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Taiwan's air force said Friday it was planning to upgrade the island's U.S.-made and indigenous fighter jets to maintain the balance of air power across the Taiwan Strait. The upgrades are aimed at boosting the fighters' performance and avoid a "gap in Taiwan's war-fighting capabilities," the island's semi- official Central News Agency reported Friday. The upgrades would seek to address "the trend of the tipping of the military balance in the Taiwan Strait," the air force reportedly said, without elaborating. On Thursday Defense Minister Kao Hua-chu told lawmakers that the military was considering mothballing the some 60 French-made Mirage models...

We did not need to wait until the Dow Jones Industrial Average hit 10,000. It has been clear for some time that global equity markets are bubbling again. On the surface, this looks like 2003 and 2004 when the previous housing, credit, commodity and equity bubbles started to inflate, helped by low nominal interest rates and a lack of inflation. There is one big difference, though. This bubble will burst sooner. So how do we know this is a bubble? My two favourite metrics of stock market valuation are Cape, which stands for the cyclically adjusted price/earnings ratio, and Q....

Iran plans to install a more advanced type of centrifuge at its newly revealed uranium enrichment site, an Iranian newspaper reported Tuesday, a development certain to add to international concerns about the country's nuclear work. Iranian scientists have carried out research and development in recent months for the new generation of more efficient centrifuges, and most of the machines' components are made domestically, said the head of Iran's nuclear agency, Ali Akbar Salehi, according to the Kayhan daily newspaper.

Once upon a time the government had a vast scrap yard in the middle of A desert. Congress said, "someone may steal from it at night.." So they created a night watchman position and hired a person for the job.. Then Congress said, "How does the watchman do his job without instruction?" So they created a planning department and hired two people, one person to write the instructions, and one person to do time studies. Then Congress said, "How will we know the night watchman is doing The tasks correctly?" So they created a Quality Control department and hired two...

Do you set aside time every day to plan your day (or end of day to plan next day)? A Daily Poll.

Many cities in the US’s so-called “rust belt” have been in decline for years—losing both jobs and population. Dan Kildee, treasurer of Genesee County, Michigan has proposed leveling portions of these cities in order to reach a more optimal balance between living accommodations and needs. “The idea is that rather than continuing to waste society’s resources maintaining unnecessary housing, we demolish the surplus units and move people closer together to gain economies of scale,” Kildee said. While Kildee’s focus is on cities already in a decaying state, the Obama Administration’s Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Shaun Donovan, sees a...

Note: The following text is a quote: Comprehensive Preparedness Guide 101 A Guide for All-Hazard Emergency Operations Planning Overview The FEMA Comprehensive Preparedness Guide, CPG 101 provides general guidelines on developing Emergency Operations Plans (EOPs). It promotes a common understanding of the fundamentals of planning and decision making to help emergency planners examine a hazard and produce integrated, coordinated, and synchronized plans. This Guide helps emergency managers in State, Territorial, Local, and Tribal governments in their efforts to develop and maintain a viable all-hazard EOP. CPG 101 continues the more than 50-year effort to provide guidance about emergency operations planning...

While chatting with fellow freepers, I realized I have some expertise (I'm no expert) in the ways of making a household more economical. I preserve foods by canning and freezing, I hunt, plant a garden, dry clothes outside, and so on. I do not pretend to be an expert in any of these endeavors, but I do my best. I have been told in the past that I mustn't be so thrifty, because it is that unwillingness to spend that hurts our economy. Got it. However, I live this way because I am building and planning for a grand future....

TOWN OF FRANKLIN, Wis. -- Daniel Borntreger's Jackson County home looks like hundreds of other Wisconsin farmhouses. But it could cost him thousands of dollars in fines. The Amish farmer built it without a permit.

