Menu



error This forum is not active, and new posts may not be made in it.
PromoteFacebookTwitter!
Luis Miguel Goitizolo

1162
61587 Posts
61587
Invite Me as a Friend
Top 25 Poster
Person Of The Week
RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
7/31/2013 3:33:01 PM
Destroying Nature: Oil Spills That Can't Be Turned Off
















Remember Deepwater Horizon? The world looked on in horror as millions of barrels worth of oil gushed out into the Gulf, and we seemed powerless to stop it, even as we were riveted to our screens watching live feeds of attempts to fix the wellhead. Eventually the well was capped, but the environmental cost was almost unfathomable; a slick so huge it could be seen from space drifted through the water, ensnaring plants and animals alike and casting huge tarballs up on the shoreline. It was a costly, ugly cleanup and it’s far from over.

“Never again,” was the response from many quarters, but the world is still desperately hungry for oil, and as we search for new reserves, we’re willing to go to greater lengths to get at the Earth’s precious supplies. Case in point, of course, is the notorious tar sands, which require a costly and lengthy extraction process that’s worth it to oil companies, given the high value of oil. Though tar sands oil needs extensive processing to be usable, it’s still salable, especially in nations like the United States that have a high demand for all the oil they can get.

But what happens when you have a tar sands spill? Not a spill from a pipeline or the recent horrific Quebec train disaster, but an underground blowout at a site where tar sands are being extracted? We appear to be finding out at Cold Lake, Alberta, and it’s not a very pretty picture. As oil seeps to the surface from underground sites in a locale restricted to the public and members of the press, scientists are scrambling to determine how to clean the site up, but they aren’t feeling very optimistic.

Oiled animals and vegetation are being steadily cleared from the site, but the real problem is how to stop the flow of oil. Only that might not be so simple, because of the extraction system used. In this type of tar sands extraction, oil companies pressurize the oil bed to force bitumen to the surface through cracks underground; a system that works well enough when it’s controlled, but there’s no way of telling when the pressure will cause a blowout and the bitumen will begin to seep out of control, as is happening here.

On the surface, it might look less distasteful than the open pit mining used to get at tar sands in other parts of Canada, but as soon as you look below, things get ugly. Every time oil companies pressurize deposits, they run the risk of causing a blowout, and since tar sands extraction isn’t organized around a wellhead, it’s not like they can turn it off to stop the bubbling of crude bitumen and other materials. They, along with scientists and cleanup officials, are instead forced to watch as the oil emerges and poisons the environment.

The restriction of people from the site is causing anger among members of the public and the media, but also among the Beaver Lake Cree, First Nations people who have treaty rights over the land. They’re furious to be kept out of their traditional hunting grounds, and the fact that they can’t access the area because it’s being slowly filled with toxins is salt in the wound. Like other Native American, First Nations and Alaska Natives, they’re being edged out of their traditional land and ways of life by oil and gas companies eager for the resources that lie beneath the soil, and they argue that they are being unfairly treated and poorly compensated for their trouble.

They’re right: in this case, hunting, fishing, trapping and wildcrafting edible plants in the area may not be an option for decades after the spill, forcing a radical disruption in their way of life. Ominously, this is only one of many sites oil and gas companies are interested in developing for their tar sands, raising the specter of more spills like this one in the coming years as hungry nations clamor for oil.

One key component of the demand for Canada’s tar sands oil is, of course, the Keystone XL pipeline, slated to carry just that oil through the U.S. to ports in the Gulf for international trade. If approved, the pipeline would undoubtedly stimulate even more demand — and even more spills.

Learn more about the Keystone XL pipeline.


Read more: , , , , , ,

Cold Lake, Alberta by Dolla Photography on Flickr



Read more: http://www.care2.com/causes/destroying-nature-oil-spills-that-cant-be-turned-off.html#ixzz2adaededv

"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

+1
Luis Miguel Goitizolo

1162
61587 Posts
61587
Invite Me as a Friend
Top 25 Poster
Person Of The Week
RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
8/1/2013 10:27:58 AM

Over a Million Are Denied Bank Accounts for Past Errors


By JESSICA SILVER-GREENBERG | New York TimesTue, Jul 30, 2013 9:17 PM EDT

Mistakes like a bounced check or a small overdraft have effectively blacklisted more than a million low-income Americans from the mainstream financial system for as long as seven years as a result of little-known private databases that are used by the nation’s major banks.

The problem is contributing to the growth of the roughly 10 million households in the United States that lack a banking account, a basic requirement of modern economic life.

