Glitch a Boom Glitch a Boom

“Glitch” is clearly the word of the moment, after a series of pesky little technical problems forced United Airlines to ground flights, halted New York Stock Exchange trading and took down The Wall Street Journal website homepage all on the same day. If that wasn’t enough technical trouble, Seattle’s 911 system went down briefly. And a couple of NASA spacecraft also suffered “glitches” in recent days.

We deal routinely with glitches these days — a Wi-Fi connection goes down, an app freezes, a plug-in (usually Shockwave) stops responding, an email doesn’t load properly — which may help explain why, aside from lots of grumbling from delayed airline passengers, the reaction to Wednesday’s glitches was rather muted. The NYSE problems were reportedly caused by a “configuration issue” after a software update and United blamed its problem on “degraded network connectivity.” We see those issues every day, just not on as large a scale.

But that’s the problem.

At the risk of sounding like a high school term paper, let us note that the Merriam-Webster definition of glitch is “an unexpected and usually minor problem; especially: a minor problem with a machine or device (such as a computer).” The full definition describes it as a minor problem that causes a temporary setback.

Sure, Wednesday’s setbacks were all temporary. The Wall Street Journal site came back up quickly. Seattle’s 911 service was restored. Action on the NYSE itself was stopped for nearly four hours, but even then traders were still able to buy and sell NYSE-listed stocks on other exchanges. United grounded about 3,500 flights, which meant some people missed a wedding or a crucial business meeting. That will take time to sort out, but it will get sorted out.

In aggregate, though, the problems add up — and the word “glitch” only minimizes what can be much bigger, more serious issues..

Stock exchanges have suffered from a series of stoppage-causing glitches in recent years, pointing to the value of having trading spread across numerous exchanges. United’s tech breakdown “marked the latest in a series of airline delays and cancellations in the last few years that experts blame on massive, interconnected computer systems that lack sufficient staff and financial backing,” the Los Angeles Times reports . Just ask any of the roughly 400,000 United passengers whose travel plans were messed up if this was a little glitch. Or maybe check with the engineers who had to troubleshoot and rebuild the HealthCare.gov site after its glitch-laden launch.

It may be some relief that these latest outages weren’t the result of external attacks, but as sociologist Zeynep Tufecki, an assistant professor at the School of Information at the University of North Carolina, writes at The Message, “The big problem we face isn’t

coordinated cyber-terrorism, it’s that software sucks. Software sucks for many reasons, all of which go deep, are entangled, and expensive to fix.”

These foul-ups are now mundane, and to some extent they may be inevitable as we rely more and more on complicated computer systems in every aspect of our lives. That’s the real issue, and it’s a lot bigger than a glitch.

A Glitch by any other name

All United Airlines flights nationwide were grounded briefly Wednesday morning as the airline dealt with computer issues.

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The stop was lifted by late morning, according to the Federal Aviation Administration, but delays lingered around the country and locally.

"We're recovering from a network connectivity issue & restoring flight ops," United Airlines said in a tweet. "We'll have a waiver on united.com to change flights."

Some flights were able to get out of Tampa International Airport on Wednesday before the issues kicked in, said airport spokeswoman Emily Nipps. If a flight was already in the air when the issues started, it could continue to its final destination.

United manages 18 flights out of TIA each day, Nipps said.

"It's going to affect flights all day," Nipps said. "It'll have a domino effect."

Lines were getting long at the United counter as passengers tried to get information and reschedule flights, Nipps said. It wasn't immediately clear how many passengers were affected.

The issue was a result of automation issues with the airline's computers.

The TIA Twitter account alerted followers about two United flights that were grounded out of Tampa at 9:35 a.m., one to Washington, D.C., and one to Houston.

United is one of the world's largest airlines, with eight hubs in the United States. The airline served 138 million passengers in 2014 with 4,935 daily departures, according to its website.

Some United flights on TIA's arrival and departures board still showed on-time statuses as of 10 a.m., but others were listed as delayed.

Ross Howell of Zephyrhills waited with his partner at the airport Wednesday morning for more information about their flights. Howell booked Delta, but his partner booked United. He's worried they'll end up in Sweden, their final destination, on different days.

"We just want to remind anyone who is flying United today definitely to check with the airline before they come to the airport," Nipps said. "If they're not flying United, they should be fine."

And then…

The Wall Street Journal's website homepage was not accessible Wednesday afternoon, shortly after the New York Stock Exchange had to shut down due to a computer glitch. The WSJ.com displayed a 504 error, which means the server was acting too slow to process HTTP requests and therefore be visible by users. 

The error appeared on the desktop version of the site, tested in Google Chrome and Safari. The website's homepage still functioned on mobile browsers. On desktop, individual pages of the Wall Street Journal were accessible.

UPDATE, 12:30 p.m. EDT: A modified version of the homepage went online shortly after the glitch. The site now reads, "WSJ.com is having technical difficulties. The full site will return shortly." We reached out to Dow Jones, the Wall Street Journal's parent company, for comment on the glitch, and are waiting to hear back.

UPDATE, 12:50 p.m. EDT: The Wall Street Journal's homepage is back up in full form after Wednesday's outage. Dow Jones has yet to issue comment.

Wednesday hasn't been a good day for technology. Earlier Wednesday morning, a technical glitch with United Airlines delayed all flights. The NYSE also had to halt trading at 11:30 a.m. EDT. "NYSE/NYSE MKT has temporarily suspended trading in all symbols. Additional information will follow as soon as possible," NYSE said in a statement, NBC News reported. 

Meanwhile, the Chinese markets were burning down

Hong Kong (CNN)China's stock market crash is now stretching into its third week, and share prices in Shanghai have lost a third of their value since mid-June.

The country's market watchdog has warned of a "mood of panic." And some say the crash might have graver implications for the world economy than the crisis in Greece.

Here's what you need to know to make sense of what's happening:

READ: China is taking 10 huge actions to save its stock market

So why are stocks falling?

Earlier this year, China's stock market was displaying many of the classic warning signs of a bubble.

Teenager making money in volatile Chinese market 02:45PLAY VIDEO

Grandmas, cab drivers and college kids were all making small fortunes in a frenzy of "chao gu" or stir-frying stocks -- Chinese slang for trading.

And the stock rally came at a time when the wider economy was slowing, puzzling many financial analysts. But now they say gravity is taking effect.

"China's stock market had become detached from the reality of China's own economy, and appallingly overvalued," Patrick Chovanec, managing director at Silvercrest Asset Management, posted on Twitter.

While some analysts believe that the stock market is undergoing a much needed "correction," China's government has pulled out all the stops to support share prices.

Panic sell-off in Chinese stocks 02:38PLAY VIDEO

The People's Bank of China has cut interest rates to a record low, brokerages have committed to buy billions worth of stocks, and regulators have announced a de facto suspension of new share listings.

Dong Tao, chief economist for Asia excluding Japan at investment house Credit Suisse, said Beijing fears that the stock rout could undermine consumption, as people nursing losses are unlikely to go to the mall and spend.

"That creates all kinds of risks for the economy and for the financial system and this is why Beijing is worried," he said.

Investors clearly aren't convinced by government efforts. China's stock market has been on a roller-coaster ride, sometimes opening with a jump of as much as 7%, before ending the day down by that much.

Few foreign investors have much direct exposure to these stock markets -- only 1.5% of Chinese shares are owned by foreigners, according to Capital Economics, as China still limits the amount of overseas investment.

The real concern for those outside China is an economic slowdown and wider impact from a fluctuating stock market.

Fears of a downturn in China have already hammered the price of commodities like iron ore and copper this week.

