Last post of the year? Maybe. Best? Maybe.

"As if Things Weren't Bad Enough, Russian Professor Predicts End of U.S.
In Moscow, Igor Panarin's Forecasts Are All the Rage; America 'Disintegrates' in 2010

Prof. Panarin, 50 years old, is not a fringe figure. A former KGB analyst, he is dean of the Russian Foreign Ministry's academy for future diplomats. He is invited to Kremlin receptions, lectures students, publishes books, and appears in the media as an expert on U.S.-Russia relations.

...A polite and cheerful man with a buzz cut, Mr. Panarin insists he does not dislike Americans. But he warns that the outlook for them is dire.
"There's a 55-45% chance right now that disintegration will occur," he says. "One could rejoice in that process," he adds, poker-faced. "But if we're talking reasonably, it's not the best scenario -- for Russia." Though Russia would become more powerful on the global stage, he says, its economy would suffer because it currently depends heavily on the dollar and on trade with the U.S.

...Mr. Panarin posits, in brief, that mass immigration, economic decline, and moral degradation will trigger a civil war next fall and the collapse of the dollar. Around the end of June 2010, or early July, he says, the U.S. will break into six pieces -- with Alaska reverting to Russian control.

He based the forecast on classified data supplied to him by FAPSI analysts, he says. He predicts that economic, financial and demographic trends will provoke a political and social crisis in the U.S. When the going gets tough, he says, wealthier states will withhold funds from the federal government and effectively secede from the union. Social unrest up to and including a civil war will follow. The U.S. will then split along ethnic lines, and foreign powers will move in.

California will form the nucleus of what he calls "The Californian Republic," and will be part of China or under Chinese influence. Texas will be the heart of "The Texas Republic," a cluster of states that will go to Mexico or fall under Mexican influence. Washington, D.C., and New York will be part of an "Atlantic America" that may join the European Union. Canada will grab a group of Northern states Prof. Panarin calls "The Central North American Republic." Hawaii, he suggests, will be a protectorate of Japan or China, and Alaska will be subsumed into Russia.

...The professor says he's convinced that people are taking his theory more seriously. People like him have forecast similar cataclysms before, he says, and been right. He cites French political scientist Emmanuel Todd. Mr. Todd is famous for having rightly forecast the demise of the Soviet Union -- 15 years beforehand. "When he forecast the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1976, people laughed at him," says Prof. Panarin." LINK

Boom?

"Yellowstone National Park was jostled by a host of small earthquakes for a third straight day Monday, and scientists watched closely to see whether the more than 250 tremors were a sign of something bigger to come.

Swarms of small earthquakes happen frequently in Yellowstone, but it's very unusual for so many earthquakes to happen over several days, said Robert Smith, a professor of geophysics at the University of Utah.

"They're certainly not normal," Smith said. "We haven't had earthquakes in this energy or extent in many years." LINK

Doomed. Sooner!

"The United States faces the possibility of much more rapid climate change by the end of the century than previous studies have suggested, according to a new report led by the U.S. Geological Survey.
The survey -- which was commissioned by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program and issued this month -- expands on the 2007 findings of the United Nations Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change. Looking at factors such as rapid sea ice loss in the Arctic and prolonged drought in the Southwest, the new assessment suggests that earlier projections may have underestimated the climatic shifts that could take place by 2100.
...In one of the report's most worrisome findings, the agency estimates that in light of recent ice sheet melting, global sea level rise could be as much as four feet by 2100. The IPCC had projected a sea level rise of no more than 1.5 feet by that time, but satellite data over the past two years show the world's major ice sheets are melting much more rapidly than previously thought. " LINK

the horror.... lol

Ok, so every third article everywhere right now is about the recession/depression whatever, and how to be thrifty, crafty and wise, so there's a LOT of terrible ideas floating around, but this might be the worst.
From the crackpots at CNN, offering suggestions for budget holiday decorating comes this shocker:
"Tree topper
Crown your tree with this fun topper: Just ball up aluminum foil and weave silver ribbon in and out of the foil."

Sadly, there was no accompanying picture. One can only dream of it.

Acorns?

This is bizarre and horrible and fills one with foreboding.

" Up and down the East Coast, residents and naturalists alike have been scratching their heads this autumn over a simple question: Where are all the acorns?

In far-flung pockets of northern Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and other states, scientists have found no acorns whatsoever.
"I can't think of any other year like this," said Alonso Abugattas, director of the Long Branch Nature Center in Arlington, Virginia.

..."WHAT IS GOING ON?" posted a resident of Maplewood, New Jersey. "Now we are finding dead squirrels! SHOULD WE ALL BE CONCERNED?"
Not necessarily, naturalists say. Last year Garris reported a bumper crop of acorns, which scientists say may be one clue to this year's scarcity. Virginia extension agent Adam Downing said acorn production runs in cycles, so a lean year is normal after a year with a big crop.
"It fits with the physiology of seed reproduction. The trees are exhausted, energy wise, from last year," Downing said.
But even he is surprised at the complete absence of nuts in parts of Virginia.
"There are plenty of acorns in most of the state, but zero acorns in some pockets," he said." LINK

Hell in a handbasket. Ayup.

Well, just because I haven't had time to breathe doesn't mean that the Doom has slowed down. Au contraire- the world is getting weirder, scarier, and darker faster than anyone could keep up, let alone me in my own weird mental state (kind of like Nebraska but a little more desolate and with more vicious wolverines chasing me).

So. To sum up:

Cocaine-fueled terrorists took Mumbai for a few days, Americans ignored it and ate turkey and trampled a part-time Wal-mart employe to death in their frenzy to buy more crap made in China, and now residents of Kashmir are worried about potential retaliation. "I have asked my children to pay attention and be vigilant if shelling starts," said one woman.

Riots in Nigeria killed at least 400, and Thailand is "Feeling like a country on brink of civil war".

In economic news, Ford would like 9 billion dollars please, to stay in business, and we are officially in a recession. Bush is "sorry" that the financial crisis is hurting Americans.

As we turn to the environment, Venice is so flooded that fools are surfing in Saint Mark's Square, the Wilkins Ice Shelf is breaking off of Antarctica,
and the UN Comittee on Climate Change just warned ""Further expansion in the same style will generate global threats of really great intensity - huge droughts and floods, cyclones with increasingly more destructive power, pandemics of tropical disease, dramatic decline of biodiversity, increasing ocean levels," said Mr Nowicki.
"All these can cause social and even armed conflict and migration of people at an unprecedented scale."

So.

Happy Tuesday!

