http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/markets/global-markets/china-pmi-spooks-tokyo-shares-close-down-more-than-7-futures-trade-briefly-halted/articleshow/20221483.cms

The Osaka Securities Exchange on Thursday briefly suspended trade in Nikkei futures due to a steep drop as investors took profits following a recent sharp rally, after weak Chinese factory activity rattled investors.

Tokyo share prices dropped more than seven percent Thursday on record volumes as investors rushed to take profit following weak Chinese data.

The Nikkei 225 index at the Tokyo Stock Exchange closed down 7.32 per cent, or 1,143.28 points, to 14,483.98, while the Topix index of all first-section issues was down 6.87 per cent, or 87.69 points, at 1,188.34.

The plunge came after HSBC said manufacturing activity in China contracted in May for the first time in seven months in another sign of the weakness of recovery in the world’s second-largest economy.

“The negative Chinese indicator triggered today’s selling,” said Hirokazu Fujikiki, strategist with Okasan Securities. “It was no wonder if sizable selling could emerge as Japanese shares rose quite fast recently.”

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thats a massive hit..and its more than just some shitty numbers out of china..if you watch the video you wil understand whats really going on over there..they might bring the whole thing down..they are bigger and far more important than greece or cyprus..

401

http://www.11alive.com/news/article/293657/40/FBI-suspect-with-possible-ties-to-Boston-bombings-killed-in-Fla

An FBI agent shot and killed an Orlando man early Wednesday who had been questioned for several hours about his alleged ties to Boston bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the victim’s friend told local media.

FBI officials have confirmed that a man died while one of its agents was “conducting official duties,” the Orlando Sentinel reports, but would not elaborate.

The Sentinel and WESH-TV identified the victim as 27-year-old Ibragim Todashev.

The television station quotes Khusn Taramiv, a friend of the victim, as saying both of them had been questioned for almost three hours Tuesday about the Boston bombing case.

Taramiv said his friend knew Boston bombings suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev because they were both mixed martial-arts fighters, WESH and The Sentinel report.

Taramiv told WESH that Todashev, who is an ethnic Chechen like Tsarnaev, had once lived in Boston and was a casual friend of the Boston bombing suspect. He said Todashev and Tsarnaev had spoken by phone or Skype for about five minutes about a week before the April 15 Boston bombings.

Tsarnaev, 26, died in a shootout with police three days after the Boston attack, which killed three people. His 19-year-old brother, Dzhokhar, has been charged in connection with the bombings and is being held at a prison medical center outside Boston.

WESH-TV quotes Taramiv as saying that the FBI, after a long interview with him and Todashev on Tuesday, said they needed his friend for a a couple of more hours.

“They told me they’re going to bring him back,” Taramiv told WESH-TV. “They never brought him back. He felt inside he was going to get shot.”

The shooting occurred at a condominium in Orlando, but details were not immediately available.

WESH-TV said Todashev had been arrested earlier this month on charges of aggravated battery.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/americas/8706370/FBI-kill-man-in-Boston-bombing-questioning

A man shot dead by FBI agents investigating the Boston Marathon bombings reportedly admitted his involvement in an unsolved triple murder, along with bomb suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev.

A friend of the dead man identified him as 27-year-old Ibragim Todashev, who had previously lived in Boston and knew Tsarnaev, the older of the two brothers suspected of planting two bombs at the marathon on April 15, killing three people and injuring 264 others.

NBC News reported that Todashev had confessed to his involvement in an unsolved 2011 triple homicide in a Boston suburb that investigators believe was drug related.

Authorities were investigating possible connections between Tsarnaev, who died in a shootout with police, and the 2011 incident.

Three men including a close friend of Tsarnaev were found stabbed in the neck in an apartment on September 12, 2011, in Waltham, Massachusetts. News reports said marijuana was strewn over their bodies.

Todashev was shot at an apartment complex near the Universal Studios theme park, where the FBI and members of other law enforcement agencies including the Massachusetts State Police were interviewing him about the marathon bombing.

“A violent confrontation was initiated by the individual,” the FBI said.

A special agent, it said, “acting on the imminent threat posed by the individual, responded with deadly force. The individual was killed and the special agent was transported to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.”

The possibility that Tsarnaev was connected to the Waltham murders is “being looked at seriously,” said Republican Representative Peter King, chairman of the counter-terrorism and intelligence subcommittee of the House Homeland Security Committee.

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doesnt this stink?

how does a guy get interviewed by the feds for hours and then get his hands on a knife right after confessing to killing 3 people and then get himself killed..you can see what the other mate who was interviewed said about it..and why were they interviewed in their house? wouldnt they be taken to a station of office?

something really smells here..and it aint the fish..

401

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/ford-set-to-end-car-making-in-australia/story-e6frg6nf-1226648917020

FORD will cease producing vehicles in Australia from October 2016, in a move that will cost 1200 jobs.

Ford Australia boss Bob Graziano announced the closure of the car-maker’s Broadmeadows and Geelong plants in Victoria while unveiling a $141 million after-tax loss for 2012-13 year.

He said after losses of $600 million over the last five years, the company had come to the conclusion that it was no longer viable to produce vehicles in Australia.

But he said the company would maintain a significant presence in Australia with a staff of 1500 in product development roles.

“Ford has been a part of the Australian automotive industry for nearly 90 years and we have continued to successfully transform our business over that time,” Mr Graziano said.

“Today we are transforming our business again in line with the changing market place,”’ he said.

“Unfortunately part of this transformation means that we will cease out manufacturing operations in October of 2016.”

Ford currently employs 3500 people at Geelong and at Broadmeadows in Melbourne.

The two plants manufacture the Falcon and the Territory SUV.

Mr Graziano said the decision to close the operations was the result of market fragmentation, the small scale of the Australian market, and relative production costs.

“There’s been a significant change in terms of the total number of vehicles sold in the large car segment,” he explained.

The taxpayer-subsidised redevelopment of the Falcon and Territory models would go ahead for release in 2014.

