XIAM007 - Making Unique Observations in a Very Cluttered World

Wednesday, 11 May 2011

Greece launches massive fire sale - Marinas, casinos and former Olympic venues up for grabs to help service its debt -

Greece launches massive fire sale - Marinas, casinos and former Olympic venues up for grabs to help service its debt -

Marinas, casinos and former Olympic venues could be up for grabs after Greece announced a massive fire sale to help service its debt.
The Greek government said it was putting vast areas of state-owned land on the market to raise £44billion in the next four years.
Nationalised companies could also be privatised to help raise the necessary capital to ensure it does not default on debt payments.
A general strike held today has seen most public services grind to a halt across the country, while thousands marched through Athens to protest against harsh austerity measures.

Read more - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1385900/Greek-debt-Greece-launches-massive-sale-riot-police-clash-protesters.html

NASA's Dawn spacecraft has obtained its first image of the giant asteroid Vesta -

NASA's Dawn spacecraft has obtained its first image of the giant asteroid Vesta -
Dawn's First Glimpse of Vesta

This image shows the first, unprocessed image obtained by NASA's Dawn spacecraft of the giant asteroid Vesta in front of a background of stars. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
› Full image and caption

Dawn's First Glimpse of Vesta -- Processed

Dawn's First Glimpse of Vesta -- Processed

This image, processed to show the true size of the giant asteroid Vesta, shows Vesta in front of a spectacular background of stars. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
› Full image and caption

NASA's Dawn spacecraft has obtained its first image of the giant asteroid Vesta, which will help fine-tune navigation during its approach. Dawn is expected to achieve orbit around Vesta on July 16, when the asteroid is about 188 million kilometers (117 million miles) from Earth.

The image from Dawn's framing cameras was taken on May 3 when the spacecraft began its approach and was approximately 1.21 million kilometers (752,000 miles) from Vesta. The asteroid appears as a small, bright pearl against a background of stars. Vesta is also known as a protoplanet, because it is a large body that almost formed into a planet.

"After plying the seas of space for more than a billion miles, the Dawn team finally spotted its target," said Carol Raymond, Dawn's deputy principal investigator at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "This first image hints of detailed portraits to come from Dawn's upcoming visit."

Vesta is 530 kilometers (330 miles) in diameter and the second most massive object in the asteroid belt. Ground- and space-based telescopes obtained images of the bright orb for about two centuries, but with little surface detail.

Mission managers expect Vesta's gravity to capture Dawn in orbit on July 16. To enter orbit, Dawn must match the asteroid's path around the sun, which requires very precise knowledge of the body's location and speed. By analyzing where Vesta appears relative to stars in framing camera images, navigators will pin down its location and enable engineers to refine the spacecraft's trajectory.

Dawn will start collecting science data in early August at an altitude of approximately 1,700 miles (2,700 kilometers) above the asteroid's surface. As the spacecraft gets closer, it will snap multi-angle images, allowing scientists to produce topographic maps. Dawn will later orbit at approximately 200 kilometers (120 miles) to perform other measurements and obtain closer shots of parts of the surface. Dawn will remain in orbit around Vesta for one year. After another long cruise phase, Dawn will arrive in 2015 at its second destination, Ceres, an even more massive body in the asteroid belt.

A CANNIBAL has been arrested after his "dinner guest" changed his mind and called the cops -

The would-be victim from Switzerland answered an internet advert from the 43-year-old man seeking someone who would agree to be killed, cooked and eaten.

He claims he thought the offer — posted by a man in Slovakia — was nothing more than a "macabre fantasy game".

But he said after speaking to the unnamed man on the phone, he realised he was "deadly serious".

He alerted Swiss police who informed their Slovakian counterparts on Monday.

The cops sent in an undercover officer posing as the victim in a sting operation to catch the suspected flesh-eater.

But as officers attempted to arrest the man yesterday, in the north-eastern village of Kysak, a gunfight broke out and the man and a cop were shot.

A Kysak police spokesman said: "It appears this man was genuinely seeking to eat someone.

"His advert said he wanted someone who would agree to be put to sleep then killed, cut up, cooked and eaten.

"One of our officers and the suspect both suffered gunshot wounds during the arrest and are both being treated in hospital."

Tuesday, 10 May 2011

Man Found Living On Top Of Waffle House - was spotted by an air conditioner repairman -

It appears someone took the “House” in Waffle House a little too literally. At the Gordon Highway location, crews were called in after reports that a man was making the roof his home.

