Sweet building blocks of life found around young star

Astronomers have for the first time found glycolaldehyde molecules around a young sun-like star. Glycolaldehyde is a an important pre-biotic species, a simple sugar, consisting of carbon, oxygen and hydrogen atoms. Through observations with ALMA the researchers have shown that the molecules are located within a region with an extent corresponding to our own solar system - and thus exist in the gas from which planets possibly are formed around the young star later in its evolution. Credit: ESO. Read article here

Lest we forget

Syrian News, August 25

What FACEBOOK and GOOGLE are Hiding from world.

Editor: This is one to make you think about how your mind is being massaged.

Fed joins stimulus party as global trade slumps

The US Federal Reserve in Washington DC Photo: REUTERS

All three major blocs of the world economy have shifted gears dramatically over the last month, preparing a fresh blast of stimulus to combat the sharpest contraction in global trade since the 2008-09 crisis. 

 By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

 

The US Federal Reserve appears poised for a third round of quantitative easing (QE) as soon as early September, joining Europe and China in concerted global stimulus.

The Fed’s latest minutes show broad support for fresh bond purchases – probably mortgage bonds – unless signs of “substantial and sustainable strengthening” emerge soon. Paul Ashworth from Capital Economics said QE3 looks like a “done deal” since little is likely to change between now and the next Fed meeting.

The shift in Fed policy caught markets by surprise and comes after the European Central Bank’s chief Mario Draghi opened the door to potentially “unlimited” purchases of Italian and Spanish bonds to prevent a euro break-up.

The most radical moves appear likely from China where the managed “soft-landing” risks spinning out of control, with exports contracting on a month-to-month basis over the summer.

“People should worry less about Europe right now and look more closely at Asia,” said Hans Redeker, currency chief at Morgan Stanley. “We think the Bernanke and Draghi 'puts’ will drive a further rally in global equities. But China represents the biggest risk to our bullish asset call.”
Read article here

 

Syrian News, August 16

Long-term unemployment in the USA – 1950 to 2012

Ready for the hunting season?

World shipping crisis threatens German dominance as Greeks win long game

Germany is the superpower of container shipping, controlling almost 40pc of the world market. Photo: AP

Germany’s shipping industry faces a wave of bankruptcies over coming months as funding dries up and deepening economic woes across the world cause a sharp contraction in container trade.

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard 10:04PM BST 13 Aug 2012

Over 100 German ship funds have already shut down as the long-simmering crisis in global container shipping finally comes to a head. A further 800 funds are threatened with insolvency, according to consultants TPW in Hamburg.

They are not alone. Britain’s oldest shipowner, Stephenson Clark, dating back to 1730, went into liquidation last week, closing the final chapter of Britain’s coal trade and the industrial revolution.

It cited “incredibly depressed” vessel rates. The firm over-invested in the boom four years ago, betting too much on the China syndrome.

Germany is the superpower of container shipping, controlling almost 40pc of the world market. The Germans also misread the cycle and have been struggling to cope ever since with a legacy of debt and a glut of ships. Now everything is going wrong at once.

Container volumes arriving at European ports plunged in June, dashing expectations of a summer rebound. Imports fell 7.5pc from North America and 9pc from Asia. Flows into the Mediterranean region crashed by 16pc, reflecting the violence of the recession in Greece, Italy, Spain, and Portugal.
Continue reading article here

Editor: You can check out the world wide Harper Petersen (HARPEX) Index here. It is an indicator of the cost of hiring container ships on the world market (i.e. Finished goods). Check out the Baltic Dry Index (BALDRY) here. It is an indicator of the cost of hiring ships carrying dry goods across the world's oceans (i.e. Raw materials)

Five years on, the Great Recession is turning into a life sentence

Some date the crisis to August 9 2007, the day it became clear that Europe’s banks were up to their necks in US housing debt. The ECB flooded markets with €95bn of liquidity. It seemed a lot of money then. The term “trillion” was still banned by the Telegraph style book in those innocent days. We have since learned to swing with the modern dance music from central banks. Photo: Reuters

Five years into the Long Slump it almost seems as if we are back to square one. 