Under 8000.

hot diggity damn.
And this makes me shudder-
"Pros Say: Get Used to Idea of Dow at 6,000

Stocks were down heavily Thursday, following Wall Street's overnight selloff. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at a 5-1/2-year low, below 8,000, as a U.S. bailout of the auto industry appeared unlikely, spurring further economy fears. CNBC's experts believe the blue-chip index will fall a lot further before year end." LINK

or if that's too cheery for you, how about this one;
"Stocks fell in Europe and Asia on Thursday, a day after a withering sell-off on Wall Street sent shares to their lowest close since 2003.
“The problem is there is absolutely no silver lining visible,” said Arjuna Mahendran, head of Asian investment strategy Asia at HSBC Private Bank in Singapore. “The financial crisis may now be at its tail end and we are now in a second phase where corporate distress is the key issue. A third phase may come early next year, when emerging markets will really struggle as the crisis widens and exports continue to shrink.” LINK

I am so so sorry.

" Polar bears are starving, drowning, resorting to cannibalism " LINK

Christ.
I don't even want to breathe.

Right now- earthquake off Indonesia. Tsunami warning.

7.7.

LINK

California burning. Again.

" Firefighters on Sunday picked through the devastation wrought by wildfires in two counties on Sunday while struggling to contain another monstrous fire that erupted suddenly in Orange County Saturday. The flames destroyed hundreds of homes and forced more than 10,000 people along the southern coast to evacuate.
...Firefighters were still trying to beat back ferocious wildfires in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara but were beginning to contain them. In the San Fernando Valley, there was fear that as workers sifted through the rubble of a trailer park that was quickly destroyed, an untold number of bodies might turn up. " link

That freaking mud volcano still going, 2 years later. Gov't gives up.

I can't believe this is still going on! In 2006, I posted about this bad boy a lot. Dang. They tried to "choke it" by dropping in a lot of concrete- one idea, that has, unsurprisingly, failed.

Well, it looks like the Indonesian government is giving up on it.

"Indonesia's vice president said on Friday the government had given up all hope of halting a mud volcano in East Java which has displaced thousands of people, hurt businesses, and destroyed the local environment.
The disastrous mud volcano, which started erupting in May 2006 near Indonesia's second-biggest city of Surabaya, has proved a huge problem for the government.
The hot, noxious mud has displaced more than 50,000 people, submerged homes, factories and schools and is now flowing at a rate of more than 100,000 cubic meters a day. Various attempts to halt the flow have all failed." LINK

We're all going to die. Sooner."Brown clouds dim Asia, threaten world's food"

"Thick brown clouds of soot, particles and chemicals stretching from the Persian Gulf to Asia threaten health and food supplies in the world, the U.N. reported Thursday, citing what it called the newest threat to the global environment.
The regional haze, known as atmospheric brown clouds, contributes to glacial melting, reduces sunlight and helps create extreme weather conditions that impact agricultural production, according to the report commissioned by the U.N. Environment Program.
The huge plumes have darkened 13 megacities in Asia — including Beijing, Shanghai, Bangkok, Cairo, Mumbai and New Delhi — sharply "dimming" the amount of light by as much as 25 percent in some places." LINK

Reptiles at Yellowstone, headed out.

Yeah, we're still so freaking doomed. Don't take my relative silence lately for an surge of optomism!

"Amphibian populations at Yellowstone - the world's oldest national park - are in steep decline, a major study shows.
The authors link this to the drying out of wetlands where the animals live and breed, which is in turn being driven by long-term climate change.
The results, reported in the journal PNAS, suggest that climate warming has already disrupted one of the best-protected ecosystems on Earth.
..."Snow pack during the winter is decreasing - which other studies have documented - and the regional aquifer is drying up as a result of these large-scale climate changes.
"These ponds are changing, the environment is changing, the landscape is drying up and the amphibians no longer have a place to breed. It's disturbing."
Amphibian populations are in crisis worldwide: pollution, diseases such as chytrid fungus and rana virus, invasive species, UV radiation and habitat destruction all contribute to the problem. " LINK

Oh Christ oh christ oh christ.

This is like the fucking end of days.

Asia is TANKING right now.

This is beyond that 'interesting times' curse bullshit.

This is unreal.

LINK to NYT

This says so much.

"People filing new claims for unemployment benefits by phone face longer wait times due to a spike in call volume.
The average wait to speak with a customer service representative at the state unemployment division on Monday, the center’s busiest day of the week, was 28 minutes, compared with 15 minutes last year, Raymond A. Filippone, assistant director, income support, for the Rhode Island Department of Labor and Training said yesterday.
The state’s caseload of unemployment claims, including new and continuing claims, has nearly doubled in the last year, to 21,000 cases, up from about 11,500 during the same time last year, Filippone said. The volume of new unemployment claims, he said, is up 12.2 percent from a year ago.
Rhode Island’s unemployment rate in August jumped to 8.5 percent, the second-highest in the country after Michigan, where the jobless rate was 8.9 percent. Rhode Island’s unemployment rolls in August swelled to 48,800, the highest level on record." LINK

And on and on and on and on......

"Asian stocks remained in a sea of red on Wednesday as the sell-off in equities continued unabated for the fifth straight session.
Markets in Tokyo and Hong Kong dipped more than 5 percent, and Jakarta tumbled 9 percent, after another gloomy session on Wall Street that saw the Dow Jones industrial average notch its biggest five-day points fall ever.
The Nikkei 225 average lost 5 percent and the broader Topix tumbled 4.9 percent by mid-day as investors could not shake off fears that the global economy would slide into recession." LINK

Amid the horror, more horror.

This has been the kind of day to really depress a girl.

This story is everywhere today, but was mostly buried by the global economic collapse-frenzy.

This is the kind of shit that makes you lose your mind. And meanwhile that block, that stone, that less than senseless thing Palin has been shooting wolves from helicopters. Seriously, can anyone not be freaking out?

Article chosen from the Washington Post, because they are the least dramatic version of this I can find, so no one can say I've posted this for drama- if you want more sources for this, hit here.

"25% of Wild Mammal Species Face Extinction
Global Assessment Paints 'Bleak Picture,' Scientists Say, and Figure of Those at Risk Could Be Higher

At least a quarter of the world's wild mammal species are at risk of extinction, according to a comprehensive global survey released here Monday.

The new assessment -- which took 1,700 experts in 130 countries five years to complete -- paints "a bleak picture," leaders of the project wrote in a paper being published in the journal Science. The overview, made public at the quadrennial World Conservation Congress of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), covers all 5,487 wild species identified since 1500. It is the most thorough tally of land and marine mammals since 1996.