He was spotted by an air conditioner repairman. Cops and firefighters were called in to help the man down.

Crews weren’t sure how long he’d been up there, or even how he got up there. Someone shared their cell phone video with our crews.

Another witness, Marvin Stone, says he “just pulled up to work, saw the fireman on the roof, saw a couple cops on the roof, started asking questions and came to find out there was a guy stuck on the roof.”

James Mayle, when asked if he’d seen anything like, said “No, you never expect anything like this, a person on top of the roof at a Waffle house? No, never that.”

We’re told the unidentified man was dehydrated and taken to a nearby hospital

Don’t Buy A House In 2011 Before You Read These 20 Wacky Statistics About The U.S. Real Estate Crisis -

Unless you have been asleep or hiding under a rock for the past five years, you already know that we are experiencing the worst real estate crisis that the U.S. has ever seen. Home prices in the United States have fallen 33 percent from the peak of the housing bubble, which is more than they fell during the Great Depression. Those that decided to buy a house in 2005 or 2006 are really hurting right now. Just think about it. Could you imagine paying off a $400,000 mortgage on a home that is now only worth $250,000? Millions of Americans are now living through that kind of financial hell. Sadly, most analysts expect U.S. home prices to go down even further. Despite the “best efforts” of those running our economy, unemployment is still rampant. The number of middle class jobs continues to decline year after year, but it takes at least a middle class income to buy a decent home. In addition, financial institutions have really tightened up lending standards and have made it much more difficult to get home loans. Back during the wild days of the housing bubble, the family cat could get a zero-down mortgage, but today the pendulum has swung very far in the other direction and now it is really, really tough to get a home loan. Meanwhile, the number of foreclosures and distressed properties continues to soar. So with a ton of homes on the market and not a lot of buyers the power is firmly in the hands of those looking to buy a house.
So will home prices continue to go down? Possibly. But they won’t go down forever. At some point the inflation that is already affecting many other segments of the economy will affect home prices as well. That doesn’t mean that it will be middle class American families that will be buying up all the homes. An increasing percentage of homes are being purchased by investors or by foreigners. There are a lot of really beautiful homes in the United States, and wealthy people from all over the globe love to buy a house in America.
But because of the factors mentioned above, it is quite possible that U.S. home prices could go down another 10 or 20 percent, especially if the economy gets worse.
So what is the right time to buy a house?
Nobody really knows for sure.
Mortgage rates are near record lows right now and there are some great deals to be had in many areas of the country. But that does not mean that you won’t be able to get the same home for even less 6 months or a year from now.
In any event, this truly has been a really trying time for the U.S. housing market. Hordes of builders, construction workers, contractors, real estate agents and mortgage professionals have been put out of work by this downturn. The housing industry is one of the core pillars of the economy, and so a recovery in home sales is desperately needed.

The following are 20 really wacky statistics about the U.S. real estate crisis….
#1 According to Zillow, 28.4 percent of all single-family homes with a mortgage in the United States are now underwater.
#2 Zillow has also announced that the average price of a home in the U.S. is about 8 percent lower than it was a year ago and that it continues to fall about 1 percent a month.
#3 U.S. home prices have now fallen a whopping 33% from where they were at during the peak of the housing bubble.
#4 During the first quarter of 2011, home values declined at the fastest ratesince late 2008.
#5 According to Zillow, more than 55 percent of all single-family homes with a mortgage in Atlanta have negative equity and more than 68 percent of all single-family homes with a mortgage in Phoenix have negative equity.
#6 U.S. home values have fallen an astounding 6.3 trillion dollars since the housing crisis first began.
#7 In February, U.S. housing starts experienced their largest decline in 27 years.
#8 New home sales in the United States are now down 80% from the peak in July 2005.
#9 Historically, the percentage of residential mortgages in foreclosure in the United States has tended to hover between 1 and 1.5 percent. Today, it is up around 4.5 percent.
#10 According to RealtyTrac, foreclosure filings in the United States are projected to increase by another 20 percent in 2011.
#11 It is estimated that 25% of all mortgages in Miami-Dade County are “in serious distress and headed for either foreclosure or short sale“.
#12 Two years ago, the average U.S. homeowner that was being foreclosed upon had not made a mortgage payment in 11 months. Today, the average U.S. homeowner that is being foreclosed upon has not made a mortgage payment in 17 months.
#13 Sales of foreclosed homes now represent an all-time record 23.7% of the market.
#14 4.5 million home loans are now either in some stage of foreclosure or are at least 90 days delinquent.
#15 According to the Mortgage Bankers Association, at least 8 million Americans are currently at least one month behind on their mortgage payments.
#16 In September 2008, 33 percent of Americans knew someone who had been foreclosed upon or who was facing the threat of foreclosure. Today that number has risen to 48 percent.
#17 During the first quarter of 2011, less new homes were sold in the U.S. than in any three month period ever recorded.
#18 According to a recent census report, 13% of all homes in the United Statesare currently sitting empty.
#19 In 1996, 89 percent of Americans believed that it was better to own a home than to rent one. Today that number has fallen to 63 percent.
#20 According to Zillow, the United States has been in a “housing recession” for57 straight months without an end in sight.
So should we be confident that the folks in charge are doing everything that they can to turn all of this around?
Sadly, the truth is that our “authorities” really do not know what they are doing. The following is what Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke had to say about the housing market back in 2006….

