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Shyness, bereavement and eccentric behavior could be classed as a mental illness under new guidelines, leaving millions of people at risk of being diagnosed as having a psychiatric disorder, experts fear. Under changes planned to the diagnosis handbook used by doctors in the US, common behavioral traits are likely to be listed as a mental illness, it was reported. The fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) of Mental Disorders could also include internet addiction and gambling as a medical problem. … "We need to be very careful before further broadening the boundaries of illness and disorder," Simon...

Global warming: Been there, done that. Forward-looking folks are adjusting their fretting machinery now to something called Cycle 25. Button up your overcoats. Ice is on the way. Global warming, which was mostly a scam invented by researchers looking for government grants, is over. The great warming phenomenon, which was supposed to have sent polar bears to vacation in Miami Beach by now, ended in 1997. Britain’s Met Office, which tracks weather and makes forecasts, and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit, the source of much global warming research (some of it faked, some of it not), agree,...

If Italian inventor Andrea Rossi's cold fusion machine, called the E-Cat, really works, then the world's energy problems are all but solved. Rossi claims that a small amount of input energy drives a fusion reaction between hydrogen and nickel atoms inside his machine, producing an outpouring of surplus heat that can be used to generate electricity. And instead of the nasty radioactive byproducts given off by nuclear fission reactors — think Fukushima or Chernobyl — the E-Cat spits out just a teaspoon of copper.

The red line in this image shows the long-term increase in global sea level since satellite altimeters began measuring it in the early 1990s. Since then, sea level has risen by a little more than an inch each decade, or about 3 millimeters per year. While most years have recorded a rise in global sea level, the recent drop of nearly a quarter of an inch, or half a centimeter, is attributable to the switch from El Niño to La Niña conditions in the Pacific. The insets show sea level changes in the Pacific Ocean caused by the recent...

David A. Banister is among a small select group of technical traders who saw the current breakout in gold before it occurred and was well positioned to cash in on it. David doesn't blindly follow technical indicators off the cliff, but rather follows them while keeping the fundamental picture in view. Using his proprietary indicators, he's discovered a number of resource plays that have led him and his subscribers to profits. In the 4th quarter of 2011, he felt gold was being overbought due to its parabolic rise and called for a correction, that proved uncannily correct. Now he believes...

Concerned that too many “deniers” are in the meteorology business, global warming activists this month launched a campaign to recruit local weathermen to hop aboard the alarmism bandwagon and expose those who are not fully convinced that the world is facing man-made doom. The Forecast the Facts campaign — led by 350.org, the League of Conservation Voters and the Citizen Engagement Lab — is pushing for more of a focus on global warming in weather forecasts, and is highlighting the many meteorologists who do not share their beliefs. “Our goal is nothing short of changing how the entire profession of...

The supposed ‘consensus’ on man-made global warming is facing an inconvenient challenge after the release of new temperature data showing the planet has not warmed for the past 15 years. The figures suggest that we could even be heading for a mini ice age to rival the 70-year temperature drop that saw frost fairs held on the Thames in the 17th Century. Based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations, the data was issued last week without fanfare by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. It confirms that the rising trend in world...

Rising human carbon dioxide emissions may be affecting the brains and central nervous system of sea fishes with serious consequences for their survival, an international scientific team has found. Carbon dioxide concentrations predicted to occur in the ocean by the end of this century will interfere with fishes' ability to hear, smell, turn and evade predators, says Professor Philip Munday of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and James Cook University.

Minnesota lawmakers today will begin looking into the issue of payments for unused sick and vacation time to retiring state employees. The joint legislative subcommittee hearing follows reports by the Pioneer Press and KSTP-TV in November about $57 million paid out in unused sick time to state employees - a practice largely unheard of in the private sector - and $32 million paid out in unused vacation time between January 2008 and June 30, 2011.

Willard & Kelsey Solar Group LLC laid off about 40 people indefinitely at the beginning of January until changes to its production line are completed, a company official said Monday. Michael Cicak, the company's chief executive officer and chairman of the board, would not say when the changes would be completed or when the laid-off employees could return to work. "We have some technical people in here improving the efficiency of the assembly line," Mr. Cicak said, adding that the Perrysburg-based facility still has about 30 employees. He said Willard & Kelsey has a little more than 80 employees when...

