1. Kerry trip sets tone for N Korea response
John Kerry might well be wondering what he has let himself in for. Half way through a ten-day global trip that has immersed him in the Arab-Israeli peace process and Syria’s civil war, on Friday the new US secretary of state flies into the middle of the latest North Korea crisis.
Making his first visit to Asia since taking office, Mr Kerry will travel to Seoul, Beijing and Tokyo at the very time North Korea could test its new medium-range ballistic missiles in what is widely believed to be an attempt to force new concessions or aid from the international community.
In a trip that will set the tone for the international response to the latest threats from North Korea, Mr Kerry’s objective will be to resist pressure from Pyongyang and provide continued reassurance to the US’ South Korean and Japanese allies, while also cajoling China into putting more pressure on its North Korean ally.
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/ba83aba2-...z2QCjNyJUv
2. Greek Unemployment Soars By 1.5% In One Month, Hits Record 27.2%
There was much hope in the feudal states of Europe that the monthly December drop in Greek unemployment - the first in years - was the beginning of the end for local misery. Alas, it appears the Greek statistics office leaarned a thing or two from the BLS and it was all seasonal adjustments.
As reported earlier today, things just got much worse again, with January unemployment surging by 1.5% in one month to a new all time record high 27.2%. More importantly, the number of employed people in Greece, which dropped to a new record low of 3.617,771 compared to 3,888,400 a year ago (and down 11,653 from December), is now nearly as much as the entire inactive population at 3,346,423 and far below the ranks of the unemployed (1,348,694 - an all time high as well) and inactive.
Spread by gender, the unemployment rate for males was 23.9%, while a record 31.4% of eligible women had no job in January. Finally, youth unemployment once again hit a record high 59.3% in January, even as unemployment among those aged 65-74 has soared from 0.9% in 2008 to 6.9% in 2013.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-04-11...record-272
3. Boomers Push Doctor-Assisted Dying in End-of-Life Revolt
Claudia Burzichelli doesn’t want to die like her dad. Nine years ago, her father, already afflicted with Parkinson’s, killed himself with a gunshot to the head days after his release from a hospital where he had been treated for a heart attack. Burzichelli, 54, now suffering from kidney and lung cancer, is haunted by her father’s violent death, even more so as she contemplates her own mortality. She hopes to find a more peaceful way to end her life, if it comes to that.
“On those days when I’ve struggled to breathe, when I think about the stresses on my family, I would hope that I might have more options than starving myself or taking my life in a violent way,” she told a panel of New Jersey lawmakers during a hearing in February on a bill to legalize assisted dying. “It comforts me to think there could be a process, a way to offer options that would not hurt my family.”
Baby boomers, like Burzichelli, a former education manager at Rutgers University, are at the forefront of a new movement. They brought on the sexual revolution, demanded natural childbirth, fought for legalized abortion and turned the mid- life crisis into a force for self-improvement. Now they’re engaged in transforming how Americans experience death.
In states across the country, including New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont, graying baby boomers have been lobbying lawmakers in recent months at hearings, in letters and by phone, pushing to make it legal for doctors to prescribe life-ending drugs to terminally ill patients. Advocates and opponents say there is more support this year than in past attempts with five states considering such legislation.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-11...evolt.html
4. Cyprus may sell some gold reserves to help fund bailout
An assessment by the European Commission says Cyprus must sell about 400m euros (£341m) worth of gold. The country has already been forced to wind down one of its largest banks in order to qualify for a 10bn euro lifeline from international lenders.
Even with that bailout, it is predicted that the Cypriot economy will shrink by 8.7% this year. Cyprus's total bullion reserves stood at 13.9 tonnes at the end of February, according to data from the World Gold Council.
At current prices, 400m euros' worth of gold amounts to about 10.36 tonnes of metal. If reports of a sale by the Financial Times and news agencies are correct, it would be the biggest bullion sale by a eurozone central bank since France sold 17.4 tonnes in the first half of 2009.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22106187
5. DARPA Building Robots With ‘Real’ Brains
The next frontier for the robotics industry is to build machines that think like humans. Scientists have pursued that elusive goal for decades, and they believe they are now just inches away from the finish line. A Pentagon-funded team of researchers has constructed a tiny machine that would allow robots to act independently. Unlike traditional artificial intelligence systems that rely on conventional computer programming, this one “looks and ‘thinks’ like a human brain,” said James K. Gimzewski, professor of chemistry at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Gimsewski is a member of the team that has been working under sponsorship of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency on a program called “physical intelligence.” This technology could be the secret to making robots that are truly autonomous, Gimzewski said during a conference call hosted by Technolink, a Los Angeles-based industry group. This project does not use standard robot hardware with integrated circuitry, he said. The device that his team constructed is capable, without being programmed like a traditional robot, of performing actions similar to humans, Gimzewski said.
