Feb 08

Russell Roberts is a professor of economics at George Mason University and former Director of the Center for Experiential Learning at Washington University in St. Louis.

Roberts is a regular commentator on business and economics for National Public Radio’s Morning Edition, and has written for the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.

Professor Roberts focuses on communicating economics to non-economists, and to that end is the host of the award-winning podcast EconTalk and blogs at Cafe Hayek with Donald J. Boudreaux. Continue reading »

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Feb 08

Raw Video Footage of Monessen taser incident


Student Speaks Out Over Brawl At High School gets tasered by cop

Related information:

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- Judge Seals Video in Taser Case - Police State: Cop Tasered Man to Death (9 Times in 14 Minutes)

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- Police State: Florida cop attempts drive-by Tasering, runs over suspect

- Police State: 14-Year-Old Girl Tasered In The Head

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- Police State: Cops pepperspray, taser mentally challenged, deaf man, while using the toilet

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- Unedited Dash Cam Footage of Grandmother Being Tased

- Taser use to obtain DNA not unconstitutional: NIAGARA COURTS RULING

- Prison officer zaps children with 50,000-volt stun gun ‘to show them what a day at work is like’

- Top cop fired for allegedly using Taser on wife

- Ex-NFL Player Tasered For Pointing At Cop
Continue reading »

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Feb 08

Tens of thousands of vulnerable dementia patients are being prescribed ‘chemical cosh’ drugs in hospital wards in a ’scandalous abuse’ of the elderly, ten leading health organisations have said in a letter to The Daily Telegraph.

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Alzheimer’s patients with diabetes experience slower decline in memory, surprise research findings suggest. Photo: GETTY

Three quarters of nurses have seen people with dementia in general wards in hospital prescribed antipsychotic drugs that are known to double the risk of death and triple the risk of a stroke in these patients, research has shown.

It is the first time the scale of the abuse in hospital wards is exposed, following warnings that 100,000 dementia patients in care homes are prescribed the drugs leading to the deaths of 23,000 a year.

Ten leading charities, carers groups and experts have written to The Daily Telegraph saying: “We cannot stand by while this scandalous abuse of vulnerable citizens continues.”

Neil Hunt, Chief Executive of Alzheimer’s Society said: “The massive over prescription of antipsychotics to people with dementia is an abuse of human rights, causing serious side effects and increasing risk of death. These powerful drugs should only be used in a small number of cases. The Government must take action to ensure that these drugs are only ever used as a last resort.”

They have called on the government to publish its long-overdue review of the use of antipsychotics which ministers promised would be out in May of this year.

Rebecca Wood, Chief Executive of the Alzheimer’s Research Trust, said: “While the Department of Health prevaricates, thousands of people are being put at risk through the misuse of antipsychotics.”

There are 700,000 people in Britain with dementia and the numbers are rising rapidly.

Antipsychotics have a sedative effect and are not licensed for use in dementia but are prescribed when patients become agitated or difficult and often then are left on them for long periods.

A survey by the Alzheimer’s Society of over 1,000 nurses and nurse managers working on general wards in hospitals found more than three quarters said antipsychotics were used always or sometimes and one quarter said that the drugs were used inappropriately. Continue reading »

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Feb 08

Feb. 4 (Bloomberg) — Real estate, stocks, credit. China sure has its share of bubbles. Oddly, little attention is paid to the biggest one of all.

China’s currency reserves grew by more than the gross domestic product of Norway in 2009. Its $2.4 trillion of reserves is a bubble all its own, one growing before our eyes with nary a peep out of those searching for the next big one.

The reserve bubble is actually an Asia-wide phenomenon. And we should stop viewing this monetary arms race as a source of strength. Here are three reasons why it’s fast becoming a bigger liability than policy makers say publicly.

One, it’s a massive and growing pyramid scheme. The issue has reached new levels of absurdity with traders buzzing about crisis-plagued Greece seeking a Chinese bailout. After all, if economies were for sale, China could use the $453 billion of reserves it amassed last year to buy Greece and Vietnam and have enough left over for Mongolia.

Countries such as the U.S. used to woo the Bill Grosses of the world to buy their debt. Now they are wooing governments. Gross, who runs the world’s biggest mutual fund at Pacific Investment Management Co., is still plenty important to officials in Washington. He’s just not as vital as the continued patronage of state asset managers in places like Beijing.

Next Step

You have to wonder what folks at the International Monetary Fund are thinking these days. Their aid packages tend to come with messy requirements, such as “get your economy in order.” China’s are merely about scoring resources or geopolitical points. We have already seen China throw lifelines to Wall Street giants, including Morgan Stanley. Entire countries seem like the natural next step.

China’s huge arsenal of reserves is increasing its global influence. The trouble is, China is trapped in an arrangement of its own making. As China and other Asian nations buy more and more U.S. Treasuries, it becomes harder to unload them without causing huge capital losses. And so they keep adding to them.

“This is a titanically large foreign-exchange trade,” says David Simmonds, London-based analyst at Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc. “It’s the biggest one history has ever seen and there’s nowhere for these reserves to go.” Continue reading »

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Feb 07

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Human rights activists demonstrate waterboarding in front of the Justice Department. A soldier father stands accused of waterboarding his daughter because she couldn’t recite the alphabet

A U.S. soldier has been accused of ‘waterboarding’ his four-year-old daughter because she couldn’t recite the alphabet.

Joshua Tabor admitted to police that he used the CIA torture technique because he was so angry.

As his daughter ’squirmed’ to get away, Tabor said he submerged her face - upwards - three or four times until the water was lapping around her forehead and jawline.

