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March disaster debris may reach Hawaii next year US researchers say some of the huge amount of debris that has been drifting in the Pacific Ocean as a result of Japan's disaster in March may reach Hawaii next year. Nikolai Maximenko, senior researcher at the University of Hawaii's International Pacific Research Center, says a huge amount of debris was spotted by a Russian training ship heading for Vladivostok from Hawaii in late September. The debris was found in a wide area in the northern Pacific Ocean about 3,200 kilometers east of Japan and about 900 kilometers west of the Midway...

http://www.chabad.org/multimedia/media_cdo/aid/1616434/jewish/Hap-bee-New-Year.htm

To see what the market thinks of the economic prospects for the economy look no farther than the 30 Year which just dropped below 4.00% and is trading at 3.99% right now. The market is effectively pricing in a major economic contraction, with long-end deflation now expected. Which means that Bernanke just got yet another carte blanche to proceed with the only thing he know. And validating it is the equity market which at last check not only did not react favorably to the Senate vote, but has been fading all the news all day, and is now trading at...

Remember that story from a few days ago, the one about the Obama administration giving ACORN a $79,819 grant in March despite a federal law that prohibits the government from giving money to ACORN? It turns out that sum is a lowball figure. I discovered Obama’s Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) gave ACORN another $461,086 in January. The funds were earmarked for ACORN Housing Corp. in January under HUD’s Self-help Homeownership Opportunity Program (SHOP), according to the government website USAspending.gov. In order words, the Obama administration gave fraud-ridden ACORN nearly a half million dollars to be used on...

It has been a long time since we had seen a 5 Year auction as ugly as today's: printing at a 1.615% high yield, the 5 Year had a 3.5 bps tail off the bat to the 1.58% WI where it was trading before. The internals were just as ugly, with the Bid To Cover coming at 2.59 a plunge from May's 3.20, and the lowest since June 2010. Not surprisingly, Indirect interest evaporated once again, tumbling from 47.1% to just 37.6%, with Primary Dealers having to take up more than half, or 52.1%, and the remainder going to Direct...

As the summer travel season approaches, airline industry experts predict that soaring fuel prices and a sharp pickup in passenger demand will push airfares up 15% over a year earlier — to levels not seen since before the economic downturn. Fare hikes have already begun, with six of the nation's largest airlines each raising rates at least five times since Jan. 1 for nearly all routes. By the time the peak summer travel season rolls around, travel industry experts predict, domestic airfares may reach an average of nearly $390, up from a low of $302 two years ago.

The Liturgical Year   Unlike pagan religions which see time as an endless cycle, Christians see time as being linear; it has a beginning and will have an end. Within Christianity's linear, "big picture" sense of time, though, the passing of hours is experienced as cycles of meditations on holy things. Think of a spiral -- of a circle of time moving ever forward toward His Coming -- and you will have a sense of "Catholic time." The Catholic year (the "liturgical year") is made special by cycles of celebrations commemorating the lives of Jesus and His mother, the angels, and...

VIDEO: Obama To China: "We Want To Sell You All Kinds Of StuffAUDIO: Obama and his Progressive Allies View the Constitution as a Hurdle, Not a WallVIDEO: Obama's lies about NAFTAVIDEO: Flashback: Obama Promised 5-Day, Public Review of Bills Before Signing; Signs Tax Bill Within Hours of House VoteVIDEO: Obama: "I Don't Think There's A Sense That I've Been Successful"VIDEO: Obama Ditches Tax Cut Presser After Bill Clinton Takes ControlVIDEO: Obama: It’s the Public Option Debate All Over AgainVIDEO: President Obama Falsely Claims the GOP Opposed Middle-Class Tax Cuts VIDEO: Obama and Vice President Biden ask newly elected Governors to...

(CNSNews.com) - With 496 casualties, 2010 was by far the deadliest year for U.S. troops fighting a war in Afghanistan that has now entered its tenth year, according to casualty reports issued by the Department of Defense and tracked in a comprehensive database of war casualties maintained by CNSNews.com. There were 303 U.S. casualties in the Afghanistan war in 2009, making 2009 the second deadliest year of the war.

