Notorious hacker collectives AntiSec and Anonymous have hacked into 70-some law enforcement websites from around the United States, in what they say is retaliation for last month’s arrests of hackers around the world , reports the AP . The groups managed to snare “a massive amount of confidential information that is sure…
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French minister for overseas territories holds urgent talks in Paris after demonstrations outside Maré airport turn violent The French government has tried to calm tensions on the south Pacific archipelago of New Caledonia after four people died and 23 were injured in clashes during a protest at the high cost of local air travel. Two armed groups clashed on Saturday night outside the airport on Maré, a small island of 6,000 people, one of several that make up France’s exotic “overseas collectivity”. For more than 10 days, several local airports on the islands had been blockaded as protesters complained that the price of local flights had become extortionate. The protest was part of a wider anger at the growing divide between rich and poor. The local airline, Air Caledonie, warned that it was facing bankruptcy because of the demonstrations and that the tourist industry would be badly damaged. A “passengers’ collective” had barricaded Maré airport and blocked entry to a local village. On Saturday night, 300 people from the Ghuama district, whose chief, Nidoish Naisseline, is the airline’s chairman, tried to break up the protest. Violence ensued between the two groups of about 300 people each. Stones were thrown, then shots were fired and four young men were killed. The Agence France-Presse correspondent described people armed with hunting rifles and machetes, on roads lined with burnt-out cars. France’s high commissioner, Albert Dupuy, called it “a nightmare day”. The French Socialist party warned that with endemic unemployment for indigenous locals and a big divide between the rich and poor, New Caledonia was about to tip into an “explosion” of social unrest. The French minister for overseas territories, Marie-Luce Penchard, rushed back from holiday to hold urgent talks in Paris, announcing mediation by religious groups. She said the dispute was not just about air tickets, but also about land ownership on the island. Gendarmes were flown to Maré by helicopter to clear the airport barricades. The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, is expected to go ahead with his planned visit to New Caledonia in three weeks. His presidency has seen unrest in France’s overseas outposts. In 2009, after a six-week general strike over high prices and social inequality rocked Guadeloupe – the Caribbean island and French “overseas department” – Sarkozy promised a vast programme of aid measures but many feel they have yet to benefit. New Caledonia is an overseas “collectivity” rather than a fully-fledged part of France. A rise in pro-independence feeling among indigenous locals and resistance by some of the locally-born people of European descent has led to political tension. Earlier this year, there were four months of political instability and vacuum as the archipelago struggled to form a government. In the 1980s, violent unrest led France to send in paratroopers. A referendum on independence is expected to be held between 2014 and 2019. South Pacific Airline industry Air transport France Nicolas Sarkozy Angelique Chrisafis guardian.co.uk
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Click here to view this media The head of Standard & Poor’s sovereign ratings said Sunday that the agency may downgrade the U.S. again. “Given the economic and political situation in the U.S., which will we see, an upgrading back to AAA or further downgrades?” Fox News’ Chris Wallace asked David Beers. “We have a negative outlook on the rating and that means we think that the risk currently for the rating are to the downside,” Beers said. While explaining what the U.S. could do to get its AAA rating back, the S&P official mentioned entitlement cuts but ignored the agency’s call to raise revenues. “Does any compromise have to have entitlement reform and revenue increases to be credible?” Wallace wondered. “The key thing is, yes, entitlement reform is important because entitlement is the biggest — are the biggest component of spending and they are the part of spending where the cost pressures are greatest,” Beers replied. “The White House as you know is not happy with this decision and they have accused S&P of amateurism. They went through your numbers and found a $2 trillion overstatement of what the debt would be and when they pointed that out to you, you simply changed the rational and continued to downgrade the debt,” Wallace noted. “That is a complete misrepresentation of what happened,” Beers claimed. “Here we are talking about highly technical assumptions about projecting budget base lines far in the future. We made the motifications that we did after a conversation with the Treasury, it doesn’t change the fact that in our estimation, that even with the agreement of Congress and the administration this past week, that the underlying debt burden of the U.S. government is rising and will continue to rise, most likely, over the next decade.” “The haste with which S&P changed its principal rationale for action when presented with this error raise[s] fundamental questions about the credibility and integrity of S&P’s ratings action,” Treasury assistant secretary for economic policy John Bellows wrote last week . White House chief economic adviser Gene Sperling added that S&P’s actions “smacked of an institution starting with a conclusion and shaping any arguments to fit it.” “The magnitude of their error combined with their willingness to simply change on the spot their lead rationale in their press release once the error was pointed out was breathtaking,” he said. Beers told Wallace that he did not expect “that much impact” from the downgrade when the global markets open on Monday.