In the longer term, this could also hurt places like Australia, which supplies of a lot of China's raw materials.

READ: How media and risky trading fueled crash

What about Chinese people?

It's ordinary Chinese that have been the biggest victims of the crash.

Millions of them piled into the market after regulations were loosened on margin trading -- borrowing money to invest.

"I know people who sold their houses to invest in stocks. Now they're finished," one man told CNN outside a Shanghai brokerage.

However, the sharp recent losses follow a long rally, with both China's two main stock indexes still holding on to gains if measured since the start of the year.

And economists say stocks only make up 15% to 20% of Chinese households' wealth. This should help keep spending money in the pockets of consumers.

READ: Stock market crashes: How does China's stack up?

What does this mean for China's leaders?

Chinese stocks hammered despite stopgaps 03:42PLAY VIDEO

President Xi Jinping has portrayed himself as a "strong man," going after "tigers" -- high-ranking officials -- in his relentless anti-corruption drive.

But the stock market plunge could prove a formidable challenge to China's top leadership.

"They're putting their credibility on the line and if people see that they shoot that bazooka and, you know, the market continues to fall and then they realize that the government doesn't control economic outcomes as much as they thought," Chovanec told CNN.

And the heavy-handed measures Beijing has enacted to try and halt the rout may have undermined faith in China's commitment to market reforms.

"The government wants to reverse the market movement -- this is not market-based policy. That's a big setback for the Chinese capital markets," said Dong.

Root Cause Analysis: Capital Markets Fuel the BRICS

Plunging oil prices and economic sanctions have pushed Russia's economy to the brink of collapse. "Couldn't happen to a nicer dictator than Vladimir Putin," you might be thinking, but it could have repercussions for all of us.

Russia's currency, the ruble, crashed to record lows against the U.S. dollar on Tuesday, accelerating a months-long selloff. Russia's central bank jacked up interest rates in the middle of the night, desperately trying to stanch the bleeding by enticing investors to keep cash in the country. The bank raised its key rate to 17 percent from 10.5 percent, the biggest hike since Russia's ruble crisis in 1998. If that effort did any good, it was hard to tell.

The central bank's failure means it will have to keep trying, either by raising rates again or potentially by cracking down on the flow of capital out of the country. Neither option is good, as they can stifle borrowing and economic growth, which was already in deep trouble.

Russian GDP might shrink by a terrifying 4.5 percent next year, the central bank said Monday, especially if the price of crude oil hangs around $60 a barrel.

Oil traded around $54 a barrel in New York on Tuesday, after free-falling from nearly $100 a barrel in August. Russia is the world's second-biggest oil exporter after Saudi Arabia. The oil price crash has starved the country of a major source of economic power. Throw in Western sanctions over Putin's adventures in the Crimea and Ukraine, and the Russian economy has ground to a halt.

So, mission accomplished, right? We've punished Putin. But beware of blowback.

The 1998 crisis brought down hedge fund Long Term Capital Management, which shook the entire financial system. The Federal Reserve had to ride to the rescue of LTCM, recruiting banks to bail it out. The current ruble collapse is starting to look worse than the 1998 debacle:

So far we don't know that anybody has bet so big on the Russian ruble that it could bring down the whole system. Then again, it's early yet. In 1998, Russia's central bank raised its key rate to 150 percent, notes Joseph Cotterill of the Financial Times. The current situation has a way to go before it gets that desperate. And you never know if and where contagion will spread. In 1998 it was a big dumb hedge fund. In 2014-15 it could be a bunch of European banks, already in not-so-great shape after a succession of various crises.

Anxiety about oil prices and Russian instability is starting to rattle U.S. stocks, which have fallen in five of the last seven trading days. Market angst, if it gets carried away or goes on for too long, can hurt economic activity.

The selling in America has been tame so far. Economists expect the U.S. to hold up despite lousy economies all over the world, from Japan to China to Russia to Europe. Lower oil prices will help the economy. But the side effects can be scary.

Now, Let’s Connect the Dots

In less than 7 months, the two main capital powerhouses behind the BRICS have been taken down. I have said often on this program that the price of oil is a weapon. It is one that the US has been strategically playing between Russia and China, and that is not easy to do. First, if oil is too high, it hurts China and blesses Russia with windfall profits. If oil is too low, then it starves Russia while China enjoys an economic boom.

How do we take both systems down without hurting ourselves? Simple. The US expands its US production financed completely by debt; huge bonds that will be bailed out by taxpayers anyway. The glut tanks the price of oil, and then the Treasury dumps Rubles on the market like rotten fish. Russia sinks like a stone, while China enjoys an uncommonly good Spring with growth rates nearly 4%...that’s about four times that of the US economy.

Just as the biggest investors have stretched their margins as far as they can go long on China, the US hacks their trading computers, sparking a massive selloff. The margin calls exceed $6 trillion in less than 2 weeks. The Chinese government suspends trading—which in itself is like a bank holiday during the 1929 crash—robs the people’s equity and nationalizes the loss in less than 24 hours. Oh, sure the market selloff was temporarily stopped. Sure, the US experts sunk the blade deep into the soft underbelly of Asia and gave it a twist.

The BRICS Assassination Leads to the CIA

The plane crash that killed Brazilian presidential candidate Eduardo Campos, who was running in second place behind incumbent President Dilma Rousseff, has severely harmed Rousseff’s chances for re-election. Campos’s successor on the ticket, former Green Party leader Marina Silva, a George Soros puppet, now stands a very good chance of unseating Rousseff in an expected run-off election.

Rousseff’s defeat would signal a victory for the Obama administration’s covert activities to eliminate from the scene progressive presidents throughout Latin America.

A review of post-World War II history reveals that of all the many ways intelligence services have used to eliminate political and economic threats, murder by plane crash rank in second place, just ahead of automobile accidents and poisoning, and only behind the use of firearms and munitions, as the Central Intelligence Agency’s favorite modus operandi for political assassination.

The aerial assassinations of United Nations Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold, Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana, Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira, Portuguese Prime Minister Francisco sá Carneiro, Pakistani President Muhammad Zia Ul-Haq, prospective Indian Prime Minister Sanjay Gandhi, American United Auto Workers’ Union President Walter Reuther, former Texas Senator John Tower, and Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone all bore the markings of the involvement of one or more U.S. intelligence agencies in putting ends to political careers that threatened the underpinnings of Imperial America.

Latin America, in particular, has been plagued by plane crashes that have killed two leaders who were determined to pull away from American political influence, President Jaime Roldos Aguilera of Ecuador and President Omar Torrijos of Panama. Both leaders died in 1981, with Roldos dying just a few months before Torrijos.

John Perkins, the author of «Confessions of an Economic Hitman» and a former member of the U.S. intelligence community, fingered the United States in both plane crash assassinations.

This background of U.S. involvement in aerial assassinations makes the August 13 crash of the Cessna 560XLS Citation aircraft in Santos, Brazil, which killed pro-business Brazilian Socialist Party presidential candidate Campos, his aides, and the crew, all that more suspicious, the timing of the crash, during an election campaign that had favored an easy victory for Rousseff, has raised significant questions among Brazilian investigators and the general public.

Since its introduction in 1996, the Cessna 560XLS Citation model has enjoyed a perfect safety record. The sudden death of Campos upended the Brazilian presidential election campaign in a manner that may benefit the United States and the Central Intelligence Agency’s long-range agenda for Latin America.

 

Eduardo Campos, le candidat socialiste à …

 

Disturbing questions are being raised about the ownership of the aircraft bearing the tail number PR-AFA.