Obama's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad YearOil Spill, High Unemployment, Election Losses Among Setbacks CALVIN WOODWARD, Associated Press UPDATED: 5:53 am MST December 21, 2010 WASHINGTON -- Barack Obama's terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year got off to a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad start. There he was, on New Year's Day, on vacation with his family in Hawaii, stuck on a secure phone with counterterrorism officials, trying to figure out what screw-ups had allowed a would-be terrorist to board a Christmas Day flight with explosives in his underwear. Things only got worse for Obama when he...

The One American Year Project 1029 Commercial Street Waterloo, IA 50702 (319) 572-6269 December 15, 2010 To whom it may concern: My name is Shaina Gaul and I'm writing to inquire as to your possible interest in a project currently underway called One American Year. One American Year was conceived of, and is being executed by, Zachary Beschorner and Shaina Gaul of Waterloo, Iowa. It was formed on a simple premise: to see whether it was possible to go one full year without purchasing any products made outside of the United States of America. Each day from January 1, 2011...

Barack Obama won the great tax-cut showdown of 2010 - and House Democrats don't have a clue that he did. In the deal struck this week, the president negotiated the biggest stimulus in American history, larger than his $814 billion 2009 stimulus package. It will pump a trillion borrowed Chinese dollars into the U.S. economy over the next two years - which just happen to be the two years of the run-up to the next presidential election. This is a defeat? If Obama had asked for a second stimulus directly, he would have been laughed out of town. Stimulus I...

Alarms are ringing loud in the business sector. According to the Venezuelan Confederation of Industries (Conindustria), 234 companies have been expropriated so far this year. "The private sector is seriously deteriorated, public policies implemented in the last few years have been steadily destroying jobs," said Carlos Larrazábal, president of Conindustria. The data do not include government's seizures in the agricultural sector. However, these figures confirm the intensification of the expropriation policy in the past two years.

Amtrak is adding more cars to its trains to accommodate passengers next week, the busiest week of the year for the state’s three passenger train routes, including the “San Joaquin” through much of the Central Valley. On what is anticipated to be the heaviest single travel day of the year for Amtrak — the Wednesday before Thanksgiving – Amtrak expects ridership to reach as many as 127,000 passengers system-wide. Last year, Amtrak carried nearly 686,000 passengers for the holiday week setting a new Thanksgiving ridership record. To accommodate more passengers traveling during this holiday week, more capacity will be added...

Nasa man expects first prototype of a spaceship that will take us between worlds ‘within a few years’The US space agency Nasa has announced an intriguing new project called the 'Hundred Year Starship' which aims to send humans on a one-way trip to newly discovered planets across the galaxy. "The human space programme is now really aimed at settling other worlds," said Pete Worden, director of Nasa'a Ames research laboratory, at a seminar in San Francisco. "Twenty years ago you had to whisper that in dark bars [or] get fired." The Ames laboratory is responsible for Pioneer 10, the...

One year after the Nobel prize jury made its controversial decision to award President Obama the prize for world peace, a larger jury is still waiting for the president to live up to those lofty expectations. Even some of Obama's allies -- like former Nobel laureates Al Gore and Jimmy Carter -- declined to assess his performance in fulfilling what the peace prize said was his "vision" of world harmony. The one year anniversary of Obama's prize comes as fighting is escalating in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq continues to smolder and Obama struggles to keep fledgling Middle East peace...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The world is enduring the hottest year on record, according to a U.S. national weather analysis, causing droughts worldwide and a concern for U.S. farmers counting on another bumper year. For the first six months of the year, 2010 has been warmer than the first half of 1998, the previous record holder, by 0.03 degree Fahrenheit, said Jay Lawrimore, chief of climate analysis at the federal National Climatic Data Center. Period of a El Nino weather pattern is being blamed for the hot temperatures globally. "We had an El Nino episode in the early part of the...

