Britain: D-Notice Issued for Upcoming WikiLeaks Diplomatic Documents Dump
November 27th, 2010Torrent: WikiLeaks Insurance File
Via: Guardian:
David Cameron and other world leaders were being briefed by the US state department about what American diplomats fear will be contained in the expected leak of thousands of sensitive diplomatic cables sent to Washington by US ambassadors around the world.
The leak is expected to be co-ordinated by the WikiLeaks website, which has previously published secret details of military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Newspaper editors were today asked to brief the government if they plan to publish sensitive diplomatic files. But Downing Street stressed that the DA (defence advisory) did not mean court action was likely to suppress publication of the documents. The issue of the so-called D-notice is supposed to be a reminder that newspapers should be concerned for UK military operations.
US officials, including the secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, have been trying to brief allies, including Cameron, on what they expect to be in the documents.
The head of the US military, Admiral Mike Mullen, called on WikiLeaks to stop the publication of the documents. “I would hope that those who are responsible for this would, at some point in time, think about the responsibility that they have for lives that they’re exposing and the potential that’s there, and stop leaking this information,” he told CNN in an interview to be broadcast on Sunday.
EU Rescue Costs Start to Threaten Germany
November 27th, 2010Via: Telegraph:
The escalating debt crisis on the eurozone periphery is starting to contaminate the creditworthiness of Germany and the core states of monetary union.
Credit default swaps (CDS) measuring risk on German, French and Dutch bonds have surged over recent days, rising significantly above the levels of non-EMU states in Scandinavia.
“Germany cannot keep paying for bail-outs without going bankrupt itself,” said Professor Wilhelm Hankel, of Frankfurt University. “This is frightening people. You cannot find a bank safe deposit box in Germany because every single one has already been taken and stuffed with gold and silver. It is like an underground Switzerland within our borders. People have terrible memories of 1948 and 1923 when they lost their savings.”
The refrain was picked up this week by German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble. “We’re not swimming in money, we’re drowning in debts,” he told the Bundestag.
While Germany’s public and private debt is not extreme, it is very high for a country on the cusp of an acute ageing crisis. Adjusted for demographics, Germany is already one of the most indebted nations in the world.
Reports that EU officials are hatching plans to double the size of EU’s €440bn (£373bn) rescue mechanism have inevitably caused outrage in Germany. Brussels has denied the claims, but the story has refused to die precisely because markets know the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) cannot cope with the all too possible event of a triple bail-out for Ireland, Portugal and Spain.
TSA Agents Use Same Set of Gloves to Carry Out Multiple Grope Downs
November 26th, 2010Via: Natural News:
There’s a startling fact about the TSA pat-downs that most of us have not realized: TSA agents often do not change their latex gloves between pat-downs! With these pat-down reaching into your pants, feeling your genitals, and sweeping bare armpits and buttocks, those latex gloves being worn by the TSA agents are obviously teeming with germs.
And yet TSA agents often don’t change gloves between patting down passengers. They’re often using the same gloves on you and your crotch as they were using on the previous passenger’s exploratory crotch feel.
Insurance Companies Using Electronic Data About Lifestyle and Purchasing Habits to Generate Risk Profiles
November 26th, 2010Via: Wall Street Journal:
Life insurers are testing an intensely personal new use for the vast dossiers of data being amassed about Americans: predicting people’s longevity.
Insurers have long used blood and urine tests to assess people’s health—a costly process. Today, however, data-gathering companies have such extensive files on most U.S. consumers—online shopping details, catalog purchases, magazine subscriptions, leisure activities and information from social-networking sites—that some insurers are exploring whether data can reveal nearly as much about a person as a lab analysis of their bodily fluids.
Life insurers are testing new ways to predict life expectancy and they’re mining personal information online and offline to do it. WSJ’s Kelsey Hubbard talks to reporter Leslie Scism about the brave new world of online actuarial research.