Unlike traditional credit reporting databases, which provide portraits of outstanding debt and payment histories, these are records of transgressions in banking products. Institutions likeBank of America, Citibank and Wells Fargo say that tapping into the vast repositories of information helps them weed out risky customers and combat fraud — a mounting threat for banks.

But consumer advocates and state authorities say the use of the databases disproportionately affects lower-income Americans, who tend to live paycheck to paycheck, making them more likely to incur negative marks after relatively minor banking missteps like overdrawing accounts, amassing fees or bouncing checks.

When the databases were created more than 20 years ago, they were intended to help banks guard against serial fraud artists, like those accused of writing bogus checks. Since then, though, the databases have ensnared millions of low-income Americans, according to interviews with financial counselors, consumer lawyers and more than two dozen low-income people in California, Illinois, Florida, New York and Washington.

Jonathan Mintz, the commissioner of the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs, says banks’ growing reliance on customer databases has frustrated efforts to help an estimated 825,000 New Yorkers without bank accounts gain access to the mainstream financial system.

“Hundreds of thousands of Americans are being shut out for relatively small mistakes,” Mr. Mintz said.

As a result, many have no choice but to turn to costly fringe operations to cash checks, pay bills and wire money. Saving for the future, financial counselors say, can be especially difficult.

The ranks of those without bank accounts have swelled — up more than 10 percent since 2009, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation — as banks have sharpened their focus on more affluent customers who typically generate twice the revenue of their lower-income counterparts. Many banks are closing branches in poor areas and expanding in wealthier ones, according to an analysis of federal data.

Rejection for would-be bank customers can come as a shock. Tiffany Murrell of Brooklyn says a credit union denied her checking account application in September 2012 even though she had a job as a secretary and was up to date on her bills.

The obstacle, it turned out, was a negative report from ChexSystems, a consumer credit reporting firm that provides customer data to virtually every major bank and credit union in the nation. The black mark stemmed from a overdraft of roughly $40 in June 2010, according to a copy of a letter that the 31-year-old Ms. Murrell later received from ChexSystems. While she repaid the amount, plus interest and fees, before applying for a new account, the incident, she says, has barred her from opening an account at nearly every bank she has tried, an experience she called “insulting and frustrating.”

While many Americans have at least a vague idea that their credit report is crucial when applying for a loan, few realize that a parallel report is used for bank accounts.

“Most of my clients have no idea these databases exist, let alone what they did to end up in them,” said Kristen Euretig, a financial counselor with Neighborhood Trust Financial Partners, a nonprofit group in New York.

The largest database, founded in the 1970s, is run by ChexSystems, a subsidiary of FIS, a financial services company in Jacksonville, Fla. Subscribers — Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citibank and Wells Fargo among them — “regularly contribute information on mishandled checking and savings accounts,” ChexSystems says on its Web site. “A consumer may dispute any information in their file and ChexSystems will facilitate the resolution of the dispute on the consumer’s behalf,” the company said in a statement. A rival, Early Warning, which is owned by Bank of America, BB&T,Capital One, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo, says roughly 80 percent of the 50 largest American banks pay a fee to subscribe to its deposit-check service.

“Client banks are focused on leveraging intelligence to mitigate fraud from going into the system,” said Frank Caruana, the company’s chief marketing officer.

But the databases are coming under scrutiny from consumer lawyers and federal regulators, who say it can be challenging to remove inaccurate information or get copies of the reports, a requirement under federal law.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has fielded complaints about the databases and is determining whether they comply with the Fair Credit Reporting Act, a federal law meant to stanch the flow of inaccurate consumer information, according to people familiar with the investigation. Banks are required to provide a reason for rejecting an applicant.

Some databases, though, provide scant details of the reason for the negative mark, according to a review of more two dozen letters. Mr. Caruana of Early Warning says the company gives the fine details to its clients, outlining, for example, how much of outstanding debt is principal and how much is fees.

Culling information from the databases is one prong in an assessment, as lenders vet potential customers and screen for fraud. Losses from fraud on new bank accounts surged to $9.8 billion last year, up 50 percent from a year earlier, according to Javelin Strategy and Research.

JPMorgan says a negative report in ChexSystems will rarely bar someone from obtaining an account. Others, like Bank of America, Citibank and Wells Fargo, say they use the information carefully, distinguishing between people who have made mistakes and those who have a history of fraud. Some banks have introduced second-chance checking accounts for people who do not qualify for traditional bank accounts.

Ultimately, Mr. Caruana said, the decision rests with the banks. He noted the soundness of the reports — of the 50 million the company issued last year, only 3,600 were disputed for inaccuracy. And banks and credit unions say that they work to ensure that customers are not penalized for minor mistakes.

Yet the interviews with officials, consumer advocates and the people denied accounts offer a starkly different picture.