For any of those who went into a coma around January of last year and just woke up, let me explain this new era after Bush (A.B.), variously known as “this is our moment,” “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for,” and the era when the “planet healed” and the seas “receded.” In sum, in the year 2 AB, your fossilized world thankfully no longer quite exists. Global warming is “climate change” and its data is “interpreted” rather than blindly “followed.” Natural calamities like the old Katrina hurricane were really man-caused disasters; and man-caused disasters like the new BP...

(and 1,500 a day readmitted for emergency care) More than 500,000 patients every year are readmitted to hospital after apparently being sent home too soon, alarming figures reveal. Labour's waiting-time targets have been blamed for the 50 per cent rise in emergency readmissions of patients within days of them being discharged. Critics said it was a scandal that almost 1,500 a day were apparently being released before they are well enough, harming their recovery.

Today is the first anniversary of the inauguration of President Obama. Creative Minority Report has obtained the first year report card. Click Here To See Graphic

Vt newspaper names homo advocate Vermonter of the Year

Treasuries headed for the worst year in at least three decades as the U.S. stepped up debt sales to help spur growth in an economy recovering from the biggest slump since the Great Depression. The existing seven-year note was little changed after a $32 billion of sale of the debt drew a yield of 3.345 percent, compared with an average forecast of 3.372 percent in a Bloomberg News survey of four of the Federal Reserve’s 18 primary dealers. U.S. government securities have fallen 3.6 percent this year, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch indexes, the worst performance since 1978.

Washington (AP) - After a sleepless, overnight flight to Oslo to accept the Nobel Peace Prize earlier this month, President Barack Obama made a not altogether surprising admission. He was tired. Who could blame him? The president was on his ninth foreign trip to his 21st country; he added a 10th trip the following week. The year had been bookended by the two most intense periods of his young presidency -- the early decisions to bail out the nation's banks and automobile industry, steps the president deemed unpopular but necessary, and his December orders to deploy 30,000 additional U.S. troops...

President Barack Obama is ending the year tired - and who could blame him? AP correspondent Julie Pace reports on the multitude of issues that have left the president looking forward to his vacation. (Dec. 29)

Clearly, there was momentum for the GOP this summer that has slowed or reversed in autumn. The party used that momentum to get top candidates into key Senate and House races, which will reap benefits if voters are angry at the Democrats a year from now. But the 1993-1994 scenario is not, so far, repeating itself

If the academic year gets pushed deeper into summer, as President Obama is advocating, the grumbling will not be limited just to students and teachers who will be forced to spend more days in school. Critics say the president's call for a longer academic calendar and a shorter summer vacation will bring on a host of unintended consequences -- including increased costs for school systems, major cuts to the nation's hotel and tourism industries, and a serious blow to summer camp operators. Obama says kids in the U.S. spend too little time in the classroom, putting them at a disadvantage...

2009 H1N1 Flu: Situation Update: The proportion of deaths attributed to pneumonia and influenza (P&I) based on the 122 Cities Report was low and within the bounds of what is expected at this time of year.

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Even with an additional 17,000 troops in Afghanistan, the top US commander there predicted "a tough year" in 2009 and warned that the situation would not be quickly turned around. General David McKiernan, who commands US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, spoke a day after President Barack Obama approved the deployment in the coming months of two additional combat brigades and support forces, about 17,000 troops in all. "Even with these additional forces, I have to tell you, 2009 is going to be a tough year," McKiernan told reporters at the Pentagon. "There are the baseline problems...

My New Year's resolutions so far are: 1- To get a job. It's becoming series. 2- To go fishing and hunting this year. 3- If I don't get a job, concentrate on fishing and hunting, and building polygons with Magnetix. 4- Not to post vanities.