 By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

Editor note: The author is a very seasoned economic commentator and really knows what he is talking about

China is sufficiently alarmed by the flint hardness of its "soft-landing" to talk up trillions of fresh stimulus. The European Central Bank is preparing to print “whatever it takes” to save Spain and Italy. Markets are pricing in an 80pc chance of yet more printing by the US Federal Reserve in September or soon after.

There is no doubt that the three superpowers acting in concert can launch a mini-cycle of growth early next year - assuming they deliver on their rhetoric - but the twin headwinds of debt-leveraging and excess manufacturing plant across the globe cannot easily be conjured away.

The world remains in barely contained slump. Industrial output is still below earlier peaks in Germany (-2), US (-3), Canada (-8) France (-9), Sweden (-10), Britain (-11), Belgium (-12), Japan (-15), Hungary (-15) Italy (-17), Spain (-22), Greece (-27), according to St Louis Fed data. By that gauge this is proving more intractable than the Great Depression.

Some date the crisis to August 9 2007, the day it became clear that Europe’s banks were up to their necks in US housing debt. The ECB flooded markets with €95bn of liquidity. It seemed a lot of money then. The term “trillion” was still banned by the Telegraph style book in those innocent days. We have since learned to swing with the modern dance music from central banks.

For me, the defining moment was twelve days later when yields on 3-month US Treasury bills to crashed from 3.76pc to 2.55pc in just two hours. At first we thought it was a mistake, a screen glitch. Nothing like this had happened before, not during the crashes of 1929 or 1987, or after the Twin Towers attack on 9/11.
Continue reading cold shower article here

Hard landing for China as factory prices fall and deflation looms

Profits for China's exporters have been squeezed 5pc a year since 2004 as wages rise faster than productivity. Photo: EPA

 

 

 

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

Factory gate prices in China fell at an accelerating rate of 2.9pc in July as the economy flirted with industrial recession, prompting calls for further stimulus to head off Japanese-style deflation. 

 “Severe deflation pressures are rippling across the country,” said Alistair Thornton and Xianfeng Ren from IHS Global Insight. “Deflation, not inflation, is the greatest short-term threat to the Chinese economy.” 

“The hard landing has happened,” said Charles Dumas from Lombard Street Research. “We don’t believe official data. We think GDP slowed to a 1pc rate in the second quarter.”

A blizzard of weak data has caught policy-makers off guard, though shares rallied in Shanghai on hopes for monetary loosening from China’s central bank after consumer price inflation (CPI) fell to 1.8pc.

New property starts fell 27pc in July. Industrial output growth fell to 9.2pc for a year ago but has been flat over recent months.

“This was the moment when stimulus was supposed to bite. It didn’t,” said Global Insight. Critics say Beijing let the property boom go too far and then hit the brakes too hard last year. Monetary tightening led to a contraction in real M1 money. The delayed effects kicked in this year just as Europe fell back into recession and the US slowed abruptly.
Read article here

Deja-Vu in Syria?

Editor: The article below was published in the Guardian in 2003. The recent assassination of top Syrian officials rings a few bells

 Macmillan backed Syria assassination plot - Documents show White House and No 10 conspired over oil-fuelled invasion plan  

Ben Fenton, The Guardian, Saturday 27 September 2003 02.35 BST


Nearly 50 years before the war in Iraq, Britain and America sought a secretive "regime change" in another Arab country they accused of spreading terror and threatening the west's oil supplies, by planning the invasion of Syria and the assassination of leading figures.

Newly discovered documents show how in 1957 Harold Macmillan and President Dwight Eisenhower approved a CIA-MI6 plan to stage fake border incidents as an excuse for an invasion by Syria's pro-western neighbours, and then to "eliminate" the most influential triumvirate in Damascus. The plans, frighteningly frank in their discussion, were discovered in the private papers of Duncan Sandys, Mr Macmillan's defence secretary, by Matthew Jones, a reader in international history at Royal Holloway, University of London.

