We already know how bad mosquitos are: The itchy bites, that awful buzz, the Dengue fever and Malaria. But if the only way to eliminate these bastards was to put your trust in genetically-engineered versions, would that be a risk worth taking? In this week’s New Yorker, Michael Specter writes about that dilemma, about how the solution to mosquitos is more mosquitos, or rather, a genetically engineered mosquito called the OX513A.

At first glance, the OX513A sounds like a god-send: cooked up in Brazilian research facility, these male, human-made mosquitos have been outfitted with a gene that kills their babies before they can even fly. And they sound pretty great when compared to their non-enhanced, targeted versions, the Aedes aegypti mosquito (right), which can “breed in a teaspoon of water” and “mate in the dew of spider lilies,” but more importantly pass on Dengue fever—one of the most rapidly spreading diseases in the world, Specter notes. So what could possibly go wrong with hundreds of millions of these genetically-engineered insects roaming around and impregnating every female Aedes in sight? Well, as Specter writes…

In fact, it’s like nothing else on earth—a winged creature, made by man, then released into the wild. Despite the experiment’s scientific promise, many people regard the tiny insect as harbinger of a world where animals are built by nameless scientists, nurtured in beakers, then set loose—with consequences, no matter how noble the intention, that are impossible to anticipate or control. “This mosquito is Dr. Frankenstein’s monster, plain and simple,” Helen Wallace, the executive director of the British environmental organization GeneWatch, said. “To open a box and let these man-made creatures fly free is a risk with dangers we haven’t begun to contemplate.”

For Specter’s full account, head on over to The New Yorker.

(Source: theatlanticwire.com)

The house of terror

British police say seven men have been arrested on suspicion of terrorist offences, just weeks before London hosts the Olympic Games.

The arrests follow the discovery of firearms hidden in a car which was stopped by police in South Yorkshire, England on June 30.

The car was pulled over last week and impounded because it did not have any insurance.

The weapons were later found during a routine search, and police tracked down the driver, passenger and other suspects.

“As soon as the items were discovered in the impounded vehicle, our priority was to protect the public by pursuing and arresting those we believed to be involved,” Detective Chief Superintendent Kenny Bell said.

The men have been arrested on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism.

A special warrant has been granted to allow detectives extra time to question the men.

Police say there is nothing to suggest any link to the Olympics, which start in three weeks’ time.

There are no further details about what the men are suspected of planning or the weapons found.

The news comes a day after police in London arrest six people over a suspected terror plot.

The five men and a woman were arrested across the city as part of an investigation into Islamic extremists who are thought to be targeting the UK.

It is not known what, if any targets, were identified.

A police source says the two operations are not linked.

British security forces are on high alert for any signs of trouble ahead of the Olympics.

The national threat level is assessed at “substantial” - meaning an attack is a strong possibility.

But that is one notch lower than it has been for most of the years following the July 2005 suicide bomb attacks in London which killed 52 people.

Security chiefs have repeatedly said they have no intelligence that the Olympics are being targeted.

However as the Games approach, commentators have suggested heightened vigilance could lead to an increase in the number of arrests.

(Source: abc.net.au)

Former Barclays chief Executive Bob Diamond has apologised for his banks role in Libor rate-fixing.

Britain’s Serious Fraud Office says it will formally investigate a bank rate-fixing scandal which has forced three Barclays executives to quit and dented London’s reputation as a top financial centre.

An SFO spokeswoman confirmed a dedicated team had started work on the case but would not comment on who specifically was under investigation.

“The SFO director David Green QC has today decided formally to accept the Libor matter for investigation,” it said.

Three senior Barclays executives including chief executive officer Bob Diamond resigned this week over the row.

Libor (London Interbank Offered Rate), the rate at which banks lend to one another, plays a key role in global markets, affecting what banks, businesses and individuals pay to borrow money.

Barclays was fined $452 million last week by British and United States regulators for the attempted rigging of Libor and Euribor, its eurozone equivalent.

The SFO said on Monday it was “considering whether it is both appropriate and possible to bring criminal prosecutions”.