“We have had too many experiences where even banks that have offered to be flexible with us find their own internal risk management systems mean that their hands are tied,” said Mr. Mintz, New York’s commissioner of consumer affairs.

The problem, said Jerry DeGrieck, a senior policy adviser to Mayor Mike McGinn of Seattle, is that “lenders just don’t want to take a risk on these clients.”

Recent regulations, which rein in the fees that banks can charge — including overdraft protection, a big moneymaker on lower-income customers’ accounts — have made lenders more reluctant to take gambles on customers with tarnished records, analysts say. Simply put, it is less economical for banks to provide inexpensive financial services and it is tougher for banks to generate revenue on lower-income customers who typically maintain small account balances. Still, banks say they are committed to provide banking services broadly.

The sting of being rejected, though, can make lower-income individuals feel like second-class citizens.

“I just don’t understand why they wouldn’t want me,” said Ms. Murrell, the Brooklyn secretary. “It feels unfair.”

The costs of not having a bank account for seven years — the longest amount of time that a negative report remains in the databases — can quickly add up. David Korzeniowski, 23, said an employee at a bank in Lansing, Mich., had told him that an overdrawn account reported to ChexSystems very likely scuttled his chances of a checking account until 2016.

Mr. Korzeniowski, who acknowledges “he made a mistake,” says the fees he pays for cashing checks, paying bills and wiring money cannibalize the paycheck he gets from part-time construction work. “Everything is more expensive,” he said.


"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

+0
Luis Miguel Goitizolo

1162
61587 Posts
61587
Invite Me as a Friend
Top 25 Poster
Person Of The Week
RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
8/1/2013 10:34:15 AM

TSA Workers Breach Security, Sleep on the Job: Report




Transportation Security Administration officers were cited for more than 9,600 cases of misconduct from 2010 to 2012, according to a new government report that shows agency employees often received light punishments for sneaking prohibited items past scanners or napping on the job.

The report, released Tuesday by the Government Accountability Office, found nearly 2,000 cases of screeners who were sleeping, not following procedures or allowing relatives to bypass security checkpoints. More than 3,000 screeners showed up late, not at all or left the job without permission, GAO reported.

In one instance of misconduct, a security officer left a checkpoint to help a relative check in and then came back with the family member's bag and allowed it to go around security. A TSA supervisor saw the misconduct and insisted the bag be screened, according to the report.

The bag contained "prohibited items" after it was finally screened. The report did not elaborate on the nature of the items in the bag. The screener was eventually suspended for seven days.

TSA Workers Allegedly Stealing From Passengers and Sleeping on Duty

The report also cited 56 cases of theft during the three-year span. In an undercover investigation by ABC News in 2012, 10 iPads were left at airport security checkpoints throughout the nation with a history of theft. Nine out of ten were returned, but one TSA officer, who was later fired, denied he stole an iPad when ABC News tracked the device to his home in Orlando.

But the report suggests the TSA is doing a poor job tracking the offenses and is not always handing out the punishment it should. The GAO's evaluation of TSA's 2012 data shows that 50 percent of the workers accused of sleeping on the job received less than the lowest penalty called for by TSA policies.

Forty-seven percent of the cases that GAO analyzed resulted in letters of reprimand, 31 percent resulted in suspensions of a definite duration and 17 percent resulted in the employee's removal from TSA.

"I get worried about this because in the history of air terrorism, employee security has been the one gap that has been the hardest gap to cover," aviation security expert Jeff Price.

The Top 20 Airports for TSA Theft

Following the report, the TSA released a statement saying, it holds their workers to "the highest ethical standards" and has "zero tolerance for misconduct."

"TSA concurs with GAO's four recommendations to ensure that the agency establishes a process to verify that TSA staff at airports are in compliance, and is already working to implement these recommendations," the agency added.

There are more than 56,000 screeners at the nation's airports, most doing their jobs, but the GAO's report points out the persistent and ongoing problem with those who are failing to comply with federal regulations.

Two subcommittees of the House Homeland Security Committee will hold a hearing later today to examine how the TSA responds to reports of misbehavior and unethical conduct by its employees.

TSA Deputy Administrator John W. Halinski will represent the agency on Capitol Hill.


