XIAM007 - Making Unique Observations in a Very Cluttered World: July 2011

Sunday, 31 July 2011

PBS announces 'Mister Rogers' next generation spin-off -

It’s a beautiful day … in Daniel Tiger’s neighborhood?

A decade after children’s classicMister Rogers’ Neighborhoodceased production, PBS has just announced an animated spin-off to the series hosted by a familiar personality from the original show. Titled Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, the series will have original Mister Rogers characters grown up and with children of their own living in the Neighborhood of Make Believe. Four-year-old Tiger (son of the original Tiger) will be the star. The “next generation” concept intends to use the musical education strategies pioneered by Fred Rogers’ landmark original program, which was in production from 1968 to 2001 and continued airing on PBS until about three years ago.

Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood will launch in fall of 2012 as part of the PBS Kids pre-school lineup and represents the first show launched by the Fred Rogers Company since the original program.

“Fred Rogers revolutionized children’s media with Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, and Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood continues on this path of innovation, helping the next generation of young children learn and grow in new ways,” said Lesli Rotenberg, senior vp, PBS. “Joining the PBS Kids family of series that cover important curricular areas like literacy and science,Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood fills a critical gap in children’s media today: modeling the behaviors and habits that kids need in order to excel in formal learning settings – essentially, learning how to learn. It’s important for kids to learn pro-social skills like cooperation and listening, so that when they start school they are able to focus on the material at hand.”

Australian civil servant wants workers comp for motel room sex injuries -

An Australian woman is suing the government for compensation after a light fixture came crashing down on her face while she was having motel room sex on business trip.

An Australian civil servant is suing the government for workers compensation after she was injured in her motel room while having sex on a business trip.

The woman, who was not identified, was having sex with a man described as an “acquaintance” when a glass light fixture came crashing down on her face from the wall above the bed, Australia’s Daily Telegraph reports.

The light injured her nose, mouth and a tooth, and caused "a consequent psychiatric injury" described as an adjustment disorder.

The motel room was arranged and paid for by her employer, and the woman’s lawyer is arguing that she is entitled to the same compensation as someone who slips in the shower.

But the Australian government’s workplace safety body, which rejected her compensation claim for the motel sex injury, argued that sex is not a “necessary activity” for a motel room in the same way that showering, sleeping or eating is.

The woman’s lawyer, Leo Grey, told the Australian Federal Court that this “isn’t a case about sex,” according to the Daily Telegraph.

Rather, his client should be compensated for her injuries because they were caused "during the course of her employment,” as she had booked into the motel in a country town ahead of an early meeting the next day.

"This is no different than slipping over in the shower or being bashed by a gang of thugs after a dispute over a woman," Grey said.

He also argued that sex is a “lawful sexual activity” and considered reasonable behavior for a motel room.

There is no rule barring Australian government employees from having visitors in their rooms during business trips, he said.

In his court statement, the woman's male "acquaintance" said they were "going hard,” Australian newspaper The Age reports.

"I do not know if we bump the light or it just fell off," he reportedly said.

"I think she was on her back when it happened but I was not paying attention because we are rolling around.”

Dubai Company Billed U.S. $900 for $7.05 Iraq Electric Switch, Audit Says -

A U.S. contractor in Iraq overbilled the Pentagon by at least $4.4 million for spare parts and equipment, including $900 for an electronic control switch valued at $7.05, according to a new audit.

Based on the questionable costs identified in a $300 million contract with Dubai-based Anham LLC, the U.S. should review all its contracts with the company in Iraq and Afghanistan, which total about $3.9 billion, said Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction Stuart Bowen.

“The audit found weak oversight in multiple areas that left the government vulnerable to improper overcharges,” Bowen wrote in the forward to his 30th quarterly report, released today. The contract in question was funded with a combination of money earmarked for Iraqi Security Forces and Army operations and maintenance funds.

Among the “egregious examples of overbilling” by Anham were $4,500 for a circuit breaker valued at $183.30, $3,000 for a $94.47 circuit breaker and $80 for a small segment of drain pipe valued at $1.41.

Bowen’s office called for an in-depth review of the entire contract after discovering “significant weaknesses” in government oversight, questionable competition practices and possible undisclosed ownership affiliations between Anham and some of its subcontractors.

