New York Times – Some of the nation’s large banks, according to economists and other finance experts, are like dead men walking. A sober assessment of the growing mountain of losses from bad bets, measured in today’s marketplace, would overwhelm the value of the banks’ assets, they say. The banks, in their view, are insolvent. None of the experts’ research focuses on individual banks, and there are certainly exceptions among the 50 largest banks in the country. Nor do consumers and businesses need to fret about their deposits, which are federally insured. And even banks that might technically be insolvent can continue operating for a long time, and could recover their financial health when the economy improves. Read Article
Market Watch – “One of the disturbing facts of history is that so many civilizations collapse,” warns anthropologist Jared Diamond in “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.” Many “civilizations share a sharp curve of decline. Indeed, a society’s demise may begin only a decade or two after it reaches its peak population, wealth and power.” Now, Harvard’s Niall Ferguson, one of the world’s leading financial historians, echoes Diamond’s warning: “Imperial collapse may come much more suddenly than many historians imagine. A combination of fiscal deficits and military overstretch suggests that the United States may be the next empire on the precipice.” Yes, America is on the edge. Read Article
Reuters – U.S. economists raised their forecast for economic growth in 2010 in March, the third straight monthly rise, while trimming their growth forecast for 2011, according to a survey released on Wednesday. Economists surveyed earlier this month in the Blue Chip Economic Indicators newsletter said the economy is expected to grow by 3.0 percent in 2011, which is 0.1 percentage point lower than estimates made a month ago. But economists raised their 2010 growth forecast for the third consecutive month to 3.1 percent, up 0.1 percentage point from February. Read Article
BBC – Japan has confirmed the existence of a secret Cold War deal allowing the transit of nuclear-armed US vessels through its ports. The move by a government-appointed panel ends decades of official denial – although the existence of the pact was an open secret. The government said that the move was aimed at increasing transparency. But it comes at an unsettled time for the US-Japan relationship, amid a row over US military bases in Okinawa. Read article
The Independent – A former head of MI5 has accused intelligence services in the US of deliberately hiding the mistreatment of terror suspects from their British allies. Baroness Manningham-Buller, giving a lecture in London last night, said the US was “very keen” to prevent Britain discovering how they were getting vital intelligence. She cited the case of Binyam Mohamed, a British resident, who was held at Guantanamo Bay after the 9/11 attacks and provided his captors with useful intelligence which was passed on the the UK security services. She was unaware until 2007, she said, that he had been subjected to waterboarding. Read Article
Post-Gazette – Women of all races bring home less income and own fewer assets, on average, than men of the same race, but for single black women the disparities are so overwhelmingly great that even in their prime working years their median wealth amounts to only $5. In a groundbreaking report released Monday by a leading economic research group, social scientists turned a spotlight on the grave financial challenges facing an often overlooked group of women, many of whom could not take an unpaid sick day or repair a major appliance without going into debt. Read article
Ed. – Please note the use of the term ‘net worth’. This implies that wealth and worth are the same. The author of the article and his audience may well not agree with this implication. However, words/language are very powerful and can be a subtle/subliminal way of continuing old attitudes or starting new attitudes, particularly with up-and-coming generations.