Mr Graziano said the Falcon name was inextricably linked to Ford’s Australian brand, and was likely to be retired when the vehicle ceased local production

The company had modelled a number of different scenarios in an attempt to keep the company’s Broadmeadows and Geelong plants open, but it could not make the numbers work, Mr Graziano said.

He said the company had attempted to restructure but its locally-made cars continued to make losses, while its imported vehicles were profitable.

“In the search to improve scale and competitiveness, we explored what export opportunities might be available to us, but we were still faced with the fact that our cost structure in Australia remains uncompetitive.

“Our costs are double that of Europe and nearly four times Ford in Asia.”

Mr Graziano said the company had made aggressive assumptions about possible future government car industry support and lower labour costs, which he did not think would be acceptable to Australians and would not have made the business profitable.

“We did not leave any stone unturned but even with these assumptions the business case did not stack up,” he said.

Mr Graziano said the workers had been informed of the decision this morning.

He said all entitlements would be protected for the 1200 employees whose jobs are affected, and the company will work through the next three years to provide support.

Mr Graziano said around 650 jobs would be lost at Broadmeadows, while 510 positions would go at Geelong.

He said no decisions had been taken on the company’s motorsport teams or about its premium car brand Ford Performance Vehicles.

Over the past decade, Ford and its rival GM Holden have shared in more than $12 billion in taxpayer-funded industry assistance.

The decision will be a blow for jobs not only at Ford but also for the wider car components industry. The auto industry underpins Victoria’s manufacturing sector.

Today’s decision will put the spotlight once again on the future of the Australian car industry, and taxpayer assistance for the sector.

The federal government gave the carmaker an extra $34 million in January 2012, with a claim from Julia Gillard that the cash would “see the number of jobs grow” at Ford.

“There will be an additional 300 jobs as a result,” the Prime Minister said at the time.

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after 90 years they are gone..manufacturing has been killed off in this country and this is a damning nail in the coffin..the unions control the wages in these factories and they have priced themselves out of the market..combine that with a carbon tax for no good reason and other regulations and you have a recipe for disaster..even europe is half the price to manufacture cars..asia is a quarter..the writing is on the walls for toyota and GMH i reckon..watch them put their hands out now..we put no tariffs on imported cars because we signed up to the WTO treaty..this is the result..

401

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/17/chinese-approve-plans-worlds-tallest-dam

Chinese environmental authorities have approved construction plans for what could become the world’s tallest dam, while acknowledging that the project would affect endangered plants and rare fish species.

The 314 metre-high dam (1,030ft) will serve the Shuangjiangkouhydropower project along the Dadu river in south-western Sichuan province, according to China‘s state news agency, Xinhua. A subsidiary of Guodian Group, one of China’s five major state-owned power companies, will complete the project over a decade at an estimated cost of £2.9bn.

The dam will be far taller than the 185 metre-high Three Gorges dam along the Yangtze river – the world’s most powerful hydroelectric project – and slightly edge out the current record holder, the 300 metre-high Nurek dam in Tajikistan. The world’s second-tallest dam, the 292 metre-high Xiaowan dam on the Lancang (Mekong) river, is also in China.

China’s environment ministry acknowledged that the dam would have an impact on the area’s highly biodiverse flora and fauna.

“The project will affect the spawning and movement of rare fish species, as well as the growth of endangered plants, including the Chinese yew, which is under first-class state protection,” the ministry said, according to Xinhua.

The ministry proposed counter-measures to mitigate the environmental impact, such as “protecting fish habitats in tributaries, building fish ladders and increasing fish breeding and releasing”, Xinhua reported. The project is still awaiting a final go-ahead from China’s state council.

The Dadu river is a tributary of the 450 mile-long Min river, which cuts through the centre of Sichuan province before joining the Yangtze further south.

Upon completion, the plant will have a total installed capacity of 2GW and produce nearly 8bn KW-hours of energy a year, about twice as much as the Hoover dam in the US.

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another record falls to the chinese..i wonder if it will be as earth moving as three gorges dam was and is?

401

————

thanks to eggins10 for the link..

good background information on bitcoin and what the alphabet groups might have in store for it..

go the cypherpunks eh?

401

http://rt.com/news/oecd-report-economic-inequality-488/

Not only has social inequality risen in the industrialized nations over the past three decades, the economic crisis of 2008-09 sped up the deterioration as “pain of the crisis was not evenly shared,” a new report says.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which unites the world’s most developed countries, has published an update to its report ‘Divided We Stand’. The report published in December 2011 showed that by 2008 the industrialized nations had the worst situation with inequality in three decades.

According to the new data, the gap between the rich and the poor in most of its 34 members has been getting wider since the crisis started at a higher pace than it did before. Inequality grew more over the three years between 2007 and 2010 than it did over the 12 years before that.

Among OECD countries, it appears that “the top 10 percent has done better than the poorest 10 percent in 21 countries,” with the widest gaps seen in the United States, Turkey, Chile and Mexico. In the three years described above, their income status had been continuously plunging by 2 per cent every year.

A majority of the countries experiencing the harshest rise of inequality were in Europe, where tough EU austerity policies took hold. Italy and Spain were hit worst. However, a 5 per cent decrease was seen annually in Iceland, Ireland, Estonia and impoverished Greece – which still remains on the verge of economic collapse.

One factor shared by all 34 countries surveyed by the OECD is children and young people. Whether it is due to unemployment or poor family living standards, they appear to have it have the worst.

“Households with children were hit hard during the crisis. Since 2007, child poverty increased in 16 OECD countries, with increases exceeding 2 points in Turkey, Spain, Belgium, Slovenia and Hungary.”

What makes the news grimmer is that cash injections into the world’s financial elite, via banks and markets, as well as Wall Street, essentially only helped the uppermost 10 per cent multiply their wealth. In the years since 2007, their financial portfolios are said to have grown by a large margin.

