The Niagara Parks Commission will allow tightrope walker Nik Wallenda to walk a wire across the Niagara Falls gorge -

The Niagara Parks Commission will allow tightrope walker Nik Wallenda to walk a wire across the Niagara Falls gorge - 


The Niagara Parks Commission will allow tightrope walker Nik Wallenda to walk a wire across the Niagara gorge – a 180-degree turn from its established policy.


Commissioners voted Wednesday to allow the stunt during their Wednesday morning meeting.


It’s an about face for the provincial agency responsible for managing the public property along the Niagara River. It goes against a decades-old policy banning stunters from Niagara Falls.


The parks commission has decided to allow one “qualified stutner” every 20 years.


“It’s a new day,” Niagara Parks Commission chairwoman Janice Thomoson said.


The commission will give Wallenda 45 days to negotiate the arrangements for the walk.


Last year, the New York State assembly passed a one-time exemption to its ban on stunts that will allow Wallenda to use New York's Goat Island state park as one of the endpoints for the highwire act.


Today's NPC decision was needed to give Wallenda permission to use its Table Rock area as the other endpoint.


Read more - 
http://www.stcatharinesstandard.ca/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=3472774

World's tiniest chameleon discovered in Madagascar... - one of the smallest reptiles on the planet -

World's tiniest chameleon discovered in Madagascar... - one of the smallest reptiles on the planet - 


His species is renowned for its ability to blend in, but this tiny critter is even better than most as the world's smallest chameleon.
Balanced on the tip of a scientist's fingernail in Madagascar, the-three centimetre reptile is no bigger than the flies that form his average-sized cousin's lunch.
Scientists discovered four new species - called Brookesia micra - on a small islet just off the main island.



This particular chameleon is now thought to be one of the smallest reptiles on the planet.
Ted Townsend, of San Diego State University, carried out genetic testing on the new species.
He said: 'Their size suggests that chameleons might have evolved in Madagascar from small and inconspicuous ancestors, quite unlike the larger and more colourful chameleons most familiar to us today.'




Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2101040/Discovered-The-mini-meleon-smallest-reptiles-planet.html?ITO=1490

20 Things We Can Learn About The Future Of America From The Death Of Detroit -

20 Things We Can Learn About The Future Of America From The Death Of Detroit - 


Do you want to know what the future of America is going to look like?  Just check out what is happening to Detroit.  The city of Detroit was once one of the greatest industrial cities in the history of the world, but today it is a rotting, decaying, post-apocalyptic hellhole.  Nearly half the men are unemployed, nearly half the population is functionally illiterate, more than half of the children are living in poverty and the city government is drowning in debt.  As economic conditions have gotten worse, crime has absolutely exploded.  Every single night in Detroit there are frightening confrontations between desperate criminals and exasperated homeowners.  Unfortunately, the police force in Detroit has been dramatically reduced in size.  When the police in Detroit are called, they often show up very late if they even show up at all. Detroit has become a lawless hellhole where violence is the currency of the streets.  If you want to survive in Detroit, you better be ready to fight because there are hordes of desperate criminals that are quite eager to take literally everything that you have got.  But don’t look down on Detroit too much, because what is happening in Detroit will soon be happening all over America.


The following are 20 things we can learn about the future of America from the death of Detroit….


#1 People don’t want to live where the stench of failure and decay is constantly in the air.  Back in the 1950s, Detroit was a teeming metropolis of approximately 2 million people.  According to the 2010 census, only 713,000 people live in Detroit today.  The U.S. Census Bureau says that Detroit lost a resident every 22 minutes during the first decade of this century.


#2 When the economy falls apart, desperate people will do desperate things and many homeowners will fight back.  Justifiable homicide in Detroit rose by a staggering 79 percent during 2011.


#3 In major cities where people are scrambling just to survive, any confrontation can quickly escalate into a life or death affair.  The rate of self-defense killings in Detroit is currently 2200% above the national average.


