Clayton Willis

Every 11 years or so, the sun gets a little pissy. It breaks out in a rash of planet-sized sunspots that spew superhot gas, hurling clouds of electrons, protons, and heavier ions toward Earth at nearly the speed of light. These solar windstorms have been known to knock out power grids and TV broadcasts, and our growing reliance on space-based technology makes us more vulnerable than ever to their effects. On January 3, scientists discovered a reverse-polarity sunspot, signaling the start of a new cycle —Detours
Clumps of ions in the atmosphere could interfere with GPS. Satellite signals are slowed by bumping into particles, meaning your trusty navigator may lose its way. Remember those colorful paper things called maps?

Falling Satellites
Increased solar energy heats Earth's atmosphere, causing it to expand. That's a drag on low-flying satellites and can even knock them out of orbit. A solar storm in 1979 deposited Skylab on Australia.

Layovers in Alaska
Particles are drawn to Earth's magnetic poles, right through popular flight paths. Electrons absorb the energy in shortwave signals, causing radio blackouts — and unscheduled stops in Anchorage.

Light Shows
Auroras occur when waves of charged particles light up gases in the upper atmosphere. As more particles stream in, the so-called aurora oval grows, bringing the "northern lights" as far south as Key West.

By Walden Siew

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wall Street banks are facing a "systemic margin call" that may deplete banks of $325 billion of capital due to deteriorating subprime U.S. mortgages, JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N: Quote, Profile, Research), said in a report late on Friday.

JPMorgan, which sent a default notice to Thornburg Mortgage Inc. (TMA.N: Quote, Profile, Research) after the lender missed a $28 million margin call, said more default notices and margin calls were likely. The Carlyle Group's mortgage fund also failed to meet $37 million in margin calls this week.

"A systemic credit crunch is underway, driven primarily by bank writedowns for subprime mortgages," according to the report co-authored by analyst Christopher Flanagan. "We would characterize this situation as a systemic margin call."

The credit crisis that began about a year ago will likely intensify after Friday's weak February U.S. employment report "that most definitely signals recession," JPMorgan said.

Indeed, corporate bond spreads widened to a new record on Friday, surpassing levels seen in October 2002 during a boom in bankruptcies following the dot-com crash. U.S. employers cut payrolls in February for a second consecutive month, slashing 63,000 jobs, the biggest monthly job decline in nearly five years, the U.S. Labor Department reported on Friday.

"The weak February employment report points to an economy in recession," JPMorgan said.

The JPMorgan report included a revised bleaker forecast for subprime-related home prices. The bank now sees prices falling 30 percent, from its prior 25 percent forecast. Those prices have declined 14 percent since mid-2006, JPMorgan said.

The U.S. jobs results also came after the Federal Reserve expanded the amount of its short-term auctions to $100 billion in total in the central bank's latest effort to ease credit concerns. Ongoing concerns about bond insurers, known as monolines, and their effort to save their top ratings also are weighing on market sentiment.

By Matthew Robinson

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oil shot to a record over $108 a barrel on Monday, extending a rally led by investors seeking a hedge against the tumbling dollar and inflation.

U.S. crude settled up $2.75 at $107.90 a barrel, off a record $108.21 hit earlier in the session. London Brent crude jumped $1.78 to settle at $104.16 a barrel.

Fears of a U.S. recession following the biggest U.S. job losses in five years and strains in the credit market have sunk the dollar and raised expectations the Federal Reserve could cut interest rates again to prop up the economy.

Speculators have rushed into commodities to hedge against the weaker dollar as well as prospects that further Fed rate cuts could fuel inflation, helping to lift oil to average over $95 so far this year despite signs the faltering U.S. economy is crimping energy demand.

"It's the same thing that has been going on, it's a shark-like feeding frenzy on commodities. A lot of people feel the latest numbers on employment were bearish on the economy," said Peter Beutel, president of Cameron Hanover.

"The bottom line is people believe that as long as we see bearish numbers it will lead to another Fed cut."

The dollar tumbled against the yen on Monday as fears of a U.S. recession hit stock prices.

A fall in U.S. crude oil inventories reported in government data released last week and OPEC's decision on Wednesday to hold supplies steady have also boosted prices. Continued...

PREMEDITATED MERGER
North American Army created without OK by Congress
U.S., Canada military ink deal to fight domestic emergencies

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted: February 24, 2008
1:45 pm Eastern


By Jerome R. Corsi
© 2008 WorldNetDaily


In a ceremony that received virtually no attention in the American media, the United States and Canada signed a military agreement Feb. 14 allowing the armed forces from one nation to support the armed forces of the other nation during a domestic civil emergency, even one that does not involve a cross-border crisis.