But OECD’s data also explains that the economic crisis could not have been the sole factor in the widening gap between segments of society and in their redistribution of wealth. There has been a process that has been exploiting these economic conditions since 2008, via the bankrupting and impoverishment taking place in the developed world, most likely for the purpose of competing with the developing world’s working classes and their cheap labor. So there is a widening base of severely underpaid working class workers across the entire world. But they don’t get nearly the kind of social, economic or healthcare benefits the upper layers of society do.

In the end, it will not get better – the report says. The only reason that 2010 seemed like the worst year is because the growth of the conditions of inequality was somewhat halted by many social state provisions, mostly across Europe. Without them, the report says the real trouble we are in would be more evident, and so would its growth in the years to come. What we are seeing now is only the beginning.

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“the gap between the rich and the poor in most of its 34 members has been getting wider since the crisis started at a higher pace than it did before.”

well what a surprise eh?

push the middle down to the lower end and break the elite further away from the pack..

401

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22600984

Apple has been accused of being “among America’s largest tax avoiders” by a Senate committee.

The committee said Apple had used “a complex web of offshore entities” to avoid paying billions of dollars in US income taxes.

Apple has a cash stockpile of $145bn (£95bn), but the committee said $102bn of this was held offshore.

Apple chief Tim Cook will go before the panel on Tuesday. In prepared testimony Apple said it did not use tax gimmicks.

Apple says it is one of the largest taxpayers in the US, having paid $6bn in federal corporate income tax in fiscal 2012.

The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations has been examining “methods employed by multinational corporations to shift profits offshore”.

Some large firms in the US have come under fire for their reluctance to repatriate their foreign earnings as they could face a top tax rate of 35%.

US corporation tax is one of the highest in the world at 35%. However, companies typically pay far less, thanks to numerous deductions and exemptions.

In its report into Apple, committee chairman Carl Levin said: “Apple wasn’t satisfied with shifting its profits to a low-tax offshore tax haven.

“Apple sought the Holy Grail of tax avoidance. It has created offshore entities holding tens of billions of dollars, while claiming to be tax resident nowhere.”

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-05-21/apple-denies-dodging-taxes/4704810

Apple chief Tim Cook has faced a grilling by US lawmakers on “sham” subsidiaries and “convoluted” strategies to shift profits offshore, but he has denied the company uses “gimmicks” to cut taxes.

A high level US Senate committee investigating corporate offshore tax avoidance has accused Apple of shifting billions of dollars in profits to avoid paying US taxes on a massive scale.

It found Apple avoided paying $9 billion in tax in 2012.

Mr Cook told a Senate hearing Apple lives up to its tax obligations and more, but some lawmakers expressed outrage over findings of the panel’s probe that the tech giant avoided taxes by using a web of foreign subsidiaries, some without any tax jurisdiction.

Senator Carl Levin, chairing the hearing, said the investigation found a disturbing pattern of shifting profits, despite denials by Cook and other Apple executives.

“Of course you shifted something, the most valuable thing you have, the intellectual rights of your company,” Levin told Cook and two other Apple executives called before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

Senator Levin said the report showed Apple shifted profits to offshore entities which were “a sham and a mere instrumentality of the parent”.

The Michigan Democrat said the report showed Apple assigned its “crown jewels,” or intellectual property rights to three Irish subsidiaries controlled by Apple, which collected profits on much of Apple’s global profits.

“About 70 per cent of the profits you own end up with those three Irish corporations,” he said.

Republican Senator John McCain echoed those sentiments, saying, “It is completely outrageous that Apple has not only dodged full payment of US taxes, but it has managed to evade paying taxes around the world through its convoluted and pernicious strategies.”

Mr Cook maintained that the issue was “complex” and often misunderstood.

“The way I look at it is that Apple pays 30.5 per cent of its profits in taxes in the United States,” the chief executive said.

“We do have a low tax rate outside the United States but this tax rate is for products we sell outside the United States.

“We paid nearly $6 billion in cash to the US Treasury. That’s more than $16 million each day.”

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apple = assholes

cook obviously says the senate report is wrong..what else can he say?

“Apple sought the Holy Grail of tax avoidance. It has created offshore entities holding tens of billions of dollars, while claiming to be tax resident nowhere.”

401

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22567023

Scientists say the recent downturn in the rate of global warming will lead to lower temperature rises in the short-term.

Since 1998, there has been an unexplained “standstill” in the heating of the Earth’s atmosphere.

Writing in Nature Geoscience, the researchers say this will reduce predicted warming in the coming decades.

But long-term, the expected temperature rises will not alter significantly.

The slowdown in the expected rate of global warming has been studiedfor several years now. Earlier this year, the UK Met Office lowered their five-year temperature forecast.

But this new paper gives the clearest picture yet of how any slowdown is likely to affect temperatures in both the short-term and long-term.

An international team of researchers looked at how the last decade would impact long-term, equilibrium climate sensitivity and the shorter term climate response.

Climate sensitivity looks to see what would happen if we doubled concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere and let the Earth’s oceans and ice sheets respond to it over several thousand years.

Transient climate response is much shorter term calculation again based on a doubling of CO2.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported in 2007 that the short-term temperature rise would most likely be 1-3C (1.8-5.4F).

But in this new analysis, by only including the temperatures from the last decade, the projected range would be 0.9-2.0C.

“The hottest of the models in the medium-term, they are actually looking less likely or inconsistent with the data from the last decade alone,” said Dr Alexander Otto from the University of Oxford.

“The most extreme projections are looking less likely than before.”

The authors calculate that over the coming decades global average temperatures will warm about 20% more slowly than expected.

The researchers say the difference between the lower short-term estimate and the more consistent long-term picture can be explained by the fact that the heat from the last decade has been absorbed into and is being stored by the world’s oceans.

Not everyone agrees with this perspective.

