Free Republic

Our economy is about to relapse into the disease that sent us into the Great Depression: Part Deux. Subprime loans caused the initial illness. Option-ARMs will cause the relapse. In the first half of the past decade, subprime loans were king. They were cheap and easy to get approved. Along with the subprime boom came subprime adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs), which were equally easy to afford…for a while. Of course, the “A” and the “R” in ARM meant that the interest rate borrowers pay changes, or resets. The majority of these resets occurred between the summer of 2007 and the summer...

China has revealed that it has upgraded 200 Russian Kh-31P ARM (anti-radiation missiles) it imported in the 1980s. The Chinese were dissatisfied with the Russian seekers (that detected and homed in on radar transmissions), and developed one of their own. The Chinese seeker detects more radar frequencies (2-18 Ghz) and will hit within 8-10 meters of the radar transmission. The Kh-31 was originally developed as an anti-ship missile. The Russians quickly realized that, with a different seeker, the missile would also work well as an anti-radiation weapon. The anti-ship version has a range of 50 kilometers, while the ARM version...

ST. SIMONS ISLAND, Ga. - Fishermen often brag about catching one as long as your arm. Sam Newton caught the arm. Newton, 66, was throwing his cast net off the St. Simons Island pier last week when he pulled up an artificial arm. "It scared the heck out of me,'' he said. "Hell, I'm hoping the rest of the person ain't coming up."

Fitch Ratings on Tuesday released a wide-ranging look at option ARMs that paints a decidedly negative picture for the mortgage markets over the next 36 months. In fact, the picture is a downright scary one: the bottom line is that most outstanding neg-am mortgages won’t get out of 2011 alive, thanks to forced recasts. Fitch analysts said they now expect roughly $29 billion in option ARMs to recast to higher monthly payments by the end of 2009, and an additional $67 billion to recast in 2010; of this, approximately $53 billion is attributed to early recasts. snip...

Nineteen new qualified armed posse volunteers will graduate today, Wednesday, May 6th, 2009 at 6:30PM from the Sheriff’s Training Academy, 2627 South 35 Avenue. Arpaio says he plans to step up his recruiting methods to attract more men and women to join his volunteer armed posse through more public outreach. “The public has a desire to help local law enforcement when times are tough. I am banking on their generosity of time and energy to help my deputies keep our communities safe,” Arpaio says. Arpaio is seeking primarily those who wish to be trained and qualified to carry and use...

Flanked by two prominent activist attorneys and backed by a throng of supporters, Minneapolis resident Rosemary Williams spent her 60th birthday in court Wednesday, resisting a lender's attempt to evict her from her foreclosed house. She and supporters vowed that if she loses in court, they will use non-violent civil disobedience to try to block authorities from removing her from the south Minneapolis house where she's lived for 23 years.

Ever since the credit crisis began, a lot of blame has been heaped on adjustable-rate mortgages, home loans that recalibrate according to market fluctuations. One brand of these innovative mortgages that have come under special criticism has been so-called "exploding A.R.M.’s" that lured borrowers with unusually low teaser rates that then reset skyward a few years later. These have often been derided as predatory, and lenders who offered them accused of luring homeowners into buying homes they couldn't afford for the long-term. Critics of these might want to check out the Homeowner Stabilization Plan put forward by the Obama administration...

Santa Monica, CA (PRWEB) December 21, 2008 -- Revolutionary new prosthetic technology has made life easier and more fulfilling for a California woman who is an upper extremity amputee. Telisa Boston was recently fit with the most advanced non-surgical upper extremity prosthetic solution commercially available - Touch Bionics' i-LIMB™ Hand, the world's first fully-articulating and commercially-available bionic hand, coupled with the innovative selective compression-stabilization interface system created by Randall Alley, CEO and chief prosthetist of biodesigns. i-LIMB Hand holding coin i-LIMB Hand holding coin Biodesigns, inc., a high-performance Southern California prosthetic facility specializing in technologically-advanced upper and lower extremity care,...