Many California planning and environmental groups are heralding the passage of legislation designed to address global warming by curbing suburban sprawl as a watershed moment, perhaps the state's most important land-use law in more than 30 years. "It's a sea change in the way we're planning and funding growth and development," said Stephanie Reyes, senior policy advocate with San Francisco's Greenbelt Alliance. "The winds are shifting, and this is the time to get on board." But she and other advocates acknowledge that the importance of SB375, signed into law by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in late September, lies as much in...

“I think we expect the climate to become much more restrictive for high-income taxpayers. The things that had been done in the past -- whether they are perceived loopholes or actual loopholes --- [are] going to be reduced dramatically under an Obama presidency,” said Phil Tortorich, a partner and tax expert at Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP in Chicago. Obama campaigned under a promise to cut taxes for American families making less than $250,000 a year while raising top federal income-tax rates from 35% to 39.6%. Of course, promises made on the campaign trail don't necessarily make it into law, and...

Great Apes Think Ahead: Conclusive Evidence Of Advanced Planning CapacitiesIn a series of four experiments, Mathias and Helena Osvath investigated whether chimpanzees and orangutans could override immediate drives in favor of future needs, and therefore demonstrate both self-control and the ability to plan ahead, rather than simply fulfill immediate needs through impulsive behavior. (Credit: iStockphoto/Michael Steden) ScienceDaily (Jun. 19, 2008) — Apes can plan for their future needs just as we humans can – by using self-control and imagining future events. Mathias and Helena Osvath’s research, from Lunds University Cognitive Science in Sweden, is the first to provide conclusive evidence...

American visitors to Paris, Rome, Prague, or Barcelona, comparing what they see with what is familiar from their own continent, will recognize how careless their countrymen often have been in their attempts to create cities. But the American who leaves the routes prescribed by the Ministries of Tourism will quickly see that Paris is miraculous in no small measure because modern architects have not been able to get their hands on it. Elsewhere, European cities are going the way of cities in America: high-rise offices in the center, surrounded first by a ring of lawless dereliction, and then by the...

Journey to the Truth May 23rd, 2008 by Anna Pier Day I argued with the priest — the strong-willed one — who sat opposite me in the confessional. For every argument I presented, though, his response was the same: a calm, understanding, but firm, “There are no exceptions to the Church’s teaching against contraception.”Truth be told, if the Church had been less wise and had made exceptions, our family situation might have qualified as one. A few months earlier, after the birth of our youngest son, I had suffered from an acute depression with accompanying suicidal thoughts and a brief...

I have always associated classical architecture with gravitas -- the large imposing columns and pediments that grace the front of serious places, like courthouses and banks. It hasn't seemed a living tradition that can inform land-use planning and the architecture of everyday life. But that was before I interviewed several architects who describe themselves as "modern classicists." They espouse a practical, no-nonsense approach to design that extends beyond individual buildings to encompass neighborhoods and whole towns. They don't limit themselves to the details and proportioning systems used by the original classicists, the builders of ancient Greece and Rome. They also...

Al-Qaida's nuclear attack against the US is in planning stages, top American intelligence officials have said. Deposing before a Congressional Committee on Homeland Security early this week, these US intelligence officials told US lawmakers that the threat of nuclear attack by the Taliban was growing and there is need to enhance its security measures. Charles Allen, Undersecretary for Intelligence and Analysis and Chief Intelligence Officer at the Department of Homeland Security; and Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, the director of Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence for the Department of Energy testified before this key Congressional committee on nuclear terrorism on April 2. ''There's...

A massive housing project may mean the end for Neenach, in the Antelope Valley. ___ Eight hundred people, give or take, live in Neenach. Recreation consists largely of trying to grow a bigger squash than your neighbor or trying to buy his truck. One man races pigeons. The school closed a few years back when they ran out of kids, and its rose-painted walls are still the brightest thing on the prairie. When the abutting development is built -- if it is built -- it will be called Centennial. It would be the end, for all intents and purposes, of...