Prof Steven Sherwood, from the University of New South Wales, says the conclusion about the oceans needs to be taken with a grain of salt for now.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/lamar-smith-overheated-rhetoric-on-climate-change-hurts-the-economy/2013/05/19/32cb6d94-bda4-11e2-97d4-a479289a31f9_story.html

Contrary to the claims of those who want to strictly regulate carbon dioxide emissions and increase the cost of energy for all Americans, there is a great amount of uncertainty associated with climate science. These uncertainties undermine our ability to accurately determine how carbon dioxide has affected the climate in the past. They also limit our understanding of how anthropogenic emissions will affect future warming trends. Further confusing the policy debate, the models that scientists have come to rely on to make climate predictions have greatly overestimated warming. Contrary to model predictions, data released in October from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit show that global temperatures have held steady over the past 15 years, despite rising greenhouse gas emissions.

Among the facts that are clear, however, are that U.S. emissions contribute very little to global concentrations of greenhouse gas, and that even substantial cuts in these emissions are likely to have no effect on temperature. Data from the Energy Information Administration show, for example, that the United States cut carbon dioxide emissions by 12 percent between 2005 and 2012 while global emissions increased by 15 percent over the same period.

Using data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a Science and Public Policy Institute paper published last month found that if the United States eliminated all carbon dioxide emissions, the overall impact on global temperature rise would be only 0.08 degrees Celsius by 2050.

Further confounding the debate are unscientific and often hyperbolic claims about the potential effects of a warmer world. In his most recent State of the Union address, President Obama said that extreme weather events have become “more frequent and intense,” and he linked Superstorm Sandy to climate change.

But experts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have told the New York Times that climate change had nothing to do with Superstorm Sandy. This is underscored by last year’s IPCC report stating that there is “high agreement” among leading experts that trends in weather disasters, floods, tornados and storms cannot be attributed to climate change. While these claims may make for good political theater, their effect on recent public policy choices hurts the economy.

http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2013/05/20/3762917.htm#.UZmSv6I3CfU

A recent slowdown in global warming means the harshest climate change predictions are less likely in the immediate decades, say an international team of scientists.

Others argue the conclusions need to be taken with a ‘large grain of salt’.

Dr Alexander Otto of Oxford University, and colleagues from the UK, US, Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Switzerland and Norway, report their findings in the journalNature Geoscience today.

They say a slower rate of warming increase observed from 2000 to 2009 suggested a “lower range of values” to be taken into account by policy makers in the next 50 to 100 years.

But, say Otto and team, warming is still on track, to breach a goal set by governments around the world of limiting the increase in temperatures to below 2°C above pre-industrial times, unless tough action is taken to limit rising greenhouse gas emissions.

“The most extreme rates of warming simulated by the current generation of climate models over 50- to 100-year timescales are looking less likely,” they write.

The rate of global warming has slowed after strong rises in the 1980s and 1990s, even though all the 10 warmest years since reliable records began in the 1850s have been since 1998.

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oh..thats inconvenient isnt it?..the warming which we have said has stopped is now confirmed as stopped..but the politicians and bankers ignore it and plow on with the the apocalyptic rhetoric..because its a money pit..possibly the greatest money pit ever invented..besides trading in derivatives..

401

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caused by a 40kg piece of rock..pretty amazing..

401

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-05-22/israel-warns-syria-golan-heights-assaults/4704874

The head of Israel’s armed forces has warned Syrian president Bashar al-Assad of “consequences” if fire continues from Syrian territory against Israeli troops in the occupied Golan Heights.

“If he disturbs the Golan Heights, he will have to bear the consequences,” Lieutenant General Benny Gantz said in an address at Haifa University and broadcast on Israeli television.

“We cannot and shall not allow the Golan Heights to become a comfort zone for Assad,” he said.

He spoke hours after Israeli troops and Syrian forces exchanged fire across the sensitive ceasefire line on the Golan Heights, but the Jewish state denied Syrian claims that one of its vehicles had been destroyed.

The Syrian army “fired on an Israeli patrol, which we confirmed six hours ago, but did not destroy a vehicle or kill anyone,” Israeli military spokesman Avichai Adraee wrote on Twitter.

“In response, Israel Defence Forces returned precise fire at the source of the gunfire. They reported a direct hit,” an army statement added.

Syria claimed to have destroyed an Israeli military vehicle it said had crossed the ceasefire line during the incident.

“The vehicle passed the ceasefire line and was moving towards the village of Bir-Ajam situated in the liberated Syrian zone” of the Golan, it said, adding that the operation was aimed at “lifting the morale” of rebel forces in the region.

Lieutenant General Gantz said the vehicle never entered Syrian-controlled territory and suggested Syria was fabricating a story with an obsolete Israeli vehicle left behind in Lebanon during Israel’s 2006 war there against Syrian ally Hezbollah.

“It’s a totally absurd story about an old 2002 model jeep,” he said.

On Monday too, the army reported that small-arms fire from Syria hit the Israeli-occupied Golan overnight, causing no harm or damage. The army filed a complaint with the UN force.

http://rt.com/news/israel-fires-shots-syria-560/

Israeli troops opened “retaliating” fire at targets across the Syrian border with Syria later claiming it destroyed an Israeli military vehicle stationed in Golan Heights. This is a third consecutive cross-border shooting in a week, Israeli media say.

The footage the Israeli army shared with RT shows the Syrian side firing first followed by return fire from the Israelis.

The Israeli military said their troops had “returned precise fire” after a Syrian soldier allegedly caused damage to a military vehicle stationed in Golan Heights, near the border.

The shots “most likely were stray bullets, we don’t know if it was intentional,” an Israeli spokesperson told AFP. There were no injuries following the initial shots.

Soon after that the Syrian military declared in a televised statement that in response they had successfully targeted a further Israeli vehicle:

“Our armed forces have destroyed an Israeli vehicle with everything that it had in it… The vehicle had crossed the ceasefire line and was moving towards the village of Bir Ajam, situated in the liberated Syrian zone [of the Golan].”

This is the first time the Syrian government claimed responsibility for firing into the Israeli territory.

Tel-Aviv denied the claims. Israel’s Army Radio however said the Tuesday incident was the third consecutive cross-border shooting this week and the military considers the incident to be concerning.