The plane’s murky record of owners and registration, along with the lack of cockpit voice recordings thanks to an apparent malfunction in the plane’s cockpit voice recorder, has a number of Brazilians wondering whether the plane was sabotaged by the United States. Rather than having the recording of the conversations of Campos’s flight crew, the recorder only had the voice recordings from a previous flight.

The plane was flying en route from Rio de Janeiro-Santos Dumont Airport to Guaruja when it crashed in a residential area of Santos. The plane was operated by AF Andrade Enterprises and Holdings, which is based in Ribeirão Preto in Sao Paulo state, but leased from Cessna Finance Export Corporation, a division of Textron, a major U.S. defense and intelligence contractor.

Cessna is a division of Textron. The malfunctioning cockpit voice recorder was manufactured by another U.S. defense and intelligence contractor, L-3 Communications. AF Andrade’s business is centered on its ownership of a distillery. A spokesman for AF Andrade said the $9 million aircraft had not been recently inspected but stressed that it had a perfect maintenance record.

However, the spokesman for AF Andrade could not specifically state who owned the aircraft but admitted that it, but likely only the lease, was up for sale and had recently been purchased by a group of «factory owners and importers» from Pernambuco. Campos was a former governor of Pernambuco.

The purchasers turned out to be a consortium that included Bandeirantes Tires, Ltd. The tire company said that negotiations on transferring ownership were ongoing when the plane crashed and that Cessna Finance Export Corporation had not yet approved the final leasing rights.

Brazilian observers believe the Cessna that crashed was a «ghost plane», with murky ownership in order to cover up the plane’s use for covert operations involving the CIA. Similar planes with spotty ownership and registration records were used by the CIA to rendition kidnapped Muslims for interrogation and imprisonment at American «black sites» around the world.

The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) sent a team to Brazil to investigate the plane crash. However, if the NTSB’s performance on such crashes as TWA 800 and American Airlines 587 is any indication, the agency only excels at cover-ups of criminal actions.

Campos was replaced on the ticket by Silva, who is a darling of the Soros-financed and directed globalization and «civil society» movement. Silva, who is a pro-Israeli adherent of the Assemblies of God Pentecostal church, is much more pro-business and pro-American than Rousseff of the left-leaning Brazilian Workers’ Party.

 

Silva, who is a darling of the Soros-financed and directed globalization and «civil society» movement. He is a pro-Israeli adherent of the Assemblies of God Pentecostal church

Recently, Rousseff, along with her fellow BRICS leaders from Russia, India, China, and South Africa, created a new development bank that challenges the supremacy of the U.S.-run World Bank. The creation of the bank infuriated Washington and Wall Street.

Silva, who may be enjoying more than a mere sympathy vote, recently gained in polls against Rousseff. The Brazilian president is seen by Washington as an adversary, especially after details were leaked by Edward Snowden of massive National Security Agency surveillance of the Brazilian president.

If Rousseff were forced into a run-off with Silva as either first or second-place finisher in the first round, Aecio Neves, of the conservative Social Democratic Party has stated he would endorse Silva if he comes in third.

The political arithmetic could then spell trouble for Rousseff, who would have likely glided to victory had it not been for Silva’s advancement to the head of the Socialist Party ticket. Silva’s vice presidential running mate is Beto Albuquerque, whose «civil society» credentials in consumer and human rights protection indicates a Soros «upbringing».

The current polls for the October 5 first round is Rousseff with 36% of the vote, Silva with 21%, and Neves with 20%. However, with Neves out of the race in the scheduled October 26 second round, some polls show Silva beating Rousseff 47% to 43% while others show Silva defeating Rousseff by a staggering 9%.

 

 

 

Of course, opinion polls are no longer independent but corporate and Western intelligence agency contrivances used to sway public opinion and engage in the «predictive programming» of entire populations.

The favorable outcome for Silva as a result of the possible aerial assassination of Campos and his aides has many suspicious about the CIA’s role in the plane crash, especially after CIA fingerprints were discovered on presidential aerial assassinations of Torrijos and Roldos in 1981.

Just this past February, the presidential helicopter normally used by Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa, a strong opponent of Washington’s policies and an ally of Rousseff, crashed in the mountains on a flight from Guayaquil to Quito.

Correa’s personal pilot was killed in the crash. Correa, who was addressing a campaign rally at the time of the crash, stressed that he was not scheduled to be on the flight of the Indian-made Dhruv helicopter. However, the suspicion of CIA sabotage could not be suppressed among the Ecuadorian population.

Silva is being touted as Brazil’s «Third Way» candidate. Third Way is an international movement that has been used by corporate politicians, many of them financed by Soros, to infiltrate and take over historically pro-labor, socialist, and progressive parties.

The Third Ways’ most notable politicians include Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Germany’s Gerhard Schroeder, Canada’s Justin Trudeau, French Prtesident Francois Hollande, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls, Italy’s Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and former Prime Minister Romeo Prodi, Portugal’s Jose Socrates, Israel’s Ehud Barak, and officials of the Brazilian Socialist, Green, and Social Democratic parties, including Silva, Neves, the late Eduardo Campos, and former President Fernando Henrique Cardoso.

However, when it becomes advantageous to assassinate one Third Wayer in order to promote another, there is no problem to eliminate someone like Campos in order to make way for a more popular (and controlled) politician like Silva, especially when the interests of Israel and Wall Street are at stake.

The Cessna carrying Portuguese Prime Minister Sá Carneiro, which crashed while the prime minister was flying to a re-election rally in Porto, destroyed the leftist Democratic Alliance’s future prospects because the two Sá Carneiro loyalists who succeeded him lacked his charisma.

Eventually, Mario Soares, a Third Way and pro-NATO «socialist-in-name-only», a «SINO», became prime minister and ushered Portugal down the path of «Third Way» subservience to a united Europe and globalization.

The ambassador to Portugal at the time of Sá Carneiro’s death was CIA officer Frank Carlucci, whose fingerprints were on the 1961 assassination of former Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba in the Congo. Carlucci became deputy director of the CIA, and National Security Adviser and Defense Secretary under President Ronald Reagan.

Carlucci is also the chairman emeritus of the CIA-connected Carlyle Group. The suspicious death of Campos in Brazil appears to be a carbon copy of the CIA’s quick dispatch of Sá Carneiro, with Rousseff the ultimate target of the action and Silva and her globalist backers as the beneficiaries.

Conclusion

Laruche PAC has been leading the charge for the US to join the BRICS. This would leave the Trans Atlantic Banks holding the hot potato derivatives allegedly worth more than $660 trillion. The entire system would collapse. The fact that Greece knows this and is playing a game of chicken with the EU on the other side of the highway shows the world that the banksters are not as strong as they think.

Yes, they can take down Russia. Perhaps they can weaken China and make Brazil fall into line with the Soros Crime Syndicate. He certainly has his hold on Washington.

The point is that now we know. Now, we the people know their game, and we can break them. We can stop them from taking over the world. The rest of tonight’s program is the key to making that happen.

Another Brick in the Wall

I can tell you what happens to a city or a country that cannot control its borders. It will be invaded by every sort of person. And when the enemy is of sufficient population, they will rise up and slit the throats of their hosts and take the whole of it. Let’s take, for example the observation of Nehemiah.

“2:1 And it came to pass in the month Nisan, in the twentieth year of Artaxerxes the king, that wine was before him: and I took up the wine, and gave it unto the king. Now I had not been beforetime sad in his presence.2 Wherefore the king said unto me, Why is thy countenance sad, seeing thou art not sick? this is nothing else but sorrow of heart. Then I was very sore afraid,3 And said unto the king, Let the king live for ever: why should not my countenance be sad, when the city, the place of my fathers' sepulchres, lieth waste, and the gates thereof are consumed with fire?”