Continue reading …George Will Takes on Former Obama Administration Official for Calling Tea Partiers ‘Terrorists’
August 7, 2011 No Comment
As NewsBusters previously reported, former Obama administration car czar Steve Rattner last month called Tea Partiers terrorists on national television. On Sunday's “This Week,” George Will took Rattner on for making such an inflammatory statement (video follows with transcript and commentary): CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, HOST: People know that you have a debt crisis and you have to deal with it. The question is, and you, I think, I don't know whether you want to say this, but you called the Congressman an economic terrorist. STEVE RATTNER, MSNBC ECONOMIC ANALYST AND FORMER OBAMA ADMINISTRATION CAR CZAR: Not, not the Congressman personally. I did say that I thought those who essentially were trying to hold up and bring the U.S. to the brink of default without being reasonable in their compromise. Look, the President was willing to go more than halfway. He was willing to go 75 percent of the way in a package that would have both revenues… CONGRESSMAN JASON CHAFFETZ, (R-UTAH): No, but we… RATTNER: Wait a minute, let me finish, and spending cuts that would have achieved this $4 trillion grand bargain and would have perhaps averted this downgrade or certainly put us on a better path for fiscal responsibility. But you do have one group of people who are saying no tax increases, never, no how, when in fact the tax decreases under President Bush partly got us in this problem. If you take today’s one and a half trillion dollar deficit, a trillion of it is from excess spending. 400 billion of it is from the Bush tax cuts. Indeed. However, if we went back to the exact same outlays called for in the 2007 budget approved by a Republican Congress, we'd actually have a $200 billion surplus in fiscal 2012 based on OMB's projected tax receipts. If we adjusted 2007's spending for inflation, we'd only have a $43 billion deficit next year thereby totally avoiding S&P's downgrade without raising taxes one cent. But I digress: ROBERTS: The Standard & Poor's report, which, again, I would like to disassociate myself from, but it does say that one of the reasons that they think that the fiscal house will not be in order is because they think the Bush tax cuts will stay in forever and that they think the intransigence of Republicans on this line is one of the reasons that they have downgraded the credit rating. GEORGE WILL: All of the people comparing the Tea Party to suicide bombers, one of whom is Steve here… AMANPOUR: I don't think he said that, did he? WILL: Yes. RATTNER: No. ROBERTS: Terrorists are suicide bombers. WILL: I can read you the transcript from the morning show. RATTNER: I was there. I was there. WILL: I understand, I was watching. And so were we. As NewsBusters reported , here's what Rattner said on MSNBC's “Morning Joe” on July 29: RATTNER: You know, the problem with this is it's like a form of economic terrorism. I imagine these Tea Party guys are like strapped with dynamite, standing in the middle of Times Square at rush hour and saying, 'either you do it my way, or we're going to blow you up, ourselves up, and the whole country up with us.' So you tell me how those kinds of standoffs end. Sounds like Will has a better grasp of what Rattner said that morning, dontcha think? But I again digress: WILL: Anyway, what you, you do know that 95 House Democrats voted against raising the debt ceiling as compared to only 66 House Republicans. You do know that 26 Democratic Senators voted against raising the debt ceiling? Indeed. What liberals like Rattner have totally ignored was that if interfering with an agreement to raise the debt ceiling was an act of terrorism, Democrats in both chambers of Congress were far more guilty than Republicans. Alas, one would have to be an impartial journalist to figure that out, and such a thing really doesn't exist anymore – certainly not on MSNBC where Rattner contributes.
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Sanders, Sharpe, Faulk, Dent Enter Hall of Fame [HQ] Sanders joins HOF in style Sanders joins HOF in style 6/8/2011 Parisdice1565 says: You just knew that PrimeTime and Shannon Sharpe was gonna give amazing speeches…Marshall Faulk should be coachin or runnin a team soon…
Continue reading …Riots rocked London last night and into this morning leaving eight police officers injured as crowds threw rocks, burned buildings and cars, and looted area shops over a police shooting Thursday, reports the BBC . The violence followed peaceful protests around 5pm, when 300 people gathered at a Tottenham police station…
Continue reading …About 45,000 Verizon workers from the landline side of the telecom’s mid-Atlantic and northeast regions went on strike today, the first such walkout in 11 years, reports the Wall Street Journal . Verizon is seeking concessions from its two major unions in the face of declining landline revenues, thanks to…
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Day job just too darn terrestrial? Maybe you should score a gig at Boeing, which’ll apparently sling two of its very own into space come 2015. What’ll be their chariot? The company’s CST-100 — you know that spiffy capsule that can hurtle a lucky seven humans 100km into the dark abyss. Strapped to ULA’s Atlas V , the crew will follow two unmanned missions, eventually reaching the International Space Station. If that all goes to plan, commercial service will start in 2016. Now about those extra five seats… Continue reading Boeing’s CST-100 to shoot non-NASA astronauts into space by 2015 Boeing’s CST-100 to shoot non-NASA astronauts into space by 2015 originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 07 Aug 2011 12:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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Report in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine finds health service second only to Ireland for cost-effectiveness The NHS is one of the most cost-effective health systems in the developed world, according