Israel’s military chief Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz also warned Syrian President Bashar Assad that the Syrian leader would “bear the consequences” if there were any more attacks on Israeli forces.

————

anyone get the feeling things are about to come to a big conclusion very soon?

israel is already doing unilateral strikes in Syria..wont take much for this to become a full on war..

401

http://rt.com/news/brazil2014-us-military-robots-501/

Brazil has added 30 US military robots to the Israeli drones and ‘Robocop-style’ glasses with face recognition cameras to its arsenal after the country allocated $900 million to make 2014 World Cup “one of the most protected sports events in history.”

The 30 PackBot 510 units, which usually cost between $100,000 and $200,000 apiece, will arrive in Brazil as part of the $7.2 million deal the country signed with American iRobot advanced technology company. The contracts include services, spare parts and associated equipment.

“IRobot continues its international expansion, and Brazil represents an important market for the company’s unmanned ground vehicles,” Frank Wilson, iRobot’s senior vice president, said in a statement. “IRobot is excited to be providing the company’s state-of-the-art robotic technologies to Brazil as the country prepares for several high profile international events, including the 2014 FIFA World Cup.”

The first real test for the PackBots will be the visit of Pope Franics to Brazil this July, with the country also looking to use the robots during the Rio Olympics in 2016.

The PackBots are equipped with cameras and are operated remotely in order to detect and examine suspicious objects or explore dangerous environments, while keeping their operators safe from harm.

The devices weigh about 27 kilogram and rely on caterpillar treads to move around, using videogame-style hand controllers to make it more familiar to the users.

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its all there to make you feel safe..you should be thanking the governments of the world..

401

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/moodys-could-downgrade-us-debt-in-2013-report-2013-05-20

Moody Investors Service could downgrade U.S. debt this year if policymakers do not address rising debt ratios, according to Bloomberg News on Monday. While Moody’s released a report on Monday saying that new budget projections from the Congressional Budget Office were “credit positive,” Steven Hess, a senior vice-president at Moody’s told Bloomberg that Washington needs to do more from a policy standpoint. “The fact that it showed much lower debt levels going forward, we view as a positive development,” Hess told Bloomberg. “More needs to be done on the policy front to address this rising debt ratio.”

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oh..but the dow is at record highs?

*think

401

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2013/05/08/sorry-global-warmists-but-extreme-weather-events-are-becoming-less-extreme/

Just about every type of extreme weather event is becoming less frequent and less severe in recent years as our planet continues its modest warming in the wake of the Little Ice Age. While global warming activists attempt to spin a narrative of ever-worsening weather, the objective facts tell a completely different story.

New data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration show the past 12 months set a record for the fewest tornadoes in recorded history. Not only did Mother Nature just set a record for lack of tornado activity, she absolutely shattered the previous record for fewest tornadoes in a 12-month period. During the past 12 months, merely 197 tornadoes struck the United States. Prior to this past year, the fewest tornadoes striking the United States during a 12-month period occurred from June 1991 through July 1992, when 247 tornadoes occurred.

The new tornado record is particularly noteworthy because of recent advances in tornado detection technology. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is able to detect more tornadoes in recent years than in prior decades due to technological advances. Even with such enhanced tornado detection capability, the past 12 months shattered all prior records for recorded tornadoes.

NOAA posted a list of the five “lowest non-overlapping 12 month counts on record from 1954-present.” Notably, each of these low-tornado periods occur since 1986, precisely during the time period global warming alarmists claim global warming is causing more extreme weather events such as tornadoes. According to NOAA, the lowest non-overlapping 12 month counts on record from 1954-present, with the starting month, are:

197 tornadoes – starting in May 2012

247 tornadoes – starting in June 1991

270 tornadoes – starting in November 1986

289 tornadoes – starting in December 2001

298 tornadoes – starting in June 2000

On a related note, a new record for the longest stretch of consecutive days without a tornado death occurred during 2012 and 2013.

Hurricane inactivity is also setting all-time records. The United States is undergoing its longest stretch in recorded history without a major hurricane strike, with each passing day extending the unprecedented lack of severe hurricanes, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data.

It has been more than 2,750 days since a major hurricane struck the United States. This easily smashes the prior record of less than 2,300 days between major hurricane strikes.

Although global warming activists and their media allies often claim global warming is making extreme weather events more frequent and severe, virtually all extreme weather events are becoming less frequent and less severe as our planet gradually warms.

Pretty much all other extreme weather events are becoming less frequent and less severe, also. Soil moisture is in long-term improvement at nearly all sites in the Global Soil Moisture Data Bank. Droughts are less frequent and less severe than in prior, colder centuries. The number of wildfires is in long-term decline despite a recent change in wildfire policy that no longer actively suppresses wildfires. Just about any way you measure it, extreme weather events are becoming quite rare.

Despite all this good news, a growing number of people believe global warming is causing an increase in extreme weather events. This is no accident. Fully aware of the objective facts, global warming activists are doing everything they can to distract people from the truth. Although extreme weather events are becoming less frequent, the Earth is a big place with a dynamic climate. There will always be some extreme weather events, even as they become less frequent and less severe. Global warming activists can always highlight some extreme weather event occurring somewhere on the planet and paint a false narrative that global warming must be to blame, even though extreme weather events are becoming rarer as the planet gradually warms and returns to pre-Little Ice Age norms.

Major hurricanes struck the U.S. Northeast on a fairly regular basis during the first half of the 20th century when temperatures were cooler. Now, as our planet warms, hurricanes of any sort almost never strike the U.S. Northeast. As a result, when even a minor hurricane like Sandy strikes the Northeast, it is a seemingly unheard of weather event. We can thank global warming for the fact that even a small hurricane like Sandy is a rare event in the U.S. Northeast. The same applies for tornadoes, droughts, etc.

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“the past 12 months set a record for the fewest tornadoes in recorded history. Not only did Mother Nature just set a record for lack of tornado activity, she absolutely shattered the previous record for fewest tornadoes in a 12-month period.”

the reality doesnt gel with the hype..we arent getting worse extreme events..its not happening on any level..