The agreement, defined as a Civil Assistance Plan, was not submitted to Congress for approval, nor did Congress pass any law or treaty specifically authorizing this military agreement to combine the operations of the armed forces of the United States and Canada in the event of a wide range of domestic civil disturbances ranging from violent storms, to health epidemics, to civil riots or terrorist attacks.

In Canada, the agreement paving the way for the militaries of the U.S. and Canada to cross each other's borders to fight domestic emergencies was not announced either by the Harper government or the Canadian military, prompting sharp protest.

read more click here

By Declan McCullagh
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

Published: July 7, 2006, 6:47 PM PDT

FBI Agent Barry Smith distributed the proposal at a private meeting last Friday with industry representatives and indicated it would be introduced by Sen. Mike DeWine, an Ohio Republican, according to two sources familiar with the meeting.

The draft bill would place the FBI's Net-surveillance push on solid legal footing. At the moment, it's ensnared in a legal challenge from universities and some technology companies that claim the Federal Communications Commission's broadband surveillance directives exceed what Congress has authorized.

The FBI claims that expanding the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act is necessary to thwart criminals and terrorists who have turned to technologies like voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP.

"The complexity and variety of communications technologies have dramatically increased in recent years, and the lawful intercept capabilities of the federal, state and local law enforcement community have been under continual stress, and in many cases have decreased or become impossible," according to a summary accompanying the draft bill.

Complicating the political outlook for the legislation is an ongoing debate over allegedly illegal surveillance by the National Security Administration--punctuated by several lawsuits challenging it on constitutional grounds and an unrelated proposal to force Internet service providers to record what Americans are doing online. One source, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitive nature of last Friday's meeting, said the FBI viewed its CALEA expansion as a top congressional priority for 2007.

Breaking the legislation down
The 27-page proposed CALEA amendments seen by CNET News.com would:

• Require any manufacturer of "routing" and "addressing" hardware to offer upgrades or other "modifications" that are needed to support Internet wiretapping. Current law does require that of telephone switch manufacturers--but not makers of routers and network address translation hardware like Cisco Systems and 2Wire.

• Authorize the expansion of wiretapping requirements to "commercial" Internet services including instant messaging if the FCC deems it to be in the "public interest." That would likely sweep in services such as in-game chats offered by Microsoft's Xbox 360 gaming system as well.

• Force Internet service providers to sift through their customers' communications to identify, for instance, only VoIP calls. (The language requires companies to adhere to "processing or filtering methods or procedures applied by a law enforcement agency.") That means police could simply ask broadband providers like AT&T, Comcast or Verizon for wiretap info--instead of having to figure out what VoIP service was being used.

• Eliminate the current legal requirement saying the Justice Department must publish a public "notice of the actual number of communications interceptions" every year. That notice currently also must disclose the "maximum capacity" required to accommodate all of the legally authorized taps that government agencies will "conduct and use simultaneously."

Jim Harper, a policy analyst at the free-market Cato Institute and member of a Homeland Security advisory board, said the proposal would "have a negative impact on Internet users' privacy."

"People expect their information to be private unless the government meets certain legal standards," Harper said. "Right now the Department of Justice is pushing the wrong way on all this."

Neither the FBI nor DeWine's office responded to a request for comment Friday afternoon.

DeWine has relatively low approval ratings--47 percent, according to SurveyUSA.com--and is enmeshed in a fierce battle with a Democratic challenger to retain his Senate seat in the November elections. DeWine is a member of a Senate Judiciary subcommittee charged with overseeing electronic privacy and antiterrorism enforcement and is a former prosecutor in Ohio.

A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., decided 2-1 last month to uphold the FCC's extension of CALEA to broadband providers, and it's not clear what will happen next with the lawsuit. Judge Harry Edwards wrote in his dissent that the majority's logic gave the FCC "unlimited authority to regulate every telecommunications service that might conceivably be used to assist law enforcement."

The organizations behind the lawsuit say Congress never intended CALEA to force broadband providers--and networks at corporations and universities--to build in central surveillance hubs for the police. The list of organizations includes Sun Microsystems, Pulver.com, the American Association of Community Colleges, the Association of American Universities and the American Library Association.

If the FBI's legislation becomes law, it would derail the lawsuit because there would no longer be any question that Congress intended CALEA to apply to the Internet.
Article posted from this website

POSTED: 4:59 pm PDT July 6, 2006
UPDATED: 12:54 pm PDT July 7, 2006

HAYWARD, Calif. -- Thousands of fish in the Bay Area are turning up dead, and biologists still have no answers to this aquatic mystery.