A man tried to cut off his own arm in a California restaurant after becoming convinced that he had injected air into his veins.Michael Lasiter, 33, had been shooting cocaine in a motel room but believed he had accidentally got air in his bloodstream which could lead to death, police said. He thought cutting off his arm was the only way to save his life so he ran into a nearby Denny's restaurant and grabbed a butter knife from a customer's table.

What women really want: a touch on the arm By Laura Clout Last Updated: 1:42AM BST 21/06/2008 Scientists have come up with a winning formula for men wishing to seduce women, and it has nothing to do with cheesy chat-up lines or good looks. Research shows that a man can significantly increase his pulling power by simply catching a woman's eye and lightly touching her arm. A study at Aberdeen University found that two-thirds of women agreed to dance with a man who rested his hand on her arm for a second or two while making the request. When the...

By April, 2009, hundreds of thousands of option ARM mortgages will begin resetting, bringing on a fresh wave of foreclosures The American homeowner must feel like one of those characters in an old cartoon who has just been hit by a falling piano. After dusting himself off and touching the large bump on his head, he probably doesn't expect another piano to be dangling overhead. But he'd be wrong. But what's often funny in a cartoon is anything but in real life. With the subprime mortgage crisis already crippling the U.S. economy, some experts are warning that the next wave...

ST. LOUIS — As if in a cosmic hug, the spiral arms of some galaxies wrap around themselves more tightly than others. The key to the bear hug: Galaxies holding heftier black holes at their centers also have more tightly wound spiral arms, an astronomer announced today. The finding gives astronomers a way to weigh so-called supermassive black holes, which can have masses of millions to billions that of the sun, and are thought to reside at the centers of galaxies. "This is a really easy way to determine the masses of these super-massive black holes at the centers of...

Real estate markets are slowing. Interest rates are ticking up. And the phones are ringing at ByDesign, a Los Angeles-based credit counselor, as homeowners start to panic about not being able to make their mortgage payments. "The number of people asking for appointments to talk about foreclosure is definitely up," said Susan Ulaga, the nonprofit service's senior vice president of counseling. Rising rates "are really putting a crunch" on homeowners with adjustable-rate loans. -snip- The timeline 30 days: Your troubles actually start as soon as you miss a single payment. Lenders may not contact you until you've skipped a second...

An Iowahawk Economy Alert-o-GramBy David Burge The sub-prime mortgage crisis threatens to kill the dream of home ownership for millions of Americans. Here is one of their stories. As many of you know, I am a longtime resident of Lakewood Mobile Home Court, a gated community on the outskirts of Coralville. When I first moved to Lakewood in 2000, I was attracted by its affordable rental rates and many amenities, such as ample streetside parking, easy access to I-80, and a quiet, low-surveillance wooded area in which to store my automobiles and train my beloved sport dogs. At the time...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The heat on U.S. mortgage lenders and servicers was turned up a few degrees this week when the country's chief bank regulator publicly proposed that they permanently freeze interest rates on subprime adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs) for many homeowners. "Keep it at the starter rate. Convert it into a fixed rate. Make it permanent. And get on with it," Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Sheila Bair said in prepared remarks at an investor's conference. Mortgage Meltdown 2007 Subprime: Big talk, little help Mortgage lenders are having a hard time helping at-risk borrowers. (more) Double-digit home price drops...

Spies 'stole secrets' to arm Chinese military By Catherine Elsworth in Los Angeles Last Updated: 11:57pm BST 27/09/2007 Two Silicon Valley computing engineers have been charged with economic espionage for allegedly conspiring to steal sensitive microchip designs they hoped to use to go into business with the Chinese military. Lan Lee, an American, and Yuefei Ge, who is Chinese, are accused of stealing trade secrets from their employer, NetLogics Microsystems, and a second company, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation. The two men allegedly set up a business, SICO Microsystems, for the purpose of developing and marketing products using the stolen...

Christopher Newport was the captain of one of three ships that carried the America's founding colonists 400 years ago and his likeness has been memorialized in bronze at the university named for him in Newport News, Va. Some alumni and history buffs want the monument to get a hook like the one that replaced the right arm Newport lost in battle 17 years before coming to Jamestown. NEWPORT NEWS, Va. (AP) — The swashbuckling sea captain who helped found America's first permanent English settlement lost his right arm in battle nearly two decades before bringing the colonists to Jamestown 400...

