Massive container ships collide near Suez Canal -

Massive container ships collide near Suez Canal - 



A collision involving two massive container ships near the Suez Canal on Monday sent containers tumbling into the sea, snarling traffic for hours on one of the world’s busiest trade routes.

Officials from the Suez Canal Authority told The Wall Street Journal that the German-flagged MV Colombo Express and the Singaporean-flagged MV Maersk Tanjong collided after one of the ships experienced rudder problems.

There were no casualties from the accident, but four containers from the Colombo Express tumbled into the sea and the ship sustained a large dent, according to officials.

The ships were towed 9 miles south of Egypt’s Port Said and ships were prevented from entering or exiting the canal for three hours, with residual delays afterward.

Skip to 2:20 for the action -



Read more -
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/09/30/massive-container-ships-collide-near-suez-canal/?intcmp=latestnews

MYSTERY: NASA scientists baffled by strange object on Saturn's moon... -

MYSTERY: NASA scientists baffled by strange object on Saturn's moon... - 



NASA's Cassini spacecraft has discovered a "mysterious feature" on Saturn's moon Titan. Scientists are working to determine, what, exactly, this feature might be.

NASA reports that the feature is roughly 100 square miles, and it lies in Ligeia Mare, one of Titan's hydrocarbon seas. Cassini's radar has observed the feature twice, but its appearance changed between the two sightings. Scientists suspect the feature's change in appearance could be the result of Titan's changing seasons, which Cassini's current extended mission will monitor.

The feature's first sighting was in July 2013, and the radar images depicted a bright spot, which stood out from the dark sea. Scientists were "perplexed" when the feature couldn't be located with follow-up radar experiments, but they found it again on August 21, 2014.

Though the scientists aren't sure what the feature is, NASA reports that they are "confident" the feature is not a "flaw in their data." Some of their current explanations for the feature include "surface waves, rising bubbles, floating solids, solids suspended just below the surface, or perhaps something more exotic."

Titan's hydrocarbon lakes have long been a source of curiosity for scientists who speculate that life may be able to survive on the moon's surface. "But if life exists on Titan, it would be very different than life on Earth, which is intimately tied to liquid water," Space.com notes.

"Science loves a mystery, and with this enigmatic feature, we have a thrilling example of ongoing change on Titan," Stephen Wall, the deputy team lead of Cassini's radar team, said in a statement. "We're hopeful that we'll be able to continue watching the changes unfold and gain insights about what's going on in that alien sea." - - Meghan DeMaria

Read more - 

http://theweek.com/speedreads/index/269015/speedreads-mysterious-feature-on-saturns-moon-baffles-nasa-scientists

Kreweser - the electric full-size cooler that can reach 18 mph and carry 96 cans plus ice -

Kreweser - the electric full-size cooler that can reach 18 mph and carry 96 cans plus ice - 



A New Orleans group is using Kickstarter to fund an unusual mode of transportation -- a cooler propelled by electric motors.

The Kreweser team posted on its Kickstarter page the electric scooter, which uses a full-size cooler for a seat, can reach speeds of 18 mph and can carry up to 96 beverage cans plus the ice to keep them frosty.

The scooter, which collapses to an easily portable size, uses motors found in the hubs of its wheels, allowing it to carry up to 400 pounds.

The coolers included with the Krewesers are outfitted with 6.5-inch, 165-watt marine-grade speakers with Bluetooth connectivity, so riders can play music from their smartphones. The speakers are built into the walls of the cooler, so no storage space is lost in the upgrade, the team said.

Kreweser had raised $7,797 of its $90,000 goal Monday with 23 days to go on Kickstarter.

Read more - 

http://www.breitbart.com/system/wire/upiUPI-20140929-125040-8675

Your 'New Normal' Life (In Pictures) -

You were born free … a bundle of tremendous potential.

.

You were loved, and loved unconditionally.

.

The concept of lack was foreign to you.

.

As you grew you started to question the world around you.

.

You hunted fireflies on warm summer nights and you put them in jars to light your room at night.

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And the door to your imagination was never locked.

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Einstein said, “Education is not the learning of facts, but the training of the mind to think.” But government schools were more interested in you becoming an obedient drone … and they wound up killing your joy of learning.

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You were ridiculed when you challenged the status quo.

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You were judged … and so learned to judge others.

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And so you allowed group mentality to sway your actions and decisions.

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The Powers That Be worked very hard to make you believe you have no power, no control. So, you did as you were told, and feared the consequences of what would happen if you did not.You became ruled by fear. 