 Although historians know that intelligence services had sought to topple the Syrian regime in the autumn of 1957, this is the first time any document has been found showing that the assassination of three leading figures was at the heart of the scheme. In the document drawn up by a top secret and high-level working group that met in Washington in September 1957, Mr Macmillan and President Eisenhower were left in no doubt about the need to assassinate the top men in Damascus.

 Part of the "preferred plan" reads: "In order to facilitate the action of liberative forces, reduce the capabilities of the Syrian regime to organise and direct its military actions, to hold losses and destruction to a minimum, and to bring about desired results in the shortest possible time, a special effort should be made to eliminate certain key individuals. Their removal should be accomplished early in the course of the uprising and intervention and in the light of circumstances existing at the time."

 The document, approved by London and Washington, named three men: Abd al-Hamid Sarraj, head of Syrian military intelligence; Afif al-Bizri, chief of the Syrian general staff; and Khalid Bakdash, leader of the Syrian Communist party.
Read original article here

Syrian News, August 9 - details of fighting not reported by western media

2008 financial crash - and still in the ditch

Syrian mainstream news, August 8 - You won't see this on North American news channels

From Syria - with "love"

Roots

The Danish Canadian National Musem and Gardens close on September 3

The Little Mermaid at the Danish Canadian Museum at Dickson, Alberta

Take the opportunity to learn about our Danish Canadian history, stroll in our beautiful gardens and sit in our lovely restaurant to enjoy our famous open-face sandwiches and delicious desserts.

We are open  Monday to Saturday 10am to 5:30 pm, Sunday 12:30 pm to 5:30 pm. Visit us online at www.danishcanadians.com/

The Summer of 2012 -- Too Hot to Handle?

Temperature anomalies for June 2012 across North America. Orange/red = above normal, blue = below normal, white = normal

Author: Dauna Coulter


August 3, 2012: This past June more than 170 all-time US heat records were tied or broken--many of them originally set in the historically hotter months of July and August. And with a drought plaguing much of the country, the ground is as dry and crispy as a saltine cracker.

By early July, 56% of the contiguous U.S. was experiencing drought. That's the largest percentage in the 12-year record of the U.S. Drought Monitor. Fires scorched over 1.3 million acres across the US in June, reducing hundreds of homes to ashes in the West. Just imagining prospects for the rest of the summer is enough to bring sweat to your brow. And last winter is partly to blame.

"799 daytime heat records were broken in the first five days of January in the US," says Jake Crouch, a climate scientist from the NOAA National Climatic Data Center. "Last year's was the fourth warmest winter since 1895. And it was dry, with a dearth of snowfall in many places. During most of this past winter and spring, a positive North Atlantic Oscillation pressure pattern kept the jet stream further north and the US warmer and drier than normal."

With little moisture in the soil to evaporate and dissipate some of the sun's energy, more solar radiation is converted to sensible heat, he says.
Continue reading article here

Facebook update - from Onion News

Political message - American style

Please click on photo to get the message

Media event promotes usage of the Red Deer River

Rafting on the Red Deer River - please click on image for a better view

Blake Richards (front left in raft) is MP for the Wild Rose federal constituency

Sherry Tytkanych (front right in raft) is Sundre Chamber of Commerce President.

Ryan Thompson (back of raft) owns and operates Mukwah Rafting Tours.

Photos courtesy of MP Blake Richards' office
Story and video by Helge Nome

Media members, politicians and some community people got together for a free lunch at the Sundre Museum grounds on July 30 to do an image repair job on Sundre following the oil spill in the Red Deer River, on which banks the town is situated, in early June. The general impression that the Red Deer River was no longer fit for recreational use had hurt the business of local tourism operators.

One misconception was that Sundre itself had been affected by the spill which was not the case: The oil entered the Red Deer River well downstream of the town. Also, an investigation of the worst  affected spill area at the junction of the James and Red Deer Rivers by this writer failed to show any visual trace of oil remaining on the banks of the river. (A heavy rainstorm in the area the day before the inspection may have washed away any remaining oil traces).