"Mammals are definitely declining, and the driving factors are habitat destruction and over-harvesting," said Jan Schipper, the paper's lead writer and the IUCN's global mammals assessment coordinator. The researchers concluded that 25 percent of the mammal species for which they had sufficient data are threatened with extinction, but Schipper added that the figure could be as high as 36 percent because information on some species is so scarce.

Land and marine mammals face different threats, the scientists said, and large mammals are more vulnerable than small ones. For land species, habitat loss and hunting represent the greatest danger, while marine mammals are more threatened by unintentional killing by pollution, ship strikes and being caught in fishing nets." LINK

Wow, so freaking screwed, we are.

This from the normally calm Telegraph.


"We face extreme danger. Unless there is immediate intervention on every front by all the major powers acting in concert, we risk a disintegration of global finance within days. Nobody will be spared, unless they own gold bars.
...During the past week, we have tipped over the edge, into the middle of the abyss. Systemic collapse is in full train. The Netherlands has just rushed through a second, more sweeping nationalisation of Fortis. Ireland and Greece have had to rescue all their banks. Iceland is facing an Argentine denouement.
The US commercial paper market is closed. It shrank $95bn last week, and has lost $208bn in three weeks. The interbank lending market has seized up. There are almost no bids. It is a ghost market. Healthy companies cannot roll over debt. Some will have to sack staff today to stave off default.
...We are fast approaching the point of no return. The only way out of this calamitous descent is “shock and awe” on a global scale, and even that may not be enough.
Drastic rate cuts would be a good start. Central bankers still paralysed by a misplaced fear of inflation – whether in Europe, Britain, or the US – have become a public menace and should be held to severe account by our democracies. The imminent and massive danger is now self-feeding debt deflation.
The lesson of the 1930s is that any country trying to reflate in isolation will be punished. The crisis will ricochet from one economy to another until every one is crippled. We are seeing it play again in this drama as our leaders fail to rise above their narrow, parochial agendas." LINK

Even more dramatic than Ambrose Evans-Pritchard 's semi-hysterical editorial are the comments left by readers, which are entertaininly insane and also kind of worrisome at the same time.



"Barack Obama brings to the Youth of America Hope and for America and the World, Peace and economic Prosperity. Just believe in Him and follow His teachings. A warning to those who go against Him, you will be cast away. "


"there will be martial law in the usa soon. the illuminati has planned it for years, but the yanks i have been talking to willfight to the death you evil bastards.the nwo will fail bush, cheney etc you have been warned"

"This is the beginning of the End Times. Just wait and see. The "solution" to this problem will be global governance and an end to money as we know it. If you don't take the mark, you will not be able to buy or sell."

Damn, I'm glad my fellow world citizens are so level-headed and reasonable. This should all work out fine.

Um, yeah, we're screwed.

WTF. Members of Congress told to vote for the bailout or there would be martial law.

The party at the end of the world.

"This time we will drink extra hard to make sure we forget the economic crisis too,' says Gunnghilder"

I totally want to hang out with Gunnghilder. If Iceland is crashing as hard as this article makes it sound, I might even be able to visit someday- I've wanted to go there for as long as I can remember, but ouch, so expensive. Although at this rate, no one's money will be worth anything soon. Seriously scary stuff.

"'What can we do? Its difficult times but we've spent all day talking about it, watching the news getting worse and worse. We had to go out and be with friends. Maybe it's like the party at the end of the world,' says Egill Tomasson, 32, sitting in the Kaffeebarinn bar.
Iceland is on the brink of collapse. Inflation and interest rates are raging upwards. The krona, Iceland's currency, is in freefall and is rated just above those of Zimbabwe and Turkmenistan. One of the country's three independent banks has been nationalised, another is asking customers for money, and the discredited government and officials from the central bank have been huddled behind closed doors for three days with still no sign of a plan. International banks won't send any more money and supplies of foreign currency are running out.

On Friday the queues at the banks were huge, as people moved savings into the most secure accounts. Yesterday people were buying up supplies of olive oil and pasta after a supermarket spokesman announced on Friday night that they had no means of paying the foreign currency advances needed to import more foodstuffs." LINK

Interview with the Somali pirates. They didn't say "Yarrgghh, matey" and they like spaghetti.

“We just saw a big ship,” the pirates’ spokesman, Sugule Ali, told The New York Times. “So we stopped it.”

...In a 45-minute-long interview, Mr. Sugule expounded on everything from what the pirates want — “just money” — to why they were doing this — “to stop illegal fishing and dumping in our waters” — to what they eat — rice, meat, bread, spaghetti, “you know, normal human-being food.”
He said that so far, in the eyes of the world, the pirates had been misunderstood. “We don’t consider ourselves sea bandits,” he said. “We consider sea bandits those who illegally fish in our seas and dump waste in our seas and carry weapons in our seas. We are simply patrolling our seas. Think of us like a coast guard.” LINK

Well, then. That certainly clears it up.

Now, that's a headline. "Panic grips world markets". Everybody panic?

"Panic grips world's markets
Shock as American rescue plan rejected on a day of nationalisations and bail-outs
The US government's $700bn bail-out of the banking industry collapsed yesterday as Congress defied the White House by voting down the plan, sending Wall Street stocks plummeting and spreading shockwaves through the global economy.
As alarm mounted on Wall Street about the stability of the financial system, the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged by 777 points to 10,365 - its biggest percentage fall for seven years and its worst drop ever in terms of points.
Peter Morici, professor of business at the University of Maryland, said: "Things are going to get so bad something will have to be done in the next few weeks. Banks will sink, credit markets will seize, the economy will go into something much worse than a recession."" LINK

Such cheeky pirates!

Because looking at the collapse of the bailout talks and the subsequent economic meltdown is a wee bit too stressful, I'm watching the pirates-with-battle-tanks. Their demands seem pretty reasonable, actually- $35 million doesn't seem like a lot for what they have.

"Somali pirates in a hijacked ship carrying more than 30 battle tanks were steaming toward a notorious pirate den on Saturday, and they vowed not to release the ship until a $35 million ransom was paid, Somali and Kenyan officials said.
Mr. Mohamed said that while the cargo in this case was extremely unusual — 33 Soviet-designed T-72 tanks and a large supply of ammunition and grenade launchers, all intended for the Kenyan military — the tactics were pretty typical.
“These guys just want the money,” he said.
He predicted that the pirates would reduce their ransom demand to $1 million to $2 million, though Ukrainian officials have not said whether they will pay any ransom at all. " LINK

Great, now the pirates have tanks. What a fantastic day.

"KIEV, Ukraine (AP) -- The Foreign Ministry says pirates have seized a Ukrainian-operated ship off Somalia.