.

But, your beliefs were formed by television programming.

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And what your culture says you should believe about God …. pick one.

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And by what your government wants you to believe about itself, and what you should sacrifice for blind Patriotism.

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You sought news of the world … but were fed propaganda.

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You were presented with continuous distractions to keep you from questioning the reality around you.

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You were kept deliberately ignorant.

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You were given hope … that you could effect change by voting. But hope was crushed when you realized both parties played the same hand.

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So, you joined the rat race as no other options seemed evident.

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You were trained to be a consumer.

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You bought into The American Dream.

.

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They fed you poison.

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You acquired debt.

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You ….. conformed. Is it any wonder you feel confused and hopeless?

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But … you’ve felt it all your life …. that it’s all just an illusion.

You let the past dictate your present, and you worry about your future. But you only have the present … living in the moment is all you can do.  Once you realize no one has power over your thoughts … you will never again act against your will.

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Just remember who you are … the same soul that was born all those years ago (though your years may be closer in age to the hands holding the baby).

But, years of conditioning almost completely eroded your sense of who you are, and the power within you. Don’t you want to change? Will you roll the red die, or the green one?

.

It’s your choice, completely.

Wearable Camera Turns Into Drone, Flies Off your Wrist! -

Wearable Camera Turns Into Drone, Flies Off your Wrist! - 



Meet Nixie, a wearable camera that flies off your wrist and turns into a remote-controlled quadcopter. It's the bizarre-yet-appealing wearable camera drone nobody asked for... and now I kind of want it.

Intel is holding a competition to encourage new wearable technology ideas, and the Nixie is one of the finalists. So far, it's still in development, so the flying wristlet camera is rough around the edges. Team captain Christoph Kohstall eventually wants you to be able to send the the Nixie flying with a gesture. It would recognize where you're standing, snap a picture, then return to the wrist, like a futuristic paparazzi boomerang.

A Wearable Camera That Would Turn Into a Drone and Fly Off Your Wrist

If sticking your arm out to capture photos makes you feel like a lo-tech peasant, you're probably Nixie's target demographic.

All of that seems to be a long way off still; they're going to have to make the Nixie extremely consistent to make it worthwhile. After all, getting one of those GoPro stick mounts to take a farther-away shot might not be as convenient of simply flinging a camera off your wrist, but it's also a lot less complicated. In a crowded area, I'd guess it'd be hard for the Nixie to tell which person it was meant to fly back towards.

The Nixie team has a lot of work to do, but if they can polish their prototype, this is a weird wearable worth watching. 

Read more - 

http://gizmodo.com/a-wearable-camera-that-turns-into-a-drone-and-flies-off-1639481900

How Goldman Controls The New York Fed: 47.5 Hours Of "The Secret Goldman Sachs Tapes" Explain -

How Goldman Controls The New York Fed: 47.5 Hours Of "The Secret Goldman Sachs Tapes" Explain - 



When nearly a year ago we reported about the case of "Goldman whistleblower" at the NY Fed, Carmen Segarra, who alleged she was wrongfully terminated after she flagged "numerous conflicts of interest and breaches of client ethics [involving Goldman] that she believed warranted a downgrade of Goldman's regulatory rating" and which were ignored due to the intimate, and extensively documented on these pages, proximity between Goldman and either one-time NY Fed Chairman and former Goldman director Stephen Friedman or current NY Fed president and former Goldman employee Bill Dudley, we said:

as everyone knows, both Bill Dudley and Stephen Friedman used to be at Goldman, and as we noted Dudley and Goldman chief economist Jan Hatzius periodically did and still meet to discuss "events" at the Pound and Pense. 

So while her allegations may be non-definitive, and her wrongfful termination suit is ultimately dropped, there is hope this opens up an inquiry into the close relationship between Goldman and the NY Fed. Alas, since the judicial branch is also under the control of the two abovementioned entities, we very much doubt it.
There was hope, but as we said: we doubted it would lead to much more. It didn't: in April, the NY Fed won the dismissal of her lawsuit:

U.S. District Judge Ronnie Abrams in Manhattan ruled that the failure by the former examiner, Carmen Segarra, to connect her disclosure of Goldman's alleged violations to her May 2012 firing was "fatal" to her whistleblower lawsuit. Abrams also said Segarra could not file an amended lawsuit.

"Congress sought to protect employees of banking agencies ... who adequately allege that they have suffered retaliation for providing information regarding a possible violation of a 'law or regulation,'" the judge wrote. "Plaintiff has not done so."

