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These pages list the most recent news stories reported by the readers and editors of Freedom's Phoenix:
Moscow - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez will arrive in Russia to conduct a new arms deal Wednesday, according to the news agency Interfax. Venezuela is planning to buy three diesel-powered submarines, several armoured personnel carriers and type T-72 tanks and ten military helicopters, said the report, quoting officials from the Russian arms industry. Caracas also wanted to invest in coastal missile defences.
The state of Maryland has recently received a crash-course in Macroeconomics 101. Amidst a budget deficit last year, the politicians in Annapolis created a new tax bracket for the wealthiest 0.3% of earners. The new millionaire tax bracket raised the top marginal income-tax rate for the state to 6.25%. Democrats praised the new tax, predicting that it would bring an additional $106 million to the state coffers. In true Marxist fashion, Governor Martin O’Malley declared that these taxpayers were "willing and able to pay their fair share." A funny thing happened this past tax season, however. According to the state comptroller’s office, million-dollar income tax returns have decreased from 3,000 to 2,000, down one-third! Naturally, some of this can be attributed to the economic downturn; but much of it is due to millionaires actually leaving the state. In this case, the grass really was greener on the other side. Instead of bringing in an extra $106 million, the st
Over the past week we’ve seen notable insider buying/selling by corporate officers, directors, and beneficiary owners in the following stocks:
ABC's World News on Tuesday night bemoaned the impact of conservatives and citizen journalists in derailing President Barack Obama's agenda. Pivoting from the reaction to Obama's address to students, anchor Charles Gibson observed “today's speech was really the latest target of some conservative groups taking on the President” and “their tactics are having an impact.” Reporter Dan Harris asserted “the conservative echo chamber is not new, but,” he fretted, “this White House is operating in a vastly accelerated media environment where you no longer need to be in the presence of reporters to make news, as we saw with the health care furor at those town hall meetings.” Journalistic veteran Tom Rosenstiel marveled: “Today you can arrange that protest yourself, photograph it with a hand-held cell phone, and if you can then generate enough views of that video on YouTube, you can make something into national news.” That's because, Harris insisted, “the mainstream media
Unlike the Obama speech, in 1991 most of the controversy came after, not before, the president's school appearance. The day after Bush spoke, the Washington Post published a front-page story suggesting the speech was carefully staged for the president's political benefit. "The White House turned a Northwest Washington junior high classroom into a television studio and its students into props," the Post reported. With the Post article in hand, Democrats pounced. "The Department of Education should not be producing paid political advertising for the president, it should be helping us to produce smarter students," said Richard Gephardt, then the House Majority Leader. "And the president should be doing more about education than saying, 'Lights, camera, action.'" Democrats did not stop with words. Rep. William Ford, then chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, ordered the General Accounting Office to investigate the cost and lega
Barack Obama will cement the new co-operative relationship between the US and the United Nations this month when he becomes the first American president to chair its 15-member Security Council.The topic for the summit-level session of the council on September 24 is nuclear non-proliferation and nuclear disarmament – one of several global challenges that the US now wants to see addressed at a multinational level.“The council has a very important role to play in preventing the spread and use of nuclear weapons, and it’s the world’s principal body for dealing with global security cooperation,” Susan Rice, US envoy to the UN, said last week.
Norwegian oil and gas giant StatoilHydro has inaugurated the world's first floating full-scale offshore wind turbine, paving the way for deep-water wind farms possessing the dual appeal of being out of sight as well as more efficient.
The turbine, known as Hywind, towers 213 feet above the waterline, but the steel spar on which it is mounted plunges another 328 feet below the surface, where it is anchored to the sea floor by three stabilizing cables. The spar is filled with water and rocks to provide ballast that keeps the turbine from capsizing in rough seas. Located about six miles off of Karmoey near the country's southwestern coastline, Hywind will serve as a test bed for offshore technologies over the next two years as engineers work on getting the cost of Hywind down and figure out how best to develop even larger deep-water turbines.