...The ministry had no information on the ship's cargo. But the Interfax news agency cited an unnamed source as saying the ship was loaded with about 30 T-72 tanks and spare parts for them." LINK

A beautiful, beautiful post from a great blog.

A Dismal Science is pretty great.

"It's a beautiful, black mountain of waste, greed, and debt. We haven't even begun feeling what liquefying that is going to feel like, and already the masses are restless. This is more than unwinding Bush's bubble. This is setting the national financial clock back to the 80's, when the credit boom began. Maybe all the way back to 1934, when the modern financial system last began anew.

Hell of a time to be alive." LINK to A Dismal Science

Well holy mackerel. WaMu is out, and McCain fucked the bailout.

"A rescue for the U.S. financial system unraveled late Thursday amid accusations Republican presidential candidate John McCain scuppered the deal,
and Washington Mutual was closed by U.S. authorities and its assets sold in America's biggest ever bank failure.

As negotiations over an
unprecedented $700 billion bailout to restore credit markets degenerated into chaos, the largest U.S. savings and loan bank was taken over by authorities and its deposits auctioned off. U.S. stock futures fell by more than 1 percent." LINK

Keeping an eye on this.

"The Northeast has been put on alert for potential tropical trouble this weekend. The low churning over the Dominican Republic has the potential to trek northward, then curve into the Northeast early Saturday as a powerful hurricane.

It must be stressed that this scenario is anything but certain. The path of the low will become clearer once it develops tropically and the low off the Carolina coastline takes shape. The latter low could keep the low now in the Dominican Republic over the open waters of the western Atlantic." LINK

Hot damn.

"The FBI is investigating Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers and AIG - and their executives - as part of a broad look into possible mortgage fraud, sources with knowledge of the investigation told CNN Tuesday.

The sources would not speak on the record because the investigation is ongoing.

FBI spokesman Special Agent Richard Kelko had no comment on that information, but said that 26 firms were currently under investigation as part of the bureau's mortgage fraud inquiry.

Earlier this month, FBI director Robert Mueller told Congress that 1,400 individual real estate lenders, brokers and appraisers were now under investigation in addition to two dozen corporations." LINK

Tent cities during an economic disaster? You don't say.

"In hard times, tent cities rise across the country
Since foreclosure mess, homeless advocates report rise in encampments

Within weeks, more than 150 people were living in tents big and small, barely a foot apart in a patch of dirt slated to be a parking lot for a campus of shelters Reno is building for its homeless population. Like many other cities, Reno has found itself with a "tent city" — an encampment of people who had nowhere else to go.

From Seattle to Athens, Ga., homeless advocacy groups and city agencies are reporting the most visible rise in homeless encampments in a generation.
Nearly 61 percent of local and state homeless coalitions say they've experienced a rise in homelessness since the foreclosure crisis began in 2007, according to a report by the National Coalition for the Homeless. The group says the problem has worsened since the report's release in April, with foreclosures mounting, gas and food prices rising and the job market tightening." LINK

So put on a happy face!

No you can't have a house. Not yours!

This is one I'm just not sure what I think about.

"Some Ike victims may not be allowed to rebuild
Little-known state law could put Texas beach home owners in a bind

By MICHAEL GRACZYK and CAIN BURDEAU, Associated Press Writers Thu Sep 18, 6:46 PM ET

GALVESTON, Texas - Hundreds of people whose beachfront homes were wrecked by Hurricane Ike may be barred from rebuilding under a little-noticed Texas law. And even those whose houses were spared could end up seeing them condemned by the state.
Now here's the saltwater in the wound: It could be a year before the state tells these homeowners what they may or may not do.

The reason: A 1959 law known as the Texas Open Beaches Act. Under the law, the strip of beach between the average high-tide line and the average low-tide line is considered public property, and it is illegal to build anything there.
Over the years, the state has repeatedly invoked the law to seize houses in cases where a storm eroded a beach so badly that a home was suddenly sitting on public property. The aftermath of Ike could see the biggest such use of the law in Texas history."LINK

WOW. Wow. This is an intersting story. I mean, this is really interesting.

I wonder how this law will be applied. So, if people are living, say, across the road from a beach, and a big storm wipes out the road (I'm thinking Matunuck, here, for Rhody-minded people, the new beachfront people suddenly on public property, and their home is condemned? Yikes!

But I VERY strongly support high/low tide line public access- in fact, it is one of my all time favorite things about Rhode Island- that that was written into the Rhode Island Constitution- "The Rhode Island Constitution specifically protects citizens' rights to fish from the shore, to gather seaweed, to leave the shore to swim in the sea, and to walk along the shore. In Rhode Island, state waters of public domain extend from mean high water three miles out to sea. Above mean high water, land and resources can be, and often are, privately owned."LINK

And hey, I want my right to fish from shore and gather seaweed, and if that's suddenly your front doorstep, I like my coffee cream, no sugar, thanks. I

ll be there.

So, all in all, a VERY interesting story, especially in light of all the the land loss we're looking at as the global warming/global storming plays out.

Lehman Brothers? More like Bush brothers. Cousins. Whatever.

Startling, isn't it, what comes up when you Google bush + lehman.
Heckuva job, kids. Seems like everything these fuckers touch turns to gold for them and to shit for everyone else.

In August 2007, Lehman hired Jeb Bush as an advisor.
"Jeb Bush: Lehman’s Secret Weapon
In the arms race by private-equity firms to line up ever-higher profile “advisers,” Lehman Brothers may have just taken the lead.According to a small handful of reports Friday, including this one in Investment Dealers’ Digest and another in Private Equity Hub, the investment bank has hired former Florida Governor and presidential son and brother Jeb Bush for its in-house investing arm. " LINK

In May 2006, "Bush Cousin Heads to Lehman
Lehman Brothers(LEH Quote - Cramer on LEH - Stock Picks) has nabbed George H. Walker, the CEO of Goldman Sachs(GS Quote - Cramer on GS - Stock Picks) Hedge Fund Strategies, to be the global head of its $188 billion Investment Management Division, Lehman Brothers announced today.
Walker has already resigned from Goldman Sachs and could not be reached for comment. A spokesman at Goldman Sachs did not return a call.
Walker, who is President George W. Bush's second cousin, had joined the merger and acquisition group of Goldman Sachs in 1991 and became a partner in 1998. He soon grew to be one of the principal architects of Goldman Sachs' investment management strategy and was overseeing a $70 billion group of alternative investments, including hedge funds of funds and private equity investments.
At Lehman, Walker will oversee two and a half times the amount of assets under his belt at Goldman, as he will run a global group that includes not just alternative investments but also traditional assets, including mutual funds. He succeeds Theodore Janulis, who recently became global head of the firm's mortgage capital business. " LINK

OK, it's all going to hell in a handbasket, and I'm falling behind.