(IsraelNN.com) A Kuwaiti newspaper reports that Hizbullah terrorist chief Imad Mughniyeh, who was killed in a car-bomb attack in Damascus on Tuesday, was in the midst of planning major terrorist attacks in moderate Arab countries when he was killed. Al-Watan reports that American intelligence had learned that Mughniyeh arrived in Damascus three days earlier with instructions from, and in coordination with, the Iranians. His objective was to meet with Hizbullah leaders and coordinate a mass attack, for which he was to receive help from Syrian intelligence. The American involvement in the killing is explained as being in retaliation for a...

Regime collapse in Pyongyang January 21, 2008 By Daniel L. Davis - On Nov. 7, Defense Secretary Robert Gates visited his South Korean counterpart Kim Jang-soo to underscore the solidarity between the United States and the Republic of Korea with regard to the oft-intransigent North Korea. Sending an unmistakable message to Pyongyang — and Asia in general — about how seriously America views the security situation on the Korean Peninsula, Mr. Gates was accompanied by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the admiral commanding all American forces in the Pacific, and the four-star general commanding all troops in...

Saenz expands administration to reflect changing role of agency AUSTIN, Texas, Jan. 7 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Texas Department of Transportation today announced selections for the final three members of Executive Director Amadeo Saenz's leadership team. The new Assistant Executive Director for Engineering Operations is John Barton of Beaumont. The newly-formed office of Assistant Executive Director for District Operations will be lead by David Casteel of San Antonio. The newly-formed office of Assistant Executive Director for Innovative Project Development will be lead by Phil Russell of Austin. "John, David and Phil are all outstanding professionals," said Saenz. "All of them understand...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 1, 2007 – Planning, constructing and renovating the world’s largest-capacity office building is the focus of a new Pentagon Channel documentary. “The Pentagon has become more than a symbol of the United States’ military might,” Air Force Master Sgt. Daniela Marchus, host of the documentary said. “It’s also an example of what American determination and ingenuity can achieve.” “Recon: An American Icon” debuts tomorrow at noon Eastern Time on the Pentagon Channel and will encore throughout October. It also will be available via podcast and video on demand at www.PentagonChannel.mil Combining interviews with those who witnessed the...

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iranian operatives are training fighters in Iraq and helping to plan attacks there despite diplomatic pressure on Tehran to halt such interference, U.S. officials said on Wednesday. The latest accusation leveled against Iran by the U.S. military followed rare diplomatic talks in Baghdad last month between the two old adversaries to discuss Washington's concerns in Iraq. "There absolutely is evidence of Iranian operatives holding weapons, training fighters, providing resources, helping plan operations, resourcing secret cells that is destabilizing Iraq," said military spokesman Brigadier-General Kevin Bergner. "We would like very much to see some action on their part...

LONDON (Reuters) - Russian billionaire Boris Berezovsky said he is planning a revolution in Russia to topple President Vladimir Putin, in comments published on Friday. "We need to use force to change this regime," Berezovsky, who has received asylum in Britain, told the Guardian newspaper. "It isn't possible to change this regime through democratic means. There can be no change without force, pressure." Asked if he was fomenting a revolution, he said: "You are absolutely correct." Berezovsky, a vocal critic of Putin, said he was in contact with members of Russia's political elite. He said these people -- who he...

Minor League Baseball and Boy Scouts Step Up to the Plate to Encourage Families to Prepare for Emergencies http://www.dhs.gov/xnews/releases/pr_1175712102184.shtm Release Date: April 4, 2007 For Immediate Release Office of the Press Secretary Contact: 202-282-8010 2007 Season Participating Minor League Baseball Teams and Schedule of Ready Games (PDF, 2 pages - 10 KB) Minor League Baseball and the Boy Scouts of America are teaming up with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Ready Campaign for the fourth consecutive year to educate and encourage Americans to prepare for emergencies. Forty-nine baseball teams are joining many local Boy Scout councils in stepping up...