CAPE CORAL, Florida (Reuters) - Phone books that were delivered but never opened rot away next to empty driveways and overgrown lawns, telltale signs that once-booming southwest Florida is now the center of the U.S. housing storm. Until two years ago, middle-class retirees vied with property speculators for houses and apartments in Cape Coral, a town near Fort Myers on Florida's sun-drenched Gulf Coast. Now almost every other house on some of its streets has a for-sale sign outside. With a bloated inventory of unsold homes and a growing number of homeowners forced by mortgage delinquencies to sell -- thanks...

For Cathy Busby, May 1 marked a personal "Mayday!" as she was sucked into the housing crisis sweeping the United States. On Tuesday, she went into arrears on her mortgage after her monthly repayments soared by 40 per cent. The 47-year-old hospital administrator will lose the three-bedroom home in the Denver suburb of Montebello that she bought 11 years ago, unless she can reach a deal with her lender. "I raised my sons here and I planted these aspens and landscaped this garden. It's a terrible thought that I could lose it all," she said on the first day that...

RIBTA, Djibouti, March 22, 2007 ? A recent Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa site survey to find water in northern Djibouti turned into a lifesaving medical assist for a young Ribta child. Members of the North Carolina-based 1132nd Engineer Detachment (Well Drillers) were conducting a mission with hydrogeologists from the Naval Facilities Engineering Command to identify potential water well sites when they were asked by a local leader for medical assistance. A Ribta girl suffered third-degree burns to her left arm that had become infected, necessitating lifesaving medical attention. The local leader requested the team help the young child....

EVERY day, Will Hertzberg owns a little less of his three-bedroom house in Corona. Like hundreds of thousands of other homeowners around the state, Hertzberg has a mortgage that lets him choose how much he pays each month. ADVERTISEMENT Like many of them, he always chooses to pay as little as possible. For the moment, this allows the 56-year-old Hertzberg to continue living in his tract home despite being only marginally employed. But his debt is swelling, and his mortgage company controls his fate. "I am rather screwed," he said.

Hundreds of Georgians lost their homes Tuesday. The houses, taken from debt-laden homeowners, were sold to bidders on courthouse steps statewide. The increasingly busy monthly auctions show that not all of the residential market is in decline. Foreclosures are rising. More than 115,000 properties across the country were in the foreclosure process in October — up 42 percent from the same month a year earlier, according to RealtyTrac, a California company that tracks foreclosures. Foreclosures in Georgia are up a stunning 99 percent in the past year...

<p>NEW YORK -- Like many other California renters in early 2005, Nick Basile and his fiancée, Jackie Neuffer, felt the pressure of ballooning home prices.</p> <p>The couple, fresh out of college, decided to act. They snapped up a house last summer in the San Joaquin Valley town of Visalia where prices had already spiked 40 percent in the prior 12 months.</p>

US to arm, train Lebanese army Instructors, military equipment worth USD 30 million to make their way from Washington to Beirut. Goal: Strengthening Fouad Siniora's government against Hizbullah, pro-Syria elements. Israel agrees to plan, tells Americans it is not headed to negotiations with Assad Shimon Shiffer Published: 09.10.06, 08:44 The United States will arm and train the Lebanese army so that it can deal with Hizbullah and elements supported by Syria . Israel has agreed in principle to the plan, it was reported. The Lebanse army is expected to undergo a significant change in the coming months. Moreover, the American...

They promise the American Dream: A home of your own -- with ultra-low rates and payments anyone can afford. Now, the trap has sprung For cash-strapped homeowners, it was a pitch they couldn't refuse: Refinance your mortgage at a bargain rate and cut your payments in half. New home buyers, stretching to afford something in a super-heated market, didn't even need to produce documentation, much less a downpayment. Those who took the bait are in for a nasty surprise. While many Americans have started to worry about falling home prices, borrowers who jumped into so-called option ARM loans have another,...