Click here to read this report

By Ker Than
LiveScience Staff Writer
posted: 05 July 2006
01:00 pm ET



Slow moving "silent" earthquakes that last on the order of weeks to months could be useful for predicting when more destructive temblors will strike, scientists said today.

In the July 6 issue of the journal Nature, a team of American geoscientists urge colleagues to search for evidence of the silent movements in earthquake-prone regions of the world, such as the Pacific Northwest.

The silent quakes could trigger swarms of small magnitude earthquakes that could in turn set the stage for a more catastrophic event, the researchers say.


To read entire story click here

LONDON (AFP) — Feeling more happy than usual this particular Friday? You should be, according to a scholar in seasonal disorders at a British university.
Cliff Arnall has analysed such factors as outdoor activities, nature, social interaction, childhood memories, temperature and holidays — data gathered over a period of 15 years in interviews with 3,000 people around the world.

His conclusion: June 23 is the happiest day of the year.

"People across borders experience happiness when they meet with friends and family and establish close social relationships," the University of Cardiff academic told AFP. "We need some close emotional ties."

He used what he considers a "simple equation" to reach his conclusion — O + (N x S) + Cpm/T + He.

21 June 2006
NewScientist.com news service
Patrick Barry

WHILE San Franciscans justifiably worry about living near the San Andreas fault, many forget that southern Californians too live in fear of their own "big one". No major quake has struck the southern San Andreas fault in at least 250 years, and scientists say that the region is now primed for a release of the built-up tension.

A new study, by geophysicist Yuri Fialko of the University of California, San Diego, provides the most precise measurements yet of this accumulated strain - and it's not a pretty picture. Deep within the Earth's crust, the west side of the San Andreas fault has moved relative to the east by as much as 8 metres since the region's last earthquake. But closer to the surface, the two sides of the fault are jammed against each other, building up ever-increasing strain.

Fialko says that this 8-metre shift is on a par with the maximum movement that the fault has ever experienced between quakes - and it has packed enough energy in the fault to unleash a magnitude-8 earthquake if the strain were released all at once. "If it's realised, it's going to be a major disaster," he says.

Fialko estimated the slip rates along faults in southern California using nine years of high-precision satellite data. Conventional seismic stations can track ground movement very precisely but are typically spaced up to about 10 kilometres apart, on average. Such a coarse grid of data points makes it hard to be certain of what is going on underground. Satellites, on the other hand, can scan the whole region with a resolution down to 20 metres. The fine detail, combined with the use of space-borne radar interferometers and GPS satellites, allowed Fialko to measure ground motions as slow as only a few millimetres per year. "It's only been a few years since that became possible," says Fialko (Nature, vol 441, p 96.

"It's certainly the most precise study that I've seen," says Karen Felzer, a geophysicist at the US Geological Survey in Pasadena, California.

These minute movements reveal the deformation of the land surface along the faults, showing for the first time where the strain is accumulating. The tension seems to be divided almost evenly between the parallel San Andreas and San Jacinto faults (see Graphic).

Scientists were also uncertain whether slow movements in the faults at shallow depths were partially relieving the built-up tension. But Fialko's analysis shows that this "shallow creep" is, unfortunately, trivially small. The southern San Andreas fault may be nearing the end of its quiet period.

From issue 2557 of New Scientist magazine, 21 June 2006, page 17

By Matt Reynolds

BRATISLAVA (Reuters) - Human beings may be at higher risk of strokes in years when the explosions on the sun peak, according to a neurologist who studied the records of 6,100 patients in Slovakia.

Dr. Michal Kovac said he found a spike in strokes and brain hemorrhages in the town of Nove Zamky in southern Slovakia in years when solar flares -- bursts of energy stronger than a million nuclear bombs combined -- are most abundant.
To read entire article click here

My Guest 05/15/06

Craig Griffin, president of ITM Trading, Inc.
will discuss the "Reasons for The Soaring Gold Price."

This program will be LIVE from Phoenix.

After the program listeners can reach Mr. Griffin at
these two numbers:

1-888-OWN GOLD
602-404-4010

By David Shukman
BBC News science correspondent

The number of people with medical problems linked to the 9/11 attacks on New York has risen to at least 15,000.

The figure, put together for the BBC, counts those receiving treatment for problems related to breathing in dust.

Many of the victims say the government offered false reassurances that the Manhattan air was safe and are now pursuing a class-action lawsuit.

On Tuesday, a coroner said the death of a policeman who developed a respiratory disease was "directly linked" to 9/11.

James Zadroga - who worked at Ground Zero - died in January. The New Jersey coroner's ruling was the first of its kind.