Segarra's findings that Goldman's conflict-of-interest practices may have violated merely an "advisory letter" that did not carry the force of law did not entitle her to whistleblower protection under the Federal Deposit Insurance Act, Abrams said.
The fact that the judge on the case was conflicted, and had a close relationship to Goldman which was represented by her husband also a lawyer, clearly was "irrelevant":

In her ruling on Wednesday, Abrams also rejected a move by Stengle for greater disclosure by the judge about her husband's relationship with Goldman Sachs. Abrams disclosed on April 3 that she had just learned that her husband, Greg Andres, a partner at Davis Polk & Wardwell, was representing Goldman in an advisory capacity.

Stengle said at the time she would not seek Abrams' recusal, the judge said, and went ahead the next day with scheduled oral arguments on the defendants' bid to dismiss the case.

But on April 11, Stengle made a written request for a "more complete disclosure" of Andres' relationship with Goldman, and Abrams' own working relationship with another defense lawyer.

Abrams said that was too late, given that Segarra by then would have had a chance to "sample the temper of the court" and perhaps anticipate she would lose unless Abrams recused herself. "The timing of plaintiff's requests suggests that she is engaging in precisely the type of 'judge-shopping' the 2nd Circuit has cautioned against," Abrams wrote, referring to the federal appeals court in New York. "Such an attempt to engage in judicial game-playing strikes at the core of our legal system."
One has to either laugh, or weep, because that statement alone merely confirmed what we said a year ago when we said that "the judicial branch is also under the control of the two abovementioned entities", namely the NY Fed and Goldman.

In any event, the Segarra case disappeared from the public eye, and was promptly forgotten by the just as corrupted media and the public.

At least until this morning, when ProPublica's Jake Bernstein revealed something quite stunning: "Segarra had made 46 hours of secret audio recordings to bolster her case about what was happening at Goldman and with her bosses.

In a partnership with This American Life, Bernstein dissects the tapes, which portray a New York Fed that is at times reluctant to push hard against Goldman and struggling to define its authority. For example, in a meeting recorded the week before she was fired, Segarra's boss asks her at least seven times to change her finding that Goldman was missing a policy to handle conflicts of interest, saying,  "Why do you have to do this?"
The full ProPublica story can be found here.
http://www.propublica.org/article/carmen-segarras-secret-recordings-from-inside-new-york-fed?utm_source=et&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dailynewsletter

And for those who are time-constrained, and would rather just read the Cliff Notes (the ending should be known to everyone by now), here is Michael Lewis with an op-ed in Bloomberg summarizing the banker-controlled farce the entire US system has devolved to:

"The Secret Goldman Sachs Tapes"

Probably most people would agree that the people paid by the U.S. government to regulate Wall Street have had their difficulties. Most people would probably also agree on two reasons those difficulties seem only to be growing: an ever-more complex financial system that regulators must have explained to them by the financiers who create it, and the ever-more common practice among regulators of leaving their government jobs for much higher paying jobs at the very banks they were once meant to regulate. Wall Street's regulators are people who are paid by Wall Street to accept Wall Street's explanations of itself, and who have little ability to defend themselves from those explanations.

Our financial regulatory system is obviously dysfunctional. But because the subject is so tedious, and the details so complicated, the public doesn't pay it much attention.

That may very well change today, for today -- Friday, Sept. 26 --- the radio program "This American Life" will air a jaw-dropping story about Wall Street regulation, and the public will have no trouble at all understanding it.

The reporter, Jake Bernstein, has obtained 47½ hours of tape recordings, made secretly by a Federal Reserve employee, of conversations within the Fed, and between the Fed and Goldman Sachs. The Ray Rice video for the financial sector has arrived.

First, a bit of background -- which you might get equally well from today's broadcast. After the 2008 financial crisis, the New York Fed, now the chief U.S. bank regulator, commissioned a study of itself. This study, which the Fed also intended to keep to itself, set out to understand why the Fed hadn't spotted the insane and destructive behavior inside the big banks, and stopped it before it got out of control. The "discussion draft" of the Fed's internal study, led by a Columbia Business School professor and former banker named David Beim, was sent to the Fed on Aug. 18, 2009.

It's an extraordinary document. There is not space here to do it justice, but the gist is this: The Fed failed to regulate the banks because it did not encourage its employees to ask questions, to speak their minds or to point out problems.