Texas got hammered by Ike, Lehman Brothers is going down, and Chicago is underwater.
Ok, we're up to date now!

So effing doomed.

"A huge 19 square mile (55 square km) ice shelf in Canada's northern Arctic broke away last month and the remaining shelves have shrunk at a "massive and disturbing" rate, the latest sign of accelerating climate change in the remote region, scientists said on Tuesday.
They said the Markham Ice Shelf, one of just five remaining ice shelves in the Canadian Arctic, split away from Ellesmere Island in early August. They also said two large chunks totaling 47 square miles had broken off the nearby Serson Ice Shelf, reducing it in size by 60 percent.
"The changes ... were massive and disturbing," said Warwick Vincent, director of the Centre for Northern Studies at Laval University in Quebec." LINK

Haitians 'screaming for help' after storms

"SAINT-MARC, Haiti (AP) -- Haitian families scrambled onto rooftops and screamed for help Tuesday in a city flooded by Tropical Storm Hanna, as U.N. peacekeepers and rescue convoys tried in vain to reach them.
Iris Norsil, 20, managed to flee the western coastal city of Gonaives and told The Associated Press that people there were isolated by muddy waters as evening fell, many seeking refuge on rooftops as wind gusts drove horizontal sheets of rain that flooded roads and buildings.
"They are screaming for help," Norsil said, as a U.N. aid convoy tried unsuccessfully to drive into Gonaives, now surrounded by a virtual lake of floodwaters. A team of AP journalists accompanied the convoy." LINK

Best site to folllow Gustav

http://www.maroonspoon.com/wx/gustav.html

Fuckers! The dying bees? It's been Bayer. And they knew it.

This is horrendous and makes me want to be violent.

" Bayer CropScience is facing scrutiny because of the effect one of its best-selling pesticides has had on honeybees.

A German prosecutor is investigating Werner Wenning , Bayer's chairman, and Friedrich Berschauer , the head of Bayer CropScience , after critics alleged that they knowingly polluted the environment.
The investigation was triggered by an Aug. 13 complaint filed by German beekeepers and consumer protection advocates, a Coalition against Bayer Dangers spokesman, Philipp Mimkes, said Monday.
The complaint is part of efforts by groups on both sides of the Atlantic to determine how much Bayer CropScience knows about the part that clothianidin may have played in the death of millions of honeybees.
Bayer CropScience , which has its U.S. headquarters in Research Triangle Park , said field studies have shown that bees' exposure to the pesticide is minimal or nonexistent if the chemical is used properly.
Clothianidin and related pesticides generated about $1 billion of Bayer CropScience's $8.6 billion in global sales last year. The coalition is demanding that the company withdraw all of the pesticides.
"We're suspecting that Bayer submitted flawed studies to play down the risks of pesticide residues in treated plants," said Harro Schultze , the coalition's attorney.
"Bayer's ... management has to be called to account, since the risks ... have now been known for more than 10 years."
Under German law, a criminal investigation could lead to a search of Bayer offices, Mimkes said.
On the other side of the Atlantic, the Natural Resources Defense Council is pressing for research information on clothianidin.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency approved the pesticide in 2003 under the condition that Bayer submit additional data. A lawsuit, which the environmental group filed Aug. 19 in federal court in Washington , accuses the EPA of hiding the honeybee data." LINK

Fay screwing with Florida, alligators swimming the streets.

"Homeowners in a Tropical Storm Fay-flooded community were being warned of an alligator swimming in their streets and near homes as record-breaking rain continued to fall Thursday.
The National Hurricane Center's projected path of movement for Tropical Storm Fay now includes a fourth Florida landfall as it continues to dump "historic" amounts of rain on parts of Central Florida." LINK

Horrible storms drench Ireland, new highway under 20 feet of water.

"Ireland must accept that extreme torrential rain and flash flooding is going to be part of the climate over the coming days and from now on and must prepare accordingly.

That was the warning from climatologist John Sweeney of NUI Maynooth speaking after a weekend that saw yet more parts of the country submerged in several feet of water.

Some of the worst-hit parts of the country were in the North, including Belfast, where the city’s new multi-million euro Broadway Underpass was submerged under 20 feet of water." LINK to story

Link to photo gallery

Bush want to kill the Endangered Species...Act.

Christ almighty.

"Parts of the Endangered Species Act may soon be extinct.

The Bush administration wants federal agencies to decide for themselves whether highways, dams, mines and other construction projects might harm endangered animals and plants.
New regulations, which don't require the approval of Congress, would reduce the mandatory, independent reviews government scientists have been performing for 35 years, according to a draft first obtained by The Associated Press.

"This is the fox guarding the hen house. The interests of agencies will outweigh species protection interests," said Eric Glitzenstein, the attorney representing environmental groups in the lawsuit over the wildfire prevention regulations. "What they are talking about doing is eviscerating the Endangered Species Act." LINK

Melty!

"Ice at the North Pole melted at an unprecedented rate last week, with leading scientists warning that the Arctic could be ice-free in summer by 2013.
Satellite images show that ice caps started to disintegrate dramatically several days ago as storms over Alaska's Beaufort Sea began sucking streams of warm air into the Arctic.
As a result, scientists say that the disappearance of sea ice at the North Pole could exceed last year's record loss. More than a million square kilometres melted over the summer of 2007 as global warming tightened its grip on the Arctic. But such destruction could now be matched, or even topped, this year.

What really unsettles scientists, however, is their inability to forecast precisely what is happening in the Arctic, the part of the world most vulnerable to the effects of global warming. 'When we did the first climate change computer models, we thought the Arctic's summer ice cover would last until around 2070,' said Professor Peter Wadhams of Cambridge University. 'It is now clear we did not understand how thin the ice cap had already become - for Arctic ice cover has since been disappearing at ever increasing rates. Every few years we have to revise our estimates downwards. Now the most detailed computer models suggest the Arctic's summer ice is going to last for only a few more years - and given what we have seen happen last week, I think they are probably correct.'" LINK

WTF, huge sudden war? 1,400 civilians dead? And Putin's at the Olympics?

"Russian forces are locked in fierce clashes with Georgia inside its breakaway South Ossetia region, reports say, amid fears of all-out war.
Moscow sent armoured units across the border after Georgia moved against Russian-backed separatists.
Russia says 12 of its soldiers are dead, and separatists estimate that 1,400 civilians have died.
Georgia accuses Russia of waging war, and says it has suffered heavy losses in bombing raids which Russia denies. " LINK

Well, an entirely glorious thing.

