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Thousands of people, including friends and families of those who died in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, gathered near the hulking gray ship, trimmed in red, white and blue banners.

The bow stem, which contains 7.5 tons of steel from the site, bore a shield with two gray bars to symbolize the twin towers and a banner over that declaring “Never Forget,” a slogan among New Yorkers.

“May God bless this ship and all who sail on her,” Dotty England said before smashing a bottle of champagne against it, producing a loud thump to go with the spurting liquid and flying streamers.

Story after story of lives lost in, and touched by, the attacks peppered the ceremony, held under the blazing sun and broadcast on large screens. It all brought back painful memories for New York Police Lt. Matt Murphy. But the reason for his being here, though, was a source of pride, he said.

“I tell you, it’s a fantastic day. Sometimes you think you’re over something,” he said, his eyes welling up as he looked off toward the ship, “and then you realize you’re not completely.”

Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England, husband to Dotty, told the crowd that ship names provide a legacy, and that for their crews they serve as a source of strength and inspiration.

When the attacks occurred, the ship was planned but had no name. Then-New York Gov. George Pataki asked the Navy to commemorate the disaster by reviving the name New York. That required an exception to Navy policy of assigning state names only to nuclear submarines.

The steel from the towers is now part of the ship that splices through the water, leading the way.

Ben Griffin could be jailed if he makes further disclosures about how people seized by special forces were allegedly mistreated and ended up in secret prisons in breach of the Geneva conventions and international law. Griffin, 29, left the British army in 2005 after three months in Baghdad, saying he disagreed with the “illegal” tactics of US troops.

He told a press conference hosted by the Stop the War Coalition this week that individuals detained by SAS troops in a joint UK-US special forces taskforce had ended up in interrogation centres in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as Guantánamo Bay. He had not witnessed torture himself but added: “I have no doubt in my mind that non-combatants I personally detained were handed over to the Americans and subsequently tortured.”

Referring to the government’s admission that two US rendition flights containing terror suspects had landed at the British territory of Diego Garcia, Griffin said the use of British territory and airspace “pales into insignificance in light of the fact that it has been British soldiers detaining the victims of extraordinary rendition in the first place”.

One family – the husband is a janitor, the wife a cleaner – bought their two bedroom bungalow in Oakland for $420,000 in 2005. Now their mortgage rate has reset and it is on the market for $119,000. It probably won’t fetch the list price.
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Over in Detroit there are now more than a handful of properties on the market at $100 (and no, that’s not a misprint – just search through property website realtor.com to see).

These kind of properties are all being sold by a very specific section of society – the so-called sub-prime buyers with poor credit records – or as Heidi puts it dolefully “It’s just the junk that’s coming back onto the market.”

However this is unlikely to remain the case. As unemployment rises – and it already is, sharply – more middle class families will find themselves out of a job and possibly having to sell. Experts also fear that whereas the so-called teaser rate problem is generally limited to working class families, a different mortgage-related issue could be about to strike the white-collar community.

President Hugo Chavez on Sunday promised Venezuela would respond militarily if Colombia violates its border, where he ordered tanks as well as thousands of troops. He also ordered closed Venezuela’s embassy in Bogota.

Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa said he deployed troops to the border while also withdrawing his government’s ambassador from Bogota and expelling Colombia’s top diplomat.

“There is no justification,” Correa said Sunday night, snubbing an earlier announcement from Colombia that it would apologize for the military incursion.

Chavez called the killing of rebel leader and spokesman Raul Reyes and 16 other guerrillas on Saturday an attack by a “terrorist state,” saying it shows Colombian President Alvaro Uribe is a “criminal.”

“Mr. Defense Minister, move 10 battalions to the border with Colombia for me, immediately — tank battalions. Deploy the air force,” Chavez said during his weekly TV and radio program. “We don’t want war, but we aren’t going to permit the U.S. empire, which is the master (of Colombia) … to come divide us.”

Correa said Colombia deliberately carried out the strike beyond its borders, flying deep into Ecuador to bomb the rebel camp from the south. The Ecuadorean leader said the rebels were “bombed and massacred as they slept, using precision technology.”

The Colombian military said the camp was located just over a mile from the border.

Colombian officials have long complained that rebels are allowed to take refuge across its borders in both Ecuador and Venezuela.

Colombia said after the assault that FARC “terrorists” including Reyes “have had the custom of killing in Colombia and taking refuge in the territory of neighboring countries.”

In Chile, President Michelle Bachelet offered to mediate in the conflict.

“A situation like this requires an explanation from Colombia to Ecuadoreans, to the Ecuadorean president and to the entire region,” Bachelet said. “We are very worried.”