“Fully aware of the objective facts, global warming activists are doing everything they can to distract people from the truth. Although extreme weather events are becoming less frequent, the Earth is a big place with a dynamic climate. There will always be some extreme weather events, even as they become less frequent and less severe. Global warming activists can always highlight some extreme weather event occurring somewhere on the planet and paint a false narrative that global warming must be to blame”

and thats what you are seeing on your tv news every night..always a weather story..no matter where its form..as long as there is one..take a look next time you watch the news..on mainstream..

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http://finance.yahoo.com/news/private-equity-firms-build-instead-030000929.html

A new dam at the headwaters of the White Nile, nearly 20 years in the making, generates almost half of this East African country’s electricity.

Its owner isn’t a state utility or an energy giant. It is Blackstone Group LP, best known for corporate takeovers.

The private-equity firm built the dam with partners and has a contract with energy-hungry Uganda to sell it power at rates that ensure profits for Blackstone for years to come.

The project, fraught with holdups that included a pirate hijacking and rituals to appease spirits before flooding an island, has little in common with the debt-fueled billion-dollar buyouts Blackstone helped popularize.

But the firm and its rivals increasingly are moving beyond the buyout playbook in search of other, sometimes unfamiliar sources of profit: drilling for oil in Oklahoma, building tract homes in North Dakota or shipping gasoline on the high seas.

“You’ve seen a radical shift in what private equity has done these last few years,” said Blackstone’s president, Hamilton “Tony” James. “You’re forced to cast your nets a bit wider and find things where the space isn’t so crowded.”

Private-equity firms long counted on buyouts for yearly returns of 20% or more. In such deals, they raise a buyout fund from investors, use that cash plus debt to take over a business, then aim to improve its operations, rejigger its finances and sell it after a few years for a big score.

In recent years, some firms are finding it difficult to survive on buyouts alone. Competitors have crowded into the buyout business, leaving fewer good candidates available. And large firms that have gone public want to show their shareholders steady earnings quarter after quarter—hard to obtain with buyouts, where the timing of a payoff is unpredictable.

“Conventional private-equity is a wonderful business in certain environments, but there are a lot of environments where, frankly, it doesn’t work right,” said Leon Black, chairman and chief executive of Apollo Global Management LLC, at an investor conference last year.

Buyouts remain the large firms’ bread and butter. Blackstone, although it ultimately decided not to go forward, recently considered mounting a $25 billion-plus offer for Dell Inc. In addition, while choppy markets limit the times when private-equity firms can cash out of past buyouts, a strong stock market has held that window wide open this spring.

Nonetheless, Blackstone, Apollo, KKR & Co. and Carlyle Group LP—all publicly held—now have operations far afield from their traditional financial plays. Only about a third of the investor assets Apollo manages now are tied to corporate buyouts—down from about 75% in 2007. At Blackstone, the portion of managed assets that is in buyout funds is below 25%, versus twice that nearly a decade ago.

Among the novel ventures, Carlyle raised a fund it is using to lend to companies that banks increasingly shun, which include a business that turns construction debris and old shipping pallets into power.

Apollo, for its part, is managing the investment of money that small savers put into fixed annuities promising them a steady rate of return. This is a business some insurers are retreating from, in the face of low returns on the high-quality corporate bonds that insurers invest in; Apollo is betting it can do better by putting the cash in higher-paying investments.

KKR, meanwhile, is making several bets on energy. It has teamed up with Chesapeake Energy Corp. to buy mineral rights from U.S. landowners, a deal that could allow KKR to drill for oil for years to come. KKR also created an in-house oil company to scout for its own drilling opportunities.

In addition, the firm has made billions of dollars in recent years flipping shale-field leases, many purchased from private landowners, to major oil companies. In yet another drilling-boom play, KKR is developing a tract of houses and apartments in Williston, N.D., for the oil workers pouring into that region.

In these ventures, the private-equity firms often are creating businesses from scratch, instead of making debt-fueled bids for existing ones at auctions. David Foley, who heads Blackstone’s energy investing, said his group is “building, not buying.”

Besides power projects like the dam in Uganda, Blackstone has used billions of dollars of its investors’ money to buy foreclosed homes to spruce up and rent out. Blackstone has bought ships and gotten into ocean transport. It also selects hedge funds and allocates some of investors’ money to them.

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get the run down here: http://www.enterprisecorruption.com/

is this the new enron..the one we have been waiting for?

thanks to reinhardt and the enormous background work he does on these topics..the man has spoken..you would be encouraged to follow his advice..he knows his shit..he really does..

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http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/31/opinion/sunday/sundown-in-america.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&

The Dow Jones and Standard & Poor’s 500 indexes reached record highs on Thursday, having completely erased the losses since the stock market’s last peak, in 2007. But instead of cheering, we should be very afraid.

Over the last 13 years, the stock market has twice crashed and touched off a recession: American households lost $5 trillion in the 2000 dot-com bust and more than $7 trillion in the 2007 housing crash. Sooner or later — within a few years, I predict — this latest Wall Street bubble, inflated by an egregious flood of phony money from the Federal Reserve rather than real economic gains, will explode, too.

Since the S.&P. 500 first reached its current level, in March 2000, the mad money printers at the Federal Reserve have expanded their balance sheet sixfold (to $3.2 trillion from $500 billion). Yet during that stretch, economic output has grown by an average of 1.7 percent a year (the slowest since the Civil War); real business investment has crawled forward at only 0.8 percent per year; and the payroll job count has crept up at a negligible 0.1 percent annually. Real median family income growth has dropped 8 percent, and the number of full-time middle class jobs, 6 percent. The real net worth of the “bottom” 90 percent has dropped by one-fourth. The number of food stamp and disability aid recipients has more than doubled, to 59 million, about one in five Americans.