Texan hosts arm against crime wave By Philip Sherwell in Houston (Filed: 27/08/2006) Hurricane Katrina may not have pounded Houston, but a year later the city is reeling from an ugly aftermath of the storm - a surging crime wave. The murder rate in the Texan city has soared by almost 20 per cent since 150,000 Katrina evacuees arrived in August last year. According to police statistics, they are involved - as victim or killer - in one of every five homicides. In the gun stores and on the shooting ranges of America's oil industry capital, business is booming as...

Millions of Americans bought into the real estate boom with adjustable mortgages and home equity loans. Now rising interest rates are forcing them into agonizing financial choices. Aug. 8, 2006 - When Shawn Howell saw the house in the summer of 2004, he thought he couldn’t lose. The location-close to family and in an upscale subdivision in Louisville, Ky.,—was perfect; the three-bedroom plus loft was just right. The price was a little high at $217,000—especially as Howell's wife, Niki, had just given birth to their second child. But the couple learned they could purchase it with no money down by...

BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan, July 13, 2006 – Bombs, bullets and explosives are hazardous to friend and foe alike but are handled with care by the men and women who work in the 455th Expeditionary Maintenance Squadron's Munitions Flight. Air Force Master Sgt. Robert Jackson inspects a 30 mm round for an A-10 Thunderbolt II in the munitions storage area for Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan. Jackson is a member of the Air Force Reserve deployed to Bagram as a munitions specialist. He and other munitions airmen receive, inspect, store, assemble and deliver ordnance used on aircraft and small arms....

Foreclosures May Jump As ARMs Reset By J.W. ELPHINSTONE NEW YORK - In 2003, Anita Britten refinanced her two-story brick cottage in Lithonia, Ga. using a hybrid adjustable rate mortgage, or ARM. Her lender reassured her that she could refinance out of the riskier loan into a traditional one when her interest rate started to reset. Three years later, Britten can't get a new mortgage and her monthly payment has jumped by a third in six months. She can't afford her payments and may face foreclosure if her financial situation doesn't change. As more ARMs adjust upward and housing prices...

NEW YORK (MONEY Magazine) - As the real estate boom inflated home values all over the country, millions of would-be owners did whatever it took to join the party: bid well over the asking price, hit up parents for a down payment and resorted to ever more creative financing tools, from short-term adjustable-rate mortgages to exotic interest-only option-payment loans. Now that the party seems to be winding down, many of those borrowers are going to be left with a messy cleanup. As many as 3 million homeowners holding more than a trillion dollars in adjustable-rate debt will face an interest-rate...

The promise of easy money comes in an official-looking envelope marked, "Important Financial Information Enclosed." Need $2.5 million at 1 percent to 2 percent to buy or refinance a home? No problem. Borrowers put no money down and pay just interest. A good credit rating is not a requirement. Bankruptcy judgments, debt charge-offs or tax liens don't matter, and "all difficult credit scenarios are okay," the lender says. The home-financing offers come from an army of mortgage brokers estimated at 250,000 nationwide, many operating outside the reach of banking regulators. They have become the principal source of home financing in...

The HeraldTribune is reporting the clock is winding down on the Hybrid Loan and Sub-Prime mortgage time bombs. Starting in 2006 and accelerating into 2007, as much as $2.5 trillion worth of the fancy mortgages called "hybrids" are coming to the end of the free-lunch part of the deal. Economists are still trying to put numbers on this reset factor, particularly when it comes to the riskiest home loans, referred to as "sub-prime." "We don't have enough data to know how big a problem this will be," said David Berson, chief economist at Fannie Mae, the nation's largest mortgage packager....

MARINE CORPS BASE QUANTICO, Va. (Dec. 8, 2005) -- Recruits endure three months of intense training to make the transition from civilian to Marine. But Marine spouses get thrown into the military lifestyle without any formal training. Quantico’s military spouses can turn to the Lifestyle, Insight, Networking, Knowledge and Skills program to help adjust to the change. The program offers three three-hour or two four-hour sessions each month packed with information about the Marine Corps, resources, services, community activities, and deployment and separation issues. “If Marine spouses have an understanding of the Marine Corps’ mission and how it affects them,...