Fernando Costa is a familiar sight at Fort Worth City Council meetings, giving presentations on one aspect or another of the city’s past, present, or future. As city planning director, he is the hub where many spokes on the city’s wheel connect. Whether the issue is zoning, road planning, or making commercial developments work, Costa is in the middle. On issues from Trinity River Vision to big ranches being subdivided for housing on Fort Worth’s ever-expanding edges to revitalizing older neighborhoods in Cowtown’s heart, his voice is perhaps the most influential in the city — Fort Worth’s “secret weapon,” as...

Planning and Democracy Democracy is essentially a means, a utilitarian device for safeguarding internal peace and individual freedom. As such it is by no means infallible or certain. When it becomes dominated by a collectivist creed, democracy will inevitably destroy itself. It would be impossible for any mind to comprehend the infinite variety of different needs of different people which compete for the available resources and to attach a definite weight to each. We can unfortunately not indefinitely extend the sphere of common action and still leave the individual free in his own sphere. That planning creates a situation which...

CHICAGO - Two Chicago-area cousins were arrested Wednesday on federal charges out of Cleveland accusing them of conspiring to wage holy war against Americans overseas, including U.S. military forces in Iraq. Zubair A. Ahmed, 27, of suburban North Chicago, and Khaleel Ahmed, 26, of Chicago, were accused along with three other men from the Toledo, Ohio, area who already had been under indictment on charges of plotting acts of terrorism against Americans overseas. The fresh indictment returned by a grand jury in Cleveland added the two Chicago-area men to the roster of defendants and brought additional charges against the three...

Here are further excerpts from F. A. Hayek’s incredible little book, The Road to Serfdom . Quotes from Chapters I & II can be viewed here: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1775089/posts Chapter III: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1778528/posts The Road to Serfdom (Ch IV) The “Inevitability” of Planning We were the first to assert that the more complicated the forms assumed by civilization, the more restricted the freedom of the individual must become. Benito Mussolini Most (planners) affirm that we can no longer choose but are compelled by circumstances beyond our control to substitute planning for competition. The myth is deliberately cultivated that we are embarking on the...

There are a number of smart, talented and acclaimed planners and architects who spend virtually all day every day thinking about a better future for New Orleans. Spend a week in the life of one, the prince of 'new urbanism,' Andres Duany. To hear some people talk, you'd think architect and urban planner Andrés Duany is the devil. They'd have us resist with religious zeal his designs for a newer, better post-Katrina New Orleans. Given a chance, Duany would damn the Crescent City to a future of cleanliness, orderliness and artificiality. He would do to us what he did to...

SAN DIEGO ---- Regional planners are polling San Diego County residents to see if they would support a special "quality of life" tax to fund beach-sand replenishment, open-space purchases, habitat restoration and water-quality programs, an agency official said Thursday. The funding source could come in the form of a sales, property, hotel or rental-car tax, and could appear on the county ballot in 2008, said Rob Rundle, principal planner for the San Diego Association of Governments, the county's regional planning agency. Rundle said results of the telephone poll of 2,000 county registered voters will be reported to the association board...

Currently, the majority of San Diego's affordable housing options have been limited to rental units, leaving little available for middle and lower-income households wishing to buy. To help alleviate this problem, Centre City Development Corp. (CCDC) is now offering an attractive incentive to builders to bring more affordable homes to the city and one of the largest new developments in the area is the first to sign on. According to Robb Walker, vice president of KMA Architecture & Engineering, by law developers have the option to pay in-lieu fees as an alternative to actually incorporating affordable units within new projects....

NOTE: If you have security concerns,please respond with private message. Hijacking 4 airliners on 9/11 required a helluva lot of planning - especially as to "flight plans". It might have been "relatively simple" to hijack the planes ,and, since some of the hijackers had taken lessons,they could operate aircraft controls to some degree ; but how about the navigation? Think about it for a minute.You take over an aircraft,but cannot reliably predict how long the takeover efforts will require,and what your location will be when this occurs. You now have to change course and altitude precisely so you hit your...