"The discovery of a population of some 125,000 lowland gorillas has been hailed by conservationists as "absolutely fantastic news". LINK

WTF, mate? Tornado kills three in Northern France.

"Three people were killed overnight when a small tornado charged through towns in northern France, destroying houses and spewing debris over the area, the local government said.
Roughly 40 houses were hit by the freak meteorological event in the town of Hautmont, near the Belgian border. Three bodies were pulled from wreckage and six people were slightly injured. " LINK

See, this is the kind of thing that makes California seem... worrisome, to me.

"A two-acre patch of land north of Fillmore heated up to 800 degrees Friday, and firefighters and geologists are unsure why.
By Joanna Lin, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer August 5, 2008
A patch of land in Ventura County's Los Padres Forest where the ground heated up to 812 degrees Friday continues to puzzle firefighters and geologists after a month and a half of monitoring."It's a thermal anomaly," said Ron Oatman, spokesman for the Ventura County Fire Department.

...Jeff Kuyper, executive director of Los Padres FireWatch, said he had not heard of hot spots in the Sespe Oil Field, but was concerned about their potential effect on the nearby Sespe Condor Sanctuary and the forest's fire-prone nature."It's just a disaster waiting to happen . . . regardless of what the cause is," he said." LINK

Yeah, it is depressing. Primates, headed out?

"A global review of the world's primates says 48% of species face extinction, an outlook described as "depressing" by conservationists.
The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species says the main threat is habitat loss, primarily through the burning and clearing of tropical forests.
More than 70% of primates in Asia are now listed as Endangered, it adds. " LINK

Wonder what Edouard will do to gas prices?

"On its projected path, Edouard would hit offshore rigs in the Gulf that produce a 30% of U.S. crude oil and 15% of its natural gas, and possibly the Houston and New Orleans-Lake Charles, La., areas, which combined are home to about 25% of U.S. oil-refining capacity. The Houston refining complex is in the storm's projected path, which has it coming ashore near Galveston.
The Hurricane Center predicted Edouard would move parallel to the coast Sunday night and Monday, then come ashore Tuesday along the Southwestern Louisiana-southeastern Texas coast possibly at hurricane strength, the center reported.
The Hurricane Center said it had issued a tropical storm warning for the Louisiana coast from the mouth of the Mississippi to Cameron, La., and a hurricane watch from Intracoastal City, La., to Port O'Connor, Tex.. ." LINK

The jellyfish are here- a bad sign.

"...while jellyfish invasions are a nuisance to tourists and a hardship to fishermen, for scientists they are a source of more profound alarm, a signal of the declining health of the world’s oceans.

The explosion of jellyfish populations, scientists say, reflects a combination of severe overfishing of natural predators, like tuna, sharks and swordfish; rising sea temperatures caused in part by global warming; and pollution that has depleted oxygen levels in coastal shallows.

...Within the past year, there have been beach closings because of jellyfish swarms on the Côte d’Azur in France, the Great Barrier Reef of Australia, and at Waikiki and Virginia Beach in the United States. " LINK

Shipping costs bringing some manufacturing back to America.

"Tesla Motors, a pioneer in electric-powered cars, set out to make a luxury roadster for the American market, it had the global supply chain in mind. Tesla planned to manufacture 1,000-pound battery packs in Thailand, ship them to Britain for installation, then bring the mostly assembled cars back to the United States.
But when it began production this spring, the company decided to make the batteries and assemble the cars near its home base in California, cutting more than 5,000 miles from the shipping bill for each vehicle.
Cheap oil, the lubricant of quick, inexpensive transportation links across the world, may not return anytime soon, upsetting the logic of diffuse global supply chains that treat geography as a footnote in the pursuit of lower wages. Rising concern about global warming, the reaction against lost jobs in rich countries, worries about food safety and security, and the collapse of world trade talks in Geneva last week also signal that political and environmental concerns may make the calculus of globalization far more complex." LINK

A slow, dim, and uncomfortable future. Yay.

"Spain has seen the future and it is slow, dim and uncomfortable. A swinging series of energy-saving measures announced by the Spanish government may be a foretaste of the kind of policies which will be forced upon an energy-hungry industrial world in the coming decades.
To protests from motorists and mockery in parts of the press, the Socialist government plans to cut motorway speed limits to 50mph and town speeds to 25mph. New austerity rules will be imposed on the air conditioning and heating of all public buildings. Street-lighting will be cut by half. " LINK

5.8 Earthquake just east of LA

"A strong earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 5.4 shook large parts of Southern California, shaking a wide swath from Ventura County to San Diego.The quake shook downtown L.A. buildings and was felt as far east as Palm Springs." LINK

And the infrastructure? Is crumbling.

"Typically built to last 50 years, the average U.S. bridge is 43 years old and approaching the age for replacement, according to the report released Monday.

At least $140 billion is needed to make major repairs or upgrades to one of every four U.S. bridges, transportation officials from states across the country said in a report released Monday.
State officials said bridge repairs are just one element of a pressing need for more federal funding to improve the country's deteriorating transportation infrastructure.
"We need federal intervention, and federal intervention at a big level," Gov. Ed Rendell said after details were released of the report by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials." LINK

Greek fires.

" Greek police on Friday evacuated more than 2,000 European vacationers from a strip of holiday resorts on Rhodes as fierce forest fires swept through the Greek island and thick plumes of smoke choked its most popular hotels.
Authorities said the evacuation was a precaution as fires raged for a fourth day, scorching at least 7,400 acres of lush pine forest on one of the country's most idyllic islands." LINK

Wow, what a storm!

WATERSPOUT ON BARRINGTON BEACH (ABC 6 Viewer Christopher Legro)

I know all eyes are on Dolly, but Rhody had quite a day!

I don't think I've ever seen rain that intense, and I was way at the south of it!

"Massive Storm Slams Southeastern New England

A severe thunderstorm passed through Rhode Island and Southeastern Massachusetts Wednesday afternoon stopping traffic and causing residents to head inside, some into their basements.
The storm yielded severe flooding, dangerous lightning strikes, hail and high winds, including a water spout in Barrington." LINK

Diesel spill on the Mississippi- yuh.

"A 19-mile stretch of the Mississippi River is closed this morning after a tanker collided with a barge being pulled by a tugboat, slicing the barge in half and causing thousands of barrels of heavy fuel oil to spill into the waterway.

And state Department of Environmental Quality officials warned the unrefined, tar-like # 6 fuel oil is so thick that it could sink, complicating the cleanup efforts.
Residents in Algiers, Gretna, St. Bernard Parish and Plaquemines Parish are also being asked to conserve water, as water intakes for those communities are closed to prevent contamination of the drinking water supply. Water flowing through the tap is from reserve supplies, which could run out in many areas by afternoon or early evening, officials said. " LINK

This is lovely.