The Times – Obama administration’s latest attempt to stem the housing crisis. NEW YORK – In an effort to end the foreclosure crisis, the Obama administration has been trying to keep defaulting owners in their homes. Now it will take a new approach: paying some of them to leave. This latest program, which will allow owners to sell for less than they owe and will give them a little cash to speed them on their way, is one of the administration’s most aggressive attempts to grapple with a problem that has defied solutions. Read Article
ScienceDaily — What began as research into how diabetics could possibly preserve their eyesight has led to findings that could prolong the vision of children afflicted with retinoblastoma. Dolores Takemoto, a Kansas State University professor of biochemistry who was researching protein kinase C gamma in the lens of the human eye, found her work taking a fascinating turn when she discovered a correlation between the protein Coonexin46 and hypoxia — a deficiency of oxygen which kills normal tissue cells. Read Article
Washington Post – President Obama’s top national security advisers will within days present him with an agonizing choice on how to guide U.S. nuclear weapons policy for the rest of his term. Does he substantially advance his bold pledge to seek a world free of nuclear weapons by declaring that the “sole purpose” of the U.S. arsenal is to deter other nations from using them? Or does he embrace a more modest option, supported by some senior military officials, that deterrence is the “primary purpose”? The difference may seem semantic, but such words, which will be contained in a document known as the Nuclear Posture Review, have deep meaning and could dramatically shift nuclear policy in the United States and around the world. Read article
Telegraph – The head of China’s central bank has given the strongest signal yet that the country will move away from pegging its currency to the dollar, but he said any changes would be gradual. At the annual session of the legislative National People’s Congress in Beijing, Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of the People’s Bank of China, said that the days of the “special yuan” policy were numbered. He described the dollar peg as a “temporary” response to the global financial crisis, but gave no timescale for any change in policy. The currency has been pegged at about 6.83 yuan per dollar since July 2008. Read Article
The Independent – Two IT workers at a suburban Philadelphia school district that secretly activated webcams on students’ school-issued laptops are on paid leave amid an FBI wiretap investigation. Lower Merion School District officials insist the move is not meant to suggest wrongdoing by the veteran employees. They have said the webcams were only activated to find missing laptops, and not for any rogue purpose. Read Article
Medical News Today – University of Michigan scientists have identified a new reservoir for hidden HIV-infected cells that can serve as a factory for new infections. The findings, which appear online March 7 in Nature Medicine, indicate a new target for curing the disease so those infected with the virus may someday no longer rely on AIDS drugs for a lifetime. “Antiviral drugs have been effective at keeping the virus at bay. However once the drug therapy is stopped, the virus comes back,”… Read Article
Ed. – “Important new research by U-M has discovered that bone marrow, previously thought to be resistant to the virus, can contain latent forms of the infection.”
No, bone marrow stem cells have been known to become infected with HIV, as far back as 2007: “So far, the method involves removing HIV-infected stem cells from a patient’s bone marrow, growing new versions tweaked to fight HIV, and then returning the rejigged cells to the patient.” Read More 2007
CNN – Sitting at the kitchen table in his small house, Steven Butler has trouble even with a very simple question. He cannot tell you the day of the week or the month, and he has to have the help of a calendar to tell you the year. “Once a moment is gone, it’s gone,” said his brother and caregiver, David Butler says in an interview to air on tonight’s “Campbell Brown”. “He can’t remember any good times, birthday parties, Christmas, any event.” On October 7, 2006, Steven Butler, by his own admission, was drunk and disorderly. He refused an order from a police officer in his hometown to get off a city bus. The officer used his Taser ECD (officially, an “Electronic Control Device”) three times. Read Article
ScienceDaily — Some anti-depressant drugs are associated with an increased chance of developing cataracts, according to a new statistical study by researchers at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute and McGill University. The study, … showed statistical relationships between a diagnosis of cataracts or cataract surgery and the class of drugs called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), as well as between cataracts and specific drugs within that class. Read article
Daily Telegraph – Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York City, is planning to tackle the American fondness for sugary soft drinks with a so -called ’soda tax’. Mr Bloomberg, whose administration has already targeted unhealthy trans fats in food and banned smoking from many public areas, has urged New York state legislators to impose a tax of a cent per ounce on the sugary drinks. Read article