In one of the biggest tests, the U.S. arm of British insurer Aviva PLC looked at 60,000 recent insurance applicants. It found that a new, “predictive modeling” system, based partly on consumer-marketing data, was “persuasive” in its ability to mimic traditional techniques.
The research heralds a remarkable expansion of the use of consumer-marketing data, which is traditionally used for advertising purposes.
This data increasingly is gathered online, often with consumers only vaguely aware that separate bits of information about them are being collected and collated in ways that can be surprisingly revealing. The growing trade in personal information is the subject of a Wall Street Journal investigation into online privacy.
FDIC List of Problem Banks Grows
November 25th, 2010It’s all about fraud and hiding the reality of what’s really on their books.
CNBC link ahead. Hold nose.
Via: CNBC:
The number of banks on the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp’s confidential “problem” list grew over the summer even while the overall industry posted solid net income.
The FDIC says its list of troubled banks rose to 860 in the July-September quarter from 829 in the previous quarter.
At the same time, the FDIC says banks earned $14.5 billion during the third quarter. That was a decrease from the previous quarter’s result of $21.4 billion, but well above the $2 billion banks earned a year earlier.
The FDIC says banks set aside less money to cover future loan losses than at any time since the October-December quarter of 2007, before the financial crisis. Fewer borrowers were behind on payments for credit cards and construction loans.
Nigel Farage To European Parliament: “The Euro Game Is Up… Just Who The Hell Do You Think You Are? You Are Very Dangerous People”
November 25th, 2010Via: ZeroHedge:
“Good morning Mr. van Rompuy, you’ve been in office for one year, and in that time the whole edifice is beginning to crumble, there’s chaos, the money’s running out, I should thank you – you should perhaps be the pinup boy of the euroskeptic movement. But just look around this chamber this morning, look at these faces, look at the fear, look at the anger. Poor Barroso here looks like he’s seen a ghost. They’re beginning to understand that the game is up. And yet in their desperation to preserve their dream, they want to remove any remaining traces of democracy from the system. And it’s pretty clear that none of you have learned anything. When you yourself Mr. van Rompuy say that the euro has brought us stability, I supposed I could applaud you for having a sense of humor, but isn’t this really just the bunker [or banker?] mentality. Your fanaticism is out in the open. You talk about the fact that it was a lie to believe that the nation state could exist in the 21st century globalized world. Well, that may be true in the case of Belgium who haven’t had a government for 6 months, but for the rest of us, right across every member state in this union, increasingly people are saying, “We don’t want that flag, we don’t want the anthem, we don’t want this political class, we want the whole thing consigned to the dustbin of history.” We had the Greek tragedy earlier on this year, and now we have the situation in Ireland. I know that the stupidity and greed of Irish politicians has a lot to do with this: they should never, ever have joined the euro. They suffered with low interest rates, a false boom and a massive bust. But look at your response to them: what they are being told as their government is collapsing is that it would be inappropriate for them to have a general election. In fact commissioner Rehn here said they had to agree to a budget first before they are allowed to have a general election. Just who the hell do you think you people are. You are very, very dangerous people indeed: your obsession with creating this European state means that you are happy to destroy democracy, you appear to be happy with millions and millions of people to be unemployed and to be poor. Untold millions will suffer so that your euro dream can continue. Well it won’t work, cause its Portugal next with their debt levels of 325% of GDP they are the next ones on the list, and after that I suspect it will be Spain, and the bailout for Spain will be 7 times the size of Ireland, and at that moment all the bailout money will is gone – there won’t be any more. But it’s even more serious than economics, because if you rob people of their identity, if you rob them of their democracy, then all they are left with is nationalism and violence. I can only hope and pray that the euro project is destroyed by the markets before that really happens.”
Europe Can’t Afford to Bailout Spain
November 25th, 2010Via: New York Times:
Europe so far has survived the bailout of Greece. The financial rescue of Ireland also is manageable. Even if Portugal becomes the third country to succumb and seek aid, as many people widely predict, it is unlikely to push Europe to the financial brink.