So the Main Street economy is failing while Washington is piling a soaring debt burden on our descendants, unable to rein in either the warfare state or the welfare state or raise the taxes needed to pay the nation’s bills. By default, the Fed has resorted to a radical, uncharted spree of money printing. But the flood of liquidity, instead of spurring banks to lend and corporations to spend, has stayed trapped in the canyons of Wall Street, where it is inflating yet another unsustainable bubble.

When it bursts, there will be no new round of bailouts like the ones the banks got in 2008. Instead, America will descend into an era of zero-sum austerity and virulent political conflict, extinguishing even today’s feeble remnants of economic growth.

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thanks to ghandiloquent for the link..

hes right to say we should be looking over our shoulder right now..highs are only precedents to lows..and this baby is riding a QE bubble..

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http://www.theage.com.au/it-pro/business-it/from-high-school-dropout-to-billionaire-previously-coy-karp-cashes-in-on-tumblr-20130520-2jvtw.html?google_editors_picks=true

Five years ago, tech prodigy David Karp was determined that the business he founded in his mother’s small New York apartment would not be absorbed by a multinational firm.

“We would really rather not be gobbled up by a big media company,” then 21-year-old Karp, the creator of the blogging platform Tumblr, said in an interview with the New York Observer.

Karp, 26, now looks set to become the latest tech billionaire with reports that Yahoo’s board has approved a deal to purchase Tumblr for $US1.1 billion in cash.

It’s a mind-boggling amount of money for anyone, let alone a once socially awkward teenager who dropped out of high school at the age of 15.

Remarkably it was Karp’s mother, teacher Barbara Ackerman, who suggested her son drop out of high school at the age of 15 so he could be home-schooled and continue an internship at an animation production company, Frederator Studios.

Karp’s mother recognised that, while her son was not particularly engaged with his classes or his fellow students, he seemed to thrive at the internship where he could talk easily with the company’s coders and engineers.

It was a passion he had developed early, teaching himself how to code HTML at the age of 11.

Karp’s mother told the New York Times that she could feel the sense of relief through her hand on her son’s shoulder when she floated the idea to him.

Soon his career was taking off.

When an entrepreneur named John Maloney sought technical help with his start-up, UrbanBaby.com, a Frederator employee recommended Karp.

The project had to be done in a couple of days, but Karp did it in four hours. At the age of 16, Karp was made UrbanBaby’s head of product, and he was given some equity in the company.

The following year Karp moved to Tokyo, where he lived for five months on his own.

It was there that he cooled on the idea of making robots, and instead decided to become an entrepreneur.

He told The Guardian that initially he would lie about his age when dealing with clients.

“I was so silly – I tried to be very formal and put on a deep voice to clients over the phone so I didn’t have to meet them and give away how young I was,” he said.

“I lied about my age. I lied about the size of my team. I lied about my experience. I was so terribly embarrassed about it for so long. I should have just owned up.”

When he moved back to New York, Karp set up his own software consultancy company, Davidville.

But he soon became fascinated by a new short-form of blogging called a “tumblelog”.

Karp told the New York Observer that he “kept waiting” for one of the established blog platform players to set up a platform for tumblelogging and, when that didn’t happen, he did it himself.

Karp founded Tumblr in 2007 at age 21 from the bedroom of his mother’s apartment in New York.

Sometimes described as Twitter meets YouTube and WordPress, Tumblr lets its users curate pictures, videos and text in one place online. The site gained 75,000 users in the first fortnight.

Tumblr now says it has more than 108 million blogs, 50 billion postings in 12 languages and 175 employees.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Karp

David Karp (born July 6, 1986) is an American web developer and entrepreneur living in New York City. He is the founder and CEO of the short-form blogging platform, Tumblr. In 2010, he was named to the MIT Technology Review TR35 as one of the top 35 innovators in the world under the age of 35. According to Forbes, Karp’s net worth exceeds $200 million, and Tumblr has been valued at $800 million. On May 19, 2013, the Yahoo board approved a deal to pay $1.1 billion in cash for Tumblr.

Karp grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. His parents are film and television composer Michael D. Karp and teacher Barbara Ackerman. He has a younger brother named Kevin. His parents separated when he was 17. Karp attended The Calhoun School from age 3 through 8th grade, where his mother teaches science.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calhoun_School

In 1896, The Calhoun School was founded by Laura Jacobi as the Jacobi School in a brownstone at 158–160 West 80th Street. Miss Jacobi came to this country from Germany with the help of her uncle, Dr. Abraham Jacobi, professor of pediatrics at New York Medical College and Columbia. Through her uncle and her aunt, Miss Jacobi was exposed to a progressive circle committed to women’s rights, community health and civil reform. Initially, Miss Jacobi began her program as a “brother-and-sister” school, counting among its first students the son and daughter of Franz Boas, one of the founders of American cultural anthropology. It gradually evolved into a girls school, attracting the daughters of socially prominent Jewish families—including Peggy Guggenheim, the children of the Morgenthaus and the Strausses. The school’s nonsectarian curriculum emphasized languages and history.

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i am a cynical bastard but i just dont think this guy fluked his way into this..they always seem to be selected..he ticks quite a few boxes when you dig deep..welcome to the billionaires club..

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http://rt.com/usa/terror-al-qaeda-pentagon-war-397/

Even after cutting off the head of al-Qaeda, the United States Department of Defense doesn’t believe an end to the war on terror is in sight. On Thursday, one Pentagon official predicted the mission against al-Qaeda could continue for another two decades.

Speaking to the Senate Armed Services early Thursday, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations Michael Sheehan said the Pentagon has no plans to pull out of its almost 12-year-old war overseas.

When asked for his take on how long the war on terror could go on for, Sheehan told lawmakers, “At least 10 to 20 years.”

According to US President Barack Obama, the last combat troops will move out of Afghanistan in 2014. If remarks from Sheehan and others are at all accurate, though, in reality the war could last through the 2030s.