There it sits on your night stand, that book you've meant to read for who knows how long but haven't yet cracked open. Tonight, as you feel its stare from beneath that teetering pile of magazines, know one thing — you are not alone. One in four adults say they read no books at all in the past year, according to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll released Tuesday. Of those who did read, women and seniors were most avid, and religious works and popular fiction were the top choices. The survey reveals a nation whose book readers, on the whole, can...

NEW YORK — A young mother's car left out of gear accidentally rolled over her only son and killed him, a year after her soldier husband was killed in Iraq, relatives and police said. "It's a tragedy for all my family," said Evelyn Mercedes, 65, the soldier's grandmother. "My grandson dies. Now, this happens to the baby." Christopher Mercedes, who turned 1 last month, slipped from his mom's arms as she got out of the sport utility vehicle that began rolling because it was in neutral gear rather than park, police said. "She was hysterical, crying out, 'Somebody help me...

  Conn. Guard Soldiers Reflect on Year in Afghanistan Events of 9/11 compel Marine to enlist in Army National Guard. By U.S. Army Sgt. Matthew Clifton22nd Mobile Public Affairs Detachment FORWARD OPERATING BASE GARDEZ, Afghanistan, April 23, 2007 — Whether serving on active duty, Army Reserve or Army National Guard, deployments have become all but inevitable for soldiers in the U.S. Army. "[The enemy] doesn’t care if you’re in the National Guard or if you’re not on a combat mission." U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Richard Rafferty Some troops have seen more years in Iraq or Afghanistan than they have...

The imam of the Taipei Grand Mosque complained to Taiwan's foreign minister for sending him a greeting card for the Chinese New Year showing four pigs, a newspaper said on Saturday. After receiving the New Year card, Imam Ma Hsiao-chi pointed out to the Foreign Ministry that the card was offensive to Muslims, the Liberty Times reported. Muslims do not eat pork and regard pigs as unclean animals. But the ministry defended Foreign Minister Huang Chih-fang's sending out the greeting cards, which were printed because 2007 is the Year of Pig according to the Chinese lunar calendar. "Sending New Year...

CAMP FALLUJAH — Marines with Regimental Combat Team 5 spent 2006 making significant progress, with the help of the Iraqi Army, in eastern Al Anbar Province. Fallujah, once the site of a pitched battle between Marines and al Qaida insurgents, is now considered a Sunni safe haven. It’s a marked progression that’s led to Marines turning over increasing responsibility to the Iraqi Security Force, a functioning city government and Iraqis seeking safety within the city’s limits. It’s been a year of tough days, spectacular battlefield performances, hope, faith and steadfast discipline. “We have aggressively worked to make Fallujah a model...

He's the last man standing on refugee island and costs Australia £8m a year By Nick Squires in Sydney (Filed: 06/10/2006) He is possibly the loneliest refugee in the world and he is being maintained at a cost of £8 million a year. Mohammed Sagar has spent the past five years living in a detention camp on Nauru, a sun-baked rock in the middle of the south Pacific. He was one of 1,500 refugees from the Middle East and Afghanistan sent to the near-bankrupt republic under Australia's so-called Pacific Solution to boatloads of people fleeing their homelands. They were intercepted...

8,400-year old settlement unearthed in Ýzmir’s Ulucak Tumulus Monday, September 25, 2006 ÝZMÝR - Turkish Daily News A team of archaeologists working at the Ulucak tumulus, located in Ýzmir's Kemalpaþa district, have unearthed a Neolithic settlement area dating back some 8,400 years, an archaeologist announced last week. Archaeologist Fulya Dedeoðlu of Ege University told the Doðan News Agency that excavations had been under way in the area since 1995. She said they believed their latest discovery could be the oldest settlement dating from the Neolithic period unearthed to date and added that further excavations on the lower levels could reveal...