As pointed out by former area MP Myron Thompson in a discussion at the lunch session, the main challenge for Sundre residents may be an ongoing process of erosion along the banks of the river during major flooding events, causing a buildup of sand, gravel and silt in the riverbed, which makes the river seek new channels for itself. The Town of Sundre is currently protected (inadequately, according to Thompson) by a stone berm which can be seen in the top photo in this post.

For now though, the Red Deer River is as welcoming as it ever was with clean banks and clear waters.

Debt Bomb

World class sculptures on exhibit south of Sundre

Grace of movement captured in stone - exhibit at Morton Burke's "Bergen Rocks" sculpture park

Photo and article by Helge Nome

Beginning in 2008 and continuing in 2009 and 2010, local sculptor Morton Burke attracted world class sculptors to his acreage south of Sundre, near the Hamlet of Bergen, where they created marvels in stone that are currently on exhibit on the acreage. Each artist was given a stipend and stayed at the acreage for a month while creating the sculptures out of rocks brought in from British Columbia by Burke. In 2011 the work was carried out on the campus of Red Deer College. The results are impressive, to say the least. Go to Alberta West Photos here to see snapshots of the artists' work.

The battle of Damascus has begun

Western and Gulf powers have launched the largest secret war operation since the Contra war in Nicaragua.

The Battle of Damascus is not intended to topple President Bashar al-Assad, but to fracture the Syrian Army to better ensure the domination of Israel and the U.S. over the Middle East. While the city is bracing for a new assault by foreign mercenaries, Thierry Meyssan takes stock of the situation.

by Thierry Meyssan 

Coming from abroad, the "Contras" started their invasion of Syria by taking border posts.

Over the past five days Washington and Paris have launched an attack operation dubbed “Damascus Volcano and Syrian Earthquake." It is not a new campaign of aerial bombardment, but a secret military operation, similar to the one used in Central America during the Reagan era.

Within a few days, 40 to 60 000 Contras, mostly Libyans, entered the country, most often via the Jordanian border. The majority of them are attached to the "Syrian" Free Army, a secret operations front for NATO under Turkish command. Some are affiliated with groups of fanatics, including Al-Qaeda, under Qatar’s command or factions of the Saudi Royal Family, the Sudairi. Along the way, they took some border posts, and then moved to the capital where they have sown confusion by attacking random targets: police groups or isolated military.
Read article here

The Vikings are coming!

The Vikings are coming to the Danish Canadian National Museum & Gardens August 18th & 19th!!! (0.8 km south of the 4-way stop in Dickson, Alberta)
Feast with the Vikings - Saturday, August 18th 5:30pm - 9pm. A prelude to Viking Day- limited tickets are now on sale at the museum for this special fundraising event. Take pleasure in an Authentic Danish Meal - Roast pork with crackling, red cabbage, new potatoes fried in butter and sugar, whipped potatoes and brown sauce and there's dessert too. Also take the opportunity to taste some mead (a wine made from honey), from Fallentimber Meadery. First wander through the Viking encampments and experience some Viking history and then see them demonstrate their renowned battle re-enactment. If you ask them nicely they might even join you for dinner! Tickets are $40- Contact Carol at the Museum -728-0019 or Joanne at 403-227-4917.

 Viking Day - Sunday, August 19th 11:30 am - 5:30pm. Vikings will be invading the gardens of the museum! Come and experience, through their re-enactments, the daily lives of Vikings a thousand years ago. Hear their stories, see their crafts and cooking methods, marvel over their armour and battle skills. See how the Vikings maintained their Ships. Lots to see for everyone. Special Event Admission: Adults $5.00 & Children (12 yrs and under) $3.00. Lunch is available in the restaurant by reservation only, so call 728-0019 and reserve your table. Two seating at 12:30 pm and 2:30 pm. There is also a concession available serving Danish hot dogs, desserts and drinks. Check out our website for more information: danishcanadians.com

Europe is sleepwalking towards imminent disaster, warn top economists

The 17 economists said Europe’s political waters have been muddied by disputes over eurobonds, debt-pooling, subsidies and fiscal union Photo: Reuters

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

The euro has completely broken down as a workable system and faces collapse with “incalculable economic losses and human suffering” unless there is a drastic change of course, according to a group of leading economists. 