Bishop Howard J. Hubbard of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany hopes involving members of the diocese -- from its top clerical leaders to its average parishioners -- will stifle apprehension as the Catholic church begins a two-year pastoral planning process that will reshape the diocese and close some churches. "I believe we have before us ... an opportunity to dream a new church into being; an opportunity to evangelize and re-evangelize," Hubbard said Monday in a prepared speech to diocese leaders in Albany. The meeting was closed to the public, but copies of his speech were provided to the...

US 'planning to keep 50,000 troops in Iraq for many years' By Francis Harris in Washington (Filed: 12/06/2006) America plans to retain a garrison of 50,000 troops, one tenth of its entire army, in Iraq for years to come, according to US media reports. The revelation came as George W Bush summoned his top political, military and intelligence aides to a summit on Iraq's future today at the presidential retreat at Camp David. America has indicated that it may raise troop levels in Iraq in the short-term Tomorrow the Americans will talk by video link to Nouri al-Maliki, Iraq's prime...

WASHINGTON, May 24, 2006 – With hurricane season nearing, the Defense Department has tremendous assets to offer a civilian-led response to a major disaster, a top DoD official involved in the process told reporters here yesterday. "Those assets are ready for deployment, and ... we are better prepared than at any point in our nation's history to move that assistance as rapidly as is humanly possible," Paul McHale, assistant defense secretary for homeland defense, said. DoD defense coordinating officers will be assigned full-time to each of the 10 Federal Emergency Management Agency's regional offices to ensure coordinated planning and operational...

Recent water shortages in Rockland County, N.Y., reveal an increasing mismatch between water demand and supply following rapid growth in the Northeast during period of abnormally high precipitation. With the summer approaching, new research has shown that recent water emergencies in the Northeast have resulted from more than just dry weather. Instead, researchers from The Earth Institute at Columbia University found droughts had more direct, human causes. The result is a condition known as demand-driven drought that may catch more water managers and residents off-guard in coming years. The study, which appeared in a recent issue of Journal of the...

... In Barbour's state, New Urbanists dominated a weeklong charrette held in October at the Isle of Capri casino in Biloxi. Led by Miami architect and CNU mainstay Andrés Duany, the so-called Mississippi Renewal Forum architects and planners from around the country who are loyal to the group's cause. Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco has also begun relying on New Urbanists for rebuilding advice. This week the newly formed Louisiana Recovery Authority tapped Duany to lead a statewide charrette and chose Berkeley-based architect and planner Peter Calthorpe, a CNU founder, to develop a long-term regional plan for areas devastated by...

“Sustainable Development” is the current buzz term that represents the efforts to eliminate private property in America... Sustainable Development is a synonym for “shortage ecology”. The philosophy behind the creation of shortage ecology underlies the Endangered Species Act.The ESA is the foundation of the land-use element of SD. The ESA is based on international treaties and is rooted in the Precautionary Principle, which abandons the legal standard that presumes innocence. Since the ESA puts the government in control of [the environment], the ideals of private property are destroyed...This idea can be illustrated using the so-called “fish-land” ordinance that has been...

The Mississippi Governor's Commission on Recovery, Rebuilding, and Renewal aims for no less than an "economic renaissance for coastal Mississippi," said its chairman Jim Barksdale, a former president and CEO of Netscape. To help create a physical plan, state officials invited New Urbanist Andres Duany, FAIA, to lead a charrette last month in Biloxi, one of Hurricane Rita's hard-hit targets. Joining him were 100 members of the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU), including transportation planners, environmentalists, code writers, sociologists, and representatives of such large AE firms as SOM, HOK, HDR, and UDA. General teams will deal with regional issues,...

GULFPORT, Miss. - (KRT) - The challenge of rebuilding Mississippi's Gulf Coast is attracting some of the nation's leading professionals in architectural planning, engineering and management, who have offered to help at reduced or no cost, state officials say. "These folks are offering their services anywhere from totally free to partially free," said Leland Speed, executive director of the Mississippi Development Authority. "We also have offers from third parties that are interested in funding planning activities." Among those whose name has surfaced: Andres Duany, the Miami-based planning guru best known for designing the traditional town of Seaside in the Florida...