Tabor, 27, admitted to investigators that his daughter was terrified of water and he had deliberately chosen the punishment. Continue reading »

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Feb 07

Global warming is a scam!

See also:

- IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri was told of false Himalayan glacier melting claims before Copenhagen


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Ignored concerns: Professor Mitchell approved controversial report

The Meteorological Office is blocking public scrutiny of the central role played by its top climate scientist in a highly controversial report by the beleaguered United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Professor John Mitchell, the Met Office’s Director of Climate Science, shared responsibility for the most worrying headline in the 2007 Nobel Prize-winning IPCC report - that the Earth is now hotter than at any time in the past 1,300 years.

And he approved the inclusion in the report of the famous ‘hockey stick’ graph, showing centuries of level or declining temperatures until a steep 20th Century rise.

By the time the 2007 report was being written, the graph had been heavily criticised by climate sceptics who had shown it minimised the ‘medieval warm period’ around 1000AD, when the Vikings established farming settlements in Greenland.

In fact, according to some scientists, the planet was then as warm, or even warmer, than it is today.

Early drafts of the report were fiercely contested by official IPCC reviewers, who cited other scientific papers stating that the 1,300-year claim and the graph were inaccurate.

But the final version, approved by Prof Mitchell, the relevant chapter’s review editor, swept aside these concerns.

Now, the Met Office is refusing to disclose Prof Mitchell’s working papers and correspondence with his IPCC colleagues in response to requests filed under the Freedom of Information Act.

The block has been endorsed in writing by Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth - whose department has responsibility for the Met Office.

Documents obtained by The Mail on Sunday reveal that the Met Office’s stonewalling was part of a co-ordinated, legally questionable strategy by climate change academics linked with the IPCC to block access to outsiders.

Last month, the Information Commissioner ruled that scientists from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia - the source of the leaked ‘Warmergate’ emails - acted unlawfully in refusing FOI requests to share their data.

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Some of the FOI requests made to them came from the same person who has made requests to the Met Office.

He is David Holland, an electrical engineer familiar with advanced statistics who has written several papers questioning orthodox thinking on global warming.

The Met Office’s first response to Mr Holland was a claim that Prof Mitchell’s records had been ‘deleted’ from its computers.

Later, officials admitted they did exist after all, but could not be disclosed because they were ‘personal’, and had nothing to do with the professor’s Met Office job.

Finally, they conceded that this too was misleading because Prof Mitchell had been paid by the Met Office for his IPCC work and had received Government expenses to travel to IPCC meetings. Continue reading »

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Feb 07


Added: Date: 6th Feb 10

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Feb 07

WARSAW (Reuters) - A Polish priest has installed an electronic reader in his church for schoolchildren to leave their fingerprints in order to monitor their attendance at mass, the Gazeta Wyborcza daily said on Friday.

Oddly Enough

The pupils will mark their fingerprints every time they go to church over three years and if they attend 200 masses they will be freed from the obligation of having to pass an exam prior to their confirmation, the paper said.

The pupils in the southern town of Gryfow Slaski told the daily they liked the idea and also the priest, Grzegorz Sowa, who invented it.

“This is comfortable. We don’t have to stand in a line to get the priest’s signature (confirming our presence at the mass) in our confirmation notebooks,” said one pupil, who gave her name as Karolina. Continue reading »

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Feb 07

US snowstorm causes power cuts in Washington DC region



“This is maybe the biggest storm that we have had.”

Hundreds of thousands of people remain without power in Washington DC and nearby states after a blizzard blanketed the area with record snows.

Electricity was cut to at least 300,000 homes as the snow felled trees, and cut power lines. Emergency workers are struggling to restore power.

Washington got up to 2ft (61cm) of snow, one of the heaviest snowfalls in decades.

The storm disrupted transport from West Virginia to southern New Jersey.

A record 3ft (91cm) of snow fell on Maryland.

Washington DC, Virginia and Maryland have declared emergencies, allowing them to activate the National Guard to help cope with the wintry onslaught.

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US Snow: Your pictures

Some 300,000 homes are without electricity in Maryland and neighbouring Virginia - the two states which bore the brunt of the storm.

Another 250,000 customers were hit by blackouts in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, the New York Times reported.

Pepco electric company said its workers were scrambling to restore power, but warned it could be a few days before everyone was back up.

“We have a lot of scattered outages and the road conditions are not really working with us,” spokesman Andre Francis told AFP news agency. Continue reading »

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Feb 06

* World’s top bankers fly in
* To meet at secret location
* Trouble on the horizon

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The high-powered gathering coincides with a fresh meltdown on world sharemarkets (AP)

THE world’s top central bankers began arriving in Australia yesterday as renewed fears about the strength of the global economic recovery gripped world share markets.

Representatives from 24 central banks and monetary authorities including the US Federal Reserve and European Central Bank landed in Sydney to meet tomorrow at a secret location, the Herald Sun reports.

Organised by the Bank for International Settlements last year, the two-day talks are shrouded in secrecy with high-level security believed to have been invoked by law enforcement agencies.

Speculation that the chairman of the US Federal Reserve, Dr Ben Bernanke, would make an appearance could not be confirmed last night.

The event will be dominated by Asian delegations and is expected to include governors of the Peoples Bank of China, the Bank of Japan and the Reserve Bank of India.

The arrival of the high-powered gathering coincided with a fresh meltdown on world sharemarkets, sparked by renewed concerns about global growth and sovereign debt.

Fears countries including Greece, Portugal, Spain and Dubai could default on debt repayments combined with disappointing US jobs data to spook investors. Continue reading »

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