Thousands of fish die as Midwest streams heat up
LINCOLN, NEBRASKA, USA - Thousands of fish are dying in the Midwest as the hot, dry summer dries up rivers and causes water temperatures to climb in some spots to nearly 100 degrees. About 40,000 shovelnose sturgeon were killed in Iowa last week as water temperatures reached 97 degrees.
Nebraska fishery officials said they've seen thousands of dead sturgeon, catfish, carp, and other species in the Lower Platte River, including the endangered pallid sturgeon. And biologists in Illinois said the hot weather has killed tens of thousands of large and smallmouth bass and channel catfish and is threatening the population of the greater redhorse fish, a state-endangered species.
So many fish died in one Illinois lake that the carcasses clogged an intake screen near a power plant, lowering water levels to the point that the station had to shut down one of its generators. "It's something I've never seen in my career, and I've been here for more than 17 years," said Mark Flammang, a fisheries biologist with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. "I think what we're mainly dealing with here are the extremely low flows and this unparalleled heat."
Deadly India car factory riot sounds alarm bells for industry
INDIA - Hiding in his office near the Indian capital as workers armed with iron bars and car parts rampaged through the factory, Maruti Suzuki supervisor Raj Kumar spent two terrified hours trying to comprehend the warzone his workplace had become.
By the end of the day, one of his colleagues had been burnt to death and dozens wounded, many with broken bones, as a long-running struggle between the shop floor and management exploded at a factory racked by mistrust.
While police investigate and the carmaker counts its mounting losses, the July 18 clash has rattled corporate India and shone a light on outdated and rigid labor laws in a country where cheap labor drives manufacturing and draws foreign investment. High inflation, a shortage of skilled labor and rising aspirations have emboldened workers' demands.
"There was always a strong sense of unease," Kumar, 43, told Reuters as he stood outside the locked factory gates more than a week after the riot in the industrial town of Manesar. "We are living in fear... The kind of violence these guys showed was unbelievable."
Pre-Crime Software Moves One Step Closer to Reality
USA - The era of Big Data is upon us. Major corporations in the areas of advertising, social media, defense contracting, and computing are forming partnerships with government agencies to compile virtual dossiers on all humans.
This data integration initiative is taking place across the board in our largest federal agencies and departments as part of an Office of Science and Technology outline (PDF) that includes a $200 million upfront investment, as well as a $250 million annual investment by military departments into human-computer interaction.
The $200 million in the Obama program will be spread among the National Institutes of Health, Department of Defense, National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, the US Geological survey, and DARPA to see that the information they collect will move quickly “from data to decisions.”
Seeing the vast potential of Big Data management and applications, Oblong Industries – the actual creator of the software that appeared in the movie Minority Report, (known by its propriety name g-speak) - is now offering a commercial version in the marketplace. An AFP article posted at Raw Story is quick to point out that the software has been stripped of its “pre-crime” detection analytics. But should this blanket dismissal by a mainstream news agency be comforting in light of stated US government goals that seek to turn science fiction into science reality?
How the ECB Plans to Use Its Bazooka
EUROPE - The European Central Bank has come up with a new plan to buy the bonds of debt-ridden countries in a bid to fight the euro crisis. Under the new approach, the ECB would only intervene if governments commit to reforms. But experts criticize the plan as dangerous and undemocratic.
Until recently, Mario Draghi was regarded as a man who understood the markets. The head of the European Central Bank (ECB) worked at investment bank Goldman Sachs for years, and he had studied under such renowned economists as Paul Samuelson and Franco Modigliani. At receptions in Frankfurt, the German banking capital, the elegant Italian was as adept at discussing the latest accounting guidelines as he was at talking about golf handicaps. He was known in the financial world as "Super Mario."
That reputation has been tarnished since last week. Shortly after Draghi began a highly anticipated press conference last Thursday, following a meeting of the ECB Governing Council, stock prices plunged and there was talk of "frustration," "irritation" and "cold showers" in the world's financial centers. A broker on New York's Wall Street railed that the ECB chief had treated investors like a bunch of "idiots."
In fact, [Mr] Draghi had done the worst thing a central banker can do to traders: He had disappointed their expectations. Stock and bond prices had been going up for a week after [Mr] Draghi had suggested, at a conference in London, that the ECB would soon be buying up Southern European sovereign bonds on a large scale once again.
Debt crisis: live
USA - Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, has said that official economic data may mask the "struggle" that many Americans face, as Germany's foreign minister warns politicians "not to talk Europe apart".
Patience with Athens Nearing an End in Germany
GERMANY - Even as Greece's leading creditors expressed satisfaction with a new agreement aimed at labor market reforms, patience in Germany is running out. The tone among politicians allied with Chancellor Merkel is growing sharper. Furthermore, there are new indications that the euro zone's biggest paymaster, Germany, is rapidly losing its appetite for footing the bill and that Chancellor Angela Merkel will have difficulties keeping her coalition together in the face of difficult currency challenges to come.
Monti Calls for More Crisis-Fighting Urgency
ITALY - Italy’s Prime Minister Mario Montiwarned of a potential breakup of Europe without greater urgency in efforts to lower government borrowing costs, as a standoff over European Central Bank help for Italy and Spain hardened. Monti, in an interview with Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine published yesterday, said that disagreements within the 17-nation euro area are detracting from the policy response to the debt crisis and undermining the future of the European Union.