It is responsible for investigating and prosecuting serious and complex fraud in Britain and the announcement of a formal investigation appears to bring the prospect of criminal charges in the case a step closer.

The SFO has not specified which banks will be covered by its investigation, but a probe by Britain’s Financial Services Authority regulator which culminated in the Barclays fine also highlighted malpractice at other banks.

The British government has also announced a full parliamentary inquiry into the banking sector and its practices which is expected to report back by January.

Royal Bank of Scotland revealed this month that it sacked four traders in 2011 over attempted rate-fixing.

Encouragement claims

Questions have also emerged over whether Britain’s central bank, the Bank of England (BoE), may have encouraged Barclays to manipulate the rates.

Barclays this week released a written account by Mr Diamond of a telephone conversation he had with BoE deputy Paul Tucker about the rates in 2008.

According to Mr Diamond, Mr Tucker suggested in the phone call “it did not always need to be the case that (Barclays rates) appeared as high as we have recently”.

Mr Diamond said Barclays chief operating officer Jerry del Missier, who has also resigned over the scandal, interpreted this as an instruction to rig the rates, though he himself did not.

Mr Tucker, who is widely regarded as a possible successor to the BoE’s governor Mervyn King, is expected to appear before parliament’s Treasury Select Committee on Monday, to give his version of events.

This is the same panel of lawmakers that this week grilled Mr Diamond over the scandal.

In defiant form before the committee during a three-hour hearing, Mr Diamond acknowledged there had been “reprehensible” behaviour at the bank but said swift action had been taken to tackle it.

“I’m sorry, I’m disappointed and I’m also angry,” the American banker said.

“Clearly there were mistakes, clearly there was behaviour that was reprehensible.”

But he added: “The attitude of Barclays three years ago when this was recognised was, let’s get to the bottom of it.”

Ratings agency Standard and Poor’s downgraded Barclays’ long-term outlook to negative from stable on Thursday following Diamond’s resignation.

Putting the rating outlook on negative usually means it is at risk of being downgraded in the future, a move which can increase financing costs for the company affected.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-07-07/fraud-squad-to-investigate-barclays/4115994

(Source: )

Romania’s parliament has suspended president Traian Basescu, ruling he had overstepped his powers, setting the stage for an impeachment referendum.

The vote will be watched closely by the European Union which says it wants the rule of law respected.

In a vote that tightened the leftist government’s grip on power, 256 of the bicameral parliament’s 372 deputies present voted to suspend Mr Basescu.

“Traian Basescu and several of his retinue have transformed Romania, illegally and unconstitutionally, into a de facto presidential regime,” co-leader of the ruling leftist Social Liberal Union (USL) party, Crin Antonescu, said.

The vote was part of a wider political row which has paralysed lawmaking, hit the leu (Romanian currency), raising doubts about Romania’s ability to stick to its 5 billion euro ($6 billion) International Monetary Fund-led aid deal.

Although the role is in-part ceremonial, the president is in charge of the country’s foreign policy and nominates the prime minister.

Mr Basescu was able to influence the previous government’s austerity policies because of his close links to the centre-right Democrat-Liberal Party (PDL), which led the government.

Mr Antonescu, whose party initiated the parliamentary vote to suspend the president, will now serve as president during Mr Basescu’s 30-day suspension until a referendum decides if he is to be impeached.

The political instability has sparked concerns in the EU, which Romania joined in 2007, about the future of EU-driven justice reforms and Romania’s fight against graft.

“We are concerned about the sequence of these events, not one in particular,” Olivier Bailly, a spokesman for European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso, said.

“And the quick way in which they were adopted.”

The Commission has demanded Romania respect the rule of law and the independence of the judiciary.

Prime minister Victor Ponta will travel to Brussels next week for talks with Mr Barroso.

Mr Ponta’s government took office in May and has taken a series of measures to broaden its power in the EU’s second-poorest country which is also in deep recession.

Political chaos

Romania’s politics has been in chaos for months and Mr Ponta is the third prime minister this year, after protests against austerity, cronyism and corruption toppled his predecessors.

Mr Ponta’s ruling USL backtracked on a plan to replace Constitutional Court (CCR) judges after international criticism, but is now issuing emergency decrees that take immediate effect before the court can rule.