Participants in this project include Malibu-based HRL (formerly Hughes Research Laborary) and the University of California at Berkeley’s Freeman Laboratory for Nonlinear Neurodynamics. The latter is named after Walter J. Freeman, who has been working for 50 years on a mathematical model of the brain that is based on electroencephalography data. EEG is the recording of electrical activity in the brain.
http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/b...px?ID=1101
6. Leaked report: Nearly half of US drone strikes in Pakistan not against al-Qaeda
A trove of leaked classified reports has confirmed what many had suspected – US drone kills in Pakistan are not the precision strikes against top-level al-Qaeda terrorists they are portrayed as by the Obama administration.
Instead, many of the attacks are aimed at suspected low-level tribal militants, who may pose no direct danger to the United States – and for many there appears to be little evidence to justify the assassinations. Top secret documents obtained by McClatchy newspapers in the US show the locations, identities and numbers of those attacked and killed in Pakistan in 2006-8 and 2010-11, as well as explanations for why the targets were picked.
The statistics illustrate the breadth of the US ‘drone doctrine’ – which has never been defined by consecutive US administrations. Between 1,990 and 3,308 people are reported to have been killed in the drone strikes in Pakistan since 2004, the vast majority of them during the Obama terms.
In the 12-month period up to 2011, 43 out of 95 drone strikes in the reports (which give an account of the vast majority of US operations in the country) were not aimed at al-Qaeda at all. And 265 out of 482 people killed in those assassinations, were defined internally as “extremists”. Indeed, only six of the men killed – less than two percent – were senior al-Qaeda leaders.
http://rt.com/news/drones-us-al-qaeda-militants-649/
7. New highly radioactive leak from pipe at Fukushima plant — Expert: Nuclear material may be flowing from “damaged pipes or drains” into Pacific
NYTimes, April 10, 2013: Some experts say that contaminated water has continued to reach the Pacific. Jota Kanda, an oceanographer at the Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology, said last month in a discussion paper posted on the Web site of the journal Biogeosciences that Tepco’s own readings of radiation levels in waters off the plant suggest a continued leak of radioactive cesium into the ocean. “This suggests that water might be leaking out from the plant through damaged pipes or drains or other routes,” he said.
Kyodo News, April 11, 2013: Another radioactive leak was detected at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant on Thursday while workers were pumping out contaminated water from one of the troubled underground tanks, plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. said. This time about 22 liters of radioactive water has leaked from a junction of the piping. The liquid has seeped into the soil, according to TEPCO. [...]
AFP, April 11, 2013: Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear plant has sprung yet another leak of radioactive water, its operator said on Thursday, the latest in an increasingly long line of mishaps to rattle public confidence. Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) said around 22 litres (six US gallons) of highly radioactive waste water leaked from a pipe as work crews were trying to empty a reservoir that itself had already sprung leaks. [...]
http://enenews.com/new-highly-radioactiv...to-pacific
8. CISPA, stripped of privacy protections, heads for House vote
A controversial cybersecurity bill is one step closer to being added to the law books following a closed-door meeting between members of Congress on Wednesday. Privacy advocates are up in arms after the House Intelligence committee overwhelmingly approved an updated draft of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, or CISPA, Wednesday afternoon by a vote of 18-to-2. Now if the bill makes it all the way to the desk of US President Barack Obama, Americans will likely be subjected to having the personal information they provide to online businesses shared with the government’s top-secret spy agencies.
The authors of the bill, Reps. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) and Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md.), introduced a revamped version of CISPA in February after attempts to pass the act in 2012 were thwarted when the congressional session came to a close before a final vote could occur. In the few months between the original CISPA’s demise and the reintroduction, though, officials have reported an increase in cyberattacks by way of Iran and China that have been condemned by politicians as high up as the president.
“Congress must act,” Obama said during his 2013 State of the Union address, “…by passing legislation to give our government a greater capacity to secure our networks and deter attacks.” On their part, Rogers and Ruppersberger say CIPA will “provide for the sharing of certain cyber threat intelligence and cyber threat information between the intelligence community and cybersecurity entities,” by closely monitoring threats to the nation’s cyber infrastructure and formally legalizing the practice of sending personal user data to government agencies, including the Department of Defense and the National Security Agency.
http://rt.com/usa/information-privacy-bill-cispa-699/
It is wrong that I find #3 to be one of the funniest articles posted in this thread?
![[Image: article-2305437-19288DFC000005DC-122_634x401.jpg]](http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/04/07/article-2305437-19288DFC000005DC-122_634x401.jpg)
![[Image: BitCoin%20250_0.jpg]](http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/2013/04/BitCoin%20250_0.jpg)