Washington Post – President Obama’s proposed budget would add more than $9.7 trillion to the national debt over the next decade, congressional budget analysts said Friday. Proposed tax cuts for the middle class account for nearly a third of that shortfall. The 10-year outlook released by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office is somewhat gloomier than White House projections, which found that Obama’s budget request would produce deficits that would add about $8.5 trillion to the national debt by 2020. Read Article
msnbc – Too much boob tube also makes you weaker, research shows. You’ve accepted the idea that TV makes you dumber. You know there are lots of more edifying things you could be doing with your time than cheering on the contestants on “Survivor.” And unless you’re working out to an exercise video, you know those hours sprawled out in front of the screen are going to make you fatter — not to mention the impact of all that junk food you’ve been tempted to scarf down during the commercial breaks. But you’ll be surprised to learn the host of other bad things TV can do to you. Read Article
NECN – Lawmakers in Connecticut are now considering a bill that would allow people to carry Taser guns for personal protection. Right now, residents of Connecticut are only allowed to keep stun guns at home. It’s a phrase that has become part of the common language of America since it hit the internet a few years back. ”Don’t tase me, bro!” Could we hear that on the streets in Connecticut soon? Possibly, if the legislature passes a bill that would allow people to carry tasers. Read Article
Al JAzeera – US special operations forces could help the Somali government with an offensive to dislodge al-Shabab fighters from the capital, Mogadishu, a US newspaper report says. Citing an unnamed US official on Saturday, the New York Times website said the offensive could begin in a few weeks. Washington believes al-Shabab has links to al-Qaeda, which has expanded its influence in Yemen across the Red Sea. Read article
Wall Street Journal – Canada’s First Nations peoples chastised Royal Bank of Canada (RY) for not doing enough to prevent “an environmental holocaust,” at the bank’s annual meeting in Toronto Wednesday. Four aboriginal groups appealed to Canada’s biggest bank to use its corporate heft and political influence to stop Enbridge Inc. (ENB) from building a 725-mile pipeline to carry oil from Alberta’s tar sands through northern British Columbia to Kitimat, where it would be loaded on tankers for shipment to the U.S. west coast or Asia. Read Article
Drinking sugar-sweetened soft drinks has been linked to an increase in new cases of diabetes and heart disease. More people now drink soft, sport and fruit drinks daily, and the increase has led to thousands more diabetes and heart disease cases over the past decade, according to research presented to the American Heart Association’s annual conference. Read Article
The Hill – A top Microsoft executive on Tuesday suggested a broad Internet tax to help defray the costs associated with computer security breaches and vast Internet attacks, according to reports. Speaking at a security conference in San Francisco, Microsoft Vice President for Trustworthy Computing Scott Charney pitched the Web usage fee as one way to subsidize efforts to combat emerging cyber threats — a costly venture, he said, but one that had vast community benefits. Read Article
CNet – Homeland Security and the National Security Agency may be taking a closer look at Internet communications in the future. The Department of Homeland Security’s top cybersecurity official told CNET on Wednesday that the department may eventually extend its Einstein technology, which is designed to detect and prevent electronic attacks, to networks operated by the private sector. The technology was created for federal networks. Greg Schaffer, assistant secretary for cybersecurity and communications, said in an interview that the department is evaluating whether Einstein “makes sense for expansion to critical infrastructure spaces” over time. Read Article
USA Today – Eleven major airports will begin using body scanners to screen passengers as the Transportation Security Administration launches a plan to buy 1,000 of the machines over the next two years.The scanners can look under passengers’ clothing in order to detect weapons and explosives. Boston Logan International Airport received one new scanner this week and will get two more next week. All will go into the same terminal. Among the other airports getting the scanners are Los Angeles International, Chicago O’Hare and Charlotte Douglas International.The Transportation Security Administration bought 150 scanners in September using $25 million from the federal stimulus package. It plans to buy 300 more this year and 500 next year Read Article
Reuters – The Obama administration on Friday sought to limit fallout from a resolution branding the World War One-era massacre of Armenians by Turkish forces as “genocide,” and vowed to stop it from going further in Congress. Turkey was infuriated and recalled its ambassador after a House of Representatives committee on Thursday approved the nonbinding measure condemning killings that took place nearly 100 years ago, in the last days of the Ottoman Empire. Read article