WTC 'cough'

Jeff Endean used to be the macho leader of a police Swat firearms team. Now, he has trouble breathing and survives on the cocktail of drugs he takes every day.

Kelly Colangelo, an IT specialist, used to have good health but now endures a range of problems including allergies and sinus pain.

"It worried me that I've been damaging my health just being in my home," she told the BBC News website. "It also worries me that I see the health impact on the [the emergency crews at the scene]. We were also exposed and I wonder if in 10-15 years from now, am I going to be another victim?"

Both are victims of what used to be called "World Trade Center cough", an innocuous sounding condition that many thought would pass once the dust that rose from the attacks of 9/11 had blown away.

But the medical problems have not merely intensified; the list of victims has grown alarmingly at the same time.

The apparent cause? The long line of contaminants carried by the dust into the lungs of many of those at, or near, the scene on that fateful day.

'Real' figure

One list of sufferers has been compiled at the Mount Sinai Medical Center. Its World Trade Center Screening Programme has 16,000 people on its books, of whom about half - 8,000 - require treatment.

A further 7,000 firefighters are recorded as having a wide range of medical problems, producing a total of 15,000. But the overall numbers affected could easily be far higher.

As the US government's newly appointed "health czar" John Howard confirmed to the BBC, there were between 30,000 and 50,000 people at or near Ground Zero who might have been exposed to the hazardous dust and no one really knows how many are suffering problems now.

Consisting of billions of microscopic particles, the dust was especially toxic because of its contents.

A grim list includes lead from 50,000 computers, asbestos from the twin towers' structures and dangerously high levels of alkalinity from the concrete.

Long time

Many of the people now suffering were sent to Ground Zero to help search for survivors. Others volunteered. Still more just happened to be living or working in the area.

The latter feel particularly aggrieved, even betrayed.

In the days following the attacks, the head of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) declared that monitoring operations had proved the "air was safe to breathe". And with that reassurance, the authorities reopened the globally important financial hub of Wall Street.

At the time it was seen as a critical morale-booster to a wounded nation.

However, in the months and years that have followed, community groups, the labour movement and local politicians have fought to raise awareness of the hazards and to lift the profile of the problem.

Now the federal courts have allowed a class-action lawsuit to be filed against those very authorities.

Last month, a judge described the EPA's reassurances as "misleading" and "shocking the conscience". The legal process could last years.

A special report on the dust fallout from the 9/11 attacks will be featured on BBC World starting on Wednesday 3 May at 1930 GMT. The documentary will also be carried on BBC News 24.

Click here BBC News

Top Ten Junk Science Stories of the Past Decade
Thursday, April 06, 2006
By Steven Milloy

Curious....Click Here

31 March 2006
Recently citizen scientist Forrest Mims told me about a speech he heard at the Texas Academy of Science during which the speaker, a world-renowned ecologist, advocated for the extermination of 90 percent of the human species in a most horrible and painful manner. Apparently at the speaker's direction, the speech was not video taped by the Academy and so Forrest's may be the only record of what was said. Forrest's account of what he witnessed chilled my soul. Astonishingly, Forrest reports that many of the Academy members present gave the speaker a standing ovation. To date, the Academy has not moved to sanction the speaker or distance itself from the speaker's remarks.

If the professional community has lost its sense of moral outrage when one if their own openly calls for the slow and painful extermination of over 5 billion human beings, then it falls upon the amateur community to be the conscience of science.

Forrest, who is a member of the Texas Academy and chairs its Environmental Science Section, told me he would be unable to describe the speech in The Citizen Scientist because he has protested the speech to the Academy and he serves as Editor of The Citizen Scientist. Therefore, to preclude a possible conflict of interest, I have directed Forrest to describe what he observed and his reactions in this special feature, for which I have served as editor and which is being released a week ahead of our normal publication schedule. Comments may be sent to Backscatter.

Shawn Carlson, Ph.D.,
MacArthur Fellow,
Founder and Executive Director,
Society for Amateur Scientists

Special Editorial: Dealing with Doctor Doom



As seen on Citizen Scientist Website

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - The use of mobile phones over a long period of time can raise the risk for brain tumors, a new Swedish study said on Friday, contradicting the conclusions of other researchers.
The Dutch Health Council, in an overview of research from around the world, last year found no evidence radiation from mobile phones and TV towers was harmful. A four-year British survey released in January showed no link between regular, long-term use of cell phones and the most common type of tumor.

However, researchers at the Swedish National Institute for Working Life said they looked at the mobile phone use of 905 people between the age of 20 and 80 who had been diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor and found a link.

"A total 85 of these 905 cases were so-called high users of mobile phones, that is they began early to use mobile and, or wireless telephones and used them a lot," the study said.



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