The government had a long list of reasons for suspending Mr Basescu, including what it said was his attempt to pressure judges and break the constitution.

Mr Basescu, who walked out of parliament before the vote, is unpopular for backing austerity measures, including salary cuts and raising sales tax but says the charges are political.

“The main objective of this suspension is to get the judiciary under control,” he said.

The suspension is an attempt to undo his efforts to clean up the judiciary and to distract attention away from plagiarism allegations against Mr Ponta, he added.

Mr Ponta, who has been jokily dubbed “Mr Copy Paste” by some, removed the authority of an academic panel just before it concluded he had copied a large part of his doctoral thesis.

A referendum will now decide whether to impeach Mr Basescu.

The result may depend on whether the CCR - which has accused the government of trying to dismantle it - accepts a USL law that changes how many votes are needed to win.

However, the government denies it is endangering the rule of law, saying it is sticking to the IMF deal.

It argues the row will hurt neither the justice system nor the economy.

The IMF has said it wants Bucharest to overhaul energy prices along with the outdated health system and to sell inefficient state assets.

The leu hit a low of 4.541 per euro, before regaining some ground, while borrowing costs have also risen.

The leftist USL remains favourite to win a parliamentary election later this year, though there have been no opinion polls in the last month.

If Mr Basescu is impeached, the USL would probably win the presidency.

But holding three elections - a referendum, a presidential and a parliamentary poll - in such a short time would further delay reforms under Romania’s IMF deal.

(Source: abc.net.au)

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos (L) and his wife Maria Clemencia with President Obama at the height of the Secret Service Sex Scandal.

The US Secret Service, embroiled in a deepening sex scandal, said Saturday it had suspended 11 agents assigned to President Barack Obama’s trip to Colombia amid reports they had used prostitutes.

Five US military personnel are also being investigated for misconduct said to have taken place at the same hotel where the Secret Service staff were staying in the Caribbean resort city of Cartagena, and have been confined to barracks.

US Secret Service Assistant Director Paul Morrissey said the allegations were made on Thursday against

the Secret Service personnel, who included both special agents and Uniformed Division Officers, though none of them was assigned to Obama’s personal security detail.

“The nature of the allegations, coupled with a zero tolerance policy on personal misconduct, resulted in the Secret Service taking the decisive action to relieve these individuals of their assignment, return them to their place of duty and replace them with additional Secret Service personnel,” he said in a statement.

But Morrissey stressed that “these actions have had no impact on the Secret Service’s ability to execute a comprehensive security plan for the president’s visit to Cartagena.”

The personnel involved were taken to the service’s Washington headquarters for interviews on Saturday as the agency’s internal affairs division investigates the matter.

“As a result, all 11 employees have been placed on administrative leave. This is standard procedure and allows us the opportunity to conduct a full, thorough and fair investigation into the allegations,” Morrissey said.

He said the incident, which threatened to overshadow the Summit of the Americas, “is not reflective of the behavior of our personnel as they travel every day throughout the country and the world performing their duties in a dedicated, professional manner.”

“We regret any distraction from the Summit of the Americas this situation has caused,” he added.

(Source: news.ninemsn.com.au)

The complete set of cards from the Illuminati Card Game was issued by Steve Jackson Games. This game was released in 1995 and seems to predict a lot of events that have already happened, such as 9/11.  Coincidence, or were the illuminati treating us with their usual contempt and hiding their agenda in plain view? 

Fukushima






Hackers such as Anon, the case for tougher internet regulation.








No comment needed.



Well, well, well





Greenpeace and the Japanese Whalers




Katrina




‘Nuff said.





Swine Flu, Bird Flu, whatever the next pandemic is.






The gun buy-back in Australia in the late 90’s. Eroding gun rights of US Citizens in many states.





Hillary Clinton’s ascent into politics and the Whitehouse





The use of weather as a weapon. HAARP.




‘Nuff said




The rise of the Police State.







Blackwater




Arab Spring








Iran




Gulf oil spill




911 Pentagon missile attack




The use of political correctness to control what we say, and tell us how we should think.