As 2012 begins, the forced unionization of about 40,000-plus so-called home health care workers in Michigan continues. Approximately 80 percent of those impacted by an unpublicized election six years ago probably did not know what was occurring. As a result, they were railroaded into the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). Union dues have been extracted from the taxpayer-funded checks they've received ever since. This represents a transfer of more than $28 million from taxpayers to the coffers of the SEIU. Dues collection will apparently continue in January. House Bill 4003 was designed to stop the dues flow, but it remains...

Philadelphia weatherman John Bolaris lost $43,712.25, his job and, arguably, his dignity from one fateful trip to Miami Beach.

It’s not every day that the New York Times makes a compelling case against government giveaways. But a recent page-one article underscored that the Solyndra scandal was only the tip of the solar-subsidy iceberg. Huge companies like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, General Electric, utilities including Exelon and NRG, and even Google are receiving government guarantees that ensure large profits with virtually no risk — except to the taxpayer. The Times ascribes to the Obama administration a “gold-rush mentality” when Congress expanded green-power incentives in 2009, despite a paralyzing federal deficit. The chief executive of NRG, which received $5.2 billion in...

Lawyers Harry and Charles Binder began representing applicants for Social Security disability benefits in the 1970s, when the field was a professional backwater. Last year, their firm collected $88 million in fees for guiding clients through the system, government data indicate, making it the nation's largest Social Security disability advocate by far. "We'll deal with the government," a cowboy-hatted Charles Binder proclaims in his firm's ubiquitous television ads. "You have enough to worry about."

How could a contracting scam avoid detection for so long?By Del Quentin Wilber and Robert O’Harrow The private contractors and government employees skimmed millions from the Army Corps of Engineers in what authorities have described as one of the most brazen contracting scams in federal government history. From 2007 through September, the contractors and two program managers at the Army Corps inflated $25 million in contract orders by $20 million — pocketing the proceeds to buy cars, flat-screen televisions and expensive jewelry, federal prosecutors allege. So where was the oversight? And how did the scam go on for so long?...

Anyone with the remotest interest in replacing Barack Obama as America's president in 2012 should take his eyes off Iowa and the boring ups and downs of the race for the Republican nomination.The real action that may well decide our next president is quietly going on elsewhere, in the state offices that qualify candidates and parties for the November 2012 presidential ballot.  You may not have heard much about a shadowy group called "Americans Elect" (it does not disclose its contributors because of alleged concerns that they might suffer loss of business or social contacts, and because it fancifully but...

As tuition costs skyrocket and graduates walk away saddled with ever-rising amounts of debt, American colleges now face a choice: Remain a part of the problem, or begin contributing to a solution. The average cost to attend a public university shot up 8.3 percent this year, while private institutions raised their prices 4.3 percent. Over the past decade, tuition rates have risen 72 percent, and universities are now taking more heat than ever from government officials, education specialists and middle-class families, all of whom think the higher-education sector hasn’t done enough to reverse the trend. If the current trajectory continues,...

Europe pledged Wednesday to press on with new charges for airline carbon emissions across its airspace as of January 1, after scoring a key victory over US rivals in the EU's top court. The decision was welcomed as vindication by the European Union, which told US airlines to get ready to obey the law in the same way EU companies respect American regulations. But it was not without collateral damage, with industry sources fearing a possible trade war after US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned of reprisals ahead of the ruling. A high-ranking source in the aviation sector told...

This one definitely does not go into the "how to persuade people that your cause is right" file. Obama For America's latest attempt to beg people to contribute $3 to enter a drawing for a dinner with POTUS and FLOTUS has a pathetic, insufferable, punkish and privacy-invading twist, wherein you get the opportunity to tell a Republican acquaintance that you just gave money to the Obama campaign.

Canada will pull out of the Kyoto protocol on climate change, Environment Minister Peter Kent said on Monday, dealing a symbolic blow to the troubled global treaty. Canada will become the first country to formally withdraw from Kyoto, which it says is badly flawed because it does not cover all major emitters of greenhouse gasses, notably the United States and China. (SNIP) “As we’ve said, Kyoto for Canada is in the past … We are invoking our legal right to formally withdraw from Kyoto,” Kent told reporters after returning from talks in Durban, South Africa, on extending the protocol. He...

Just recieved this. I'm a little suspicious but maybe it's legitimate. Anybody know anything about it? ********************************************************* Dear MSN and Hotmail Subscriber, ===================== Virus Notification A DGTFX Virus has been detected in your folders. Your email account has to be upgraded to our new Secured DGTFX anti-virus 2011 version to prevent damages to our web mail log and to your important files. Click your reply tab, Fill the columns below and send back to us or your email account will be terminated to avoid spread of the virus. Full Name: ................................... User name: ............................... Password: .................................. Reconfirm Password: .................. Date...