Europe is “sleepwalking towards disaster”, according to the 17 experts, who warned that over the past few weeks “the situation in the debtor countries has deteriorated dramatically”.

“The sense of a neverending crisis, with one domino falling after another, must be reversed. The last domino, Spain, is days away from a liquidity crisis,” said the economists. They include two members of Germany’s Council of Economic Experts and leading euro specialists at the London of School of Economics, all euro supporters.

“This dramatic situation is the result of a eurozone system which, as currently constructed, is thoroughly broken. The cause is a systemic failure. It is the responsibility of all European nations that were parties to its flawed design, construction and implementation to contribute to a solution. Absent this collective response, the euro will disintegrate,” they added in a co-signed report for the Institute for New Economic Thinking.

The warning came as contagion from Spain pushed Italy’s borrowing costs to danger levels, with two-year yields rocketing 40 basis points to more than 5pc. The Milan bourse tumbled 3pc, led by bank shares. Italian equities have been in freefall since it became clear two weeks ago that the EU’s June summit deal had failed to break the nexus between crippled banks and sovereign states.

The crisis is starting to ricochet back into Germany, where the PMI manufacturing index for July fell to its lowest since mid-2009. Doubts are emerging about the creditworthiness of the German state itself.
Read article here

News from the other side - in Syria

Editor: Check out this video from Damascus to get a very different story on what is happening in Syria at this time.

Satellites See Unprecedented Greenland Ice Sheet Surface Melt

Extent of surface melt over Greenland’s ice sheet on July 8 (left) and July 12 (right). Measurements from three satellites showed that on July 8, about 40 percent of the ice sheet had undergone thawing at or near the surface. In just a few days, the melting had dramatically accelerated and an estimated 97 percent of the ice sheet surface had thawed by July 12.

July 24, 2012: For several days this month, Greenland's surface ice cover melted over a larger area than at any time in more than 30 years of satellite observations. Nearly the entire ice cover of Greenland, from its thin, low-lying coastal edges to its two-mile-thick center, experienced some degree of melting at its surface, according to measurements from three independent satellites analyzed by NASA and university scientists.

On average in the summer, about half of the surface of Greenland's ice sheet naturally melts. At high elevations, most of that melt water quickly refreezes in place. Near the coast, some of the melt water is retained by the ice sheet and the rest is lost to the ocean. But this year the extent of ice melting at or near the surface jumped dramatically. According to satellite data, an estimated 97 percent of the ice sheet surface thawed at some point in mid-July.
Read article here

Scientists find medicinal plants caught in Neanderthal teeth

Researchers work inside Spain's El Sidron cave, where plaque scraped from the teeth of Neanderthals suggests that at least one of them was chewing medicinal plants.

By Alan Boyle

Tooth scrapings from tens of thousands of years ago suggest that Neanderthals chewed on medicinal plants to soothe their upsets.
That's the conclusion drawn by an international team of researchers who conducted a chemical analysis on dental calculus from five sets of Neanderthal remains that were excavated inside El Sidron Cave in northern Spain. The calcified crud contained microscopic bits of plant material as well as chemicals associated with wood smoke.
The analysis indicated that the Neanderthals ate cooked plant food that was high in starch, and perhaps also nuts, grasses and green vegetables. One case was particularly intriguing: The scrapings from an individual known as Adult 4 contained chemicals known as azulenes and coumarins. Those are the sorts of chemicals that are found in yarrow and chamomile, two types of herbal remedies.

Yarrow is an astringent that's long been used to cleanse wounds when used externally, or counter internal bleeding when ingested. Chamomile may be best-known today as a soothing tea, but that's because it has a settling effect on colds, headaches, intestinal distress and menstrual cramping. Both plants have anti-inflammatory properties.
The researchers say this is the first molecular-scale evidence supporting the idea that Neanderthals ingested medicinal plants. Their findings — which are based on a high-tech method of analysis known as pyrolysis-gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, plus the study of plant microfossils — were published online today in the journal Naturwissenschaften.
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