Iraq





‘Nuff said







The rapid, recent increase in the number of survivalists and doomsdayers.





911 WTC Bombings




Indonesian Tsunami, or another reference to Fukushima?




Greece, Britain, USA………..





Occupy Wall Street






Is this the next prophecy from the game that will come true?






 

The little cameras in your home are multiplying. There are the ones you bought, perhaps your SLR or digital camera, but also those that just kind of show up in your current phone, your old phone, your laptop, your game console, and soon your TV and set-top box.

Varun Arora wants you to turn them all on.

The founder and CEO of GotoCamera in Singapore sees every such camera as an opportunity. The startup, which is attending this year’s DEMO Asia conference in Singapore, provides software and online storage for capturing or streaming video, and says it now has 100,000 users.

Arora hopes that eventually he can convince his users to switch on the various cameras in their homes and let his company’s algorithms analyze what they show, then sell the results as marketing data, in a sort of visual version of what Google and other firms do with search results and free email services.

“But video is another level of privacy for users,” he said.

For now, his company makes money by charging manufacturers for offering its services with their products, or from users that upgrade to extra storage. Currently most such cameras are USB-driven, but a new wave of cheap Wi-Fi models are on the way, and manufacturers like Samsung and Panasonic are putting them into TVs and other devices, mainly for motion control and video conferencing.

“USB is a sunset industry” for cameras, Arora said. He showed off a tiny wireless camera from partner Trek 2000 International, about the size of a roll of film. It sells online for about US$65, and other manufacturers will soon launch for less than $50. Unlike USB models, Wi-Fi cameras don’t need to be plugged into a computer or network, and usually just require a power source, which makes them ideal for security and monitoring.

As the prices of such devices fall, manufacturers will be squeezed, and GotoCamera proposes to provide a portion of the online fees it receives back to them, a rare ongoing revenue stream he compares to disposable blades for shaving razors, that must be continually purchased.

“What we say to them is, ‘Please accept that you’re a commodity, and let us bring the Gillette model to you,’” Arora said.

Currently only about one percent of users subscribe to the company’s paid service, which costs US$40 per year for a gigabyte of storage versus 50 MB for the free version, but Arora thinks that can climb to 50 percent as more people buy cameras specifically for security or monitoring.

GotoCamera, which was founded in 2008, now has five staff and is actively looking for more developers. It has partnered with camera makers like Creative and is in talks with ISPs (Internet service providers) and set-top box makers, and Arora said it will break even next year.

One of the principal producers of DEMO Asia is IDG Enterprise, a subsidiary of International Data Group (IDG), which also owns the IDG News Service.

(Source: networkworld.com)

Hundreds of angry protesters have booed French President Nicolas Sarkozy, forcing him to take shelter in a bar as he campaigned in the Basque country ahead of April’s presidential election.

Some in the crowd then threw eggs at the bar guarded by riot police in the south-western town of Bayonne.

Mr Sarkozy described the protesters - Basque nationalists and supporters of his rival Socialist candidate Francois Hollande - as “hooligans”.

He left the bar after about an hour.

The Basque region straddles south-western France and northern Spain.

Sarkozy ‘saddened’

Mr Sarkozy was met in Bayonne by a hostile crowd, who jeered him and shouted insults.

Some chanted “Nicolas kampora”, which in the Basque language meant “Nicolas get out”.

Mr Sarkozy was also showered with campaign leaflets calling for greater Basque autonomy.

Riot police had to be deployed around the Bar du Palais, where the president took refuge.

Visibly angry, Mr Sarkozy later denounced “the violence of a minority and their unacceptable behaviour”.

“Here, we’re in France, on the territory of the French republic, and the president of the republic will go everywhere. And if that doesn’t please a minority of troublemakers, too bad for them”, he said.

He also said he was “saddened to see Hollande’s Socialist militants associating with [Basque] separatists in violent protests to terrorise ordinary people who want just one thing: to meet and talk with me”.

A senior member of Mr Hollande’s campaign team later said that while the party leader condemned any violence, no Socialist was involved in the Bayonne incident, the AFP news agency reports.