Just the opposite: The Fed encourages its employees to keep their heads down, to obey their managers and to appease the banks. That is, bank regulators failed to do their jobs properly not because they lacked the tools but because they were discouraged from using them.

The report quotes Fed employees saying things like, "until I know what my boss thinks I don't want to tell you," and "no one feels individually accountable for financial crisis mistakes because management is through consensus." Beim was himself surprised that what he thought was going to be an investigation of financial failure was actually a story of cultural failure.

Any Fed manager who read the Beim report, and who wanted to fix his institution, or merely cover his ass, would instantly have set out to hire strong-willed, independent-minded people who were willing to speak their minds, and set them loose on our financial sector. The Fed does not appear to have done this, at least not intentionally. But in late 2011, as those managers staffed up to take on the greater bank regulatory role given to them by the Dodd-Frank legislation, they hired a bunch of new people and one of them was a strong-willed, independent-minded woman named Carmen Segarra.

I've never met Segarra, but she comes across on the broadcast as a likable combination of good-humored and principled. "This American Life" also interviewed people who had worked with her, before she arrived at the Fed, who describe her as smart and occasionally blunt, but never unprofessional. She is obviously bright and inquisitive: speaks four languages, holds degrees from Harvard, Cornell and Columbia. She is also obviously knowledgeable: Before going to work at the Fed, she worked directly, and successfully, for the legal and compliance departments of big banks. She went to work for the Fed after the financial crisis, she says, only because she thought she had the ability to help the Fed to fix the system.

In early 2012, Segarra was assigned to regulate Goldman Sachs, and so was installed inside Goldman. (The people who regulate banks for the Fed are physically stationed inside the banks.)

The job right from the start seems to have been different from what she had imagined: In meetings, Fed employees would defer to the Goldman people; if one of the Goldman people said something revealing or even alarming, the other Fed employees in the meeting would either ignore or downplay it. For instance, in one meeting a Goldman employee expressed the view that "once clients are wealthy enough certain consumer laws don't apply to them." After that meeting, Segarra turned to a fellow Fed regulator and said how surprised she was by that statement -- to which the regulator replied, "You didn't hear that."

This sort of thing occurred often enough -- Fed regulators denying what had been said in meetings, Fed managers asking her to alter minutes of meetings after the fact -- that Segarra decided she needed to record what actually had been said. So she went to the Spy Store and bought a tiny tape recorder, then began to record her meetings at Goldman Sachs, until she was fired.

(How Segarra got herself fired by the Fed is interesting. In 2012, Goldman was rebuked by a Delaware judge for its behavior during a corporate acquisition. Goldman had advised one energy company, El Paso Corp., as it sold itself to another energy company, Kinder Morgan, in which Goldman actually owned a $4 billion stake, and a Goldman banker had a big personal investment. The incident forced the Fed to ask Goldman to see its conflict of interest policy. It turned out that Goldman had no conflict of interest policy -- but when Segarra insisted on saying as much in her report, her bosses tried to get her to change her report. Under pressure, she finally agreed to change the language in her report, but she couldn't resist telling her boss that she wouldn't be changing her mind. Shortly after that encounter, she was fired.)

I don't want to spoil the revelations of "This American Life": It's far better to hear the actual sounds on the radio, as so much of the meaning of the piece is in the tones of the voices -- and, especially, in the breathtaking wussiness of the people at the Fed charged with regulating Goldman Sachs. But once you have listened to it -- as when you were faced with the newly unignorable truth of what actually happened to that NFL running back's fiancee in that elevator -- consider the following:

1. You sort of knew that the regulators were more or less controlled by the banks. Now you know.

2. The only reason you know is that one woman, Carmen Segarra, has been brave enough to fight the system. She has paid a great price to inform us all of the obvious. She has lost her job, undermined her career, and will no doubt also endure a lifetime of lawsuits and slander.

So what are you going to do about it? At this moment the Fed is probably telling itself that, like the financial crisis, this, too, will blow over. It shouldn't.

Read more - 

http://www.propublica.org/article/carmen-segarras-secret-recordings-from-inside-new-york-fed?utm_source=et&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dailynewsletter

Is Exercise Bad for Your Teeth? -

Is Exercise Bad for Your Teeth? - 



Vigorous exercise is good for almost all of the body — except perhaps the teeth, according to a surprising new study of athletes. The study, published in The Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports, found that heavy training may contribute to dental problems in unexpected ways.