A new International Climate Court will have the power to compel Western nations to pay ever-larger sums to third-world countries in the name of making reparation for supposed “climate debt”. The Court will have no power over third-world countries. Here and throughout the draft, the West is the sole target. “The process” is now irredeemably anti-Western. Ø “Rights of Mother Earth”: The draft, which seems to have been written by feeble-minded green activists and environmental extremists, talks of “The recognition and defence of the rights of Mother Earth to ensure harmony between humanity and nature”

Reason’s science correspondent sends a third dispatch from the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Durban. Durban, South Africa—Yesterday, before an audience of more than 100 environmental ministers gathered at the opening “high level segment” plenary of the Durban Climate Change Conference, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon flatly declared, “We are nearing the ‘point of no return,’ and we must pull back from the abyss." The “abyss” against which the Secretary-General warned is a future average global temperature increase higher than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit). What's so terrible about exceeding those two degrees, and where did that figure come from?...

The devotion of right-thinking persons to the Kyoto Protocol is not just puzzling. It is proof they are not serious. If they were, they would be even more fed up than we so-called "deniers" over the failure of Kyoto, and its 17 fancy follow-up conferences, to do anything important to stop climate change. Obviously supporters such as Jean Chretien and Bill Clinton were cynics, signing the accord for domestic political gain without having or wanting a plan to meet its targets. Indeed, Clinton never even asked for U.S. Senate ratification, let alone pushed for it. But what can explain the...

DURBAN, South Africa (AP) — An all-encompassing climate deal "may be beyond our reach for now," the U.N. chief said Tuesday as China and India delivered a setback to European plans to negotiate a new treaty that would bind all parties to their pledges on greenhouse gas emissions. The European "road map" toward a new accord that would take effect after 2020 is a centerpiece of negotiations among 194 countries at a U.N. climate conference in the South African coastal city of Durban. It has been presented as a condition for Europe to renew and expand its emissions reduction targets...

A body discovered by authorities Friday morning in Akron may be that of a missing Jackson Township man. The body of a man was found in a shallow grave behind Rolling Acres Mall, said FBI Special Agent Vicki Anderson. She said the identity of the man has not yet been confirmed. An ambulance carrying the body left the scene around 1:40 p.m. to the Summit County Medical Examiner’s Office. Investigators are working at a wooded area on the north side of the mall, north of Harlem Street. “We had information to go looking there,” Anderson said. Anderson declined to say...

LONGMONT -- Sundrop Fuels, a young company focused on developing what it calls "green gasoline," has announced plans to build its first production plant in central Louisiana. Sundrop, which relocated its headquarters to Longmont from Louisville about a month ago, let Louisiana's Economic Development Department make the announcement late Tuesday night that ground will be broken on the $450 million plant in 2012, and full production should begin in 2014. Ultimately it will employ about 150 people and will produce up to 50 million gallons of the renewable green fuel a year. ... "The technology can use any, literally any,...

RICHARD RUSSELL: The Gold Skyrocketing Phase Still Lies Ahead Cullen Roche, Pragmatic Capitalism Nov. 24, 2011, 4:41 AM Via Richard Russell’s Dow Theory Letters: “Day after day, everyone asks whether gold has topped out. Nobody ever asks whether the market has topped out. Think about it, we’re in a low inflation, low investor fear environment, a dollar that appears to have bottomed and is now firming, and still gold holds above 1700 an ounce. This is a remarkable performance aided by heavy buying in China, India, and Asian nations. But what happens when we hit the inevitable inflation; when investors...

Defkalion Nearly Ready, NASA Files Patent, Piantelli Silent Posted on November 21, 2011 http://e-catsite.com/2011/11/21/defkalion-nearly-ready-nasa-files-patent-piantelli-silent/ Defkalion Green Technologies of Greece continues to publicly speak as if their version of Andrea Rossi’s e-Cat will soon ready for the market. For those new to the story, or just as a refresher, Defkalion was Andrea Rossi’s original business partner but there was a sudden and quite public break with Rossi in August. At that the time both sides claimed that the split was over a financial dispute but, accordingly to a news article in a Greek publication, Tovima, there was more to the...

Ever since I moved to the inner city one thing has puzzled me more than any other, and that is how my low-income neighbors get by. Assuming they aren't doing anything illegal, how do they afford their homes, their meals, their gadgets, their cars? Few seem to work, even part time, for they are home in the morning when I leave for work, home if I stop by for lunch, and home when I return in the evening. They can't work the graveyard shift, for they keep me up half the night with their raucous music. I am left to...