#4 When there is not enough money to go around, a lot of local governments will choose to cut back on police protection.  Ten years ago, there were approximately 5,000 police for the city of Detroit.  Today, there are less than 3,000.


#5 The essential social services that you are enjoying today will not always be there in the future.  Officials in Detroit recently announced that due to budget constraints, all police stations will be closed to the public for 16 hours a day.


#6 Economic decay is a breeding ground for chaos and violence.  Last Friday and Saturday, a total of nine shootings were reported in the city of Detroit.


#7 More Americans than ever are realizing the benefits of self-defense.  The following is what 73-year-old Julia Brown recently told the Daily….


The last time Brown, 73, called the Detroit police, they didn’t show up until the next day. So she applied for a permit to carry a handgun and says she’s prepared to use it against the young thugs who have taken over her neighborhood, burglarizing entire blocks, opening fire at will and terrorizing the elderly with impunity.


#8 When crime gets go bad that the police are powerless to stop it, vigilante groups begin to form….


In fact, crime has gotten so bad and the citizens are so frustrated by the lack of police assistance that they have resorted to forming their own organizations to fight back.  One group, known as “Detroit 300″, was formed after a 90-year-old woman on Detroit’s northwest side was brutally raped in August.


#9 When criminals become desperate, they will steal literally anything that is not bolted down.  In Detroit today, thieves have stripped so much copper wiring out of the street lights that half of all the lights in some neighborhoods no longer work.


#10 As things fall apart, eventually a time comes when it is not even safe to drive down the road in the middle of the day.  100 bus drivers in Detroit recently refused to drive their routes out of fear of being attacked on the streets.  The head of the bus drivers union, Henry Gaffney, said that the drivers were literally “scared for their lives“….


“Our drivers are scared, they’re scared for their lives. This has been an ongoing situation about security. I think yesterday kind of just topped it off, when one of my drivers was beat up by some teenagers down in the middle of Rosa Parks and it took the police almost 30 minutes to get there, in downtown Detroit,” said Gaffney.


#11 One of the clearest signs of decline in America is the state of our education system.  Only 25 percent of all students in Detroit end up graduating from high school.  Many other major cities will soon have graduation rates similar to Detroit.


#12 When local governments run out of money they are forced to make tough choices.  After already shutting down dozens of schools, officials in Detroit have announced plans to close down 16 more schools.


#13 A growing percentage of Americans cannot even read or write.  This is a very frightening indication of what the future of America could look like.  According to one stunning report, 47 percent of all people living in the city of Detroit are functionally illiterate.


#14 Sadly, child poverty is absolutely exploding all over the United States.  Today, 53.6 percent of all children that live in Detroit are living below the poverty line.


#15 The employment situation in America is a lot worse than the government is telling us.  An analysis of census figures found that 48.5% of all men living in Detroit from age 20 to age 64 did not have a job in 2008.


#16 When a major city becomes a hellhole, home prices fall like a rock.  The median price of a home in Detroit is now just $6000.


#17 When crime and looting become commonplace, homes in an area can become absolutely worthless.  Some homes in Detroit have been sold for a single dollar.


#18 When depression-like conditions exist in an area for a number of years, large numbers of people will move on to greener pastures.  As of a few years ago, there were more than 40,000 vacant properties in the city of Detroit.


#19 Just because we have a high standard of living today does not mean that will always be the case.  Detroit is just a rotting shell of what it once was, and what is happening to Detroit will happen to much of the rest of America very soon.  The following is what one British reporter found during his visit to Detroit….


Much of Detroit is horribly dangerous for its own residents, who in many cases only stay because they have nowhere else to go. Property crime is double the American average, violent crime triple. The isolated, peeling homes, the flooded roads, the clunky, rusted old cars and the neglected front yards amid trees and groin-high grassland make you think you are in rural Alabama, not in one of the greatest industrial cities that ever existed.


#20 When government finances collapse, politicians look for things to sell off and “privatize”.  Unfortunately, the Detroit city government is so broke that it is now considering selling off some of its most famous assets….