Opinion polls show that Mr Sarkozy is lagging behind Mr Hollande, although the current president is narrowing the gap.

(Source: BBC)

Even with cranes, helicopters, tractors and trucks at our disposal, it would be tough to construct the Great Pyramid of Giza today. Its construction 4,500 years ago is so astounding in some people’s eyes that they invoke mystical or even alien involvement. But the current theory of the building of the Great Pyramid — the notion that it was assembled from the inside out, via a spiraling internal ramp — is probably still the best construction plan.

Following that plan, we could replicate the Wonder of the Ancient World for a cool $5 billion.

First, let’s look at the blueprint: The pyramid is 756 feet long on each side, 481 feet high, and composed of 2.3 million stones weighing nearly 3 tons each for a total mass of 6.5 million tons. Legend has it that the structure was erected in just 20 years’ time, meaning that a block had to have been moved into place about every 5 minutes of each day and night. That pace would have required the (slave) labor of thousands. While traditional theories hold that the pyramid was built via a long external ramp, such a ramp would have had to wind around for more than a mile to be shallow enough to drag stones up, and it would have had a stone volume twice that of the pyramid itself.

A new, more economical theory gaining traction among architects and Egyptologists holds that the bottom third of the pyramid’s height wasconstructed by stones dragged up an external ramp. But above that — for the remaining 33 percent or so of the pyramidal volume — the Egyptians worked their way up through the inside of the structure, building around a gently sloping internal ramp and fitting stone blocks into place as they ascended. Furthermore, the workers could have re-used the stones quarried for the external ramp to build the pyramid’s upper echelons, so that nothing went to waste.

Jean-Pierre Houdin, the French architect who developed the internal ramp theory, has collaborated with a team at Dassault Systems, a 3D graphics firm, to create a virtual model of the construction process. A team of scholars at Laval University in Quebec is now planning an infrared imaging investigation, which could soon reveal the spiraling ramp within the Great Pyramid; if found, it will be the final proof of Houdin’s theory. But whether or not the theory bears out, Houdin says an inside-out construction would still be the best way to build the Great Pyramid.

“I am quite sure we could do the same today, and it would be the most economical method,” Houdin told Life’s Little Mysteries.

There would be two main differences between pyramid-building now and then. First, “Instead of people pulling the sleds that carry the stones up the ramps, you would use something with an engine,” he said. Secondly, “for the [topmost] 10 or 15 meters, you would use a small crane.”

Just as cranes are lifted onto the tops of skyscrapers today, a helicopter would apposition a crane onto a flat top of the pyramid. Stones and other construction materials dragged up to that level via the internal ramp would then be set in place by the crane. (It wouldn’t be feasible to build the entire structure with cranes, Houdin said, because they wouldn’t be able to reach far enough to lift materials from the base to the center of the top of the pyramid.) [Why is the Great Pyramid So Sloppy?]

While the pyramid was originally built by 4,000 workers over the course of 20 years using strength, sleds and ropes, building the pyramid today using stone-carrying vehicles, cranes and helicopters would probably take 1,500 to 2,000 workers around five years, and it would cost on the order of $5 billion, Houdin said, based on manpower and cost of constructing the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River during the Great Depression. The dam contains a volume of concrete roughly equal to the stone in the pyramid. By comparison, the 1,776-foot-tall One World Trade Center being constructed in downtown Manhattan will cost an estimated $4 billion.

There are no plans to build a full-scale Great Pyramid, but a campaign for a scaled-down model is underway. The Earth Pyramid Project, based in the United Kingdom, is raising funds to erect a pyramidal structure in an as-yet-undecided location, built of stones quarried all around the world. It will contain a time capsule, to be opened 1,000 years from now. Funded by governments and organizations around the globe, the Earth Pyramid will not only provide a window into contemporary culture for future societies, it will also serve as an opportunity to test Houdin’s construction theory of the Great Pyramid of Giza.

(Source: livescience.com)

New ‘thinking cap’ technologies that control weaponry ‘a step closer’

New technologies that tap into the brain and allow weapons to one day be fired through mind control could soon become a reality, British scientists claim.

(Source: telegraph.co.uk)