So, he asks to be sent to Jerusalem to build the walls again.

2:17 Then said I unto them, Ye see the distress that we are in, how Jerusalem lieth waste, and the gates thereof are burned with fire: come, and let us build up the wall of Jerusalem, that we be no more a reproach.18 Then I told them of the hand of my God which was good upon me; as also the king's words that he had spoken unto me. And they said, Let us rise up and build. So they strengthened their hands for this good work.19 But when Sanballat the Horonite, and Tobiah the servant, the Ammonite, and Geshem the Arabian, heard it, they laughed us to scorn, and despised us, and said, What is this thing that ye do? will ye rebel against the king?20 Then answered I them, and said unto them, The God of heaven, he will prosper us; therefore we his servants will arise and build: but ye have no portion, nor right, nor memorial, in Jerusalem.”

It only took Nehemiah 52 days to rebuild the walls, because he took labor from each family name and gave them sections to repair or build again. Once the city was secure, where the invasion of immigrants could be controlled, the city prospered and the kingdom was saved.

Where is Captain America when We Need Him?

Was it Sarah Palin who was the first Tea Party politician? Maybe. She spoke loudly, but in the end she was only a speaker and not a gladiator. It is one thing to make a speech and move the crowds, but we have had those before. Liberals are moved to war and death so easily by such speeches, but conservatives are not. They will shout, but they will hardly ever move out of their own shadow to actually do anything.

In 2014, Americans sent dozens of Tea Party candidates to Washington with two orders; stop the spending and repeal Obamacare. Those were simple enough instructions. To this day, not one single bill has been introduced or debated, and nothing has been repealed. In fact, the first act of the 137th Congress was to pass a budget that funded Obamacare and every other Federal giveaway program for two more years.

Now, the American people are mad as hell. They don’t like to see ISIS funded and supported with intelligence from the White House. They don’t like it when the employment numbers are faked to 5.5%. They know there are really 20% of the people out of work or working part time jobs in another industry from their true skills.

Enter the next Tea Party leader, Donald Trump. The Tea Party platform is beautiful in its simplicity, its inherent fairness, it’s universality and timelessness.

How much more do you need to govern than to state that the government is a necessary evil that desperately needs to be kept in check or else it will lead to unspeakable misery? History has proven this time and again.

How is it offensive to state that nations without borders cannot possibly exist? Why is this an extremist notion?How is it offensive to point out the hard cold numbers of rape and crime statistics? It is more offensive, in fact it is downright criminal not to do so!

How is it offensive to point out that good paying jobs have been traded away by this administration to Mexico, China and elsewhere and I might add with GOP establishment support.

I can go on like this but you already know it and so does most of America which is why Donald Trump is leading.

Unlike Sarah Palin, Donald Trump is not as easily bullied or dismissed as a light weight. And unlike Sarah Palin, Donald Trump does not need the GOP establishment slime to back his campaign financially.  For the second time in the span of just three presidential election cycles the Tea Party ideals, and truth is that these are the same ideals that founded our nation, are shaking up the old rotted walls of the GOP establishment ivory towers.  I really hope they’ll come down this time but if not then soon they’ll succumb to the relentless attacks of the Tea Party.

The Tea Party platform is beautiful in it’s simplicity, it’s inherent fairness, it’s universality and timelessness.

How much more do you need to govern than to state that the government is a necessary evil that desperately needs to be kept in check or else it will lead to unspeakable misery? History has proven this time and again.

How is it offensive to state hat nations without borders cannot possibly exist? Why is this an extremist notion?How is it offensive to point out the hard cold numbers of rape and crime statistics? It is more offensive, in fact it is downright criminal not to do so!

How is it offensive to point out that good paying jobs have been traded away by this administration to Mexico, China and elsewhere and I might add with GOP establishment support.

I can go on like this but you already know it and so does most of America which is why Donald Trump is leading.

Unlike Sarah Palin, Donald Trump is not as easily bullied or dismissed as a light weight. And unlike Sarah Palin, Donald Trump does not need the GOP establishment slime to back his campaign financially.  For the second time in the span of just three presidential election cycles the Tea Party ideals, and truth is that these are the same ideals that founded out nation, are shaking up the old rotted walls of the GOP establishment ivory towers.  I really hope they’ll come down this time but if not then soon they’ll succumb to the relentless attacks of  the Tea Party.

Improve Immigration: Mr. Trump argues that the immigration system should be reformed to increase the number of newcomers with skills that are in demand and decrease expensive “freeloaders who come here to live off our welfare system.” To do this, he proposes tying most visas to jobs skills (75 percent of permanent resident visas are now based on having a family member already in America), deporting hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens in U.S. prisons for criminal activity, making it more difficult for illegals to receive entitlement benefits and taking control of the southern border by increasing manned patrols, drone surveillance, and building more physical barriers in high-traffic areas.

Build the Wall: Like Nehemiah, Trump has vowed to build the wall across our Southern

Border and make Mexico pay for it. I tweeted on Friday that he should build it like you mean it. Build it 30 feet high and ten feet wide, so no one can get over it. Put sensors along it to alert us if anyone tunnels under it. Place and staff entry points so that every legal person can pass through in a convenient manner on most roads. Start with the porous areas along Arizona’s Sonora desert, Texas, and then California. Use the National Guard, the Corps of Engineers, and concrete and steel contractors. Build a wall that will last 500 years and create hundreds of new permanent jobs staffing that wall. Dissolve half a dozen Agencies in Washington and stop the flow of $22.5 billion in cash back to Mexico from illegal immigrants already here.

Not only is the flow of cash from the US to Mexico the second highest form of income to that country, just behind Pemex Oil, but that money never comes back to the US. Normally, those dollars would get spent ten times before they were returned to the bank. You might as well put that cash through the shredder, because not a single dollar comes back to buy American goods.

End the War on Drugs: Empty our jails of people who were convicted of simple possession of marijuana. Convince people to stop doing drugs and to seize the American dream instead. There is no reason to destroy your mind and your future if you really have one. Once the American people stop using the drugs, the drug Lords will starve to death and go away. The Mexican people will go home on their own once that is accomplished.

It is the only way to beat the drug lords of Mexico. Loretta Lynch, the current attorney general, declined to prosecute HSBC after it was caught red handed laundering more than $2.1 billion in drug cash. Why? Could it be that the Administration was getting a cut?

Mexico's billion-dollar drug lord escapes prison on an underground MOTORBIKE: Eighteen guards are questioned after the bike, oxygen tanks and lights are found in El Chapo's elaborate mile-long tunnel

Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman, head of powerful Sinaloa Cartel, is on the run 

He fled through an elaborate tunnel network - that boasted its own motorbike on rails and even an electricity supply

Armed police are searching a house believed to be at the end of tunnel

Flights have been cancelled in Mexico as part of the massive manhunt 

Guzman fled a jail in 2001 with help of guards by hiding in laundry basket 

By Ollie Gillman for MailOnline

A powerful drug lord known as Mexico's Osama bin Laden has escaped from a maximum security jail for the second time - fleeing through an elaborate network of tunnels underneath his cell.Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman, head of the powerful Sinaloa Cartel, is on the run from Altiplano jail, 50 miles outside of Mexico City, security officials said.His audacious escape saw him dash through the mile-long tunnel system, which led to a building under construction next to the prison. The tunnels boast air vents, electric lights, emergency oxygen tanks - and even a motorbike on rails, according to Mexico's National Security Commissioner Monte Alejandro Rubido.This afternoon armed police were searching a half-built house believed to be at the end of a tunnel - where Guzman may have surfaced. 