There have been hints in the past that athletes could have a heightened risk for cavities and other oral issues. In a study published last year in The British Journal of Sports Medicine, dentists who examined 278 athletes at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London reported that a majority displayed “poor oral health,” including high levels of tooth decay, often in conjunction with gum disease and erosion of the tooth enamel. The athletes came from the United States and Europe as well as less-developed parts of the world, and most had access to good-quality dentistry, although many had not visited a dentist in the last year.

The study didn’t examine why the athletes were at such high risk of dental problems, although many of us might assume that sugary sports drinks and bars would be a primary cause. Other studies, however, have found little if any link between consuming sports drinks and developing cavities.

So to better understand what is going on inside the mouths of athletes, researchers with the dental school at University Hospital Heidelberg in Germany and other institutions recruited 35 competitive triathletes and 35 age- and gender-matched healthy adults who were not athletes.

All of the volunteers visited the hospital’s dental lab for a full oral examination, including collection of their saliva after they had been sitting quietly. They also completed questionnaires about their diets, including consumption of sports drinks and other beverages, their normal oral hygiene routines, and their exercise habits, if any.

Fifteen of the athletes also completed an increasingly strenuous run of about 35 minutes on an outdoor track, during which their saliva was collected several times.

Then the researchers compared the groups’ teeth and spit, which turned out to be different in telling ways.

Compared with the control group, the athletes showed significantly greater erosion of their tooth enamel. They also tended to have more cavities, with the risk increasing as an athlete’s training time grew. Over all, the more hours that an athlete spent working out, the more likely he or she was to have cavities.

The researchers found no correlation, however, between consuming sports drinks or any other elements of the athletes’ diets and their oral health.

They also found no differences in the amount or chemical make-up of their volunteers’ saliva after the athletes and the non-athletes had been at rest.

But that situation changed when the athletes worked out. During their experimental runs, the amount of saliva that they produced progressively lessened, meaning that their mouths became drier, regardless of whether they consumed water or other beverages during the workout. The saliva’s chemical composition also shifted, growing more alkaline as the workout continued. Excess alkalinity in saliva is thought to contribute to the development of tartar plaques on teeth and other problems.

The extent of the changes in the athletes’ saliva during a workout were something of a surprise, said Dr. Cornelia Frese, a senior dentist at University Hospital Heidelberg, who led the study.

“We had thought sports drinks and nutrition might have the most detrimental influence on dental decay,” she said, “but we saw no direct link” between them. Instead, it was the changes in saliva during exercise that differentiated the athletes’ mouths from those of the control group. Since saliva “has a very protective function” for teeth, Dr. Frese said, having less of it or a chemically different version during exercise could be problematic.

But, she cautions, this study was small, short-term and in many ways unrepresentative of the oral risks most of us would likely face from exercise. “The athletes participating in our study had a mean weekly training time of nine hours,” she said. They were, in technical parlance, hard-core.

“All we can say” based on the data from this group, she said, “is that prolonged endurance training might be a risk factor for oral health.” Whether less frequent or intense exercise would likewise affect oral health is uncertain but unlikely, Dr. Frese said.

Still there are a few precautions that anyone who exercises and has concerns about their oral health might want to take, she said. Drinking water during workouts could be a start, although the connection between hydration and oral health is not scientifically established, Dr. Frese said. More generally, brush and floss, as you know you should. And if you’re a serious endurance athlete, consider visiting a dentist with a specialty in sports dentistry, she said. The goal is to ensure that your teeth remain in as good shape as the rest of you.

Read more - 

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/09/24/is-exercise-bad-for-your-teeth/

Miss a Car Payment? Good Luck Moving That Car -

Miss a Car Payment? Good Luck Moving That Car - 



The thermometer showed a 103.5-degree fever, and her 10-year-old’s asthma was flaring up. Mary Bolender, who lives in Las Vegas, needed to get her daughter to an emergency room, but her 2005 Chrysler van would not start.

The cause was not a mechanical problem — it was her lender.

Ms. Bolender was three days behind on her monthly car payment. Her lender, C.A.G. Acceptance of Mesa, Ariz., remotely activated a device in her car’s dashboard that prevented her car from starting. Before she could get back on the road, she had to pay more than $389, money she did not have that morning in March.

“I felt absolutely helpless,” said Ms. Bolender, a single mother who stopped working to care for her daughter. It was not the only time this happened: Her car was shut down that March, once in April and again in June.

This new technology is bringing auto loans — and Wall Street’s version of Big Brother — into the lives of people with credit scores battered by the financial downturn.

