Met warning campaign
After the US and British governments introduced a warning system, there was never an all-clear
Once a system is introduced that publicly reports the threat of terrorism, the tendency of the bureaucrats seems to be to keep the old, come what may – or not.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is apparently alarmed about the "still unsolved too-big-to-fail problem", but he also exacerbates this
Time and again, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has criticized processes, some of which are justified, and, like IMF chief Christine Lagarde in London this week, identified serious problems. It took ie with criticism that the gap between rich and poor was widening and suggested that there were headwinds on banking reform from the banking lobby. However, it may be amed that this criticism is only intended to make the IMF more credible, since it made fatal mistakes during the crisis. Because the IMF programs have led to the impoverishment of broad strata in the crisis countries and the problem that banks "too big to fail" have come to a head under his control.
City of London. The British financial district wants to preserve capitalism. Image: GeographBot/CC BY-SA 2.0
New strategy aims to disrupt dynasties and give kids a chance at life outside organized crime
Calabria’s juvenile court president Roberto di Bella has developed a new strategy against the ‘Ndrangheta, which has controlled his region since the mid-19th century. Century terrorizes: He takes away the children of families suspected of belonging to the mafia or of being positively opposed to it at the first available opportunity. The purpose of these measures is not to deter parents who are already hopelessly trapped in the criminal network, but to protect the sons and daughters who should get a chance to choose a life different from the one predetermined by the family.
As evidence that such a thing is possible, di Bella points to a sixteen-year-old who went to Milan and radically cut off all contact with his family when his mother gave him the choice of joining civil society or the ‘Ndrangheta, and taking the place of his shot father. Di Bella, who is working closely with social workers, youth workers and other agencies in his new program, helped the boy get a job in northern Italy and other help in building an independent life.
A British research report claims to have identified millions of network dropouts. A US study, on the other hand, expects "substantial" Productivity gains from the Internet – in the amount of "a whopping" 0.25 percent
28 million surfers in the U.S. and two million in the U.K. are already fed up with the Net, according to the Virtual Society, a research group paid for by the British government. The American Brookings Institute, on the other hand, ames that the economic advantages of the Internet will only have an impact in the future and that the network revolution will take place after all. However, more modest than previously expected by many market analysts.
It was a shock for all net euphorics, what came out of the research laboratories of the Virtual Society: Their report "Profile 2000" which summarizes the results of surveys conducted by a total of 76 researchers at 22 universities in England, Holland, Denmark and the United States, says that despite all the cyberhype, the impact of the Internet on society is much smaller than expected.
…and the U.S. to launch airstrikes and night raids
"You have the wristwatches, we all have time". The saying is attributed to the Taliban. Mullah Omar, head of the so-called Quetta Shura, alludes to this when, in his latest rejoinder, he continues to predict an "exhausting war of attrition" for the Allies, which will "grind down" the foreign troops as it did the Soviet army at the time. "The longer the war lasts, the more soldiers will fall on their side and the coarser the economic burdens will become."The USA are under other prere to succeed, their time constraints are dictated by election campaigns. Thus, the currently circulating timetables for withdrawal, partial withdrawal in 2011 and withdrawal of combat troops along the lines of Iraq in 2014, can easily be linked to the 2012 presidential elections and 2014 midterms. The tremendous intensification of airstrikes and raids in recent weeks shows that results are being demanded. Whether this indicates military effects on the enemy?
Messages from Mullah Omar to the general public are rare. All the more importance is attached to its multilingual message, which was sent to several media outlets. Because he also called on Muslims around the world to donate, some see this as an indication that NATO operations are having more of an impact on the Taliban than he admits.
Family Praises Cooperation of Turkish Authorities and Believes Suicide After Viewing Surveillance Recordings
On Tuesday, it was announced that Jackie Sutton, the acting head of the Iraq section of the London-based Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR), died in mysterious circumstances at Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport. Turkish media reported that the fifty-year-old woman from London hanged herself in the airport toilet with her own cords after she missed a connecting flight to Erbil and said she had no money for a new ticket (cf. Hanged on a string because of a missed flight?).
Numerous acquaintances of the doctoral student and lecturer at the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies at the Australian National University (ANU) disputed this. Sutton’s family now believes suicide after all. Her sister Jenny told the Daily Mail that after the initial reports, they were "skeptical" but based on the evidence presented to them and to a colleague of Sutton’s at work "satisfied" with the investigation of the Turkish authorities and convinced of it, "that Jackie acted alone".
Back to Gaya, the first German CGI-production will be shown in cinemas from Thursday
Premieres aren’t what they used to be either. And this now applies even to world premieres, where actually for the first time an opera, a theater piece or a movie is presented to the hopefully afterwards enthusiastic world public. But only actually – as the current example of Back to Gaya shows. The first German film to be made exclusively on the computer, which was produced in Hanover for a two-digit million euro sum, will celebrate its world premiere next Thursday at the Hanover Opera House. At any rate, this is how the event, to which all kinds of celebrities and sponsors are invited, is announced. And probably a red carpet will be rolled out in front of the opera house according to the occasion.
So far, so solemn. And the excited PR ballyhoo of those responsible before the premiere is understandable, because the production of this film was such an enormous financial feat that a flop at the box office would have been difficult for the companies involved to cope with economically. But unfortunately already the vollmundig announced spectacle has a small Schonheitsfehler.
Pumpen auf dem kalifornischen Lost-Hills-olfeld. Bild: Arne Huckelheim/CC-BY-SA-3.0
The extreme fall in the price of oil has made more expensive methods of collecting oil loss-making, and North Sea oil is also running out of money
The oil price, which has risen again in recent days, has given the industry some relief, but prices are still far too low for many producers to be able to produce profitably. In addition, the price increase was driven by reports that fracking companies in particular are now being hit hard. The number of active wells has fallen in the last eight weeks to the lowest level since 2012, so a shortage of oil is expected soon. Drilling rigs will be extracted mainly from shale oil fields, companies will go bankrupt, jobs will be cut, loans will become bad and it will once again be dangerous for banks that have fed the fracking boom with cheap money from the money glut.
Network basis for creative artists
Those who enter the rooms of Public Netbase in the former offices of the Vienna Messepalast expecting the usual technical office environment of Internet cafes are immediately buried at the entrance by Kybermax, a life-size robot that can be controlled via the Internet. Tee Null (Note.: spelled out here, as the 0 can all too easily be mistaken for an O), is an Internet server of a different kind, and the rooms from which it is operated reflect this hybrid otherness in the best possible way. Here the steamed and already quite shredded luxury of the Austrian social bureaucracy of the seventies with its light wood veneers and fitted carpets mixes with the machine aesthetics of a local and global Internet and cultural scene.
Homepage
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) wants to continue granting loans even though the country is not repaying loans
Once again, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) wants to violate its previous rules and continue lending to Ukraine. Since it is also clear to the IMF that this is an increasingly dramatic violation of its own statutes, these very rules are now to be changed for the preferential treatment of the bankrupt state.
Actually, the Washington-based fund is not allowed to lend to countries that are in arrears with other creditor countries. Because Ukraine does not repay its debts to Russia, this rule is now to be dropped in order to be able to continue to financially support countries that are in arrears. This was decided by the Executive Board, explained IMF spokesman Gerry Rice.