Category: Uncategorized

In an effort to protect itself against future U.S. sanctions, and to distance itself from the dollar, Russia wants to cut its $45 billion dollar holdings in its $125 billion sovereign wealth fund.    Vladimir Kolychev, Russia’s deputy finance minister, said they are “looking at different reserve currencies that meet IMF standards, including the yuan...

Last Thursday, Evo Morales, the once popular leader of Bolivia, who was pressured to resign on 11 November, accused the United States and the Organization of American States (OAS) of leading a coup to replace him with a government more friendly to U.S. commercial interests. The OAS had been called in to review what was...

It’s non-stop. Another day, another wave of violent confrontations between Hong Kong protesters and police… this time closing down universities and virtually bringing commercial traffic to a halt. Unable and unwilling to deal with escalating conflict, some colleges ended the semester early while others have been become barricaded fortresses behind which protesting students are in...

Among the many leaderless demonstrations sweeping the globe protesting graft, corruption, political elite dominance, income inequality, declining living standards, lack of jobs, etc., the street demonstrations in Lebanon that began in mid-October have escalated.  The protest that escalated last Wednesday, when some 250,000 were on the streets, many of them blocking the major road near...

Last Friday saw the deadly confrontations between protesters, who were closing in on government headquarters in central Baghdad, and military/police forces, who fired live bullets and tear gas to stop them from entering the zone.  Amnesty International has called the deadly force used by the Iraqi government as “nothing short but a bloodbath.” Since the...

On Saturday, demonstrations broke out across Iran when oil prices jumped 50 percent overnight following the government’s decision to slash fuel subsidies. While the Iranian demonstrations began peacefully, riots broke out and violence escalated.  By Sunday, evening street protests had spread out to about 100 cities and towns across the country. Within those cities and...

Last Tuesday, Israel’s military carried out the planned killing of Palestinian leader Baha Abu al-Ata in the Gaza Strip. An Israeli airstrike that destroyed Ata’s home also killed his wife, and his two children were seriously injured.  Israeli officials called Ata a “ticking time bomb,” claiming he was responsible for rocket attacks against Israel. Justifying...

A new study from asset management firm BNP Paribas sees the oil industry’s future path shrinking from today’s superhighway to a country lane over the next 25 years. The study looked at the transportation “energy at the wheels” to be gained over the next 25 years through a $100 billion investment in oil compared to...

At the University of Leeds, British biologists have been able to undo key symptoms of aging by tickling people’s ears. A lobe in humans’ outer ear holds a strand of the vagus nerve, a neurological highway carrying messages between the gut and brain. It plays several central roles in the parasympathetic nervous system, the branch...

As part of the world’s quest for increasingly scarce potable water, chemists at the University of California at Berkeley have fashioned a material that pulls water vapor out of air, even in a desert, and delivers it as liquid water. The material is a metal-organic framework or MOF; think of metal atoms as balls linked...