First Solar just signed an agreement with China to build the biggest solar power plant yet, according to a statement released today by the company. The 2-gigawatt plant in the Mongolian desert will generate enough electricity to power three million homes.
That's a heck of a lot of cadmium telluride, the semiconductor they use for their thin film cells.
The largest solar plant currently in operation is a mere 60-megawatt plant in Spain, according to pvresources.com.
First Solar and China officially signed a memorandum of understanding, which is still up for final negotiations. The plan is to start building a 30-megawatt phase this summer, adding more and more until the final phase is complete in 2019.
Earlier this year, First Solar became the first company to produce solar cells at less than a dollar per watt, crossing the boundary thought to make solar power competitive with traditional energy sources.
As part of a greater effort to someday build computing elements at an atomic scale, IBM scientists in Zurich have taken the highest-resolution image ever of an individual molecule using non-contact atomic force microscopy. Performed in an ultrahigh vacuum at 5 degrees Kelvin, scientists were able to "to look through the electron cloud and see the atomic backbone of an individual molecule for the first time," a feat necessary for the further development of atomic scale electronic building blocks.
Atomic force microscopy employs a cantilever so small that its tip tapers to a nanoscale point. As the microscope scans, the cantilever bounces up and down in response to the miniscule forces between the tip and the sample, generating a picture of the sample’s surface. The pentacene molecule sampled consists of 22 carbon atoms and 14 hydrogen atoms and measures 1.4 nanometers in length, with the space between carbon atoms registering at 0.14 nanometers, or ha
Some futurists such as Ray Kurzweil have hypothesized that we will
someday soon pass through a singularity--that is, a time period of
rapid technological change beyond which we cannot envision the future
of society. Most visions of this singularity focus on the creation of
machines intelligent enough to devise machines even more intelligent
than themselves, and so forth recursively, thus launching a positive
feedback loop of intelligence amplification. It's an intriguing
thought. (One of the first things I wanted to do when I got to MIT as
an undergraduate was to build a robot scientist that could make
discoveries faster and better than anyone else.) Even the CTO of Intel,
Justin Rattner, has publicly speculated recently that we're well on our
way to this singularity, and conferences like the Singularity Summit
(at which I'll be speaking in October) are exploring how such transformations might take place.
A printing technique that could stamp out features just tens of nanometers across at industrial scale is finally moving out of the lab. The new roll-to-roll nanoimprint lithography system could be used to cheaply and efficiently churn out nano-patterned optical films to improve the performance of displays and solar cells.
Nano press: This 10-by-30-centimeter plastic sheet (top) has been patterned with a series of nanoscale polymer lines using roll-to-roll nanoimprint lithography (bottom). The film is iridescent because of the way its nanoscale features scatter light.Nanoimprint lithography uses mechanical force to press out a nanoscale pattern and can make much smaller features than optical lithography, which is reaching its physical limits. The technique was developed as a tool for miniaturizing integrated circuits, and a handful of companies, including Molecular Imprints of Austin, TX, are still developing it for this applicat
The most efficient possible display technology would be something that bypasses the eyes altogether and sends information straight to the brain. Sadly, cranial USB ports are still pretty hard to install. The second most efficient possible display technology anyone's devised projects images directly into the eye. The dream of a wearable virtual retinal display, or VRD, has been around for nearly two decades; it's on the horizon, but it's still going to be a while until it gets here.
The idea of VRD was first tossed around at the University of Washington's Human Interface Technology Lab back around 1991. Thomas Furness, who'd been working on helmet-based displays for the Air Force in the '80s, and research engineer Joel Kollin were part of the team that put together the initial (and enormous) prototype. The concept was that tiny, ultra-low-power lasers could paint an image onto the human retina by scanning across it at high speed,
Merck was in trouble. In 2002, the pharmaceutical giant was falling behind its rivals in sales. Even worse, patents on five blockbuster drugs were about to expire, which would allow cheaper generics to flood the market. The company hadn't introduced a truly new product in three years, and its stock price was plummeting.