9,500-year-old decorated skulls found in Syria Sun Sep 24, 4:14 PM ET DAMASCUS (AFP) - Archaeologists said they had uncovered decorated human skulls dating back as long as 9,500 years ago from a burial site near the Syrian capital Damascus. "The human skulls date back between 9,500 and 9,000 years ago, (on which) lifelike faces were modelled with clay earth ... then coloured to accentuate the features," said Danielle Stordeur, head of the joint French-Syrian archaeological mission behind the discovery. Located at a burial site near a prehistoric village, the five skulls were found earlier this month in a pit...

A 5-year-old girl is undergoing treatment for possible HIV infection after the man charged with raping her -- an illegal alien who was previously deported to Mexico -- admitted he has the virus, authorities said. The case has re-energized some state lawmakers to push for tougher penalties for people who commit sex crimes and knowingly expose their victims to HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Julio Cesar Cruz Martinez, 32, of Fairhope is being held in a segregated unit at the Baldwin County Corrections Center on charges of first-degree rape, sexual abuse and sodomy, a jail official said Wednesday. Police...

Chinese archaeologists discover 2,000-year-old leather shoes Beijing, Sept. 9 (PTI): Six leather shoes, made some 2,000 years ago, have been discovered at a relic site in Dunhuang in northwest China's Gansu Province, taking the Chinese shoe-making industry older by some 1,000 years.The leather shoes, from the Han Dynasty (205 BC-220 AD), are the oldest leather shoes found in China, indicating that the history of China's leather shoe-making is some 1,000 years longer than previously believed, an archaeologist from Gansu Province, He Shuangquan said. The newly found, well-preserved shoes were made for children, aged three to six years old, said He,...

Spc. Patrick Hart, military policeman, hands over keys to an Iraqi Police lieutenant of the Tarmiyah Police Station for seven of the 18 new Iraqi Police trucks being distributed from Camp Taji. The Iraqi Police are being issued 96 trucks throughout the 1st Brigade Combat Team’s area of responsibility, north of Baghdad, to help the police curb sectarian violence. Department of Defense photo by Army Sgt. 1st Class Brent Hunt. CAMP TAJI -- In an effort to make the Taji district north of Baghdad a safer place to live, Multi-National Division - Baghdad Soldiers provided the Iraqi Police stations in...

SACRAMENTO – After a partisan battle over Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's failed “Year of Reform” initiatives last fall, the Republican governor and Democratic legislators yesterday wrapped up what could be called the “Year of the Deal.” They addressed long-neglected infrastructure by putting a record $37.3 billion bond package on the November ballot, produced a rare on-time budget and helped average Californians through a higher minimum wage and cheaper prescription drugs. They also increased school spending by 10 percent, moving a lagging California closer to the national average spent per pupil, and directed $3 billion in new spending over the next seven...

Natascha weighs less than when kidnapped By Kate Connolly in Vienna (Filed: 26/08/2006) The full horror of Natascha Kampusch's eight-year kidnap ordeal became clearer yesterday as her mother said that the 18-year-old girl weighed less now than when she was abducted. Brigitte Sirny said she had been shopping for size 6 clothes for her daughter whose weight had dropped to 6st 6lb despite having grown to 5ft 3in. She said her daughter had "nothing" except for an orange dress she was wearing when she escaped her "master". Natascha has developed a formal, slightly stilted high-German accent similar to that of...

Archaeologists find 2,500-year-old mummy in Mongolia, tattoos and all Thu Aug 24, 2:18 PM ETAFP/DDP/GAI-HO Photo: This undated picture released by the German Archaeological Institute (GAI) shows a mummified body from... BERLIN (AFP) - An international group of archaeologists has unearthed a well-preserved, 2,500-year-old mummy frozen in the snowcapped mountains of Mongolia complete with blond hair, tattoos and a felt hat. The president of the German Archaeological Institute, Hermann Parzinger, hailed the "fabulous find" at a press conference to present the 28-member team's discovery in Berlin. The Scythian warrior was found in June at a height of 2,600 meters (8,500...