“Housing markets are cooling a bit. Our expectation is that the decline in activity or the slowing in activity will be moderate, that house prices will probably continue to rise.”

Since that time U.S. housing prices have experienced their biggest decline ever.
At some point widespread inflation is going to reverse the trend we are experiencing right now, but that doesn’t mean that most American families will be able to afford to buy homes when that happens.
As I have written about previously, the middle class in America is shrinking. The number of Americans on food stamps has increased by 18 million over the past four years and today 47 million Americans (a new all-time record) are living in poverty.
Millions of our jobs are being shipped overseas, the cost of living keeps going up and an increasing percentage of American families are losing faith in the economy.
More Americans than ever are talking about “the coming economic collapse” as if it is a foregone conclusion. Our federal government is swamped with debt, our state and local governments are swamped with debt and our economic infrastructure is being ripped to shreds by globalization.
So sadly, no, there are not a whole lot of reasons to be optimistic at this point about a major economic turnaround.
The U.S. economy is going down the toilet and the coming collapse is going to be incredibly painful for all of us.
Hopefully when that collapse comes you will have somewhere warm and safe to call home. If not, hopefully someone will have compassion on you. In any event, we all need to buckle up because it is going to be a wild ride.

Read more - http://www.blacklistednews.com/Don%E2%80%99t_Buy_A_House_In_2011_Before_You_Read_These_20_Wacky_Statistics_About_The_U.S._Real_Estate_Crisis_/13824/0/0/0/Y/M.html

Saturday, 7 May 2011

Video Captures Obama in Secretive Exchange of Notes With Air Force General -

The italian channel Rainews discovered an exchange of two small pieces of paper between President Obama and General Wilson when on April 29 the American President, few hours after he gave the order to kill Osama Bin Laden, landed at Cape Canaveral airport. While shaking hands with the general President Obama passed a small piece of paper and received another one in exchange.

Let’s break it down by a few freeze frames.

Here Obama makes the initial move to have the note/paper/item in his hand:

He then positions it to pass to Wilson:

Wilson stretches out his hand to receive the item:

Obama places the item in Wilson’s hand:

Here’s a close-up from the actual AP photograph of that moment:

Wilson then moves to retrieve his item for the President:

Here comes the pass:

Pass complete, Obama moves to place the item in his pocket:

Slick.

Friday, 6 May 2011

Report: Nearly Half Of Detroiters Can’t Read - 47 percent of Detroiters are ”functionally illiterate.” -

According to a new report, 47 percent of Detroiters are ”functionally illiterate.” The alarming new statistics were released by the Detroit Regional Workforce Fund on Wednesday.

WWJ Newsradio 950 spoke with the Fund’s Director, Karen Tyler-Ruiz, who explained exactly what this means.

“Not able to fill out basic forms, for getting a job — those types of basic everyday (things). Reading a prescription; what’s on the bottle, how many you should take… just your basic everyday tasks,” she said.

“I don’t really know how they get by, but they do. Are they getting by well? Well, that’s another question,” Tyler-Ruiz said.

Some of the Detroit suburbs also have high numbers of functionally illiterate: 34 percent in Pontiac and 24 percent in Southfield.

“For other major urban areas, we are a little bit on the high side… We compare, slightly higher, to Washington D.C.’s urban population, in certain ZIP codes in Washington D.C. and in Cleveland,” she said.

Tyler-Ruiz said only 10 percent of those who can’t read have gotten any help to resolve it.

