France: Second Hostage Crisis Erupts as Police Surround Charlie Hebdo Suspects
January 9th, 2015Update: French Terror Suspects Dead at Both Locations, 3 Hostages Dead
—
Via: France24:
Police have surrounded two suspects in this week’s Charlie Hebdo attack northeast of the capital and are now dealing with a developing situation in eastern Paris, where a gunman has taken hostages at a supermarket.
How OPEC Weaponized the Price of Oil Against U.S. Drillers
January 9th, 2015Disclosure: I’m long USO/oil.
Via: Bloomberg:
If there ever was doubt about the strategy of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, its wealthiest members are putting that issue to rest.
Representatives of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait stressed a dozen times in the past six weeks that the group won’t curb output to halt the biggest drop in crude since 2008. Qatar’s estimate for the global oversupply is among the biggest of any producing country. These countries actually want — and are achieving — further price declines as part of an attempt to hasten cutbacks by U.S. shale drillers, according to Barclays Plc and Commerzbank AG.
Crude fell 48 percent last year and has declined 35 percent since OPEC affirmed its output target on Nov. 27. That decision, while squeezing revenues for OPEC members in 2015, aims at preserving their market share for years to come.
“The faster you bring the price down, the quicker you will have a response from U.S. production — that is the expectation and the hope,” said Jamie Webster, an analyst at consultants IHS Inc. in Washington. “I cannot recall a time when several members were actively pushing the price down in both word and deed.”
…
OPEC won’t reverse course even if oil prices fall as low as $20 a barrel or non-OPEC countries offer to help with production cuts, Saudi Arabian Oil Minister Ali Al-Naimi said in an interview with the Middle East Economic Survey on Dec. 21. The kingdom may even bolster output if non-OPEC nations do so, he said. The global oversupply is 2 million barrels a day, or 6.7 percent of OPEC output, Qatar estimates.
The group will stand by its decision not to cut output even if prices fall and wait at least three months before considering an emergency meeting, U.A.E. Energy Minister Suhail Al-Mazrouei said Dec. 14. He said clearing the surplus may take years, Abu Dhabi-based newspaper The National reported Jan. 6.
Fast Food on Display in Chiropractor’s Office
January 9th, 2015Via: Business Insider:
A Michigan chiropractor has been saving a Taco bell chicken taco and McDonald’s cheeseburger with fries for years, and none of the items have appeared to rot.
Dr. Jaqueline Vaughn purchased the meals two years ago and put them on display in her office, Vaughn Chiropractic, in Waterford, Michigan.
The meals have remained there ever since, sitting uncovered next to the patient sign-in sheet.
None of the food has grown mould or started to smell, according to Jessica Freed, a chiropractic assistant who works in the office.
“You would think there would at least be bugs coming around, but we don’t see any at all,” Freed told Business Insider.
China’s Elaborate and Absurd Internet Propaganda Machine
January 8th, 2015Seems like their learned their tricks from watching White House press conferences.
Via: Quartz:
“NOTICE: We request every internet commenter carry out the following task today,” begins an email from the supervisor.
It’s just another day in the propaganda department of Zhanggong, a district in southeast China’s modestly sized city of Ganzhou. Employees and freelancers are paid to post pro-government messages on the internet, part of a broader effort to “guide public opinion,” as the Chinese Communist Party frequently puts it.
The details of these directives are usually hidden from public view. But thousands of emails obtained from the Zhanggong propaganda department by a Chinese blogger—and released on his website—offer a rare view into the mechanics of manipulating web conversation in China at its most local level.
Among the hacked documents are instructions to paid commenters, their posting quotas, and summaries of their activity. The emails reveal hundreds of thousands of messages sent to Chinese microblogging and social media services like Sina Weibo, Tencent, and various internet forums, including working links to the actual posts. All told, they demonstrate the Chinese state’s wide reach on the internet, even at the lowest levels of government.
Zhanggong’s propaganda department comes across as surprisingly large, yet comically unsophisticated. To get a sense of its inner workings, Quartz examined emails related to a single event: an online Q&A with the local Communist Party secretary earlier this year. What we found was a Potemkin online village of adoring citizens posting favorable messages and easy questions—all manufactured by the propaganda department.
Aquion Energy Enters 1 MWh Battery Supply Deal in Hawaii
January 8th, 2015Disclosure: I sell solar power systems in New Zealand.
Via: PV Magazine:
U.S. aqueous hybrid ion battery developer and supplier Aquion Energy has entered into a supply deal with the residential community Bakken Hale, to supply a 1 MWh battery system. The battery installation will be coupled with a PV array to supply the community with 24/7 solar electricity.
Afghan Money Pit & The Pacification of Rio
January 8th, 2015Via: Vice:
The Invasion of America
January 8th, 2015Via: Aeon:
Between 1776 and the present, the United States seized some 1.5 billion acres from North America’s native peoples, an area 25 times the size of the United Kingdom. Many Americans are only vaguely familiar with the story of how this happened. They perhaps recognise Wounded Knee and the Trail of Tears, but few can recall the details and even fewer think that those events are central to US history.
Their tenuous grasp of the subject is regrettable if unsurprising, given that the conquest of the continent is both essential to understanding the rise of the United States and deplorable. Acre by acre, the dispossession of native peoples made the United States a transcontinental power. To visualise this story, I created ‘The Invasion of America’, an interactive time-lapse map of the nearly 500 cessions that the United States carved out of native lands on its westward march to the shores of the Pacific.
New Antibiotic Pulled From Dirt
January 8th, 2015Via: Bloomberg:
Scientists have discovered an antibiotic capable of fighting infections that kill hundreds of thousands of people each year, a breakthrough that could lead to the field’s first major new drug in more than a quarter-century.
The experimental drug, which was isolated from a sample of New England dirt, is called teixobactin. It hasn’t yet been tested in people, though it cured all mice infected with antibiotic-resistant staphylococci bacteria that usually kills 90 percent of the animals, according to a study published today in the journal Nature. Bacteria appear to have a particularly difficult time developing resistance to the drug, potentially overcoming a major problem with existing antibiotics.
Fracking Confirmed as Cause of Rare “Felt” Earthquake in Ohio
January 7th, 2015Via: Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America (.pdf):
A new study links the March 2014 earthquakes in Poland Township, Ohio to hydraulic fracturing that activated a previously unknown fault. The induced seismic sequence included a rare felt earthquake of magnitude 3.0, according to research published online by the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America (BSSA).
Research Credit: winstonsmith
Paris: Charlie Hebdo Shooting
January 7th, 2015Update: Terrorist Leaves ID Document at Scene [???]
Fascinating.
Well, at least it hadn’t been aboard a plane that smashed into a skyscraper.
Via: CNN:
Police found an ID document of Said Kouachi at the scene of the shooting, CNN affiliate BFMTV reported. “It was their only mistake,” said Dominique Rizet, BFMTV’s police and justice consultant, reporting that the discovery helped the investigation.
—
WARNING: GRAPHIC
Via: BBC:
Gunmen have attacked the Paris office of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, killing 12 people and injuring seven in an apparent Islamist attack.
At least two masked attackers opened fire with assault rifles in the office and exchanged shots with police in the street outside before escaping by car.
The gunmen shouted “we have avenged the Prophet Muhammad”, witnesses say.
President Francois Hollande said there was no doubt it had been a terrorist attack “of exceptional barbarity”.
A major police operation is under way in the Paris area to catch the killers.
