cryptogon.com

Since the beginning of 2007, EEStor, Inc. has been advancing its chemical purification and powder production processes. The decision to focus on these processes was made to help assure that EEStor, Inc. could meet the most critical demands of business segments for production throughput, cost, and energy storage. The certification data described in this press release will assist in indicating the success EEStor, Inc. has had in completing its objectives.

EEStor, Inc. has achieved success on one of its most critical technical milestones and that is the certification of the completeness of the powder crystallization of the constituents utilized in producing its CMBT powders. The percent of the constituents crystallized in the CMBT powders ranged from 99.57% to 100.00% with the average being 99.92%. This level of crystallization provides the path for the possibility of EEStor, Inc. providing the published energy storage for present products and major advancements in energy storage for future products.

The documents, which were being taken to RAF Northolt for delivery to embassies abroad, were snatched after the van driver stopped and went into a shop at 6:40 a.m. on Monday.

A Foreign Office spokesman acknowledged the theft was a serious breach and said an immediate review had been ordered.

It is the latest in a string of incidents involving government loss of personal data and documents including child benefits information and top secret intelligence files.

The Identity and Passport Service said the hi-tech embedded chip features on the e-passports meant they would be unusable.

But security experts reported in the media said they could be used for fraud and employment and had a street value of about 2.5 million pounds.

“Although these passports were blank, they could be worth a lot of money to criminals,” said Detective Constable Natalie Brennan of Oldham CID.

“The blogs were a bit out of control,” Sheila Bair, chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., told the San Francisco Business Times after a speech in San Francisco this week.

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The FDIC plans to pay closer attention to the blogosphere in the future.

“We’re very mindful of the media coverage and blogs in controlling misinformation. All I can say is were going to continue to stay on top of it,” Bair said. “The misinformation that came out over the weekend fed a lot of depositors’ fears.”

The FDIC also plans to begin airing public service announcements as part of a public education campaign on the nation’s deposit insurance program.

The intervention would come as a little known quirk of US law threatens to drive down house prices even faster.

Faced with seemingly never-ending falls in the value of their properties, some American home-owners are taking radical action; they are choosing to walk away from homes and their mortgages.

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Professor Wachter believes that, to date, most people have had their homes repossessed because they could not manage the repayments.

The trend of people now positively choosing to walk away because it makes financial sense to do so is a worrying new development.

“The dangers are extraordinary,” Professor Wachter says.

“If all that is needed is that the house value is less than the mortgage value, there is a large number of homeowners in the United States who are in that situation”.

…

It is impossible to know for sure how many of the people who are now walking away from their homes could have gone on paying their mortgages.

But Professor Nouriel Roubini of New York University, one of the first economists to warn of the dangers of the American house price boom, believes the number of people positively choosing to walk away is growing rapidly.

“This is becoming a tsunami of voluntary defaults,” Professor Roubini says.

“The losses for the financial system from people walking away could be of the order of one trillion dollars when the entire capital of the US banking system is only $1.3 trillion.

“You could have most of the US banking system wiped out, so this is a total disaster.”

Which is why it is not just US policymakers who are hoping America’s new, multi-billion dollar initiative to stabilise the housing market will succeed in its aims and thus make walking away less attractive.

A “citizen’s inquiry” instigated by the Human Genetics Commission (HGC) also called for the National DNA Database to be taken out of direct control of the police and government, with oversight handed instead to an independent authority.

The conclusions will fuel controversy about the ethical foundations of the database, which was established in 1995 in Britain — the country where scientists first pioneered the technique of DNA fingerprinting.

Brig. Gen. Thomas L. Tinsley suffered a gunshot wound to his chest late Sunday night and was pronounced dead within a half hour, said Col. Richard Walberg, who assumed command at Elmendorf Air Force Base after Tinsley’s death.

The weapon was likely a handgun, Walberg said.

Medical responders who rushed to Tinsley’s home on base were unable to save him. Tinsley’s wife and college-age daughter were home at the time.

Tinsley was named base commander in May 2007. He had served as an F-15 instructor pilot, F-15C test pilot, wing weapons officer, exchange officer and instructor with the Royal Australian Air Force.

His previous 22-month assignment was executive officer to the Air Force chief of staff, Gen. T. Michael “Buzz” Mosely, who resigned in June under pressure in an agency shake-up.

Mosely, the Air Force military chief, and Air Force Secretary Michael W. Wynne, the agency’s civilian head, were held accountable for failing to fully correct an erosion of nuclear-related performance standards. One concern was a cross-country flight in August of a B-52 carrying armed nuclear weapons.

Walberg said Tinsley was not under investigation or undue stress.

“As far as stress, sir, this job, by nature of being an Air Force officer in a nation at war, is stressful,” he said. “Undue stress, no.”

The Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller 20-city index, released Tuesday, is off 15.8 percent for May compared with a year ago, a record decline since its inception in 2000. The narrower 10-city index has fallen 16.9 percent, its biggest decline in its 21-year history.

No city in the Case-Shiller 20-city index saw price gains in May, the second straight month that’s happened. The monthly indices have not recorded an overall home price increase in any month since August 2006.

Voice, which has 38,000 members, will discuss a motion that it should welcome the establishment of cadet units in state schools.

This clashes with the stance of the NUT, the biggest teaching union, which voted in March to oppose military recruitment campaigns in schools. One teacher told that debate that military cadet forces should be barred from schools because they were used for recruitment.

But two months later, a report commissioned by Gordon Brown said more cadet corps should be set up in schools, and recommended the inclusion of lessons on the Armed Forces’ role in society in the national curriculum. It also said more military personnel should visit schools.

This has found favour with Peter Morris, the retired teacher who is making the latest proposal.

He will tell the Voice annual conference on Wednesday that a military presence at school would foster patriotism, integrity, loyalty and courage.

The ads, run by Npower, promote a website at www.climatecops.com where “trainees” must complete three missions before they can join the “elite cadets” and “train to become a climate cop”.

These missions basically consist of a barrage of eco propaganda which the child must simply engage in in order to be accepted as a special agent of the green brigade.

The site offers a selection of downloads, including a pack of “climate crime cards“, which instruct recruits to spy on families, friends and relatives, encouraging each of them to build up a written “climate crime case file”.

“Report back to your family to make sure they don’t commit those crimes again (or else)!” one section states, before reminding recruits to keep a watchful eye on parents and even extend their web further. “What about the homes of aunts and uncles, or friends from school?” it suggests.

The concept brings to mind George Orwell’s classic Nineteen Eighty Four, in which children are encouraged by authorities to spy on their own parents and turn them in for minor transgressions against the State.

Despite criticism from Amnesty International at the level of secrecy permitted, the changes look set to become law, with the National Party pledging its support.

National Party immigration spokesman Dr Lockwood Smith acknowledged the bill’s provision for using biometric information would be “a little bit controversial” but said it would speed up passenger processing and ultimately benefit New Zealanders.