Meet the countries in the Triple-A debt club - 17 countries have the world's highest credit rating, AAA -

Meet the countries in the Triple-A debt club - 17 countries have the world's highest credit rating, AAA -

These 17 countries have the world's highest credit rating, AAA from both Moody's and Standard & Poor's, but the U.S. risks losing that high standing if lawmakers don't raise the debt ceiling.

These 17 countries have the world's highest credit rating, AAA from both Moody's and Standard & Poor's, but the U.S. risks losing that high standing if lawmakers don't raise the debt ceiling.

Amid the contentious debt ceiling debate, the United States is at risk of being booted out of a prestigious group of countries that boast a spotless credit rating.

Only 17 countries in the world -- currently including the U.S. -- hold the highly coveted triple-A rating from both Standard & Poor's and Moody's. (S&P rates an additional three countries as triple-A, that aren't featured on Moody's list).

Germany, Canada, France, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland are among those with the undisputed stamp of approval -- so is the Isle of Man, a British crown dependency off Ireland's east coast, and Singapore (both of which are too small to see on our CNNMoney map above.)

Now, S&P and Moody's are questioning the United States' membership in this exclusive club.

The triple-A rating enables nations to borrow funds at a low cost, because their governments are considered stable and their bonds safe.

The U.S. for example, has seen its dollar become the world's No. 1 reserve currency because its bonds are held in such high regard by investors. They're backed by the "full faith and credit of the U.S. government" -- which until now, has never seriously been called into question.

Hundreds of women in New Delhi participate in the first ever 'slutwalk' in India -

Sure Cure for the Debt Problem: Economic Growth -

NOT so long ago, the National Debt Clock, perched above the Avenue of the Americas, a block east of Times Square, was running backward.

It seems remarkable now, with all the End Times talk of debt ceilings and default, but it was only 11 years ago that the owners of that electronic totem, the Durst family, simply pulled the plug. The clock, a fixture since 1989, went dark after the federal government ended its 2000 fiscal year with a record $236.4 billion budget surplus.

Today, well — you know. We face the largest budget deficit the nation has ever known: $1.6 trillion, the equivalent of about 11 percent of our economy. And, whatever Washington does, many economists say the situation will grow only worse, particularly as Americans age andMedicare costs spiral higher.

But there is, in theory, a happy solution to our debt troubles. It’s called economic growth. No need to raise taxes or cut programs. Just get the economy growing the way it used to.

Good luck with that. Growth is in short supply these days, as new, dismal numbers underscored on Friday. Revised data showed that the recession took an even bigger bite of the economy than we thought. And economists are sizing up the risks of another recession.

“The basic issue is that the U.S. is on an unsustainable fiscal track,” says Dean Maki, the chief United States economist at Barclays Capital. “From that point, none of the choices are fun.” The most obvious choices, Mr. Maki says, are to reduce spending (ouch), raise taxes (yuck), let inflation run (gasp) or default (thud).

Prince Harry is the hero in a new comic book series -

Free crack pipes to be handed out in Vancouver -

Health officials in Vancouver say they will launch a pilot project later this year to distribute clean, unused crack pipes to drug users.

While heroin users can pick up clean needles from needle-exchange programs or the city's controversial safe-injection site, crack pipes are more difficult to come by.

Some crack smokers can afford to buy small glass or Pyrex stems to use as pipes. Others fashion makeshift pipes from bottles, cans or even hollow car antennas. And in many cases, they just simply share, potentially putting themselves at risk of contracting disease.

It's part of the city's harm-reduction strategy that seeks to reduce the transmission of disease while ensuring health-care and social workers are able to interact with hard-to-reach drug addicts.

Currently, the city distributes clean mouth pieces for crack pipes, but not the pipes themselves.

"We want to do it in a way that we can evaluate this, because there's a couple of questions I hope we can answer by doing this," says Dr. Patricia Daly, the medical health officer for Vancouver Coastal Health.

"And not just about demand and numbers, but can we use this as an engagement strategy like we do with our other harm-reduction initiatives. If you can deliver [harm-reduction programs] in a way where you can get people into other services, that's very beneficial."

Unlike needle-exchange programs for injection drugs, programs to ensure users who smoke crack are using the drug safely are uneven across the country and, in some cases, non-existent. That's despite a growing body of evidence that smoking crack cocaine increases the risk of diseases such as HIV and hepatitis.