Solar power offers some hope.

Thanks B!

"A tiny rectangle superimposed on the vast expanse of the Sahara captures the seductive appeal of the audacious plan to cut Europe's carbon emissions by harnessing the fierce power of the desert sun.
Dwarfed by any of the north African nations, it represents an area slightly smaller than Wales but scientists claimed yesterday it could one day generate enough solar energy to supply all of Europe with clean electricity." LINK

Hurricane Dolly!

Could plant 15 inches of rain in parts of Texas- levee safety in question.
"Dolly strengthened into a Category 1 hurricane Tuesday afternoon and was making its way to coastal areas of northeast Mexico and South Texas, where officials worried it would bring so much rain that flooding could break through the levees holding back the Rio Grande.
Officials urged residents to move away from the levees because if Dolly continues to follow the same path as 1967's Hurricane Beulah, "the levees are not going to hold that much water," said Cameron County Emergency Management Coordinator Johnny Cavazos. " LINK

It takes a heck of an economic mess for the NYT to bust into second person narrative.

"You have heard that Fannie and Freddie, their gentle names notwithstanding, may cripple the financial system without a large infusion of taxpayer money. You have gleaned that jobs are disappearing, housing prices are plummeting, and paychecks are effectively shrinking as food and energy prices soar. You have noted the disturbing talk of crisis hovering over Wall Street.
...Job losses will probably accelerate through this year and into 2009, and the job market will probably stay weak even longer. Home prices will probably keep falling, shrinking household wealth and eroding spending power.
“The open question is whether we’re in for a bad couple of years, or a bad decade,” said Kenneth S. Rogoff, a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, now a professor at Harvard." LINK

Reminds me of one of my favorite books, Bright Lights Big City.
First line:
"You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time of the morning. But here you are, and you cannot say that the terrain is entirely unfamiliar, although the details are fuzzy."
LINK to Amazon, because if you haven't read that book, well, I think you should.

Ah, Hurricane season.

Well, it looks like TS Christobal is going to drench Nova Scotia, but more eyes are on TS Dolly, who might be getting a promotion overnight, and who is headed to celerate in the Gulf of Mexico.

"Tropical Storm Dolly drenched a sparsely populated section of the Yucatan Peninsula on Monday and then plunged into the Gulf of Mexico, where it is expected to grow into a hurricane and move toward the Texas-Mexico border." LINK

In advance of the storm, "Shell Oil Co began flying workers from platforms in the western Gulf of Mexico on Sunday ahead of Tropical Storm Dolly, but said no production was shut, according to a statement issued by the company on Monday.
Fellow energy giant Exxon Mobil said it was making preparations for heavy weather across its Gulf and South Texas operations.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration said Dolly, which is forecast to become a hurricane by Tuesday night, would likely miss major offshore production areas but could affect the three Corpus Christi, Texas, refineries with power outages and flooding if it makes landfall as forecast on the Texas coast sometime on Wednesday." LINK

Food or water? What an awful choice to have to make.

"Global food shortages have placed the Middle East and North Africa in a quandary, as they are forced to choose between growing more crops to feed an expanding population or preserving their already scant supply of water.

For decades nations in this region have drained aquifers, sucked the salt from seawater and diverted the mighty Nile to make the deserts bloom. But those projects were so costly and used so much water that it remained far more practical to import food than to produce it. Today, some countries import 90 percent or more of their staples.
Now, the worldwide food crisis is making many countries in this politically volatile region rethink that math.
The population of the region has more than quadrupled since 1950, to 364 million, and is expected to reach nearly 600 million by 2050. By that time, the amount of fresh water available for each person, already scarce, will be cut in half, and declining resources could inflame political tensions further." LINK

Blue crabs- I sure hope they're on their way here, because they're not in the Chesapeake Bay.

"It's an anxious summer for watermen harvesting the Chesapeake's best-loved seafood, the blue crab. The way some see it, the crabbing business here isn't just dying. It's already dead.
Crabs have thrived in the bottom muck of the Chesapeake and its tributaries even as centuries of overfishing harmed oysters, fish and other species in the nation's largest estuary. Now blue crabs are in trouble, too, and when they go, a way of life is sure to go with them." LINK

Eat some cashews, I guess.

"BISSAUZINHO, Guinea-Bissau (Reuters) - The next time you grab a handful of cashew nuts at a party, think that you may be holding the economic heartbeat of one tiny West African state in the palm of your hand.
Cashew nuts are the main export of Guinea-Bissau, a former Portuguese colony wedged between French-speaking Senegal and Guinea. Its 1.6 million people are ranked among the third poorest in the world in development terms by the United Nations.
As world leaders chase solutions to the global crisis caused by soaring food and fuel prices that threaten millions with hardship, Guinea-Bissau's peasant farmers are looking to their cashew crop to see whether they will eat or go hungry this year.

...Last year, government pricing and commercialization blunders triggered a collapse in local producer cashew prices that caused a disastrous cashew harvest for poor local farmers, who found themselves struggling to afford food for big extended families.
..."Last year, we could only sell our cashews at 25-30 CFA francs (6/7 U.S. cents) a kilo. We suffered a lot and couldn't buy rice," said Chico, a teenage girl with tightly braided hair.
"Now a kilo of rice costs 500 CFA francs ($1.19), last year it was 250 CFA," Chico added, reflecting the squeeze on pockets and bellies that the global food crisis has inflicted in Africa" LINK

Well, what the hell. Better to pay a toll than to have the bridges fall down, right?

"PROVIDENCE — The state’s highways and bridges need so much expensive work, and the state has so little money to pay for it, that officials are beginning to discuss drastic measures to raise money that include imposing tolls on such main highways as Route 95.
That, and measures such as leasing state bridges or highways to private companies to maintain and operate in return for the tolls they would collect, are on the table at Governor Carcieri’s Blue Ribbon Panel for Transportation Funding.

The state’s bridges and highways have deteriorated significantly, to the point that critical structures such as the highway bridges crossing the Pawtucket and Sakonnet rivers have been posted with weight limits. Roads are crumbling, and one in five state bridges is classified as “structurally deficient.”
Meanwhile, according to state Department of Transportation figures, transportation revenue will fall far short of what’s needed for repairs and maintenance.
The sums involved are enormous. The DOT says it needs to spend more than $600 million per year, while its present sources produce just over $300 million." LINK

Both the South and the North are all effed up.