1. Obamacare Devastates Tanning Industry

The Affordable Care Act imposed a tax on tanning salons that has devastated the tanning industry and led to the loss of some 80,000 jobs.

Obamacare stipulated that beginning in 2010, the so-called Tanning Tax imposed a 10 percent excise tax on tanning bed services, in addition to state sales taxes and taxes paid by the tanning salon owner.

"As it turns out, Obamacare has not been 'affordable' (as the official name Affordable Care Act would imply) for women who own tanning salons — or their customers," according to Cherylyn Harley LeBon, a former senior counsel to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, writing in TheBlaze.

The tax was regarded as a way to help pay for increases in government healthcare spending due to Obamacare.

"But like almost every other aspect of the ACA, its advocates had to eat crow. Revenues shrank to less than half of the anticipated $200 million per year," The Hill observed.

"The ACA's designers failed to anticipate the elasticity of tanning bed demand. The less necessary an item, the more likely the market will stop using it once taxes or higher prices are imposed."

According to the American Suntanning Association, since the tax was imposed in 2010, about 10,000 tanning salons have closed. This has resulted in a loss of 81,000 jobs.

In California in 2009, tanning salons employed 8,649 people. Now there are 4,617, according to LeBon.

The impact has been especially hard on women, who own 75 percent of tanning salons, while 95 percent of salon employees are women and 75 percent of customers are women.

"There is a ripple effect: The owners, the employees, and the customers have become a casualty of the Tanning Tax," LeBon stated.

The Daily Caller noted: "It’s not as if the tanning tax is unique. Obamacare is loaded with bad ideas that will require decades of untangling, including taxes on medical device manufacturers, innovator drug companies, charitable hospitals, and even patients with high medical costs.

"But the tanning tax does provide an excellent case study into what happens when political optics and expediency are allowed to trump sound policymaking. There’s nothing stopping a more sober Congress from returning to the issue and repealing items like the Tanning Tax that have proven to be failures."

Editor's Note:

Special: The Real Ronald Reagan Revealed in This Movie

 

2. Free College a 'Massive Subsidy' for the Wealthy

President Barack Obama has proposed universal free community college for American students, and Sen. Bernie Sanders, a presidential candidate, has called for tuition-free college.

Advocates of free tuition often cite the need to make college affordable for lower-income students. But free college would in fact offer a "massive subsidy" to wealthier Americans, according to a report by Patrick Holland for Economics21 at The Manhattan Institute.

Although advocates point to the sharp rise in college costs in recent years, much of that talk is "apocalyptic rhetoric," Holland insists.

"Headlines have recently proclaimed that college costs have increased by 500 percent since 1985. But the statistic does not take inflation into account," he said.

"The real cost of college has only doubled since 1985. In addition, the real cost of attending a public two-year college has actually dropped since 1992." He added: "Public school is still quite affordable for the majority of Americans."

There is no doubt that attending college is worth the expense, even if a student graduates with significant debt from student loans, he maintains. Graduates on average earn 83 percent more than high school graduates.

But the way student loans are structured is often "unsustainable," according to Holland. Most grads don't immediately land a high-paying job after leaving school and new grads have an unemployment rate of about 10 percent. Grads who don't meet their obligations face mounting penalties and are often forced to default.

But free tuition may not solve the debt problem. In Sweden, which abolished college tuition, many students still graduate with significant debt due to the high costs of room and board, which the government does not cover.

"Advocates of free tuition often point out that the country has an obligation to make sure more low-income students go to college," Holland observes.

But "currently 81 percent of college graduates come from families with above-average incomes. Free college wouldn't just make college affordable for low-income students. It would also offer a massive subsidy to the upper class.

"More than $56 billion of the $70 billion it would cost to eliminate tuition would go to families with above-average income."

Instead of trying to subsidize college costs, he concludes, public policy should focus on reducing those costs — which are actually being driven higher due to the availability of government-sponsored student loans, according to a report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

"What will not work," Holland adds, "is free tuition."

Editor's Note:

Tip: How to Retire Comfortably on $2,000

 

3. New Overtime Rule Could Lower Base Pay

The Obama administration's plan to require overtime pay for more American workers isn't likely to boost their earnings because many employers could respond by lowering base pay, according to a Heritage Foundation report.

Under existing regulations, most employers must pay time-and-a-half overtime to all hourly employees who work more than 40 hours a week, and must also pay overtime to salaried workers who earn less than $455 a week ($23,660 a year).

The new regulations would raise the minimum from $455 to $970 a week ($50,440 a year). Employers would have to track the hours and pay overtime to any salaried employee making less than this amount.

The Fair Labor Standards Act does exempt some employees from overtime requirements, principally executives, administrative and professional employees, and salesmen who work outside the office.

Liberal groups have lobbied the White House to implement the changes, James Sherk of Heritage notes; their argument is that employers "misclassify" many salaried workers to exempt them from overtime pay requirements.

The new regulations would force employers to pay salaried workers earning moderate incomes overtime regardless of their job duties, and the administration contends that the mandatory overtime pay will boost the earnings of 5 million salaried workers.

But according to Sherk, economic research shows that expanding overtime coverage does not boost earnings because employers largely respond by cutting base pay, leaving total hours and earnings little changed.

"Unless workers earn close to the minimum wage, in which case employers cannot offset the overtime with lower wages, overtime requirements have little effect on hours or earnings," the report states.

Sherk cites the example of IBM, which recently reclassified 7,000 salaried and technical-support employees as eligible for overtime as part of a lawsuit settlement, and responded by cutting their base pay by 15 percent, leaving their total earnings unaffected.

He concludes that the new requirement will have "unintended consequences," effectively converting millions of salaried professional employees into "hourly workers required to clock their time.

"It will severely limit their use of the flexible work arrangements and telecommuting options that many rely on to balance their work and family lives. Expanding overtime

regulations to more salaried employees will hurt the workers the White House wants to help."

Editor's Note:

New York Times Bans Ted Cruz From Best-Sellers List. Get Cruz's New Book — Save $18 — Click Here

 

4. Bishop: Christianity 'Burning Out' in Middle East

The Iraqi-born bishop of the Syriac Catholic Church in America warns that Christianity is "burning out" in the Middle East and is considered an "enemy of civilization" by many.

Bishop Yousif Habash spoke on the second day of the Spring General Assembly of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in St. Louis, Mo.

"I am 20 years here in America," he told the gathering with a heavy accent. "We heard all the talking about the freedom of religion, but in fact, on the ground, what happened?

"I am burning. Christianity is burning out. It's smashed. It's denied. It's considered an enemy of civilization, of cultures, enemy of life, of humanity."

Habash was born in 1951 and served in two parishes in Iraq until 1994, when he was assigned to the Syriac Catholic Mission of North America, CNS News reported. In 2010, he was appointed by Pope Benedict XVI to head the Syrian Catholic Eparchy of Our Lady of Deliverance in Newark, N.J.

"Before 20 years ago, Christianity in the Middle East, the freedom of religion, was better than today," Habash said. "We were enjoying our churches, enjoying our faith.

"Now the church is turning the last page of her history in that area."

Many sources have reported on the persecution of Christians in Iraq, Syria, and Libya by ISIS and other Muslim jihadists. Thousands of Christians of all denominations, including Catholic, Orthodox, and Coptic, have fled from Muslim persecution.