Report says airport security screeners have been caught breaking rules, breaching security

"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

+0
Luis Miguel Goitizolo

1162
61587 Posts
61587
Invite Me as a Friend
Top 25 Poster
Person Of The Week
RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
8/1/2013 10:44:06 AM

Al-Qaida: We will try to free Guantanamo inmates


FILE - In this June 27, 2006 file photo, reviewed by a U.S. Department of Defense official, U.S. military guards walk within Camp Delta military-run prison, at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base, Cuba. The Obama administration said Friday it planned to transfer two detainees from Guantanamo Bay to Algeria, the first movement of prisoners out since the president announced a renewed push to close the military-run detention center in Cuba. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley, File)
Associated Press

View Gallery

BAGHDAD (AP) — Al-Qaida's leader said in remarks posted Wednesday that a prisoners' hunger strike in Guantanamo Bay has revealed the "odious" face of America and claims that the terror network will spare no effort to free prisoners held at the U.S. military-run detention center in Cuba.

Ayman al-Zawahri spoke in a 22-minute audio message posted on the Internet.

"The strike by our brothers in Guantanamo reveals the real odious and ugly face of America," he said. Some of the 166 prisoners there began a hunger strike earlier this year to protest conditions and their indefinite confinement.

"We pledge God that we will spare no efforts to set them free along with all our prisoners, on top of them Omar Abdel Rahman, Aafia Siddiqui, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and every oppressed Muslim everywhere," he said.

Militants have in the past tried to free Abdel Rahman, a blind Egyptian sheik convicted of plotting to blow up New York City landmarks, and Siddiqui, a Pakistani scientist convicted of shooting at two U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, by offering to free hostages in exchange.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the admitted mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, is at Guantanamo. The other two are at civilian prisons in the United States.

The message's authenticity could not be independently confirmed but the message was posted on a militant website commonly used by al-Qaida.

Al-Zawahri's last message, urging Sunni Muslims to devote their lives, money and expertise to battling Syria's President Bashar Assad, was delivered in June. Assad's regime is dominated by members of a Shiite offshoot sect.


"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

+1
Luis Miguel Goitizolo

1162
61587 Posts
61587
Invite Me as a Friend
Top 25 Poster
Person Of The Week
RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
8/1/2013 10:46:04 AM

My Life, and Past, as Seen Through Google's Dashboard

An Amazing Amount of Information Has Been Collected


By Tom Gara | The Wall Street Journal19 hours ago

Reuters - An illustration picture shows a woman holding her Apple Ipad tablet which displays a tactile keyboard under the Google home page in Bordeaux, Southwestern France, February 4, 2013. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau/Files

What is Google (GOOG) Dashboard? In short, it is a one-stop shop that links to all the different buckets of your stored data collected by Google Inc.'s services. From your first Gmail account onward, Google has been collecting an amazing amount of information from you, and Dashboard is where you go to find it.

Strangely enough, the easiest way to find your Google Dashboard is to go to Google.com and search for "Google Dashboard." There might be a link to it from somewhere in Gmail, but I have never seen it, and it doesn't seem to make itself obvious anywhere. Google created the Dashboard in 2009 so its users could manage all their privacy setting in our place.

Once you find your Google Dashboard, you're not going to look away. That's because the reality of how much history you share with Google can be unnerving to confront, especially for heavy Web users.

Before we get into it, a few caveats: First, this data can only be collected when you are logged in to a Google service. Second, Google gives you options to turn the collection off, or delete archived data. And third, access to all this information is password protected. But once you get past the login screen, the amount of information there is staggering.

Today, it isn't just all your emails and chat logs, but everything searched for, every YouTube video you watched, all the Web pages you visited, calls you made with Google Voice, even a day-by-day history of every location you have looked up on Google Maps.

The idea that all of this data exists as a mass of ones and zeros deep in a server farm in California, being studied by disinterested robots to serve up better search results and more relevant ads, is something most of us can process in the abstract.

But the fact that it is all viewable right now, on a user-friendly Web page complete with its own search service (yes, you can run Google searches on your own web history), is something else entirely. For example, I searched for every website I've ever visited containing the word "octopus." And yes, the results were wonderful.

They were also sign of disturbing things to come. Are you really ready to see a meticulous recreation of that YouTube binge you went on late one night in 2009?

That's an appetizer compared with your search history—a year-by-year evolution of the biggest and smallest questions you believed the Internet could answer. Looking back on a week of searches from years gone by will give you pangs of nostalgia. It will also give you a deep conviction that nobody else should ever see it.

The kind of analytics you can perform on your own online history is impressive, but the idea anybody else who manages to get your Google password could also do it is eye-opening. The bad outcomes seem endless, from digital blackmail to much more multilayered forms of identity theft.

There's another side to this, of course. Our online histories, in the long run, could become one of our most cherished memories. In 20 years time they will paint a picture of our past more detailed than anything our brains are capable of.

And this is based on what is being stored right now, before wearable computers and self-driving cars. As time goes on, our Google Dashboards will tell us more and more about who we are, and who we were.

Write to Tom Gara at tom.gara@wsj.com


"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

+1