Euro zone action inches forward in game of chicken
EUROPE - The euro zone is inching towards a new plan to tackle its debt crisis in a three-dimensional game of chicken among all the main players. The European Central Bank's heavily qualified offer last week to step in and buy bonds to bring down the borrowing costs of Spain and Italy was the latest gambit in this game. Each of the main protagonists - the central bank, the countries under pressure, EU paymaster Germany, and governments already under a bailout program - is angling for others to make the first move and carry the brunt of the cost.
London 2012 Olympics: 'biblical storm' lashes capital
LONDON, UK - Huge thunderstorms have swept across London as torrential downpours threaten several Olympic events ahead of another potential gold rush for British athletes. The “biblical storm” lashed swathes of the capital this morning as Britain’s wintry weather returned with a vengeance. The torrential rain left scores of homes flooded in North Somerset following heavy rain, which also caused a landslip.
Saudi invites Iran for Muslim summit
SAUDI ARABIA - Saudi King Abdullah invited Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for an extraordinary summit of Muslim leaders to be held this month in the holy city of Mecca, state news agency SPA reported Sunday. The Saudi monarch "sent a written letter to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad inviting him to attend the extraordinary Islamic solidarity meeting which will be held in Mecca" in mid-August, SPA reported. Tensions have been running high between the Sunni-dominated kingdom and Shiite Iran as both regional powers had taken opposite stances on the uprisings in Bahrain and Syria.
Greece to deport 1,600 immigrants
GREECE - Greek police say more than 1,600 illegal immigrants will be deported following a major crackdown in Athens in recent days. More than 6,000 people have been detained, though most were released. Public Order Minister Nikos Dendias defended the crackdown. He said Greece's economic plight meant it could not afford an "invasion of immigrants". He called the immigration issue a "bomb at the foundations of the society and of the state". "Unless we create the proper structure to handle immigration, then we will fall apart," he said.
Chemo 'undermines itself' through rogue response
USA - Chemotherapy can undermine itself by causing a rogue response in healthy cells, which could explain why people become resistant, a study suggests. The treatment loses effectiveness for a significant number of patients with secondary cancers. Writing in Nature Medicine, US experts said chemo causes wound-healing cells around tumours to make a protein that helps the cancer resist treatment. Around 90% of patients with solid cancers, such as breast, prostate, lung and colon, that spread - metastatic disease - develop resistance to chemotherapy.
Syria Prime Minister Riad Hijab defects
SYRIA - Syrian Prime Minister Riad Hijab has defected from President Bashar al-Assad's government to join "the revolution", his spokesman says. Mr Hijab was appointed less than two months ago and his departure is the highest-profile defection since the uprising began in March 2011. State-run TV said he had been sacked. Riad Hijab, who is said to have fled with his family, is a Sunni Muslim from the Deir al-Zour area of eastern Syria which has been caught up in the revolt.
German politicians concerned about bigger role for ESM
GERMANY - Politicians in Germany's ruling centre-right coalition have expressed renewed concerns about an increased role for the euro zone's permanent bailout fund, which is at the centre of a court case after the German parliament approved it in basic form.
German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle told Germany's weekly Focus magazine he was opposed both to broadening the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), the euro zone's permanent bailout mechanism, and to stepping up purchases of European sovereign bonds.
"I can't imagine the Bundestag lower house of parliament would give a majority to a policy of unlimited joint liability for Germany. As an MP I certainly couldn't agree to that," he said in an advance copy of the article due to appear on Sunday.
Giving Europe's permanent ESM rescue fund a banking license, as called for by Italy and France, would allow it to tap the European Central Bank for funding so it could intervene more authoritatively in bond markets if needed.
Only 24.6 Percent Of All Jobs In The United States Are Good Jobs
USA - Do you want to know why it seems like good jobs are very rare in the United States today? It is because good jobs are very rare in the United States today. According to a paper that was just released by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, only 24.6 percent of all American jobs qualified as “good jobs” in 2010.
Over the past several decades, there has been increasing pressure on corporations to reduce expenses and increase corporate profits. One of the biggest expenses that any corporation faces is labor. Large corporations all over the globe are in an endless race to gain a competitive advantage by pushing labor costs as low as possible. Sometimes this is done by using technology. Computers, automation, robotics and other forms of technology have eliminated millions of jobs in the United States and those jobs are never coming back.
Millions of other jobs have been eliminated by offshoring. In our globalized economy, American workers have been merged into one giant labor pool with everyone else. That makes it very tempting for big corporations to move jobs from areas where workers are very expensive (such as the United States) to areas of the world where it is legal to pay slave labor wages. When big corporations do this, corporate profits go up, but the number of good jobs in the United States goes down.
As a result, there is increased competition for the jobs that remain in the United States and this drives down wages. Meanwhile, the cost of living just keeps going up. So millions of American families have fallen into poverty in recent years, and millions of others have gone deep into debt in an attempt to survive. This dynamic is absolutely shredding the middle class in the United States.
Disclaimer:
The views expressed in this section are not our own, unless specifically stated, but are provided to highlight what may prove to be prophetically relevant material appearing in the media.