Yields on two-year US Treasuries plummeted to 1.63pc on Friday in a flight to safety, foretelling financial winter.
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The debt markets are freezing ever deeper, a full eight months into the crunch. Contagion is spreading into the safest pockets of the US credit universe.

It is hard to imagine a more plain-vanilla outfit than the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which manages bridges, bus terminals, and airports.

The authority is a public body, backed by the two states. Yet it had to pay 20pc rates in February after the near closure of the $330bn (£166m) “term-auction” market. It had originally expected to pay 4.3pc, but that was aeons ago in financial time.

“I never thought I would see anything like this in my life,” said James Steele, an HSBC economist in New York.

No sane mortal needs to know what term-auction means, except that it too became a tool of the US credit alchemists. Banks briefly used the market as laboratory for conjuring long-term loans at Alan Greenspan’s giveaway short-term rates. It has come unstuck. Next in line is the $45trillion derivatives market for credit default swaps (CDS).

Last week, the spreads on high-yield US bonds vaulted to 718 basis points. The iTraxx Crossover index measuring corporate default risk in Europe smashed the 600 barrier. We are now far beyond the August spike.

Sub-prime debt is plumbing new depths. A-rated securities issued in early 2007 fell to a record 12.72pc of face value on Friday. The BBB tier fetched 10.42pc. The “toxic” tranches are worthless.

Neural Impulse ActuatorWhile details of how it worked at the time were quite sketchy with many people taking guesses at whether it was actually controlled by brainwaves or facial expressions/muscle movements, today (after seeing the device in action on a one-on-one basis) we’ve got some further information on the unit along with some pictures of what you can expect from the retail version once it starts shipping.

How does it work?

Obviously the biggest question that has been on everyone’s minds (excuse the pun) is how does it work? While it has to be said that a lot of the information fed to us by Dr. Michael Schuette (Neurobioligist & OCZ VP of Technology) went well over our heads (here we go again – Ed), we managed to extract from the conversation that the nia works by reading bioptentials. These include activities of the brain, the autonomous nervous system and muscles – all of which are captured using embrace sensors located on the nia’s headband, amplified and sent to the PC via USB2.0.
OCZ Neural Impulse Actuator
The biopotentials are broken into frequency specific components that allow a reasonably fine granularity of control for the novice user, after a short period of adaptation, the controls become essentially a streaming of body signals into the computer that don’t really require any further “thinking” but become sort of second nature.

FLAC LOSSLESS (607.9 MB zip file)
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Lenders from around the country wrote off some £6.8bn in individual debts last year, statistics from the Bank of England reveal. It is the biggest annual total since records began in 1993, more than doubling in the past five years.

The news coincides with figures from Nationwide showing house prices are now suffering their worst streak since 2000, after falling for a fourth month in February.

With the credit crunch making it harder than ever for banks to seek funding in the City’s money markets, they are clamping down on borrowers both by raising their mortgage rates and increasing the pressure on borrowers to pay back their debts.

Alan Clarke, UK economist at BNP Paribas, said: “This is certainly a sign that households are already struggling. The debt burden is high, and you would expect write offs to rise as a result.

The test is part of the military’s national security preparation for the capital area.

Over the past few years, the defense agency has worked with Arlington County to set up chemical sensors throughout the county, where thousands of defense employees work in leased office space.

The Pentagon has also supplied the sensors and accompanying monitoring equipment to Arlington for the county’s own use.

“Within minutes, if someone attacks the Pentagon, it becomes a problem for Arlington,” Pengtagon Force Protection Agency Director Paul Benda said.

The sensors scan broad areas, Benda said.

If weather cooperates, the Pentagon will release perfluorocarbon tracers, which are commonly used commercially to detect leaks, and sulfur hexafluoride, a common window insulator filling, near the Jefferson Plaza building at 10am on Thursday and Friday.

Officials in yellow vests will set up 80 battery-operated samplers – toolbox-looking cases with 12 air tubes inside of them – throughout Crystal City and will check the air samples in the tubes afterwards to evaluate how quickly and how high the gases spread.

The data will help the Pentagon and Arlington shape their lockdown policies for chemical and biological attacks or accidents, and will also help them determine the most effective locations for sensors.

“We want to place our sensors so we can detect this stuff as quickly as possible,” Benda said.

But consumers who would like to be able to buy local fruits and vegetables not just at farmers’ markets, but also in the produce aisle of their supermarket, will be dismayed to learn that the federal government works deliberately and forcefully to prevent the local food movement from expanding. And the barriers that the United States Department of Agriculture has put in place will be extended when the farm bill that House and Senate negotiators are working on now goes into effect.