In a small handful of cities, including Calgary and Winnipeg, local health authorities pass out crack pipes. Others prefer to only hand out mouth pieces, which users can place on their own pipes to avoid exposing themselves to others' saliva and blood.

And in others still, the job of distributing either mouth pieces or pipes is left to local community groups.

22 Restroom Cubicle Doors Stolen At Rest Stops -

German motorists were forced to take their restroom breaks in public after thieves made off with 22 stainless steel cubicle doors from highway service stops.

Police believe the culprits took the doors -- which retail at €2,000 ($2,900) each -- to use them elsewhere. But the manufacturer of the doors, the firm Hering Bau, thinks the thieves are planning to resell them as scrap metal.

Authorities said they had no leads and the firm feared the doors would not be found.

"I've never heard of a case that culprits have been caught or that their booty has been recovered," Gabi Jentzsch from Hering Bau told The Local .

Repairing the cubicles in Potsdam, eastern Germany, would cost €110,000 ($160,000), authorities said.

Cops have busted a group of oddball poachers in NY - vagrants that are trapping and EATING ducks, squirrels and pigeons -

Cops have busted a group of oddball poachers in Prospect Park — a band of vagrants that was trapping and eating ducks, squirrels and pigeons.

Parks officers wrote four tickets — two for killing wildlife and two for illegal fishing — totaling $2,100 in fines during a two-day period last week.

The city would not immediately release details of the incidents, which occurred on July 17 and 18 — just days after park-goers told rangers about a “Beverly Hillbillies”-like scene on the southeast side of the lake, near the ice skating rink.

“This is a dodgy group,” said park-goer Peter Colon, who spotted one of the men catching a pigeon while his friend started a fire. “They are the most threatening people in the park.”

The disheveled — and possibly homeless — tribe in question uses “makeshift” fishing poles and traps to catch the critters, then grills them over the fire, according to park watchdogs.

“One woman uses a net to bag the ducks,” said wildlife advocate Johanna Clearfield.

Wildlife advocates have long pushed the Parks Department to crackdown on illegal hunting and fishing in Prospect Park — especially after a stunning array of cases in which geese and cygnets were injured by illegal barbed fishhooks and lure.

In the most-dramatic case, a plucky little goose who lost the top half of his beak to a fishhook earned him endless sympathy and the nickname, “Beaky.”

The fishing and hunting ticket blitz comes while park-goers collect and document large mounds of fishing wire, claiming waterfowl are frequently get tangled.

And it’s not the first time that poachers have been busted. Last year, park-goers confronted a man after spotting him catching fish and secreting them into a bag — a violation of the city’s “catch-and-release” rules.

Is the mystery of DB Cooper about to be solved? FBI reveals it has new suspect 40 years after fugitive parachuted -

The FBI today revealed that it believes it has America's most elusive fugitive finally in its sights 40 years after famed hijacker DB Cooper disappeared when he jumped out of a plane over Washington.

Investigators said that they are testing the fingerprints of a new suspect after what they said is the 'most promising' lead to date in its bid to crack America's only unsolved hijacking.

A mystery hijacker calling himself Dan Cooper, also known as DB Cooper, boarded a Northwest flight in Portland for a flight to Seattle on the night of November 24 1971, and commandeered the plane, claiming he had dynamite.

In Seattle, he demanded and got $200,000 and four parachutes and demanded to be flown to Mexico.

Somewhere over southwestern Washington, he jumped out the plane's tail exit with two of the chutes, and was never seen or heard from again.

The FBI today announced that it has a new suspect in the case who they are hoping to link to a tie Cooper left on the plane and cigarette butts in an ashtray using DNA testing and fingerprints.

There have been more than 1,000 suspects over the past four decades, but the FBI have described the new lead as 'looking like our most promising one to date'.

'We do actually have a new suspect we're looking at,' said FBI spokesman Ayn Dietrich as she revealed the twist in the investigation.

'It comes from a credible lead who came to our attention recently via a law enforcement colleague,' she said.

Moody's: Neither debt plan protects the nation's AAA rating -

The "limited magnitude" of both debt plans put forward by congressional leaders would not put the nation's AAA credit rating back on solid footing, Moody's Investors Service announced Friday.

"Reductions of the magnitude now being proposed, if adopted, would likely lead Moody's to adopt a negative outlook on the AAA rating," the credit rating agency said in a new report. "The chances of a significant improvement in the long-term credit profile of the government coming from deficit reductions of the magnitude proposed in either plan are not high."

