UK science to be freely available
The government is to develop plans to make publicly funded research results freely available to all.
Ron Paul's Latest "Audit the Fed" Bill Passes Committee Unanimously
This morning, the U.S. House of Representatives Oversight and Government Reform Committee unanimously passed Ron Paul's latest "Audit the Fed" bill, H.R. 459.
The bill would eliminate certain restrictions that now exist on any audits done on the Federal Reservefrom 31 U.S.C. 714, such as:
Audits of the Board and Federal reserve banks may not include—
(1) transactions for or with a foreign central bank, government of a foreign country, or nonprivate international financing organization;
(2) deliberations, decisions, or actions on monetary policy matters, including discount window operations, reserves of member banks, securities credit, interest on deposits, and open market operations;
(3) transactions made under the direction of the Federal Open Market Committee; or
(4) a part of a discussion or communication among or between members of the Board and officers and employees of the Federal Reserve System related to clauses (1)–(3) of this subsection.
Again, the above are the existing restrictions that H.R. 459, if it eventually passes the full House and then becomes law in unaltered or unamended form, will eliminate from Fed audits. By the time his last try at this got in some form into a final bill, even Ron Paul himself wouldn't vote for that whole bill.
Ron Paul’s Latest “Audit the Fed” Bill Passes Committee Unanimously
Flat-pack cardboard and plywood car scoops Eco-Design award at Shell Eco-Marathon
Aston University’s entry into this year’s Shell Eco-Marathon may look a little low-tech, but that didn’t stop the hydrogen-fueled cardboard and plywood flat-pack car from scooping the Eco-Design award at the European event, held in Rotterdam in May… Continue Reading Flat-pack cardboard and plywood car scoops Eco-Design award at Shell Eco-Marathon
Section: Automotive
Tags: Aston University, Cardboard, Fuel efficiency, Hydrogen-powered
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Flat-pack cardboard and plywood car scoops Eco-Design award at Shell Eco-Marathon
How Universal One-Click Payments Will Change Everything
Stripe, a startup backed by the same band of self-styled Libertarian revolutionaries who founded and then cashed out of PayPal, is set to do to every transaction on the planet what one-click payments did to Apple's App store and Amazon.com. If the company succeeds, the psychological abstraction of money at the core of the one-click impulse buy could make buying things easier than ever -- maybe even too easy -- and the backers of Stripe very, very rich.
How Universal One-Click Payments Will Change Everything
Vast F.D.A. Effort Tracked E-Mails of Its Scientists
A wide-ranging surveillance operation by the Food and Drug Administration against a group of its own scientists used an enemies list of sorts as it secretly captured thousands of e-mails that the disgruntled scientists sent privately to members of Congress, lawyers, labor officials, journalists and even President Obama, previously undisclosed records show.
Vast F.D.A. Effort Tracked E-Mails of Its Scientists
Allow third party recording tools for YouTube
Allow third party recording tools for YouTube #FreedomOnYoutube
For decades people were allowed to take a private copy of a public broadcast. You could record the radio program with a cassette recorder or make a copy of your favorite movie by using a video recorder. All these techniques have been opposed heavily in its early years by the big media companies who didn't want the public to have such technology. They did describe such technology as criminal and as a threat to their business e.g. the 1980s campaign Home Taping Is Killing Music.
Several years later history is about to repeat: Google has teamed up with the RIAA to make the same claims against all sorts of online recording tools for their 21th century broadcasting service: YouTube ("Broadcast yourself"). Google is taking action against nearly every service that enables its users to create a private copy of a public YouTube broadcast while the RIAA is threatening news media like CNet for promoting such a software.
I hereby ask Google to break their silence and participate in an open and fair discussion with the intention to find a solution that suits the needs of the users.
Just want to say for this and other reasons, I'm happy to be an ex-Wells Fargo customer. They're not the only bank that steered minority borrowers who qualified for regular loans to subprime mortgages, but I don't think $175 million begins to pay for the harm they've caused. It's more like a slap on the hand. After all, their lending practices helped perpetuate the lingering myth that minorities crashed the economy - when it was really their own damned greed:
WASHINGTON — Wells Fargo Bank will pay at least $175 million to settle accusations that it discriminated against African-American and Hispanic borrowers in violation of fair-lending laws, the Justice Department announced Thursday.
Wells Fargo, the nation’s largest residential home mortgage originator, allegedly engaged in apattern or practice of discrimination against qualified African-American and Hispanic borrowers from 2004 through 2009.
At a news conference, Deputy Attorney General James Cole said the bank’s discriminatory lending practices resulted in more than 34,000 African-American and Hispanic borrowers in 36 states and the District of Columbia paying higher rates for loans solely because of the color of their skin.
Cole said that with the settlement, the second largest of its kind in history, the government will ensure that borrowers hit hard by the housing crisis will have an opportunity to access homeownership.
The bank will pay $125 million in compensation for borrowers who were steered into subprime mortgages or who paid higher fees and rates than white borrowers because of their race or national origin rather than because of differences in credit-worthiness.
Wells Fargo also will pay $50 million in direct down payment assistance to borrowers in areas of the country where the Justice Department identified large number of discrimination victims. Those areas are Washington, D.C., Chicago, Philadelphia, Oakland and San Francisco, New York City, Cleveland, Riverside, Calif., and Baltimore.
Wells Fargo To Pay $175 Million Settlement For Steering Qualified Minority Buyers To Subprime Mortgages
Guess Who’s Back? SOPA And ACTA Are Sneaking Into Law Behind Your Back
The Internet has won the fight. SOPA and ACTA are both dead after having been eviscerated by the combined powers of the world coming together to fight for what they believe in – basic digital human rights. We can now rest easy knowing that the war has come to an end. Politicians would never think to bring them back, even under the guise of innocuous trade agreements and IP bills, right? Right?
Unfortunately, the war is not won and it’s looking like the war will never end. SOPA and ACTA are both back in new forms that are even harder to kill than before. I can understand SOPA being back as it’s been dead for a while, but are they really trying to push through ACTA right after it was defeated in the European Parliament? The answer is an astounding yes and the tactics that politicians are employing to regulate the Internet are pretty terrifying.
Guess Who’s Back? SOPA And ACTA Are Sneaking Into Law Behind Your Back
Join us at the Fort Meade hearings to stand with Brad
Alleged WikiLeaks whistle-blower PFC Bradley Manning is back in court soon for his next pre-trial motion hearing. We encourage everyone to attend! The next scheduled court dates are:
- Monday, July 16, 2012
- Tuesday, July 17, 2012
- Wednesday, July 18, 2012
- Thursday, July 19, 2012
- Friday, July 20, 2012
- Monday, August 27, 2012
- Tuesday, August 28, 2012
- Wednesday, August 29, 2012
- Thursday, August 30, 2012
- Friday, August 31, 2012
FUTURE PRIMATE 