In the first line of his book, Planning for Freedom, Ludwig Von Mises, the famed Austrian economist, observed "Planning is socialism." I will admit that my first acquaintance with government planners was a planning class in my Master’s program, where I was given the party line about how important it was to plan for growth. I read dozens of books, by some very brilliant writers, bemoaning the fact that our society doesn’t plan growth, and I was treated to descriptions of the planning utopia that would exist if we just "planned" our growth. I then sat on a City Planning...

I thought we might need to start finding all of the disaster readiness plans for each state. I found this for TN.

McCain, Clinton planning Alaska visit Associated Press Published August 3 2005 Senator Hillary Clinton (L) arrives for the world premier of Miramax Film's 'The Great Raid' with Senator John McCain at the Uptown Theatre in Washington, D.C. July 28, 2005. REUTERS/Jeffrey Snyder ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- A group of U.S. Senators are planning a trip to Alaska in two weeks to view melting permafrost, retreating glaciers and other consequences of global climate change in cold latitudes. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who co-authored a bill to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases blamed for global warming, and Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., are scheduled...

Bush faulted on postwar planning REUTERS WASHINGTON - An independent assessment of the tumult in Iraq led by two top former presidential advisers found that the Bush administration was unprepared for postwar Iraq and underestimated the number of troops needed in a miscalculation that helped fuel the insurgency. The report by a Council on Foreign Relations task force, released Wednesday, concluded that the failure to prepare properly for the period after the war had given "early impetus for the insurgency" now gripping the country. The task force was headed by two former national security advisers, Democrat Samuel "Sandy" Berger and...

Maryland is the "global hotspot for biotechnology," the state's secretary of business and economic development told a group visiting from India last month. "I made it up this morning," Aris Melissaratos acknowledged, shortly after the meeting in Montgomery County.

Stephen Hayes, whose book The Connection detailed the links that are said not to have taken place between Saddam and al Qaeda, returns to the fray. Marvelling at the bare-faced lies of CNN which has been stating that there were no links -- and that the 9/11 Commission said so, when it said explicitly that there were -- he adds a few more examples of the contacts: 'In 1992 the Iraqi Intelligence services compiled a list of its assets. On page 14 of the document, marked "Top Secret" and dated March 28, 1992, is the name of Osama bin Laden,...

PASADENA -- Eric Jacobsen speaks passionately about things like sidewalks and store fronts. But he's not an architect or a developer. He's an ordained Presbyterian pastor who says city planning can have an important influence on religious experience. Jacobsen is an advocate for New Urbanism, the movement that calls for interdependence among residents by promoting pedestrian-friendly streets, parks and town squares in neighborhoods where shops and homes coexist. The values of New Urbanism, whose national leaders gathered in Pasadena last week, are consistent with those of Christianity and a possible antidote to the isolation experienced by many churches and Christians,...

The Democrat Party has finally set out an agenda that they know the entire nation will get behind and demand the Republicans to quit stalling. The following list is some of the highest priority items. National Energy Policy Your Democrat Party will initiate legislation to provide low cost Natural Gas for every individual in the nation. This Natural Gas will be obtained from a non polluting natural source right out of the Senate chambers in Washington, DC. Social Security Integrity The solution for the financial insolvency of the Social Security System will be solved by raising taxes for the current...

WASHINGTON - To slow the rapidly growing Medicaid program, some lawmakers would like to make it harder for the elderly to shelter their assets as a way to have the government cover more of their nursing home expenses. GOP members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee asked state Medicaid directors on Wednesday what they have done to curb "Medicaid estate planning," in which assets are transferred so people look poor on paper and thus qualify for Medicaid. Federal law subjects beneficiaries to eligibility delays when assets are transferred at below-market values, but estate planning allows people to evade those...