It added that "prolonged debt ceiling deliberations" have increased the odds of a downgrade, but that the firm is still confident policymakers will avoid a default.

"It remains our expectation that the government will continue with timely debt service," the firm said.
It also clarified that as far as it is concerned, the nation will only default if it misses an interest or principal payment on U.S. debt, not if it misses payments on other obligations like federal employee salaries or Social Security benefits.

The report also gives credence to a claim popular among Republicans: that the government has enough cash to avoid a default even past the Aug. 2 deadline set by the Treasury Department.
"If the debt limit is not raised before August 2, we believe that the Treasury would give priority to debt service payments and could thus postpone a potential debt default for a number of days," it said. "Revenues would be more than adequate for some period of time to meet those payments, although other outlays would be severely reduced as a result."

Moody's previously put the nation's top credit rating on watch for a downgrade on July 13, as lawmakers continue to fight over a deal to raise the debt limit.

While Moody's is confident it will not have to downgrade the nation's rating because of a default, it maintained that long-term debt and deficit problems will continue to weigh on the AAA mark.

As Republicans and the White House fight over the length of a debt limit increase, Moody's said it would not reaffirm the nation's AAA rating unless there is at least a six-month boost to the debt limit.

However, if the nation were to default for a short period of time, Moody's said it would knock its credit rating down to AA, under the assumption that the default would be quickly rectified and investor losses would be minimized. However, in the "extremely unlikely" situation that investors do lose on Treasury investments, a lower rating could be given.

Read more -
http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/801-economy/174447-moodys-neither-plan-protects-the-nations-aaa-rating

Latest counterfeit IDs are so good they’re dangerous -

When the fleeing motorcycle hit the curb, scraped past a utility pole and hurled 20-year-old Craig Eney to his death, a bogus South Carolina driver’s license was in the hip pocket of his jeans.

He spent the final hours of his life trading on that phony license to buy shots for his buddies at two downtown Annapolis bars, places so popular among underage drinkers that bouncers are stationed outside to check everyone’s ID.

Yet scores of young people flash fake driver’s licenses and waltz on by to the bar.

The days when faking driver’s licenses was a cottage industry — often practiced in college dorm rooms by a computer geek with a laminating machine — have given way to far more sophisticated and prolific practitioners who operate outside the reach of U.S. law enforcement.

In an era when terrorism and illegal immigration have transformed driver’s licenses into sophisticated mini-documents festooned with holograms and bar codes, beating the system has never been easier.

Just wire money to “the Chinese guy.”

“He’s like some sort of genius in China,” said a 19-year-old for whom Eney bought shots that night. “Every kid in Annapolis has one of his licenses.”

The “Chinese guy” — whose e-mail address is passed around on college campuses and among high school kids — is actually a Chinese company that mails untold thousands of fake driver’s licenses to the United States. They have been turning up in states from coast to coast.

To the naked eye — even the practiced eye of most bartenders and police officers — the counterfeits look perfect. The photo and physical description are real. So is the signature. The address may be, too. The holograms are exact copies, and even the bar code can pass unsophisticated scans.

Saturday, 30 July 2011

Government Wants “Panic” To Push Through Debt Hike - Washington Is Annoyed at Wall Street’s Failure to Panic -

I just got off the phone with a source on Capitol Hill who has spent the past few days trying to convince Republicans to vote for a debt ceiling hike.

He told me that the biggest obstacle he faces has been "market complacency."

"Frankly, a bit of panic would be very helpful right now," he said.

"We were following the script from 2008. When the market collapsed after TARP failed, that spooked everyone enough to get them to fall in line. We thought the same thing would happen this week," he said.

As he explained it, lots of people in Washington, D.C. expected that this would be a week marked by panic in the markets. Stocks would tank. Bonds would get clobbered. The dollar would do something dramatic. And all of this would help convince reluctant lawmakers that they had to reach a compromise on the debt ceiling.

Instead, the market has just been on a quiet, non-panicked slide.

Stocks have sold off by a couple of percentage points, but nothing that indicates a real fear trade in the works.

Everyone in D.C. has a theory about this. Some believe the market is sending a message that a deal will get done. Others think the market doesn't understand politics.