Auto loans to borrowers considered subprime, those with credit scores at or below 640, have spiked in the last five years. The jump has been driven in large part by the demand among investors for securities backed by the loans, which offer high returns at a time of low interest rates. Roughly 25 percent of all new auto loans made last year were subprime, and the volume of subprime auto loans reached more than $145 billion in the first three months of this year.

But before they can drive off the lot, many subprime borrowers like Ms. Bolender must have their car outfitted with a so-called starter interrupt device, which allows lenders to remotely disable the ignition. Using the GPS technology on the devices, the lenders can also track the cars’ location and movements.

The devices, which have been installed in about two million vehicles, are helping feed the subprime boom by enabling more high-risk borrowers to get loans. But there is a big catch. By simply clicking a mouse or tapping a smartphone, lenders retain the ultimate control. Borrowers must stay current with their payments, or lose access to their vehicle.

“I have disabled a car while I was shopping at Walmart,” said Lionel M. Vead Jr., the head of collections at First Castle Federal Credit Union in Covington, La. Roughly 30 percent of customers with an auto loan at the credit union have starter interrupt devices.

Now used in about one-quarter of subprime auto loans nationwide, the devices are reshaping the dynamics of auto lending by making timely payments as vital to driving a car as gasoline.

Seizing on such technological advances, lenders are reaching deeper and deeper into the ranks of Americans on the financial margins, with interest rates on some of the loans exceeding 29 percent. Concerns raised by regulators and some rating firms about loose lending standards have disturbing echoes of the subprime-mortgage crisis.

As the ignition devices proliferate, so have complaints from troubled borrowers, many of whom are finding that credit comes at a steep price to their privacy and, at times, their dignity, according to interviews with state and federal regulators, borrowers and consumer lawyers.

Some borrowers say their cars were disabled when they were only a few days behind on their payments, leaving them stranded in dangerous neighborhoods. Others said their cars were shut down while idling at stoplights. Some described how they could not take their children to school or to doctor’s appointments. One woman in Nevada said her car was shut down while she was driving on the freeway.

Beyond the ability to disable a vehicle, the devices have tracking capabilities that allow lenders and others to know the movements of borrowers, a major concern for privacy advocates. And the warnings the devices emit — beeps that become more persistent as the due date for the loan payment approaches — are seen by some borrowers as more degrading than helpful.

“No middle-class person would ever be hounded for being a day late,” said Robert Swearingen, a lawyer with Legal Services of Eastern Missouri, in St. Louis. “But for poor people, there is a debt collector right there in the car with them.”

Lenders and manufacturers of the technology say borrowers consent to having these devices installed in their cars. And without them, they say, millions of Americans might not qualify for a car loan at all.

Read more - 

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/09/24/miss-a-payment-good-luck-moving-that-car/?_php=true&_type=blogs&src=twr&_r=0

In Case You Are Still Confused By What Is Going On In The Middle East -

Then the following recent recap by a contributor to the Daily Mail should explain everything.

Canada Warns Its Citizens Not To Take Cash To The USA -

Canada Warns Its Citizens Not To Take Cash To The USA - 



The Canadian government has had to warn its citizens not to carry cash to the USA because the USA does not presume innocence but guilt when it comes to money. Over $2.5 billion has been confiscated from Canadians traveling to the USA, funding the police who grab it.

If you are bringing cash to the land of the free, you will find that that saying really means they are FREE to seize all your money under the pretense you are engaged in drugs with no evidence or other charges.

It costs more money in legal fees to try to get it back so it is a boom business for unethical lawyers to such an extent than only one in sixth people ever try to get their money back and the cops just pocket it. That’s right. Money confiscated is usually allowed to be kept by the department who confiscated it.

This is strangely working its way into funding police and pensions.

This is identical to the very issue that resulted in the final collapse of Rome when the armies began to sack cities to pay for their pensions. We are at that level now with respect to seizing whatever they want knowing you will have to spend more in legal fees to assert your rights that do not really exist.

Those trying to flee tyranny elsewhere can not bring money with them for the police get to take it on this end.

This pretend war on terrorism is really a wholesale war against the people. It serves as the justification to seize whatever they desire ever since 9/11 as reported by the Washington Post.

Read more - 

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-09-24/canada-warns-its-citizens-not-take-cash-usa

Dead Ebola Patients Resurrect? -

Dead Ebola Patients Resurrect? - 



Two Ebola patients, who died of the virus in separate communities in Nimba County have reportedly resurrected in the county. The victims, both females, believed to be in their 60s and 40s respectively, died of the Ebola virus recently in Hope Village Community and the Catholic Community in Ganta, Nimba.