"Twenty Russian scientists have been rescued from their camp on an ice floe in the Arctic that was melting faster than expected, a spokesman for the expedition told AFP on Monday.
"The 20 polar researchers and their two dogs climbed on board the 'Mikhail Somov'" research ship late Sunday, said Sergei Bolyasnikov, a spokesman for Russia's Arctic and Antarctic Institute.
"All scientific programmes at the station have been stopped," he added.
The ship travelled with an ice-breaker to rescue the researchers from camp North Pole 35, which was set up last September on an ice floe that has shrunk from six kilometres (3.8 miles) to just 600 metres in length.
The scientists are now due to return to the Russian Arctic port of Murmansk.
Scientists report that global warming means the thawing season is coming earlier in the Arctic and that the ice cover is retreating, making expeditions on ice floes increasingly perilous. " LINK

Panicked depositors lined up outside IndyMac banks.

"IndyMac Bancorp Inc customers lined up outside a branch at the company's headquarters on Monday, hoping to withdraw their money after regulators seized what was once one of the largest mortgage lenders in the United States.
Several hundred people arrived around 4 a.m., five hours before the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp planned to open that branch." LINK

Looks like the '30s. Everything old is new again.

Seabirds not breeding.

"The poor breeding of Scotland's seabirds is giving cause for "serious concern", according to RSPB Scotland.
Early reports from coastal reserves indicate continuing problems for the internationally important populations of guillemots, kittiwakes and others.
Nests have been abandoned, with cliffs which "should be teeming" now empty.
..."At our Copinsay reserve on Orkney, the kittiwake population has plummeted drastically since the mid 1980s, when there were at least 10,000 birds on the cliffs, but today there are just under 2,000."
He added: "The declines are primarily being driven by changes in the availability of the fish that these birds depend on.
"Seabirds are indicators of the health of the marine environment and, like the canary in the coalmine, the decline in their fortunes should be a wake-up call to us all that we must pay attention to." LINK

Christ this is heartbreaking.

"Tens of thousands of newly-born penguins are freezing to death as Antarctica is lashed by freak rain storms.
Scientists believe the numbers of Adelie penguins may have fallen by as much as 80 per cent – and, if the downpours continue, the species will be extinct within ten years.
And the Emperor penguin – made famous in the Oscar-winning documentary March Of The Penguins – is also under threat.
Temperatures on the Antarctic peninsula have risen by 3C over the past 50 years to an average of -14.7C and rain is now far more common than snow.
Adelie penguins are born with a thin covering of down and it takes 40 days for them to grow protective water-repellent feathers. With epic rains drenching their ancestral nesting grounds, their parents try to protect them. But when the adults leave to fish for food, or are killed by predators such as seals, the babies become soaked to the skin and die from hypothermia.
‘Everyone talks about the melting of the glaciers but having day after day of rain in Antarctica is a totally new phenomenon. As a result, penguins are literally freezing to death,’ said Jon Bowermaster, a New York-based explorer who has recently returned from Antarctica.
‘It is all very well talking theoretically about how the ice cap could disappear – but watching penguins walking among the skeletons of their young is the most powerful evidence of climate change I have seen.’" LINK

French oysters, dying off? Oh noes!!!!

One of the most beautiful and delish looking things I've ever seen was some oysters my DH had in Brittany. They were served in their shells, atop little mounds of fleur de sel, baked in a champagne cream sauce. Glorious.
So this saddens me.

"FRANCE'S shellfish industry is facing its worst crisis in 40 years after stocks of young oysters have been decimated by a mystery ailment.
French oyster farmers have seen between 40 and 100 per cent of their oysters aged one to two years wiped out in recent weeks, far higher than the normal mortality rate in the summer months, a top industry expert said." LINK

Holy sh*t, Marburg is WICKED scary.

"The World Health Organization has warned people not to go into Ugandan caves with bats, after a Dutch tourist contracted the deadly Marburg virus.
The woman, aged 40, died after being taken to hospital following her return to the Netherlands, health authorities there said.
They said she probably contracted the disease while visiting a Ugandan cave inhabited by fruit bats.
Marburg is a contagious disease that causes sudden bleeding and high fever.
There is no treatment or vaccine.
The largest outbreak occurred in 2004-2005 in Angola and killed more than 300 people.
No tourists are known to have previously contracted the disease.
"It is an isolated case of imported Marburg," said WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl.
"People should not think about amending their travel plans to Uganda but should not go into caves with bats."
Dutch health officials said people who had come into contact with the woman on her return were being closely monitored.
In the past, Marburg and the related Ebola virus have caused outbreaks in humans and great apes with mortality rates of 80 to 90%.
Early symptoms of Marburg are diarrhoea, stomach pains, nausea and vomiting, which give way to bleeding. It is spread by the transfer of blood or other bodily fluids. " LINK

From global to local, bad news all around.

"Starting Tuesday, National Grid customers in Rhode Island will pay 21.7 percent more for electricity and 8 percent more for natural gas, the Public Utilities Commission voted yesterday. " LINK

New World New World New World New World New World

A pretty staid group has made a major decision. We are living in a new age.

"The London Society is the world's oldest association of Earth scientists, founded in 1807, and its Commission acts as a college of cardinals in the adjudication of the geological time-scale. Stratigraphers slice up Earth's history as preserved in sedimentary strata into hierarchies of eons, eras, periods, and epochs marked by the "golden spikes" of mass extinctions, speciation events, and abrupt changes in atmospheric chemistry.
Although the idea of the "Anthropocene" -- an Earth epoch defined by the emergence of urban-industrial society as a geological force -- has been long debated, stratigraphers have refused to acknowledge compelling evidence for its advent.
...At least for the London Society, that position has now been revised.
To the question "Are we now living in the Anthropocene?" the 21 members of the Commission unanimously answer "yes." They adduce robust evidence that the Holocene epoch -- the interglacial span of unusually stable climate that has allowed the rapid evolution of agriculture and urban civilization -- has ended and that the Earth has entered "a stratigraphic interval without close parallel in the last several million years." In addition to the buildup of greenhouse gases, the stratigraphers cite human landscape transformation which "now exceeds [annual] natural sediment production by an order of magnitude," the ominous acidification of the oceans, and the relentless destruction of biota.
This new age, they explain, is defined both by the heating trend (whose closest analogue may be the catastrophe known as the Paleocene Eocene Thermal Maximum, 56 million years ago) and by the radical instability expected of future environments. In somber prose, they warn that "the combination of extinctions, global species migrations and the widespread replacement of natural vegetation with agricultural monocultures is producing a distinctive contemporary biostratigraphic signal. These effects are permanent, as future evolution will take place from surviving (and frequently anthropogenically relocated) stocks." Evolution itself, in other words, has been forced into a new trajectory. " LINK