In interviews with the press, Edward Scolnick, Merck's research director, laid out his battle plan to restore the firm to preeminence. Key to his strategy was expanding the company's reach into the antidepressant market, where Merck had lagged while competitors like Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline created some of the best-selling drugs in the world. "To remain dominant in the future," he told Forbes, "we need to dominate the central nervous system."
His plan hinged on the success of an experimental antidepressant codenamed MK-869. Still in clinical trials, it looked like every pharma executive's dream: a new
Cheng Siwei, former vice-chairman of the Standing Committee and now head of China's green energy drive, said Beijing was dismayed by the Fed's recourse to "credit easing".
"We hope there will be a change in monetary policy as soon as they have positive growth again," he said at the Ambrosetti Workshop, a policy gathering on Lake Como.
"If they keep printing money to buy bonds it will lead to inflation, and after a year or two the dollar will fall hard. Most of our foreign reserves are in US bonds and this is very difficult to change, so we will diversify incremental reserves into euros, yen, and other currencies," he said.
China's reserves are more than – $2 trillion, the world's largest.
PHOENIX (2/11/08) -- The night of March 13, 1997 strange lights were witnessed flying over the Phoenix sky. For years the lights have remained a mystery, which have led to a number of hypotheses ranging from UFOs to military exercises to weather balloons. But there was something more. That night, under the cover of strange lights in the sky, a "man" appeared in Phoenix unleashing a series of mysterious events. Who was he? Where was he from? Why did he come? This is the story of the Appearance of a Man and the Phoenix Lights Mystery
Demonstration to boost support for legislation gets help from 9-year-old boy.
SCRANTON – How many people have read the full health care reform bill known as HR 3200?
Organizers of a public reading of the bill that took place in downtown Scranton on Wednesday say not many. And for that reason, organizer Roxanne Pauline said that more than 38 people, old and young, with and without health care coverage, signed up to help read the more than 1,000-page bill.
The reading at the Lackawanna County Courthouse Square began at 5 a.m. and continued for over 15 hours. And, according to Pauline, it is said to be the first public reading of the bill in America.
The event gained national attention from USA Today featuring a preview story about the reading and international attention from BBC Radio live at the reading.
Pauline said the reading aimed to inform members of the public and organizers of the reading about the bill.
“We’ve been learning a
Russia has denied a cargo ship whose apparent disappearance sparked an international mystery was carrying S-300 anti-aircraft missiles bound for Iran.
Sergei Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister, on Tuesday dismissed a report in a British newspaper that the Arctic Sea was carrying a batch of the sophisticated Russian-made weapons when it was apparently hijacked by pirates.
"Regarding the S-300s on board the Arctic Sea, this is absolutely untrue," Lavrov said.
Russian investigators also announced they had begun inspecting the ship and so far had only found its official cargo of timber.
Cindy Sheehan will be at Martha’s Vineyard beginning August 25 a short way from Obama’s vacation paradise of the celebrity elite but very far from the Afghanistan and Pakistan and Iraq where the body bags and cemeteries fill up each day as Obama’s wars rage on. She will remain there from August 25 through August 29 and has issued a call for all peace activists to join her there. For those of us close by in the New England states and in New York City, there would seem to be a special obligation to get to Martha’s Vineyard as soon as we can.
Warren Buffett lost about $25 billion during the financial crisis, but
he still managed to make the most out of the situation by attempting to
profit from the downturn. His picks could reap huge rewards, but right
now, Berkshire Hathaway appears to be taking a more cautious approach,
buying fewer stocks than it is selling, suggesting that Buffett is
getting worried. At the same time, "Buffettologists" say that as his
inevitable retirement approaches Buffett is also thinking about his
legacy and is more concerned about making investments that will give
out profits in the long-term.