Spiral arm of Milky Way looms closer than thought 19:00 08 December 2005 NewScientist.com news service Maggie McKee The Milky Way is made of four main arms curving around its centre – astronomers measured the distance from Earth to a star-forming region called W3OH inside the Perseus arm (Image: Y. Xu et al/Science) One of the Milky Way's star-studded spiral arms lies twice as close to Earth as some previous estimates suggested. New research has produced the most accurate distance measurement ever made of the arm, which could help astronomers understand how our galaxy's spiral structure formed. The Milky Way...

In an unprecedented move, even during the 8-year Iran-Iraq war, Baseej Volunteer Militia has started arming some of its units with heavy arms. Taking place under the current administration, it is not clear whether a new role has been added to Baseej or whether its mission has changed altogether. What is not clear is the purpose of arming this force at peace time. And since Baseej has been acting as an arm of the Judiciary, especially under Ahmadinejad’s administration, this change is looked at suspiciously. The principal mission of Baseej resistance mobilization force, under the law establishing it, is to...

BAGHDAD (Army News Service, Nov. 14, 2005) -- Some might ask why the U.S. forces are refurbishing old enemy weapons, and the answer is: the AK-47s are being used to arm the Iraqi Army, police and security forces, putting the insurgents weapons to use against insurgents. When the Iraqi Police were being put together, they were short on weaponry and this program is solving the shortage problem, said Chief Warrant Officer Pedro Munoz, armament and repair technician, 3rd Forward Support Battalion, 1st Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division. His unit’s armory was recently refurbished 88 AK-47 automatic rifles. It saved the Iraqis...

I have tried to devise the absolute worst mortgage loan that I can imagine. Fortunately, this loan is nothing more than a figment of my imagination -- at least, as far as I know. But take a cynical guy like me with a looming deadline and this is what you get. This fictional loan would contain many of the elements that appeal to borrowers hemmed in by affordability. Like today's option, adjustable-rate mortgages, borrowers would be able to choose an interest-only payment or even a minimum-payment option. While the borrower is lured by the minimum payment, what results is a...

France continues to require the lifting of the embargo on the weapons PEIJING - continuous France "to require" the lifting of the embargo on the weapons of China and does not think that the European Council will change its position, declared Thursday in Peijing French the Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin. "France continues to require the lifting of the embargo and does not see what could lead the European Council to change its position on the subject", Mr. Raffarin during a press conference declared. The European embargo on the weapons in China was imposed after the massacre of Tiananmen in...

China: One-armed Egg Original source: Dahe Daily of China. Comment: It was found by a chef "Mr. Wang" at a restaurant in Henan Province, China. He wondered what would come out of the egg eventually.

LONDON,Feb 19 (IranMania) - There is no evidence to support the claim that Iran is developing nuclear weapons, the head of the UN nuclear watchdog Mohamed ElBaradei said, according to The Washington Post. "On Iran, there really hasn't been much development, neither as a result of our inspections or as a result of intelligence," said the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director general. ElBaradei called for greater U.S. participation in diplomatic efforts to engage Iran and North Korea in talks about their nuclear programs. "North Korea and Iran are still the two 800-pound gorillas in the room and not much...

GRANTS PASS, Ore. – The U.S. Forest Service and Department of the Interior need to develop a long-term wildfire strategy that gives Congress a better idea how much money is really needed to thin forests and where the work is needed most, the Government Accountability Office said. "While the agencies have adopted various strategy documents to address the nation's wildland fire problems, none of these documents constitutes a cohesive strategy that explicitly identifies the long-term options and related funding needed to reduce fuels in national forests and rangelands and to respond to wildland fire threats," said a GAO report made...

    For the freedom you enjoyed yesterday... Thank the Veterans who served in The United States Armed Forces.     Looking forward to tomorrow's freedom? Support The United States Armed Forces Today!       ~ MILITARY SHORT SPEAK ~             The military seems to have a language of its own, with many terms, acronyms, initialisms and abbreviations that aren't generally used in the "civilian world." What is an acronym? It is a word created from the first letter of a series of other words. It is spoken as one word.  What is an initialism?...

