrating the financial pressures faced by millions, one in two households also said they had seen their disposable income fall over the past year.
More than a quarter – or 28% – said their monthly earnings had fallen by more than £100 during that time, with just 14% saying it had gone up.
Afghanistan: Petraeus Triples Air War
December 14th, 2010Via: Wired:
November is ordinarily the month when the air war in Afghanistan — and really, the whole American-led campaign — ratchets down for the winter. This November, with Gen. David Petraeus in charge of the war effort, things have been different. Radically different. NATO fighter jets and attack planes launched their bombs and missiles on 850 separate missions this November. That’s three-and-a-half times the number of attack sorties they flew in November 2009.
Next House Finance Chairman Declares: Regulators Exist to Serve the Banks
December 14th, 2010Via: Raw Story:
Alabama Republican Spencer Bachus, the incoming chairman of the House banking committee, suggested Congress and federal regulators should play a subservient role with banks.
“In Washington, the view is that the banks are to be regulated, and my view is that Washington and the regulators are there to serve the banks,” Bachus told The Birmingham News in an interview.
The Republican leadership last week designated Bachus the next chairman of the powerful House Financial Services Committee, which is tasked with overseeing banks, financial markets, housing and consumer credit.
Grand Compromise or Great Conspiracy?
December 14th, 2010Via: Money and Markets:
When Americans went to the polls last month, many thought they were voting for a return of fiscal sanity in Washington. And with fiscal sanity, we’d have far better assurance of bond-market stability.
Instead, three houses of ill repute — two on Capitol Hill and one on Pennsylvania Avenue — are joining to deliver one of the most wanton, deficit-busting, bond-wrecking bills of all time.
What most people seem to overlook is that there are actually two bills in the works. There’s the bill Congress will pass this year. And there’s the bill you and I will have to pay next year, the year after, and perhaps till the day we die.
President Obama and the Republican leadership are calling it a “grand compromise to stimulate the economy.”
In reality, it’s little more than a great conspiracy to slaughter our nation’s finances.
Scientist Warns of Dire Consequences with Widespread Use of Glyphosate (RoundUp)
December 14th, 2010Grim.
Via: Organic Consumers:
In a paper published in the European Journal of Agronomy in October 2009, Huber and co-author G.S. Johal, from Purdue’s department of botany and plant pathology, state that the widespread use of glyphosate that we see today in agriculture in the United States can “significantly increase the severity of various plant diseases, impair plant defense to pathogens and diseases, and immobilize soil and plant nutrients rendering them unavailable for plant use.”
Further, the authors state that glyphosate stimulates the growth of fungi and enhances the virulence of pathogens such as Fusarium and “can have serious consequences for sustainable production of a wide range of susceptible crops.” The authors warn “ignoring potential non-target detrimental side effects of any chemical, especially used as heavily as glyphosate, may have dire consequences for agriculture such as rendering soils infertile, crops non-productive, and plants less nutritious. To do otherwise might well compromise not only agricultural sustainability, but also the health and well-being of animals and humans.”
Research Credit: RJF
Stallman Continues to Warn Against Cloud Computing as Google Gets Ready to Push ChromeOS
December 14th, 2010Via: Guardian:
Google’s new cloud computing ChromeOS looks like a plan “to push people into careless computing” by forcing them to store their data in the cloud rather than on machines directly under their control, warns Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation and creator of the operating system GNU.
Two years ago Stallman, a computing veteran who is a strong advocate of free software via his Free Software Foundation, warned that making extensive use of cloud computing was “worse than stupidity” because it meant a loss of control of data.
Now he says he is increasingly concerned about the release by Google of its ChromeOS operating system, which is based on GNU/Linux and designed to store the minimum possible data locally. Instead it relies on a data connection to link to Google’s “cloud” of servers, which are at unknown locations, to store documents and other information.
The risks include loss of legal rights to data if it is stored on a company’s machine’s rather than your own, Stallman points out: “In the US, you even lose legal rights if you store your data in a company’s machines instead of your own. The police need to present you with a search warrant to get your data from you; but if they are stored in a company’s server, the police can get it without showing you anything. They may not even have to give the company a search warrant.”
Google gave ChromeOS a “soft” launch last week, showing off aspects of the software and providing developers and some journalists with Cr-48 laptops set up to run it, while saying that it won’t be widely available until mid-2011.
Racial Factions in Prisons Unite for Large Protest Against Inhumane Conditions; Actions Coordinated via Contraband Mobile Phones
December 14th, 2010Via: Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
Corrections officials said the prisons on lockdown are Hays State Prison in Trion, Macon State Prison in Oglethorpe, Telfair State Prison in Helena and Smith State Prison in Glennville.
However, advocates said inmates, at times, have shut down all activity at Augusta, Baldwin, Calhoun, Hancock, Hays, Macon, Rogers, Smith, Telfair, Valdosta and Ware state prisons. There are 30 prisons in the state system, housing almost 53,000 men and women.
The protest, which started last Thursday, was organized by inmates using contraband cell phones purchased from guards, according to Elaine Brown, a prisoner advocate who has been in contact with the inmates.
According to Brown, the inmates are protesting the lack of fruits and vegetables in their meals, no pay for their work, poor living conditions and parole decisions.