The report will be used to provide better training for local workers.

Nuclear plant workers release unknown amount of radioactive tritium into Mississippi River -

Workers at the Grand Gulf Nuclear Plant in Port Gibson, Miss., last Thursday released a large amount of radioactive tritium directly into the Mississippi River, according to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), and experts are currently trying to sort out the situation. An investigation is currently underway to determine why the tritium was even present in standing water found in an abandoned unit of the plant, as well as how much of this dangerous nuclear byproduct ended up getting dumped into the river. Many also want to know why workers released the toxic tritium before conducting proper tests.
The Mississippi Natchez Democrat reports that crews first discovered the radioactive water in the plant’s Unit 2 turbine building after heavy rains began hitting the area last week. Unit 2 was a partially-constructed, abandoned structure that should not have contained any radioactive materials, let alone tritium, which is commonly used to manufacture nuclear weapons and test atomic bombs (http://www.nirs.org/radiation/triti…)
According to reports, alarms began to go off as workers were releasing the radioactive storm water into the river, which engaged the stop flow on the release pump. Neither NRC nor plant officials know how much tritium was released into the river during this release.
“Although concentrations of tritium exceeded EPA drinking water limits, the release should not represent a hazard to public health because of its dilution in the river,” insisted Lara Uselding, public affairs officer at NRC Region IV, to reporters.

Such a statement, of course, is a health concern because precise levels of released tritium are unknown. Just because the radioactive substance has been diluted does not necessarily mean it is harmless, nor does it verify the substance’s source or whether or not it is still being unknowingly released. Without this crucial information, there is no telling where else tritium might be lurking around the plant and river.
A beta radioactive substance, tritium bombards cells and damages DNA when inhaled or swallowed, and can persist in the body for more than ten years upon exposure. Its perpetual effect on cells can lead to all sorts of serious diseases, including, but not limited to, gene mutations, birth defects, and cancer.

Read more - http://www.naturalnews.com/032303_tritium_nuclear_power_plant.html

Thursday, 5 May 2011

Mexican Central Bank Quietly Buys 100 Tons of Gold -

Mexico has quietly purchased nearly 100 tons of gold bullion, as central banks embark on their biggest bullion buying spree in 40 years.

The purchase, reported in monthly data published by Mexico’s central bank, is the latest in a series of large gold buys by emerging market economies intent on diversifying reserves away from the faltering US dollar.

China, Russia and India have acquired large amounts of gold in recent years, while Thailand, Sri Lanka and Bolivia have made smaller purchases.

Central banks became net buyers of gold last year after two decades of heavy selling – a reversal that has helped propel the price of bullion to a series of record highs.

On Wednesday gold was trading at about $1,510 a troy ounce, down 4 percent from a nominal record high of $1,575.79 reached on Monday.

As a result of Mexico’s purchase, central banks, sovereign wealth funds and other so-called “official sector” buyers are on track to record their largest collective purchase of gold since the collapse of the Bretton Woods system, which pegged the value of the dollar to gold, in 1971.

Read more - http://www.cnbc.com/id/42909399

Wednesday, 4 May 2011

iPhone Software Update Squashes Location-Data ‘Bugs’ - will no longer contain a history of location data -

Apple on Wednesday morning released a software update for iPhones, iPads and iPod Touch devices, fixing a flawed location-storage method that raised privacy concerns last month.

The update, iOS version 4.3.3, reduces the size of the file that stores geodata on iOS devices — meaning it will no longer contain a history of location data going back as far as one year ago.

Additionally, with the update installed, iTunes won’t back up the iOS device’s location database file, meaning the geodata will no longer be stored on your computer.

Last, when customers disable the Location Services setting on their iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch, it deletes all the information stored in the location file, according to Apple.

The software update comes in response to a security issue illuminated by two data scientists, who discovered that an unprotected file inside Apple’s iOS software stores a log of geodata accompanied with time stamps, creating a digital trail of a customer’s general moves for the past year.

The Wall Street Journal later reported that even when location services were turned off on the iPhone, the device was still collecting geodata.

Apple eventually explained that iOS devices are not actually tracking a customer’s precise movements, but rather, iOS devices are collecting information about nearby cell towers and Wi-Fi access points, which helps speed up location services.

The company added that “bugs” caused iOS devices to continue storing location data even when location services were turned off. Apple also said it made a mistake by making the location database file too large.

The iOS 4.3.3 update is a free download available through iTunes. The download is 666 megabytes large.