After days of intense negotiations, the United States and Russia reached agreement Saturday on a framework to secure and destroy Syria’s chemical weapons by mid-2014 and impose U.N. penalties if the Assad government fails to comply. The deal, announced by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Geneva, includes…
Category: World
Syria Napalms Kids, Americans Bury Their Heads
I have to shake my head at the level of American ignorance displayed in regards to the Syria conflict. People talk about Muslims and say they will never stop fighting. AMERICA has never stopped fighting. Our last war is still going on! Just because we take our fights out of our country does not make…
GMO Wheat Found In Oregon Field. How Did It Get There?
The U.S. Department of Agriculture says its investigating, trying to find out how this wheat got there. The USDA says there’s no risk to public health, but wheat exporters are worried about how their customers in Asia and Europe will react. In fact, worry about export markets is the main reason why genetically engineered wheat…
Chinese hackers access major weapons systems: Washington Post
Chinese hackers have gained access to designs of more than two dozen major U.S. weapons systems, a U.S. report said on Monday, as Australian media said Chinese hackers had stolen the blueprints for Australia’s new spy headquarters. Citing a report prepared for the Defense Department by the Defense Science Board, the Washington Post said the…
America’s Share of the Global Solar Market Grew Strongly in 2012
It may not compare to the German solar market. But the U.S. is definitely becoming a major force globally when it comes to new installations. According to the 2012 Solar Market Insight report from GTM Research and the Solar Energy Industries Association, America installed 3,313 megawatts of solar capacity last year — accounting for 11 percent…
Cornell NYC Techs Alarming Ties to the Israeli Occupation
When Community Board 8, which represents Roosevelt Island and the Upper East Side of Manhattan, met last November, Cornell representatives described the campus as an engine of job growth, entrepreneurship and technological innovation for New York City. Despite the marketing, many Roosevelt Island residents had reservations about the proposed campus. Some raised concerns about the…
An amazing mea culpa from the IMF’s chief economist on austerity
Consider it a mea culpa submerged in a deep pool of calculus and regression analysis: The International Monetary Fund’s top economist today acknowledged that the fund blew its forecasts for Greece and other European economies because it did not fully understand how government austerity efforts would undermine economic growth. The new and highly technical paper…
How the Israeli Army Used Social Media To Brag About an Assassination
On Wednesday, the Israeli Air Force took out a car carrying Ahmed Said Khalil al-Jabari, head of the military wing (the Al-Qassam Brigades) of Hamas, the Palestinian terror group that governs the Gaza Strip. Shortly after, the Israeli military started going to town on Gaza, again. And like that, the Israel Defense Forces took…
BBC poll: Rest of world favours Obama
A BBC World Service opinion poll has found sharply higher overseas approval ratings for US President Barack Obama than Republican challenger Mitt Romney. An average of 50% favoured Mr Obama, with 9% for Mr Romney, in the survey of 21,797 people in 21 countries. MORE: BBC News – BBC poll: Rest…
Africa’s Elephants Are Being Slaughtered in Poaching Frenzy
Like blood diamonds from Sierra Leone or plundered minerals from Congo, ivory, it seems, is the latest conflict resource in Africa, dragged out of remote battle zones, easily converted into cash and now fueling conflicts across the continent. Some of Africa’s most notorious armed groups, including the Lord’s Resistance Army, the Shabab and Darfur’s janjaweed,…
CHARTS: US Overseas Arms Sales More Than Tripled in 2011
In 2011, the United States experienced its biggest year ever in weapons exports: According to an annual study by the Congressional Research Service [PDF] released earlier this week, the US overseas weapons sales jumped to $66.3 billion last year (77.7 percent of the $85.3 billion global market in 2011), from $21.4 billion in deals in 2010….
Romney: Israel’s Superior Economy To Palestinians Result Of ‘Culture,’ ‘Providence’
Romney at no point mentioned that the Palestinian territories have for decades been occupied without sovereign control, where residents face significant restrictions on movement and employment. “It is a racist statement and this man doesn’t realize that the Palestinian economy cannot reach its potential because there is an Israeli occupation,” Saeb Erakat, a senior Palestinian…
Romney praises health care in Israel, where ‘strong government influence’ has driven down costs
Romney’s point about Israel’s success in controlling health care costs is spot on: Its health care system has seen health care costs grow much slower than other industrialized nations. How it has gotten there, however, may not be to the Republican candidate’s liking: Israel regulates its health care system aggressively, requiring all residents to carry…
U.S. Sees Hottest 12 Months And Hottest Half Year On Record: NOAA Calls Record Heat A One-In-1.6-Million Event
Like a baseball player on steroids, our atmosphere has been “juiced” with human emissions of greenhouse gases, which means we are going to be breaking heat records at an “unnatural” pace for a long, long time. Climatologist Richard Alley offers a different analogy in a column today: Humans have made some extreme weather events more…
Report: US Has One Of The Highest Child Poverty Rates In The Developed World
According to a new report from the Office of Research at the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the U.S. has one of the highest rates of child poverty in the developed world. Of the 35 wealthy countries studied by UNICEF, only Romania has a child poverty rate higher than the 23 percent rate in the…
The end of fish, in one chart
Between 1950 and 2006, the WWF report notes, the world’s annual fishing haul more than quadrupled, from 19 million tons to 87 million tons. New technology — from deep-sea trawling to long-lining — has helped the fishing industry harvest areas that were once inaccessible. But the growth of intensive fishing also means that larger and…
U.S. slaps tariffs on Chinese panels. Is this the end of cheap solar?
On Thursday, the Commerce Department ruled that China’s solar manufacturers are engaged in “dumping” — that is, they’re selling their panels for below-market rates in order to drive their competitors out of business. In response, the Commerce Department has slapped a 31 percent tariff on imports of silicon photovoltaic cells from China. That’s on top…
Record-setting 2012 warmth largely confined to North America, western Europe
In March, high temperatures over two-thirds of the continental US set numerous records and made it the nations warmest March on record. April has been no slouch either, as high temperature records have continued to fall. But at the time of our last report, the services that track global temperatures hadnt analyzed the global extent…
Global push to guarantee healthcare coverage leaves U.S. behind
Even as Americans debate whether to scrap President Obamas healthcare law and its promise of guaranteed health coverage, many far less affluent nations are moving in the opposite direction — to provide medical insurance to all citizens. China, after years of underfunding healthcare, is on track to complete a three-year, $124-billion initiative projected to cover…
CHARTS: Austerity In Europe Hasn’t Worked
Indeed, the French vote, alongside elections in Greece in which voters abandoned pro-austerity parties in droves in favor of extremists, was a stark reminder that voters have no patience with forced economic sacrifice that isn’t paired with efforts to boost growth and create jobs. And here are three charts showing that the austerity policies adopted…