In April, the Orthodox Church's Patriarch Krill of Moscow and All Russia said: "I regularly get reports of horrible crimes that are committed there against Christians, especially in northern Iraq. I have visited those places and I remember that there were many churches there. The city of Mosul alone had 45 churches. Now there is not a single one. The buildings have been destroyed. Four hundred churches have been destroyed in Syria."

As the Insider Report disclosed in February, Pope Francis called the beheadings of 21 Coptic Christians in Libya "barbaric murder" and stated: "The blood of our Christian brothers and sisters is a testimony which cries out to be heard."

Editor's Note:

Uncle Sam’s Secret: Add $1,000 to Your Social Security Check

 

5. 33% of Americans Ignorant About First Amendment

The majority of Americans know that the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees freedom of speech, but fewer than one in five know that it also protects religious freedom, a new poll reveals.

The Newseum Institute in Washington, D.C., has conducted a national survey of American attitudes about the First Amendment since 1997.

The First Amendment states: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or abridging the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

The 2015 survey of more than 1,000 adults asked respondents to name the five specific freedoms in the Amendment, and 33 percent were unable to cite a single right that was guaranteed.

The most cited freedom was freedom of speech, which was named by 57 percent of respondents, but just 10 percent mentioned freedom of the press, 10 percent cited the right to assemble, 2 percent mentioned the right to petition, and 19 percent cited freedom of religion.

In fact, about half of respondents, 51 percent, mistakenly agreed that the Constitution established a Christian nation, including 35 percent who strongly agreed.

After respondents were read the words of the Amendment, they were asked: "Based on your feelings about the First Amendment, please tell me whether you agree or disagree with the following statement: The First Amendment goes too far in the rights it guarantees."

The result: 19 percent agreed that it goes too far, while 75 percent disagreed. Just 9 percent of those under 30 years old agreed, compared to 22 percent of seniors.

The highest percentage of Americans in the Newseum survey who agreed that it goes too far was 49 percent in 2002, several months after the 9/11 attacks.

In a question relating to freedom of speech, respondents were asked if students should be able to express their opinions about teachers and school administrators on social media without fear of being punished, and 60 percent agreed that they should, compared to 33 percent who disagreed.

Sixty percent of those surveyed also agreed that cartoonists should be allowed to publish images of the Prophet Muhammad even if those images could be offensive, and 32 percent disagreed.

Editor's Note:

Decoding the Bible – A Blueprint for Financial Success?

 

6. Cato: Plan Could Replace Federal Income Tax

A U.S. state could effectively end the federal personal income tax by using two surprisingly simple legislative maneuvers, according to a proposal cited by the Cato Institute.

Ryan H. Murphy, a research associate in the O'Neil Center for Global Markets and Freedom at Southern Methodist University, offers the example of Texas, where residents pay no state income tax but do pay the federal income tax.

The state could choose to send its federal taxpayers a check in the form of a state tax credit equal to their federal income tax liability. And it could pay for the credit by increasing the state sales tax in a revenue-neutral way.

"Effectively, that would mean the end of all income taxes in the state while significantly raising sales taxes," Murphy writes. "This isn't about cutting taxes per se; rather, this is the tax swap to end all tax swaps."

The plan would work well in Texas because the state's population centers — chiefly Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, and San Antonio — are far from its borders with other states, so residents are unlikely to travel to a neighboring state to take advantage of lower sales taxes.

It would also work well in most of California, in Central and Southern Florida and some other states, but not well in a state like New York, where New York City residents could choose to shop in New Jersey.

"Such a change would profoundly improve the prospects for economic growth, even from the perspective of very orthodox economists," Murphy maintains in his Cato article.

"The resulting inflow of investment from other states, and other countries, would be unprecedented."

Also, the difference between a consumption tax (sales tax) and an income tax is that a consumption tax encourages saving and thrift and an income tax discourages it.

Murphy cites research indicating that consumption taxes and property taxes are distinctly superior to income taxes.

The plan would not discourage charitable giving, since taxpayers would still have to file a federal tax return.

Murphy concludes: "The only real obstacle to this policy change is the tyranny of the status quo. If states want to unilaterally end inefficient federal taxation from taking place within their borders, they can do it."

It’s a Small World, After All

  Last scientist in Congress has human genetic engineering warningBy Rep. Bill Foster - 07/08/15 06:41 PM EDT

It is rare that prominent members of the scientific community come together to warn our leaders of technological breakthroughs that our legal system and society are not prepared for. As the last scientist with a Ph.D. remaining in Congress, I feel a responsibility to transmit those concerns to my colleagues and to the public.

The breakthrough in question relates to human genetic engineering. This has long been a theoretical possibility assumed to be decades away from practicality. In the last several years this has changed significantly due to recent breakthroughs that allow inexpensive and precise editing of chromosomal DNA. The technological potential has been amplified by the widespread adoption of in vitro fertilization, the rapid decline in the cost of genome sequencing, increasing use of Big Data to understand the relationship between genetic variations and behavior and the rapid spread of these technologies throughout the world.

It’s time for leaders in government to take notice.

The ability to modify DNA has been around for decades, but until recently it was expensive and time consuming, and required a very high level of technical skill. That has changed significantly in the last few years with the development of new gene editing tools such as CRISPR/Cas9, introduced by Jennifer Doudna and others. These tools have been rapidly adopted by researchers around the world.

These tools are revolutionary because they enable any researcher with basic capabilities in molecular biology to edit genomes. Therein lies the promise and the danger. Anyone with $300 and Internet access can now buy their own CRISPR kit to begin primitive genome editing of plants and animals.

It works like an old-fashioned film reel, where a director can cut apart a film, take frames out and fill them in with something new. Already, this tool is in daily use in laboratories around the world, editing DNA to produce genetically customized versions of organisms from cell cultures to insects, plants, mice and monkeys.

There is the possibility of great benefit from these new technologies. Animal models with specific genetic variations are being created to greatly accelerate research to determine the links between genetics and disease. In agriculture, it has the potential to vastly accelerate our ability to develop more productive crops, better biofuels and favorable animal characteristics like high growth rates and stronger immune systems to reduce the need for antibiotics. However, environmental risks are also amplified.

Yet what really makes this tool revolutionary is what it could mean for humans. Many of the potential applications of this technology are likely to be non-controversial: for example, replacing the bone marrow of someone suffering from a sickle-cell disease with a modified version of their own marrow but with the genetic defect removed. Genetic modifications of this kind will only carry risks to a single person and not affect future generations. However, if genetic modifications are made to “germline” cells — sperm, eggs and embryos — these modifications will also be carried forward to future generations. This will fundamentally change the course of human evolution and is something ethicists have been concerned about for decades.

Although none of these tools have yet demonstrated the reliability necessary for safe clinical modification of the human germline, the rate of technological progress is such that it is prudent to begin thinking through the implications. Many in the scientific community believe there are critical ethical, legal and safety questions that must be answered before this research advances. Earlier this year, many of the most respected scientists in the field published a letter calling for a moratorium on human germline modification for clinical applications, warning that “there is an urgent need for open discussion of the merits and risks of human genome modification.”

So serious is the potential for CRISPR and related tools that the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Medicine recently announced they will launch a major international initiative to develop guidelines for human gene editing. Additionally, the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, on which I serve, hosted the first congressional hearing on the topic.

This is a critical point in the future of humankind, much like the advent of nuclear power. That was a development that fundamentally altered global politics and created such a lasting impact that it won’t only be remembered by historians but will forever be traceable in our geological history. Similarly, the first human life created from a genetically modified embryo will be a development that will alter the global political landscape and will forever be traceable in the human genetic record.