8/17/2006 - RANDOLPH AIR FORCE BASE, Texas (AFPN) -- The Air Force is on track to make its recruiting goal this year, marking the seventh consecutive year the service has brought in the right number and mix of new Airmen. To date, 25,645 people have enlisted in the Air Force and entered active duty in fiscal 2006. That puts the Air Force on pace to send 30,750 men and women to basic training and technical schools to fill jobs in more than 150 areas. In response to the Air Force's force shaping, fiscal 2007 recruiting goals have been reduced by...

Cambridge scholar makes rare 30,000-year-old find Archaeologists have unearthed a pair of tiny bone fragments dating back almost 30,000 years and featuring minute designs carved by some of our earliest European ancestors. The thumbnail-sized bone fragments are engraved with parallel lines and match similar artefacts uncovered in the same area during the 19th century. They were carved by hunter-gatherers as they slowly made their way north in pursuit of moving populations of mammoth and reindeer 25-30,000 years ago. The unusual find was made by a Cambridge scholar, Becky Farbstein, who has been working at Predmosti in north Moravia, in the...

A 3,000-year-old voyage of discovery JENNIFER VEITCHMen would have used this type of log boat to fish and hunt, as well as to trade goods with others, as this drawing exhibits. Picture: Courtesy Perth and Kinross Heritage Trust IN ANCIENT times, when Scotland was virtually covered in dense forest, there was only one way to get around. Traveling by boat helped early Scots to find food and trade goods with their neighbours. The work to extract the boat from the river bed is slow and painstaking. Picture: Courtesy Historic Scotland Now, with the excavation of a 3,000-year-old log boat, archaeologists...

Archaeologists seek hints on 4000-year-old civilization in Tekirdað Wednesday, July 19, 2006 ANKARA - Turkish Daily News Archaeologists working on an ancient Thracian site in Tekirdað said on Monday they have unveiled part of an ancient city named Heraion Teichos, which is thought to date back to 2000 B.C. The excavation team of Mimar Sinan University's Archaeology Department has been working to unearth the ancient city, located near Tekirdað's Karaevli village, for the last six years. Head of the excavations, Associate Professor Neþe Atik, told the Doðan News Agency on Monday that they were the first team to conduct the...

AL ASAD, Iraq (July 12, 2006) -- From navigating the jungles of Vietnam to surviving the deserts of Iraq, one warrior has been a part of almost every major campaign that the Marine Corps has had in the past four decades. Marines with Task Force Military Police, 1st Battalion, 14th Marine Regiment, honored Chief Warrant Officer 4 Wayne H. Silva for his 40th anniversary in the Marine Corps while in Al Asad July 8. "June 28, 1966, was the day that I stepped onto the yellow footprints," stated Silva, Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear defense officer, Task Force Military Police....

2,300-year-old artefacts may change Ashoka-Buddhist history (FOC) BHUBANESWAR: Orissa Institute of Maritime and South East Asian Studies (OIMSEAS) has unearthed some 2,300-year-old artefacts at Jajpur district in Orissa, which, it claimed, could change some historical narratives on the Ashokan period. The description of Chinese pilgrim Hieun-Tsang about Ashoka that he had constructed 10 stupas in Odra country where Buddha had preached may come true. Earlier, historians refused to accept the narrative. We have already analysed five stupas and found three more similar structures,” OIMSEAS Director Debaraj Pradhan told mediapersons here. He said a huge inscribed monolithic stupa along with other...

30,000-year-old Relics Reveal Pre-historic Civilization along Qinghai-Tibet Railway 2006-06-24 13:59:42 Xinhua Chinese archaeologists claim that relics unearthed in the areas along the Qinghai-Tibet Railway proved that human beings lived there at least 30,000 years ago. Archaeologists with the Qinghai Provincial Archaeological Institute said they collected large number of chipped stone tools including knives and pointed implements dating back 30,000 years in the Tuotuo River valley, Hoh Xil, a habitat for Tibetan antelopes, and Qaidam Basin, where the railway runs through, during recent excavations. More than 30 stone implements were also discovered at the site of Sancha River bridge on the...