Read more -

http://www.cnbc.com/id/43943482

Friday, 29 July 2011

Why the Debt Crisis Is Even Worse Than You Think -

There is a comforting story about the debt ceiling that goes like this: Back in the 1990s, the U.S. was shrinking its national debt at a rapid pace. Serious people actually worried about dislocations from having too little government debt. If it hadn’t been for two wars, the tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, the housing meltdown, and the subsequent financial crisis and recession, the nation’s finances would be in fine condition today. And the only obstacle to getting there again, this narrative goes, is political dysfunction in Washington. If the Republicans and Democrats would just split their differences on spending and taxes and raise the debt ceiling, we could all get back to our real lives. Problem solved.

Except it’s not that way at all. For all our obsessing about it, the national debt is a singularly bad way of measuring the nation’s financial condition. It includes only a small portion of the nation’s total liabilities. And it’s focused on the past. An honest assessment of the country’s projected revenue and expenses over the next generation would show a reality different from the apocalyptic visions conjured by both Democrats and Republicans during the debt-ceiling debate. It would be much worse.

That’s why the posturing about whether and how Congress should increase the debt ceiling by Aug. 2 has been a hollow exercise. Failure to increase the borrowing limit would harm American prestige and the global financial system. But that’s nothing compared with the real threats to the U.S.’s long-term economic health, which will begin to strike with full force toward the end of this decade: Sharply rising per-capita health-care spending, coupled with the graying of the populace; a generation of workers turning into an outsize generation of beneficiaries. Hoover Institution Senior Fellow Michael J. Boskin, who was President George H.W. Bush’s chief economic adviser, says: “The word ‘unsustainable’ doesn’t convey the problem enough, in my opinion.”

World Population Predicted to Hit 7 Billion This Year - If this keeps up, things are going to get crowded -

If this keeps up, things are going to get crowded.

A new study shows that the earth's population will hit 7 billion in 2011, which is double what it was in the 1960s, according to Discovery News. What's more, researchers predict that another 2.3 billion people will be added to our planet over the next 39 years. In case you were wondering, that's a lot of people in not a lot of time.

Worryingly, the study adds:

"Over the next forty years, nearly all (97%) of the 2.3 billion projected increase will be in the less developed regions, with nearly half (49%) in Africa. By contrast, the populations of more developed countries will remain flat, but will age, with fewer working-age adults to support retirees living on social pensions."

Which means the coming population explosion will be bad news all across the globe, putting strains on space, labor and the environment. And, if estimates turn out to be true, things are going to get far, far worse: by the year 2100, the earth could be home to a staggering 15.8 billion people.

President Barack Obama takes debt battle to Twitter, loses more than 40,000 followers in one day -

President Obama brought his debt battle to Twitter and he lost – more than 40,000 Twitter followers.

Obama asked Americans Friday to call, email, and tweet Congressional leaders to “keep the pressure on” lawmakers in hopes of reaching a bipartisan deal to raise the nation’s $14.3 trillion debt limit ahead of an Aug. 2 deadline.

Obama’s campaign staff used the @BarackObama Twitter account to post the Twitter handles of tweeting GOP leaders – state by state, tweet by tweet.

“Tweet at your Republican legislators and urge them to support a bipartisan compromise to the debt crisis,” Obama’s campaign staff wrote on his account before launching the day-long Twitter campaign.

The campaign appears to have served its purpose: Republican Twitter accounts were flooded with pleas for compromise.

Not everyone is a fan of the presidential spam. By Friday evening, the President had lost more than 40,000 Twitter followers - and counting.

Many members of the Twitterati took to the social media platform to voice their annoyance over the barrage of partisan tweets. A search for “@BarackObama unfollow” turned up scores of irritated posts.

“Honestly, @BarackObama, I’m going to have to unfollow you if you don’t stop filing up my Twitter inbox soon,” tweeted Bostonian @melisthreadgill, a self-described “Progressive activist”.

“Can’t believe I had to unfollow @BarackObama for spamming Twitter. Really, really strange behavior,” wrote @Arevill inConnecticut.

“I want to unfollow @BarackObama but his desperation is too entertaining,” tweeted @rdpatrick of Lavonia, Georgia.

While his follower number appears to have taken its biggest dive in recent memory, Obama’s Twitter account still had a whopping 9,362,880 followers at 7:30pm Friday night, down from 9,402,898 Friday morning - and he's still the third-most followed person on the planet.