But any bailout of Spain — with an economy twice the size of the other three combined — could severely stress the ability of Europe’s stronger countries to help the financially weaker ones, and spell deep trouble for the euro, Europe’s common currency. Even though Spain, like Ireland, has adopted an austerity plan to help it avoid the need for a bailout, it still could need aid if its banking system proves frailer than the government thinks it is, as was the case in Ireland.
This troubling possibility has unnerved lenders, with Spain’s borrowing costs rising even though Madrid has cut its deficit and the country’s banks maintain they have sufficient strength to absorb their bad real estate loans. “Europe can afford the collapse of Ireland, even perhaps that of Portugal, but not that of Spain, so Spain’s ultimate line of defense is in fact this knowledge that it’s too big to fail and that it represents a systemic risk for the euro,” said Pablo Vázquez, an economist at the Fundación de Estudios de Economía Aplicada, a research institute here.
Upcoming WikiLeaks Release Could Damage International Relations Between U.S. and Allies
November 25th, 2010Via: CBC:
The U.S. government has notified Ottawa that the WikiLeaks website is preparing to release sensitive U.S. diplomatic files that could damage U.S. relations with allies around the world.
U.S. officials say the documents may contain accounts of compromising conversations with political dissidents and friendly politicians and could result in the expulsion of U.S. diplomats from foreign postings.
…
A State Department spokesman said Wednesday the release of confidential communications about foreign governments probably will erode trust in the United States as a diplomatic partner.
U.S. diplomatic outposts around the world have begun notifying other governments that WikiLeaks may release the documents in the next few days.
Director of Operations for BP’s Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill Recovery Efforts and Former Texas Solicitor General Die in Plane Crash
November 25th, 2010Via: AP:
An executive helping to guide BP’s recovery from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, a top Texas lawyer and his mother-in-law were killed in a small plane crash in waters off northern Florida, officials said Wednesday.
James Patrick Black, 58, died about a mile from the Destin airport in the Florida Panhandle on Tuesday night, said BP spokeswoman Hejdi Feick. Those who knew them said the three were bound for a Thanksgiving holiday gathering in Florida.
Black was director of operations for BP’s Gulf Coast Restoration Organization and had a key role guiding the business unit created after April’s Deepwater Horizon rig fire and explosion and monthslong spill that spewed at least 200 millions of crude oil from a blown-out BP well.
Investigators also said former Texas solicitor general, 47-year-old Gregory Scott Coleman, and his mother-in-law, Charlene Black Miller, 63, died when the Piper Malibu that Coleman was piloting from Texas via New Orleans went down in limited visibility while approaching the airport.
Black had worked for BP for 34 years, Feick said in a statement.
“BP extends its heartfelt sorrow to the family of our friend and colleague, Jim Black,” Lamar McKay, chairman and president of BP America Inc., said in an e-mail statement.
“Jim was a devoted member of our Gulf Coast spill response team,” the statement added. “He will be missed by all who knew him and worked with him.”
Coleman was a prominent lawyer and Texas’ top appellate lawyer as the state’s first solicitor general, appointed in 1999.
Coleman’s career included clerking for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and he later went on to argue several cases before the U.S. Supreme Court including two within a week of each other in 2009, according to Christian J. Ward, a partner in the Yetter Coleman firm where Coleman had joined about 3 1/2 years ago.
South Korea: New Rules of Engagement Allow Much Stronger Retaliation Against North Korea
November 25th, 2010Via: BBC:
The government also said it was changing its rules of engagement to allow it to respond more forcefully to similar incidents. The old rules have been criticised as too passive.
The BBC’s Chris Hogg in Seoul says the cabinet had decided that under the old rules of engagement there was too much emphasis on preventing a military incident escalating into something worse.
In future, the South would implement different levels of response, depending on whether the North attacked military or civilian targets, a presidential spokesman said.
A senior government official told the BBC that Seoul wanted to be more flexible in order to keep the North Koreans guessing as to their response.
The South Korean broadcaster, KBS, said the new rules called for the South to fire back “with shots two to three times more powerful than the enemy artillery”.