A new book by Hoover Institution fellow Peter Schweizer details the startling extent of the cronyism that has pervaded President Obama’s “green jobs” push. According to Schweizer, 4 out of every 5 renewable energy companies backed by the Energy Department was “run by or primarily owned by Obama financial backers.” Those companies’ “political largesse is probably the best investment they ever made in alternative energy,” Schweizer explains. “It brought them returns many times over.” Doug Ross spotted the relevant excerpt of Schweizer’s book (h/t Ben Domenech’s Transom): When President-elect Obama came to Washington in late 2008, he was outspoken about...

What are we to believe about Newt Gingrich's recent admission that his commercial with Nancy Pelosi in 2008 was the, "dumbest single thing," he has done in years. Conservatives agree that it was dumb, in fact, infuriating. Gingrich has for years suggested that he is a staunch, combative conservative. This week, the Daily Caller reported on a segment on Fox News where Newt was a guest and said, “First of all, that is probably the dumbest single thing I’ve done in years,” Gingrich said. “It is inexplicable that somebody used to say, ‘You know, there aren’t enough hay wagons to...

, Nov. 8, 2011 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- In the run-up to the international climate negotiations in Durban later this month, China has responded to efforts to ban the trading of widely discredited HFC-23 offsets by threatening to release huge amounts of the potent industrial chemical into the atmosphere unless other nations pay what amounts to a climate ransom. China's threat comes after the European Union and other nations moved to ban HFC-23 credits from internal carbon markets in recognition of the perverse incentives created by these credits under the UN Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). The vast amounts paid for...

I’m a day late on this but it’s too intriguing not to blog. You can read the actual letter, which is exceedingly tame, on Mike Simpson’s website. Among the signatories: …Ron Paul. The bad news? If this happens, some people might be paying a little more. The good news? We’ll never have to read another “time for a grand bargain” column from Tom Friedman again. Dude, I think we should take the deal. A group of 40 House Republicans for the first time Wednesday encouraged Congress’s deficit reduction committee to explore new revenue as part of a broad deal that...

• Cold Fusion as a technology Haiko Lietz 03.11.2011 Part 10: The Italian engineer Andrea Rossi has reportedly sold a 1-megawatt generator In January 2011, at the University of Bologna, a generator has been presented which allegedly generated at the push clean energy from the cold fusion of nickel and hydrogen ( cold fusion in the Black Box? ). Ever since the Internet was tracked as a potential breakthrough in energy production moves in circles. Now, obviously is a reactor that can produce one megawatt of thermal power on the market. The estimates range from plain fraud and the beginning...

Freakish weather disasters — from the sudden October snowstorm in the Northeast U.S. to the record floods in Thailand — are striking more often. And global warming is likely to spawn more similar weather extremes at a huge cost, says a draft summary of an international climate report obtained by The Associated Press. The final draft of the report from a panel of the world’s top climate scientists paints a wild future for a world already weary of weather catastrophes costing billions of dollars. The report says costs will rise and perhaps some locations will become “increasingly marginal as places...

With the Golden State nearly broke, it now plans to secure funding largely by borrowing more, the Associated Press reported, though specifics were unclear. About 20 percent would come from the private sector. Until now, the state had been relying on more than $15 billion from the federal government, $10 billion from private investors and $5 billion from local governments. But the state hadn't gotten any closer to raising the money in the three years since voters approved the plan. The bullet train project, which would link San Francisco and Los Angeles with the nation's first high-speed rail line, has...

LUBBOCK, TX (KCBD) - A Lubbock man, Jeff Gunselman, 29, is suspected of committing $40 million worth of wire fraud. Court records related to Gunselman's company, Absolute Fuels, were unsealed Monday, solving some of the mystery surrounding a mid-October federal raid at several Lubbock and South Plains locations. On Oct. 19, Secret Service Agent Michael Fiveash requested 36 seizure warrants for properties and bank accounts related to Gunselman or Absolute Fuels. Each request for a seizure warrant accuses Gunselman of selling "Renewable Identification Numbers" for bio-diesel fuel that never existed. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 obligated fuel makers to...

Two “clean energy companies” which Barack Obama and Harry Reid have touted as creators of “green energy jobs” have joined Solyndra on the growing list of federal loan recipients facing financial turmoil and default. And a new poll indicates that voters don’t support the idea of agenda-driven federal loans to chosen corporations. Beacon Power Corp., a Massachusetts based energy storage company, filed for bankruptcy on Sunday, just one year after the company received a $43 million loan guarantee from the Department of Energy. And The New York Times reports that Nevada Geothermal Power, another recipient of millions in DOE loan...