to a study (pdf) published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. The “surprising” findings show the NHS saving more lives for each pound spent as a proportion of national wealth than any other country apart from Ireland over 25 years. Among the 17 countries considered, the United States healthcare system was among the least efficient and effective. Researchers said that this contradicted assertions by the health secretary, Andrew Lansley, that the NHS needed competition and choice to become more efficient. “The government proposals to change the NHS are largely based on the idea that the NHS is less efficient and effective than other countries, especially the US,” said Professor Colin Pritchard, of Bournemouth University, who analysed a quarter of a century’s data from 1980. “The results question why we need a big set of health reform proposals … The system works well. Look at the US and you can see where choice and competition gets you. Pretty dismal results.” The study will be a blow for Lansley, who argues that patients should choose between competing hospital services and GPs. Pritchard’s last academic paper, which argued that surgeons were being distracted from frontline work by “unfunded” targets in the NHS, was used by Lansley to justify government reforms. Using the latest data from the World Health Organisation, the paper shows that although Labour’s tax-and-spend strategy for the NHS saw health spending rise to a record 9.3% of GDP, this was less than Germany with 10.7% or the US with 15%. Not only was the UK cheaper, says the paper, it saved more lives. The NHS reduced the number of adult deaths a million of the population by 3,951 a year – far better than the nearest comparable European countries. France managed 2,779 lives a year and Germany 2,395. This means, the paper says, that dramatic NHS improvements have led to a situation where that there are now 162,000 fewer deaths every year compared with 1980. The paper says the US suffers from a “relatively huge bureaucratic burden needed to monitor the costs, behaviour and risks of customers, as well as the immense legal costs required to control payment”. Looking at elderly patients, the difference was even more stark with the best performers – Ireland, the UK and New Zealand – having health systems that were three times more effective and efficient than the worst – Switzerland, Portugal and the US. Pritchard said that only Ireland’s position today would be significantly different – because its economy has shrunk. “I think Ireland would have slipped back today.” The paper also takes Lansley to task over his claims that “if UK cancer survival rates were at the European average, we know we would save 5,000 extra lives a year.” It says: “In terms of actual cancer mortality rates, rather than the more ambiguous ‘survival’ rates, the UK had better results … which appears to be linked to major additional funds going to cancer care.” Pritchard points out that even Adam Smith, the Scottish economist and father of market-based ideology, thought the state was “probably better” at health and education. “It’s naive to think that Lansley does not want more privatised health service. But there’s no evidence why it be better. There’s a lot to suggest it would be worse.” A Department of Health spokesman said that the paper was “mistaken to think that competition is an end in itself, or will necessarily increase the independent sector’s role in the NHS”. He added: “Under our modernisation plans we are improving choice for patients to drive up the quality of care and improve patient experience … We are investing an extra £12.5bn in the NHS to improve the quality of services and safeguard the NHS for future generations.” ENDS NHS Health policy Liberal-Conservative coalition Health Andrew Lansley Conservatives Randeep Ramesh guardian.co.uk
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Poll shows 77-year-old broadcaster, best known for the Late Late Show, is hugely popular with voters For decades, he has played the part of Ireland’s on-air confessor, listening sympathetically as guests shared their most intimate stories with him – and, of course, thousands of viewers. In a somewhat surprising turn of events, the talkshow host Gay Byrne looks likely to be the Irish people’s choice for president. Now that Senator David Norris has dropped out of the race, pressure is building on Byrne to launch a bid for the presidency. The silver-haired host of the Late Late Show said he would give “serious consideration” to running if offered a nomination. Norris, who is openly gay, dropped his candidacy after it emerged he had used Irish parliamentary notepaper to write to the Israeli authorities pleading clemency for an ex-lover found guilty of the statutory rape of a 15-year-old boy. Ireland’s main opposition party Fianna Fáil said Byrne would “make an excellent candidate”. An opinion poll in the Dublin Sunday Independent put Byrne way ahead of all other candidates on 34%. The paper claimed support for Norris, who was the most popular candidate, had switched to Byrne. Byrne told the paper: “I would have to consider it seriously … But I would have to consult with ‘she who must be obeyed’ because any mention of presidency would mean a huge disruption to our lives.” The 77-year-old presenter, who is still making programmes for the Irish state broadcaster, RTE, would need the backing of 20 parliamentarians or nominations from several county councils before putting his name forward. The potential entry of one of the most famous faces on Irish TV, known affectionately as Gaybo, has re-ignited interest in October’s election. Several generations of voters have grown up watching Byrne, who has helped break social taboos in Ireland since the late 1960s. Issues such as sex before marriage and homosexuality were openly discussed for the first time on his hit TV and radio shows. It is often said that sex was only introduced into Ireland once The Late Late Show started. Ireland Europe Television Henry McDonald guardian.co.uk
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