We recently helped expose the outrageous treatment of dozens of soldiers at Fort Bragg, NC with “Echo Platoon - Warehousing soldiers in the homeland”
According to international law experts, the invasion and ongoing occupation of Afghanistan is as illegal as the US presence in Iraq. The United Nations Charter mandates that military force against another country is only justified when used in self-defense or authorized by the UN Security Council.
Government is malignant. You can't allow even a tiny bit to
remain without the certainty of it spreading again. How much cancer is
the best amount to give yourself? How
much cyanide do you think is best to add to your food?
I am working on a story about the New World Order. I assume you know about the Sibel Edmonds story?As I have told you in the past it is not a Zionist plot for heavens sakes all one has to do is look at the religious backgrounds, diversity of the players involved. Rip off artist Jamie Dimon is a Greek boy. The family shortened the name from Papademetriou, Front man Timonthy Geithner is German. He was married by Rev. Thomas Keehn, a United Church of Christ minister and the Ringleader Henry Paulson is a Christian Scientist. To understand requires a lot of reading here we go... To connect the dots please listen to this audio all the way through. Then read this and this and THIS! It is vital to understand that the New World Order is inextricably tied to the Fabian Socialists that formed in England during the later part of the 1800s and their intricate plans for a global fascist-socialistic society. In fact, there is no New World Order outside of the Fabian Socialist agenda.
Does bad judgment or rude behavior by any citizen justify the use of force of an electric shock by the police in America?
Here we go again, another officer with poor or nonexistent communication skills using the Taser in a manner unacceptable in a free society. This new report comes from not New York City where you expect rude behavior to be the norm, but from the wild west of Glenrock, Wyoming.
Wasn’t it the Bush Administration that coined the phrase, “Freedom isn’t free.”? I’m left to wonder, free of what; free of excessive force from our own police force? Just going through the airport in America I’m made to feel like a criminal in ways you won’t feel going through airports in Europe. In Russia you get robbed over luggage charges but you expect it. In America we now get not just robbed by Wall Street, but there is a growing trend of being mugged by our own police forces.
Like many of the reports seen on YouTube and
Existing state and federal legislation authorizes treating vaccine resisters as terrorists, including forcible removal and indefinite detention.The Obama administration wants to keep Bush administration’s secret about terror watch-list information that at least seventeen federal, state and local agencies share.
How many people have read the full health care reform bill known as HR 3200? Organizers of a public reading of the bill say not many. And for that reason, organizer Roxanne Pauline said that more than 38 people signed up to help read the more than 1,000-page bill.
The key piece of evidence used to crack the Baseline Serial Killer case sat in an evidence locker for 9 months while 7 more people lost their lives. Sources inside the Phoenix Police Dept. say that's just the crime lab's latest mistake.
Fewer than 10 states ended the last fiscal year with significant
reserves, and three-fourths have deficits exceeding 10% of their
budgets. Only an emergency infusion of printed federal funny money is
keeping most state boats afloat right now.
To be fair and balanced, the speech wasn’t that bad. Being delivered this morning to all K-12 schools across America, it’s fairly difficult to write a controversial speech that first graders would comprehend.
China has issued what amounts to the “Beijing Put” on gold. You can make a lot of money, but you really can’t lose. I happened to see quite a bit of Cheng Siwei at the Ambrosetti Workshop, a gathering of politicians and global strategists at Lake Como, including a dinner at Villa d’Este last night at which he listened very attentively as a number of American guests tore President Obama’s economic and health policy to shreds. Mr Cheng was until recently Vice-Chairman of the Communist Party’s Standing Committee, and is now a sort of economic ambassador for China around the world — a charming man, by the way, who left Hong Kong for mainland China in 1950 at the age of 16, as young idealist eager to serve the revolution. Sixty years later, he calls himself simply “a survivior”. What he said about US monetary policy and gold – this bit on the record – would appear to validate the long-held belief of gold bugs that China has fundamentally lost confidence in the US dollar and is going to s