But to the amazement of residents and onlookers on Monday, the deceased reportedly regained life in total disbelief. The New Dawn Nimba County correspondent said the late Dorris Quoi of Hope Village Community and the second victim only identified as Ma Kebeh, said to be in her late 60s, were about to be taken for burial when they resurrected.

Ma Kebeh had reportedly been in door for two nights without food and medication before her alleged death. Nimba County has had bizarre news of Ebola cases with a native doctor from the county, who claimed that he could cure infected victims, dying of the virus himself last week.

News of the resurrection of the two victims has reportedly created panic in residents of Hope Village Community and Ganta at large, with some citizens describing Dorris Quoi as a ghost, who shouldn't live among them. Since the Ebola outbreak in Nimba County, this is the first incident of dead victims resurrecting.

Read more - 

http://allafrica.com/stories/201409240829.html

Mom drove car with baby in trunk... - Did not want to get ticket for not having a car seat... -

Mom drove car with baby in trunk... - Did not want to get ticket for not having a car seat... - 



Fearful that she would get ticketed for not having a car seat, a Florida woman, 19, drove around early yesterday with her five-month-old baby inside the trunk of her car, police allege.

After spotting a passing 2005 Dodge Stratus with one of its headlights out, Broward Sheriff’s Office deputies sought to pull over the vehicle around 1 AM. The motorist, later identified as Breona Synclair Watkins, continued driving for several blocks before stopping her vehicle.

When a deputy asked Watkins why she did not immediately stop the car, “she said she has never been pulled over before,” according to a sheriff’s report. After giving deputies a false name, Watkins subsequently “advised that that she lied about her name because she does not have a license.” Watkins was then arrested and placed in a patrol car.

During the stop, a second cop “heard crying from the vehicle and there was no child in the vehicle.” Upon opening the trunk, an investigator found Watkins’s baby inside. The infant was atop a “large pair of bush cutting shears” and was surrounded by other potentially dangerous items, like a tire iron, a rusty hanger, a fuel pump, and plastic bags.

While being questioned, Watkins said that the baby had been in the lap of a 14-year-old male passenger (whose mother owns the Dodge). But when cops tried to initiate a traffic stop, she directed the boy to stash the baby in the trunk “through the rear seat opening which folds down.”

Cops noted that during the 15 minutes prior to the baby’s discovery, Watkins and the boy did not tell deputies that “there was a 5 month old child alone in the enclosed trunk.” Watkins, investigators added, “did not want to get a ticket for having her child not in a car seat.”

For trying to avoid a ticket, Watkins was charged with felony child cruelty, resisting an officer, driving without a license, and four vehicular charges. The Lauderdale Lakes resident is being held in the county jail in lieu of $7000 bond.

Read more - 

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/baby-hidden-in-car-trunk-465321

Grandmother can't stop swearing following stroke... -

Grandmother can't stop swearing following stroke... - 



A grandmother who once hated the idea of swearing now turns the air blue after a stroke left her unable to control her potty mouth.

Pat Preston, 65, now has a mouth like a sailor following her stroke and has even called her grandchildren ‘little b******s’ when they were playing up.

The grandmother from Gateshead says her new-found profanity laden speech is completely involuntary.

‘Before I had a stroke I would still get annoyed at things but I could control my upset, however now I just can’t help it,’ she said.

The retired bank worker says her swearing particularly irks her husband, as he used to be a head teacher and therefore has an obvious aversion to swearing.

She has introduced a swear box since her stroke last January in an attempt to train her brain, and is also receiving help from psychologists.

Prim pensioner Pat Preston swears like a trooper for the first time in her life after waking from a stroke with a changed personality.nGrandmother Pat, 65, has shocked her husband, Michael, 66, by turning the air blue with a stream of four-letter words in front of her doctor; has sworn in the presence of friends; and has been known to call her grandchildren ¿little b****s¿ since suffering a stroke in January.nIt is a complete departure from the type of language the retired bank customer service adviser would have used in the past and she even has a ¿swear box¿ she adds money to after using inappropriate words.nnPat Preston pictured with Husband Michael Preston.nPat Preston has had a personality change since having a stroke in January.

Pat says she has changed from a woman who once was able to control her mouth to someone who will suddenly announce anything she isn’t happy with in an expletive laden outburst.

She said: ‘If something really annoys me I am not able to keep my thoughts to myself and I’m quite outspoken.