Blame Bush for Fidel Castro's Broken Knee? Written by Joe Mariani Monday, October 25, 2004 Most people know by now that Fidel Castro fell off a stage, apparently breaking his knee and arm, after making a commencement speech. The people of Cuba would be a lot better off had it been his neck. Despite the way Oliver Stone and many other Hollywood halfwits consider Castro some sort of demigod, he's just another thug that managed to hijack an entire country for his own personal aggrandisement. Steven Spielberg called his dinner with Castro ''the eight most important hours of my life.''...

Tanya Smith is sporting a broken left arm, and she says a South Bend police officer is to blame. Police Chief Thomas Fautz said he has been reading reports of the incident, and so far he hasn't found any evidence of wrongdoing on the part of the officers involved. He said he cannot provide many details about the incident since it is an open investigation, and police policy keeps him from talking about it. He did confirm that the officer injured the woman. Smith, a 25-year-old Elkhart resident, said she and a friend, Felicia Bradley, had gone to Benchwarmers early...

A 50-year-old map of the Milky Way will have to be redrawn after Australian astronomers made the astonishing discovery that our spiral galaxy has a huge, outflung arm, New Scientist reports. The vast gassy limb comprises an arc of hydrogen 77,000 light years long and several thousand light years thick, running along the Milky Way's outermost edge and sweeping around the four main arms that swirl out from the galaxy's core. As it is not in the visible part of the light spectrum, it cannot be seen by telescope. Astronomers at the Australia National Telescope Facility in the Sydney suburb...

<p>PALM BEACH, Florida -- A new computer chip promises to keep police guns from firing if they fall into the wrong hands.</p> <p>The tiny chip would be implanted in a police officer's hand and would match up with a scanning device inside a handgun. If the officer and gun match, a digital signal unlocks the trigger so it can be fired. But if a child or criminal would get hold of the gun, it would be useless.</p>

<p>NASA's Opportunity rover sent back its first 360-degree color panoramic image of the surface of Mars on Monday, and extended a robotic arm that will touch the planet's surface.</p> <p>The Mission team unveiled a photograph showing a wide expanse of red soil and the bumpy edge of a crater where the craft sits. "It provides us with a real sense of you are there," said Jeff Johnson, of the U.S. Geological Survey.</p>

Suburban wives arm themselves against terror By David Rennie in Chantilly (Filed: 31/05/2003) It is midweek night at the Blue Ridge Arsenal and Ginger Wright, passionate gun owner and professional shooting coach, cannot seem to hit the centre of the target. Ginger Wright takes aim on the shooting range "I'm shooting in heels," she says with a laugh. "I don't usually shoot in heels." She steadies her .45 calibre Sig Sauer once more and the spent cartridges fly. Mrs Wright is shooting in a smart blue business suit, a pink blouse and heels. At her feet sits a canvas holdall...

Climber describes how he amputated his own arm The Associated Press GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. -- Hopelessly pinned by a boulder that rolled onto his arm in a remote canyon, adventurer Aron Ralston says he first took a dull pocketknife to his forearm after three days, but couldn't cut the skin. In his first meeting with reporters since he walked, bloody and dehydrated, out of a remote Utah canyon, Ralston described Thursday what it took for him to eventually do the unthinkable -- cutting off his own arm to save his life. "I'm not sure how I handled it," the mechanical...

Mountaineer cuts off trapped arm with penknife By Andrew Gumbel 03 May 2003 A mountaineer whose right arm became trapped under a heavy boulder in a remote stretch of the eastern Utah desert took the drastic step of hacking off his own arm with a pocket knife before abseiling down a sheer rock wall and looking for help. The extraordinary story of Aron Ralston, a fitness fanatic and highly experienced mountaineer, hit the headlines yesterday as police officials from Green River, Utah, gave accounts of his bravery to American television. "He's pretty darn tough. He wanted to live. He saved...