Two-thirds of all college students now graduate with debt, and owe an average of $24,000, as student loans are quickly becoming the only way many Americans can afford a college education. As a result, thousands of young people -- who are also facing high unemployment -- are forced to tackle mountains of debt immediately after graduating, and many are uncertain about their futures. Shannon Johnson, who has been a lawyer at a small, family-owned firm in North Dakota for two years, said she owes more than $150,000 from her undergraduate degree and law school. "Because of my choice to attend...

Vice President Joe Biden Rallies for Jobs Bill on Capitol HillOct 19, 2011 6:15pm Vice President Joe Biden and a group of Senate Democrats rallied on Capitol Hill today with firefighters, teachers, nurses and police officers for passage of the $35 billion piece of the jobs bill that is on the Senate floor this week. “This is an emergency,” Biden told the crowd. “I say to the American people: Watch your senator. Watch him or her choose. Are you going to put 400,000 school teachers back in classrooms? Are you going to put 18,000 cops back in the street and...

The California man who lives part of his life as an “adult baby” and collects Social Security disability payments says the federal agency has cleared him of wrongdoing and will continue sending checks. Stanley Thornton Jr. now wants an apology from Sen. Tom Coburn, the Oklahoma Republican who called for the benefit review because the investigation disrupted the final months of life for his roommate Sandra Dias, who playacted as his mother, spoon-feeding him and helping him into his baby clothes until her death in July. “We recently reviewed the evidence in your Social Security disability claim and find that...

Americans need to know why the Energy Department approved a loan guarantee for Solyndra when the company was so clearly troubled. But politicizing this mess to smear the entire renewable energy industry won't help the country or the jobless. This industry is estimated to have doubled its number of American jobs in the past two years. Demonizing it could cripple its job-creating potential. San Jose's SunPower is the latest victim. Fox News has made a series of outrageous claims about it, calling its $1.2 billion federal loan guarantee a scandal "bigger than Solyndra." This is utterly baseless. Fox, without a...

At Friday’s Solyndra hearing, an Obama administration Treasury Department official admitted that he’s never heard of taxpayer money being subordinate to outside commercial firms. That means the Obama administration is admitting it’s awfully suspicious that investors like George Kaiser’s firms and others got their cash back when Solyndra failed, but the taxpayers ended up on the hook for the $535 million the Department of Energy promised it via a loan guarantee.

Jeff Carlisle, LightSquared's vice president of regulatory affairs and public policy, accused the Global Positioning System (GPS) industry of trying to manufacture a political scandal to discredit his wireless company on Wednesday. "[GPS companies] have completely mischaracterized the political donations [LightSquared investor] Phil Falcone and our CEO [Sanjiv Ahuja] have made," Carlisle said after a House Small Business Committee hearing. When asked whether he believes the GPS industry has pushed negative political stories about LightSquared, Carlisle said, "There's no doubt in my mind. Of course they have. It's not like this stuff just shows up for no reason whatsoever." Republican...

Money might not make the world go round for the protesters in New York City’s Zuccotti Park, but it’s certainly starting to help. The movement, which has been described as “organized anarchy” with no presiding leader, has its very own finance team to handle the influx of donations — which totaled more than $50,000 Tuesday — the group has received. The money is now being kept in a credit union account at the Amalgamated Bank. “[It's a sign] we’re growing very fast,” said Bre Lembitz, a senior economics major at Clark University who is spending this semester working with Occupy...

I've noticed that I have a charge on my home phone bill from ILD Teleservices. I already have Long distance service from ATT. Anybody know what it is and how to get rid of it? Thanks

September 23, 2011 Green Firm's Big Scam Reps. Blackburn, Andrews weigh in on Solyndra hearing, green jobs funding

Not content with having invented the internet, the great Climate Science communicator Al Gore appears to have developed still more miraculous skills of late: the ability to turn 17,000 into 8.6 million – just like that. The figures refer to the number of "views" for Gore's special "24 Hours Of ManBearPig" which this column helped celebrate the other day. Gore claims that as many as 8.6 million flocked to his thrilling festival of climate fear; but a nasty cruel man called Charles the Moderator at Watts Up With That? has "done the math" and reckons the figure is probably more...

CHRIS FARLEY ON YOUTUBE