We are on the verge of a technological breakthrough that could change the future of humankind; we must not blindly charge ahead. Now is the time to engage in serious and thoughtful discussion about what this means for the future of the human race.Foster, a physicist, represents Illinois’s 11th Congressional District and has served in the House since 2008. He sits on the Financial Services and the Science, Space and Technology committees.

It’s the Environment, StupidBy: Thais Gibson | Hack Your Passion   Quantum physics is the new physics that is pointing to something far greater than the materialistic world that we once believed to be the basis of our existence. Not only is disproving our original perception of space and time, but it is opening the doors to possibility of time travel, telepathy and consciousness creating our reality. Below are some of the major properties of quantum mechanics and the implications they have on the world around us. You won’t be disappointed!

o Quantum Entanglement: When two sub-atomic particles cross paths with one another, they become “entangled.”This means that their properties become linked with one another. When these entangled particles are separated (even millions of miles or light-years apart), what happens to one particle instantaneously happens to the other particle.

 Why this is so phenomenal: This means that information is travelling far faster than the speed of light to be communicated in an instant way across vast distances.This defies what we previously knew to be possible, and also hints at the notion of telepathy having the potential to be scientifically studied.

Einstein referred to this as “spooky action at a distance.” The new physics is currently being harnessed in an attempt to build “quantum computers” that would revolutionize technology as we know it today.

Atoms and subatomic particles can be in two places at once. In 2012 Dr. S. Haroche and Dr. Wineland won the Nobel Prize for using quantum mechanics to prove that electrons can be in two places at once. This theory was tested to 1 part in 100 billion in terms of accuracy. This officially made it the most successful physical theory that ever existed.

What this means: In theory, the fact that this has been proven runs in congruence with the Many-Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics. This theory implies that all potential realities and possibilities already exist, and that there are potentially an infinite number of parallel realities. This theory was brought to life by a scientist named Hugh Everett.

In theory, this would technically mean that any actions you judge in others, you have also committed in a parallel reality. It would also mean that what is happening to you right now have already happened and will happen again.

Most importantly, it would essentially mean that we collectively create our personal reality – as the “Implicate” order of existence projects outward the “Explicate” order around us (See David Bohm’s Implicate and Explicate Order of Existence). This happens through the means of our collective energy being filtered through our human consciousness to project the outer reality we experience.

In the quantum world, everything behaves as both waves and particles! So sub-atomic particles can behave like matter or move in wave patterns. The most mind-blowing part about this, is that particles behave like waves when we aren’t looking, and like matter when we are!The act of looking is what changes the behavior of the particles.

What this means: This means that consciousness literally influences reality. The act of observing something can literally be responsible for bringing a potential reality to life. If you’ve ever heard of the Law of Attraction, quantum physics essentially supports this idea.

When you focus on a desired outcome, it is almost as if you “reel in” that already existing quantum super-position of reality that brings it to life!! (See Double Slit Experiment Video Below) 

Quantum particles have the ability to move back and forth through time. Very recently, scientists at the University of Queensland were able to simulate photons travelling through time. In one case, the photon was sent through a wormhole to interact with itself in a previous state. In another, a photon travelled through regular space-time to interact with a different photon.

What this means: Quite simply this means that our five senses are very limited in the way they allow us to perceive the world. Classical physics and much of science is based on finding proof from conducting experiments and observing their results.But we interpret our observations based on our limited five senses. Quantum physics is beginning to demonstrate that there is so much more outside of our current mainstream perception of reality.

This also means that time and space aren’t what we have made them out to be. They are not linear functions.

This also opens the hypothetical doors to the possibility of time travel.If these sub-atomic particles are able to do this, and we are made of sub-atomic particles, what implication does this have!?

One thing I have always found funny about mainstream science is that it has a preference towards ignoring the miraculous and studying the ordinary. When astonishing events take place that challenge our foundation of scientific beliefs, scientists that wish to explore them are often condemned by their peers and community.We know that science is based on proving things through measurement and calculation.

But if what we are perceiving is limited because our five senses only provide a piece of the entire picture, maybe it is time we began to focus on studying what is out of the ordinary.

Quantum mechanics is currently challenging and uprooting some of our belief systems that have previously been based on the limitations of our senses. Rather than looking at the external world, science is now beginning to investigate the internal world in the form of microscopic particle behavior.To contemplate that these particles are behaving this way and these particles are what form the world around us is a mind-boggling thought.

The Millennium Falcon Might Just be Around the CornerBy Ellie Zolfagharifard For Dailymail.com Published: 13:25 EST, 10 July 2015 | Updated: 16:20 EST, 10 July 2015

My good friend, Stanton Friedman, was working on nuclear powered aircraft in the 1960’s. This was with the aviation pioneer company McDonnel Douglas. Future aircraft could be powered by lasers and nuclear explosions, now that mega giant Boeing has been investing its attention to it.The aerospace firm claims a new-type of engine could produce energy-efficient thrust by firing lasers at radioactive material, such as deuterium and tritium. The technology could mean that planes and spaceships will require only a fraction of the power to operate, according to a recent patent filed by the company. An interesting embodiment of this idea is to use a laser on the ground to fire at a ship blasting into space. The engine outlined in the patent would work by using high-powered lasers to vaporise the radioactive material producing a fusion reaction.'At least one laser is positioned to vapourise the propellanet with at least one laser-beam into a thrust producing flow,' the company wrote in the document. A report in Business Insider compared the process to a small thermonuclear explosion.

The by-products of the process would be hydrogen or helium, which would leave the back-end of the plane creating thrust.Meanwhile, the inside wall of the engine's thruster chamber will react with the neutrons created by the nuclear reaction.The resulting heat can then be harnessed by placing a coolant on the sides of the combustion chamber.The idea is to use this heat to produce electricity that can then drive the engine’s lasers.Other than the radioactive material, the engine requires very little in terms of external energy.Boeing’s Dreamliner is currently driven by turbofan engines that compress air and ignite fuel to create thrust. 

HOW WILL IT WORK? High-powered lasers will be used to vaporise the radioactive material producing fusion a reaction.The by-products of the process would be hydrogen or helium, which would leave the back-end of the plane creating thrust.Meanwhile, the inside wall of the engine's thruster chamber will react with the neutrons created by the nuclear reaction.The resulting heat can then be harnessed by placing a coolant on the sides of the combustion chamber.The idea is to use this heat to produce electricity that can then drive the engine’s lasers.

But it's expensive. The 787-8 Dreamliner. for instance, uses roughly $24.53 (£15.97) worth of fuel per nautical mile flown The latest application, approved by the US Patent and Trademark Office last week, was filed by Boeing's Robert Budica, James Herzberg, and Frank Chandler.It is unclear when, if ever, Boeing plans to create a prototype of the engine.The inside wall of the engine's thruster chamber will react with the neutrons created by the nuclear reaction. The resulting heat can then be harnessed by placing a coolant on the sides of the combustion chamber. The idea is to use this heat to produce electricity that can then drive the engine’s lasers.

And The Sun Went to Sleep

By Mark Prigg For Dailymail.com Published: 12:40 EST, 10 July 2015 | Updated: 15:42 EST, 10 July 2015

The Earth could be headed for a 'mini ice age' researchers have warned.