Now, the city of Detroit’s most venerable assets — from Belle Isle to the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel — could end up on the auction block as the city fights for its financial life.


Facing mounting debt and the prospect of a state-appointed emergency manager, the city is looking at all options to shed expenses and raise revenue. If city officials can’t come up with a viable budget plan, an emergency manager would have the power to sell assets as part of a financial takeover of Detroit.


But Detroit is not alone.


Read more -
http://www.blacklistednews.com/20_Things_We_Can_Learn_About_The_Future_Of_America_From_The_Death_Of_Detroit_/17938/0/0/0/Y/M.html

Rats being put to work in Colombia, training to detect explosives -

Rats being put to work in Colombia, training to detect explosives - 


At a Colombian National Police base in the outskirts of Bogota, the nation's capital, a new recruit is being trained.
This new recruit is unlike any other. It stands on four legs, has white hair all over its body and weighs slightly less than a pound. Its name is Rattus Norvegicus -- but it's more commonly known as a lab rat.
During a recent training session, trainers set the white rat on a patch of grass where they had hidden an explosive device underground. It took the rat less than a minute to find it. The rodent was showered with praise. Its trainers also gave it its favorite reward, a treat.
Though safer than a decade ago, Colombia is a country where landmines and car bombs are still a threat. Earlier this month, six people were killed by a car bomb targeting a police station in the town of Villa Rica in the southern province of El Cauca. The day before the February 2 bombing, nine people were killed and 70 were injured by another explosion in the neighboring province of Narino.
Edgar Ramirez, a second lieutenant with the Colombian National Police, says his country still "faces conflicts such as guerrillas, and criminal and paramilitary groups. There are many disputed territories because of the drug trade or simply to take control, and many groups set up land mines in these territories."
In the past, Colombian police used bomb-sniffing dogs; but the dogs' weight would often trigger the explosives. That's not a problem for lab rats that weigh slightly less than a pound.
And according to the trainers, their sense of smell is just as good as a dog's.
Colombia is not the first country to use rodents in this fashion. Rats have already been put to work in Mozambique to detect landmines.
Ramirez says that the only disadvantage he can think of about using rats is their short life span.


Read more - 
http://www.cnn.com/2012/02/13/world/americas/colombia-bomb-detecting-rats/index.html?hpt=hp_bn2

Hungary’s Needy Given Money to Burn (in Their Furnaces) - blocks of disused bank notes -

Hungary’s Needy Given Money to Burn (in Their Furnaces) - blocks of disused bank notes -



Hungary’s central bank, currently at the centre of a dispute between the country’s government and the EU, has launched an unusual social programme to counter the effects of the current cold snap. It’s handing out blocks of disused bank notes to the country’s poorest citizens, so that they can be burned for fuel.

Could your Valentine's kiss give you lead poisoning? - Most lipstick contains lead -

Could your Valentine's kiss give you lead poisoning? - Most lipstick contains lead - 


If you're going to be on either end of a kiss this Valentine's Day, you might want to consider smooching bare-lipped. Most lipstick contains lead.
Lead has been banned in paint since 1978 because of its toxicity at low levels, but it still shows up in small amounts in some of the best-selling lipstick brands.
The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, which did an analysis of a study of lead in lipstick conducted by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, wants consumers to know that most of the 400 different lipsticks tested were positive for the substance.
"Recognizing that there is no safe level of lead exposure, we need to be protecting women and children from all levels of exposure," said Stacy Malkan, co-founder of the campaign—a non-profit coalition of environmental- and cancer-prevention groups.
Malkan's group wants the FDA to set a limit for how much lead lipstick can contain and to study whether there are any dangers to having the substance applied to human lips, particularly the lips of children and pregnant women. "We know that ingestion of lipstick happens. It gets into our bodies," she said, noting that lead accumulates in people.
The group said that five of the nine lipstick brands with the most lead are sold by L'Oreal, the world's largest cosmetics maker.




Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2012/02/14/could-your-valentines-kiss-give-lead-poisoning/

Top Republican at CPAC says - Jeb Bush could emerge as nominee at a brokered convention -

Top Republican at CPAC says - Jeb Bush could emerge as nominee at a brokered convention - 




Al Cardenas, head of the American Conservative Union, has said that Republican turmoil might lead to a brokered convention in which Jeb Bush, former Florida governor, would emerge as a “possible alternative” party nominee.


Mr Cardenas, who is running this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), a gathering in Washington of some 10,000 conservatives, told MailOnline that it was not certain that one of the four current Republican candidates would emerge victorious.


His comments came as Republicans fretted publicly about the perceived weaknesses of Mitt Romney, the establishment choice and frontrunner, Rick Santorum, surprise winner in three states on Tuesday, Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul.


Read more -
http://harndenblog.dailymail.co.uk/2012/02/top-republican-at-cpac-jeb-bush-could-emerge-as-nominee-at-a-brokered-convention-.html

The most shocking extreme sport of the year - Tazer Ball - with a 300,000 volt electroshock gun -

The most shocking extreme sport of the year - Tazer Ball - with a 300,000 volt electroshock gun - 


A Toronto team is ushering in the world’s newest ultimate sports league, but don’t expect to see a home game anytime soon: One of the pieces of equipment used, a 300,000 volt electroshock gun, is considered a weapon in Canada.


“It’s not technically a police grade Taser,” said Eric Prum, 25, one of the founders of Ultimate Tazer Ball. “That being said, the first thing the [players] will tell you is that they hate getting tased. Those things really do hurt.”


The Toronto Terror is one of four teams in the newly minted Ultimate Tazer Ball league. The game puts two teams of four players on a field about the size of a hockey rink. Players have to get a large ball into a net while avoiding their opponents, all of whom are armed with the device.


“The reason it’s really cool in game play is because it causes your muscles to spasm, therefore you’re going to drop the ball, you’re going to trip, you’re going to fall over. And it’s fun,” said Mr. Prum.


The stun guns are not lethal. While high-rates of voltage are certainly painful, it is electrical current that kills.


Read more - 
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/02/08/ultimate-tazer-ball/

The Top 12 Reasons Why You Should Hate the Mortgage Settlement -

The Top 12 Reasons Why You Should Hate the Mortgage Settlement - 


Here are the top twelve reasons why this deal stinks:


1. We've now set a price for forgeries and fabricating documents. It's $2000 per loan. This is a rounding error compared to the chain of title problem these systematic practices were designed to circumvent. The cost is also trivial in comparison to the average loan, which is roughly $180k, so the settlement represents about 1% of loan balances. It is less than the price of the title insurance that banks failed to get when they transferred the loans to the trust. It is a fraction of the cost of the legal expenses when foreclosures are challenged. It's a great deal for the banks because no one is at any of the servicers going to jail for forgery and the banks have set the upper bound of the cost of riding roughshod over 300 years of real estate law.


2. That $26 billion is actually $5 billion of bank money and the rest is your money. The mortgage principal writedowns are guaranteed to come almost entirely from securitized loans, which means from investors, which in turn means taxpayers via Fannie and Freddie, pension funds, insurers, and 401 (k)s. Refis of performing loans also reduce income to those very same investors.


3. That $5 billion divided among the big banks wouldn't even represent a significant quarterly hit. Freddie and Fannie putbacks to the major banks have been running at that level each quarter.


4. That $20 billion actually makes bank second liens sounder, so this deal is a stealth bailout that strengthens bank balance sheets at the expense of the broader public.


5. The enforcement is a joke. The first layer of supervision is the banks reporting on themselves. The framework is similar to that of the OCC consent decrees implemented last year, which Adam Levitin and yours truly, among others, decried as regulatory theater.


6. The past history of servicer consent decrees shows the servicers all fail to comply. Why? Servicer records and systems are terrible in the best of times, and their systems and fee structures aren't set up to handle much in the way of delinquencies. As Tom Adams has pointed out in earlier posts, servicer behavior is predictable when their portfolios are hit with a high level of delinquencies and defaults: they cheat in all sorts of ways to reduce their losses.