‘If I go into a shop and don’t like how the assistants are reacting to me or even someone else I will say so.’

Despite this, Pat claims she is ’75 per cent’ back to how she was before her stroke, and says she can carry on with life and ‘see the funny side’.

Read more - 

http://metro.co.uk/2014/09/24/grandmother-who-once-despised-profanity-cant-stop-swearing-following-a-stroke-4880391/

3-Boobed Woman ... A FAKE! -

3-Boobed Woman ... A FAKE! - 



The woman claiming to have 3 boobs is A FRAUD ... A FAKE ... and ironically what exposed her lie is a crime someone committed against her.

Jasmine Tridevil has been making the rounds, claiming she got plastic surgery to net her an additional boob.  

But we got a document from the Tampa International Airport Police Dept. describing a baggage theft. According to the doc ... someone stole a bunch of luggage off an American Airlines conveyor belt, including a black nylon roller bag.

Cops caught the thieves after IDing them with surveillance video. The black bag belonged to Tridevil, but before she got it back it was inventoried by police as part of the case against the crooks.

Guess what was inside the bag?  "A 3 breast prosthesis."

BTW ... she told cops the prosthesis was valued at $5K.

The boobs are perfect, but she's a little crooked.

Read more: -

http://www.tmz.com/2014/09/23/woman-with-3-boobs-fake-jasmine-tridevil-luggage-stolen-breast-prosthesis/

Ellen DeGeneres Hilariously Spoofs Matthew McConaughey's Lincoln Car Commercial -

Chinese restaurant admits to selling 'opium-laced noodles' - to keep customers coming back to his restaurant -

Chinese restaurant admits to selling 'opium-laced noodles' - to keep customers coming back to his restaurant - 



The owner of a noodle shop in China has admitted to using poppy seeds in his noodles to keep customers coming back to his restaurant.

Liu Juyou, a customer at the restaurant in Yan'an in the Shaanxi province, made the discovery after he tested positive for drugs during a routine traffic stop — despite the fact that he says he has never taken drugs in his life. Juyou suspected the restaurant's food was behind his test results, since he had eaten there mere hours before.

To confirm his suspicion, Juyou asked some of his relatives to eat at the shop and then drug-test themselves, and as it turns out, their urine tested positive for drugs, too.

The store's owner, identified as Zhang, confessed to the Xi'an Evening News that he had crushed poppy buds into powder and added it in with the seasoning to his noodles. The result, as the BBC notes, was "opium-laced noodles."

Police reports stated that the unprocessed seeds contained enough opiates to cause positive drug-test results and could "produce dependence" in consumers. Zhang was detained for 10 days by the police.

Read more - 

http://theweek.com/speedreads/index/268643/speedreads-chinese-restaurant-admits-to-selling-opium-laced-noodles

China Floods U.S. With Near-Perfect Fake Driver’s Licenses -

China Floods U.S. With Near-Perfect Fake Driver’s Licenses - 



Fake driver’s licenses are flooding our market and could pose a real threat.
2 Investigator Dave Savini reports these bogus licenses are being produced overseas and sold online.
State and federal officials say they want to shut down the sales of them.
Bogus licenses are seized by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials in big numbers, says Chief Customs Officer Brian Bell.
“We have hundreds of boxes of these,” he says. “They are all containing counterfeit driver’s licenses.”
They are incredible fakes. Smuggled into this country by high-tech forgery rings that have mastered the details so well, they could lead to critical securitythreats. Each license costs about $150.
They’re smuggled inside boxes of tea sets and jewelry from China; one intercepted batch was headed to a group of 20 students at the same college.
Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White says he is amazed by the level of these fakes.
One concern if the potential homeland security issue.
“And that’s why I’m not going to stand idly by and allow this activity to continue without doing something about it,” he says.
White’s team investigating these latest seized shipments includes Tyler DuMontelle.
“Instead of a generic hologram, they are imitating our actual holograms,” says DuMontelle. “These are some of the best I’ve seen.”
Says Bell: “The question is: Is it good enough to get you on an airplane?”
It is hard to know because the fakes are that good, say experts. However, the Secretary of State’s Office says the fakes have failed the laser and ultra-violet light tests.
For those who are underage, buying one of these fakes can lead to a year-long suspension of their real license. Some college students have been kicked out of school over this issue.



Read more - 

http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2014/09/22/2-investigators-china-floods-u-s-with-near-perfect-fake-drivers-licenses/