A new study claims to have cracked predicting solar cycles - and says that between 2020 and 2030 solar cycles will cancel each other out.This, they say, will lead to a phenomenon known as the 'Maunder minimum' - which has previously been known as a mini ice age when it hit between 1646 and 1715, even causing London's River Thames to freeze over.  The new model of the Sun's solar cycle is producing unprecedentedly accurate predictions of irregularities within the Sun's 11-year heartbeat.It draws on dynamo effects in two layers of the Sun, one close to the surface and one deep within its convection zone.Predictions from the model suggest that solar activity will fall by 60 per cent during the 2030s to conditions last seen during the 'mini ice age' that began in 1645, according to the results presented by Prof Valentina Zharkova at the National Astronomy Meeting in Llandudno.The model predicts that the pair of waves become increasingly offset during Cycle 25, which peaks in 2022.During Cycle 26, which covers the decade from 2030-2040, the two waves will become exactly out of synch and this will cause a significant reduction in solar activity.'In cycle 26, the two waves exactly mirror each other – peaking at the same time but in opposite hemispheres of the Sun,' said Zharkova. 'Their interaction will be disruptive, or they will nearly cancel each other. 'We predict that this will lead to the properties of a 'Maunder minimum''

'Effectively, when the waves are approximately in phase, they can show strong interaction, or resonance, and we have strong solar activity. 'When they are out of phase, we have solar minimums. 'When there is full phase separation, we have the conditions last seen during the Maunder minimum, 370 years ago.'

THE MAUNDER MINIMUMThe Maunder Minimum (also known as the prolonged sunspot minimum) is the name used for the period starting in about 1645 and continuing to about 1715 when sunspots became exceedingly rare, as noted by solar observers of the time.It caused London's River Thames to freeze over, and 'frost fairs' became popular.

This period of solar inactivity also corresponds to a climatic period called the 'Little Ice Age' when rivers that are normally ice-free froze and snow fields remained year-round at lower altitudes.There is evidence that the Sun has had similar periods of inactivity in the more distant past, Nasa says. The connection between solar activity and terrestrial climate is an area of on-going research.Some scientists hypothesize that the dense wood used in Stradivarius instruments was caused by slow tree growth during the cooler period. Instrument maker Antonio Stradivari was born a year before the start of the Maunder Minimum. It is 172 years since a scientist first spotted that the Sun's activity varies over a cycle lasting around 10 to 12 years. But every cycle is a little different and none of the models of causes to date have fully explained fluctuations. Many solar physicists have put the cause of the solar cycle down to a dynamo caused by convecting fluid deep within the Sun. Now, Zharkova and her colleagues have found that adding a second dynamo, close to the surface, completes the picture with surprising accuracy.'We found magnetic wave components appearing in pairs, originating in two different layers in the Sun's interior,' she said.'They both have a frequency of approximately 11 years, although this frequency is slightly different, and they are offset in time. 'Over the cycle, the waves fluctuate between the northern and southern hemispheres of the Sun. Combining both waves together and comparing to real data for the current solar cycle, we found that our predictions showed an accuracy of 97%,' said Zharkova.Zharkova and her colleagues derived their model using a technique called 'principal component analysis' of the magnetic field observations from the Wilcox Solar Observatory in California. They examined three solar cycles-worth of magnetic field activity, covering the period from 1976-2008. In addition, they compared their predictions to average sunspot numbers, another strong marker of solar activity. All the predictions and observations were closely matched. 

The World’s Newest Glacier

By Anneta Konstantinides For Dailymail.com

Published: 11:30 EST, 12 July 2015 | Updated: 13:00 EST, 12 July 2015What once was the remains of the deadliest volcanic eruption in history is breathing new life into the world's youngest glacier, located on Washington's Mount St. Helens.As global climate change melts ice caps and glaciers around the world, the Mount St. Helens' Crater Glacier continues to grow. The glacier has been forming for decades in a horseshoe-shaped crater that was left on the mountain after the volcano erupted in May 1980 and caused massive destruction.Scroll down for video 

The Mount St. Helens' Crater Glacierhas been growing for decades in a horseshoe-shaped crater that was left on the mountain after the volcano erupted in May 1980

The Skamania County mountain's summit dropped 1,314 ft to a total 8,363ft, forming the hollowed-out crater that would become the perfect growing environment for the world's newest glacierFifty-seven people were killed, as were more than 7,000 big game animals, and more than 200 homes and 185 miles of highway were destroyed, according to the Cascades Volcano Observatory of the US Geological Survey.The Skamania County mountain's summit dropped 1,314 ft to a total 8,363ft, forming the hollowed-out crater that would become the perfect growing environment for the world's newest glacier. The north-facing crater shields sunlight from normal snowfall, which also gets fed to from the additional snow and ice that slough off the crater's walls, said USGS geologist Dave Sherrod. Snow also piled up along the crater's back wall thanks to a sheltering lava dome that grew to 900ft in six years. 'It's as if you've doubled, tripled or quadrupled the amount of snow and ice accumulation in this small area,' he told The Post-Star. 'It's a fountain of youth as far as the glacier is concerned.The glacier is also protected from the mountain's volcanic heat by a thick layer of loose volcanic rock on the crater's floor that acts as an insulating barrier.A permanent snowfield more than 200ft thick had settled into the crater by 1988, but scientists feared the entire glacier would be jeopardized in 2004 when the volcano once again began releasing steam and emitting magma quickly built a second dome.But a repeat of 1980 never happened thanks to an underlying rock layer that kept the Crater Glacier well insulated. 

And instead of hurting the glacier, the second lava dome doubled its thickness and accelerated its descent downslope by pushing it up against the crater wall.The Crater Glacier, whose speed of advance slowed down by 50 percent last spring, is now 650ft thick in certain plans and runs 1.25-miles long, Sherrod told The Post-Star.It's perfect growing environment has also given the Crater Glacier its own distinct look, as barely a few glints of ice can be seen through the surface of volcanic rock.

Pluto Coming into View

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft is closing fast on an unexpectedly spotted Pluto, the most distant planetary body ever explored.

From New Horizon's position more than 3 billion miles (4.88 billion km) from Earth, radio signals, traveling at the speed of light, take nearly four and a half hours to reach the ground.

Not that the probe, which has been traveling toward Pluto for more than nine years, is currently spending much time relaying back pictures and data from its seven science instruments.

With its closest approach to Pluto slated for 7:49 a.m. EDT/1149 GMT on Tuesday, New Horizons is running on auto-pilot to gather as much scientific information as possible leading up to its one-shot punch past Pluto and its entourage of five known moons.

Data will be radioed back to Earth over the next 16 months.

"You have to really be into delayed gratification if you want to be on this mission," said New Horizons lead scientist Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

The spacecraft, about the size of a baby grand piano and weighing in at just over 1,000 pounds (454 kg), doesn't carry the propellant to fire braking rockets to slow down and slip into orbit.

NASA launched a fleet of initial reconnaissance missions between 1960 and 1977 to every planet in the solar system except Pluto.

DESIGNATED AS DWARF PLANET

But after the 1992 discovery that the solar system had a heavily populated 'backyard' beyond Neptune, a region known as the Kuiper Belt, a band of scientists won their long crusade to send a probe to Pluto.

Just months after New Horizons launched, Pluto was formally removed from the solar system's primary planets list and rebranded a dwarf planet.

Pluto and its icy Kuiper Belt kin are believed to be relics left over from the formation of the solar system 4.6 billion years ago.

The most recent image relayed from New Horizons and released on Saturday shows large, evenly spaced dark spots on the side of the Pluto that permanently faces its primary moon Charon. The spots are related to a dark belt that circles Pluto's equatorial region.

"We're seeing these crazy black-and-white patterns. We have no idea what those mean," said New Horizons scientist John Spencer, also with the Southwest Research Institute.

New Horizons will pass on the other side of Pluto, coming as close as 7,800 miles (12,500 km) and traveling at 30,800 mph (49,600 kph).

From there, New Horizons will continue to shoot deeper into the Kuiper Belt for a possible second mission to a Pluto cousin.