7. The cave-in Nevada and Arizona on the Countrywide settlement suit is a special gift for Bank of America, who is by far the worst offender in the chain of title disaster (since, according to sworn testimony of its own employee in Kemp v. Countrywide, Countrywide failed to comply with trust delivery requirements). This move proves that failing to comply with a consent degree has no consequences but will merely be rolled into a new consent degree which will also fail to be enforced. These cases also alleged HAMP violations as consumer fraud violations and could have gotten costly and emboldened other states to file similar suits not just against Countrywide but other servicers, so it was useful to the other banks as well.


8. If the new federal task force were intended to be serious, this deal would have not have been settled. You never settle before investigating. It's a bad idea to settle obvious, widespread wrongdoing on the cheap. You use the stuff that is easy to prove to gather information and secure cooperation on the stuff that is harder to prove. In Missouri and Nevada, the robosigning investigation led to criminal charges against agents of the servicers. But even though these companies were acting at the express direction and approval of the services, no individuals or entities higher up the food chain will face any sort of meaningful charges.


9. There is plenty of evidence of widespread abuses not that are appear not to be on the attorney generals' or media's radar, such as servicer driven foreclosures and looting of investors' funds via impermissible and inflated charges. While no serious probe was undertaken, even the limited or peripheral investigations show massive failures (60% of documents had errors in AGs/Fed's pathetically small sample). Similarly, the US Trustee's office found widespread evidence of significant servicer errors in bankruptcy-related filings, such as inflated and bogus fees, and even substantial, completely made up charges. Yet the services and banks will suffer no real consequences for these abuses.


10. A deal on robosiginging serves to cover up the much deeper chain of title problem. And don't get too excited about the New York, Massachusetts, and Delaware MERS suits. They put pressure on banks to clean up this monstrous mess only if the AGs go through to trial and get tough penalties. The banks will want to settle their way out of that too. And even if these cases do go to trial and produce significant victories for the AGs, they still do not address the problem of failures to transfer notes correctly.


11. Don't bet on a deus ex machina in terms of the new federal foreclosure task force to improve this picture much. If you think Schneiderman, as a co-chairman who already has a full-time day job in New York, is going to outfox a bunch of D.C. insiders who are part of the problem, you are smoking something very strong.


12. We'll now have to listen to banks and their sycophant defenders declaring victory despite being wrong on the law and the facts. They will proceed to marginalize and write off criticisms of the servicing practices that hurt homeowners and investors and are devastating communities. But the problems will fester and the housing market will continue to suffer. Investors in mortgage-backed securities, who know that services have been screwing them for years, will be hung out to dry and will likely never return to a private MBS market, since the problems won't ever be fixed. This settlement has not only revealed the residential mortgage market to be too big to fail, but puts it on long term, perhaps permanent, government life support.


Read more - 
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/yves-smith/mortgage-settlement_b_1264806.html?ref=business&ir=Business

McCain’s new ads in British bus shelters actually smell like baked potatoes -

McCain’s new ads in British bus shelters actually smell like baked potatoes - 




The smell of potatoes baking is the secret ingredient in a new McCain Food campaign that has just launched across Britain.


At 10 bus shelters from London to Glasgow, commuters can press a button on a bulging 3D baked potato and get a whiff of a custom McCain scent.


“This is their biggest launch since oven chips (fries) in 1979,” an advertising spokeswoman told the Toronto Star.


“The idea is to bring the whole feeling, the smell and comforting warmth” of baked potatoes straight to potential consumers.


In a marketing first, the fibreglass potato also warms up and dispenses a discount coupon.


The $2.2 million campaign from the British arm of the New Brunswick frozen foods giant is promoting McCain Ready Baked Jackets, which are microwaveable pre-baked potatoes.


Read more - 
http://www.thestar.com/business/article/1129174--mccain-is-sniffing-success-with-3d-jacket-potato-ad-in-british-bus-shelters?bn=1