Sheehan was being grilled by members of the Senate committee on Thursday over not just the future of the war, but what rules are in play to continue the operation. Congress granted then-President George W. Bush the power to go after al-Qaeda in 2001 by signing the Authorization to Use Military Force, a legislation that essentially gave the go-ahead to use America’s might by any means necessary to avenge the attacks of 9/11. Nearly 13 years later, though, some members of the Senate saw that the overly broad powers extended to the commander-in-chief through the AUMF are being used to justify a widening war that now has soldiers targeting insurgents in venue like Yemen and Somalia.

The scope of America’s counterterrorism program, Sheehan said, stretches “from Boston to the FATA,” referring to the region of Pakistan considered a hotbed of terrorism. Because of that widening arena, some senators said it’s time to rewrite the law.

“It has spread throughout North Africa, throughout the Maghreb,” Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) said during the hearing. “The situation’s changed dramatically.

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“The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous. Hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance. This new version is the past and no different past can ever have existed. In principle the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects and its object is not the victory over either Eurasia or East Asia, but to keep the very structure of society intact.”

- George Orwell

401

http://rt.com/usa/tornado-usa-midwest-deadly-535/

At least 51 casualties including children have been reported after a historic tornado swept through the Oklahoma City suburb of Moore, devastating hundreds of buildings including two schools. Meteorologists reported winds up to 200 miles per hour.

A large tornado touched down in Moore, Oklahoma, a suburb of Oklahoma City on Monday, causing catastrophic damage to several housing developments, and at least two schools in the area. Local television news deployed a helicopter to track the tornado as it moved through the area, and then began to survey the extensive destruction to the region.

Monday’s storm appeared to be the deadliest tornado since 2011, and one of the worst in the last 20 years according to The Atlantic. The town lies well in the center of “Tornado Alley,” an area running from north Texas to South Dakota and west of the Mississippi river, known for frequent and powerful tornado systems.

“The whole city looks like a debris field,” said Mayor Glenn Lewis of the city of Moore.

Officials say that 75 children and teachers took shelter at Plaza Towers Elementary in Moore, which was essentially flattened by the passing tornado, and was the site of a rescue effort for several hours after the storm had passed.

Winds from the tornado tore the roof off, and parents had to be kept back as it was too loud to hear screams for help. Several children were pulled out alive from the debris during the day, with officials reporting that teachers had shielded students with their own bodies.

Students in fourth, fifth and sixth grade were evacuated to a church, but students in lower grades had sheltered in place, KFOR reported. Several dozen children are thought to have been killed at Plaza Towers as rescue teams continued to sift through the remains of the structure.

Seven students at the elementary school were found drowned at the bottom of the wreckage Monday evening, and no additional survivors were expected according to local media at the scene.

Meanwhile, students at another local school, Briarwood Elementary, had been accounted for and moved to a safe location.

Moore was last hit hard by a tornado in 1999. That storm had the highest winds ever recorded near the earth’s surface. That storm’s winds were measured at 302 miles per hour, and left 36 people dead. 

The National Weather Service initially classified Monday’s storm as an EF4, the second-strongest type with winds of up to 200 mph. Local reporters who were present for the 1999 storm, however, believe that the damage caused by this tornado appears to be considerably worse.

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incredible scenes of destruction..and the most bizarre fact is that this has happened before in the very same place..

401

http://globalconflictanalysis.com/2013/05/top-ten-largest-militaries-in-the-world-by-expenditure/

While police forces are normally assigned to provide a nation’s internal security, militaries are responsible for a state’s external security. However, most countries are only financially capable of using their armed forces for self defense purposes, but the most powerful militaries in the world are able to deploy outside the traditional boundaries of the state in which they operate. This allows rich countries the ability to not only provide security to regions that are of interest, but to also spread influence and project power on an international scale.

This list is based on the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) Yearbook 2013 which includes a list on the world’s top 15 military spenders in 2012, based on current market exchange rates.

Global Conflict Analysis presents the Top Ten Largest Militaries in the World By Expenditure:

http://globalconflictanalysis.com/2013/05/top-ten-largest-militaries-in-the-world-by-expenditure/

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italy is number 10…seriously?

japan is number 5 but i thought they were a pacifist nation?

russia 3 china 2 and usa 1 of course..

401

http://www.environment.gov.au/education/

Sustainability education

Sustainability education develops skills, knowledge and values that promote behaviour in support of a sustainable environment. It is not confined to formal schooling. It also occurs in a wide range of non-formal education settings at work and at home.

Taking Action for the Future

Taking Action for the Future presents four case studies which demonstrate how Yarra Valley Water, the National Australia Bank, Bankstown City Council and Amcor have made successful change for sustainability.

Sustainability Curriculum Framework

Sustainability Curriculum Framework – a guide for curriculum developers and policy makers. The framework provides information and guidance on how education for sustainability may be effectively incorporated into school curriculum from Kindergarten to Year 10.

National Action Plan for Education for Sustainability

Living Sustainably: the Australian Government’s National Action Plan for Education for Sustainability. The aim of the plan is to equip all Australians with the knowledge and skills required to live sustainably.

United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005-2014)

Launched at the UN Headquarters in New York on 1 March 2005 with an address from UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005-2014) is now well under way.
More about the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development

Educating for a Sustainable Future – A National Environmental Education Statement for Australian Schools

The National Environmental Education Statement provides the first ever nationally agreed description of the nature and purpose of environmental education for sustainability through all years of schooling. It also highlights a range of approaches to quality teaching and school administration to enhance sustainability within schools and their communities.
Educating for a Sustainable Future: A National Environmental Education Statement for Australian Schools

***

http://www.environment.gov.au/education/decade/index.html

In December 2002, the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed the years from 2005 to 2014 the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD). Governments from around the world have been invited to strengthen their contribution to sustainability through a focus on education.

The Australian Government has responded to the DESD with a range of relevant national initiatives already under way. The DESD is supported in the Australian Government’s Second National Action Plan on Education for Sustainability - Living sustainably.

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sustainable, sustainability, sustainably..etc etc..get the picture?..its code for “global warming caused by man”..we told the readers this years ago..we see it everywhere every day..and its firmly entrenched in our schools..

this is UN backed..why am i not surprised?

401