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Michigan becomes 5th US state to thwart direct Tesla car sales
2014-10-22, CNBC/Reuters
http://www.cnbc.com/id/102109510

Michigan Governor Rick Snyder signed a bill on Tuesday that will keep electric carmaker Tesla Motors from selling its cars directly to consumers in the state, home to the biggest U.S. automakers. Snyder said in a letter to members of the state House of Representatives on Tuesday that the measure merely "clarifies" existing law not to allow direct manufacturer-to-consumer retail sales. Those sales, he said, must be made through franchised dealers. Michigan becomes the fifth U.S. state to keep Tesla from easily selling cars directly to consumers. In all of those states except Michigan, Tesla operates "galleries" where consumers can view Tesla cars but cannot discuss prices, take test drives or order cars. Michigan has gone a step further, said Diarmuid O'Connell, Tesla vice president of business development, and will not allow even the informational galleries. Tesla, which has challenged some of the long-held conventions of auto industry, wants to set up its own sleek stores rather than to sell through a franchised dealer network. The Michigan measure, passed 38-0 in the state's Senate and 106-1 in the House, does not mention Tesla by name. But, O'Connell said, the legislation clearly is addressed to the company. O'Connell said the bill was pushed through the legislature without chance for public debate because well-connected auto dealers did not want a public airing of the state's policy. Detroit-based General Motors on Tuesday said it supported the new measure.

Note: For more along these lines, see these concise summaries of deeply revealing government corruption news articles from reliable sources. You can also read more about inspiring innovations and how these are suppressed.


Humble delivery man becomes reluctant hero after dramatic fire rescue
2014-10-22, CNN News
http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/22/us/mysterious-hero-identified

It is sheer panic in the woman's voice on the cell phone video as the flames shot out of the windows of the wood frame home: "There's a man in there!" The next sound on the video is a loud explosion. "We gotta get the dad," screams the woman. The explosion forced two men who were trying to reach the trapped man away from the home. Seconds later, a man in a blue Los Angeles Dodgers cap jogs out with a 73-year-old man slung over his shoulder. "I didn't see him," says Beth Lederach, the woman who recorded the dramatic weekend fire and rescue on her cell phone. In the seconds before the explosion ... you can see the man in the blue cap calmly walk towards the burning home, flames nearing 20 feet high. "He calmly walks in there, calmly. Then here he comes, carrying the dad," recalls Lederach. Then he vanished. For 48 hours, the Fresno fire department and local reporters hunted for the mysterious hero. Who was he? Why would he dive into a burning home, save a man and then not stay long enough for even a simple "thank you"? It appeared the man would never be found. But in this age, social media has a way of making sure all secrets are uncovered. Tom Artiaga groaned as the reporters starting banging on his door. "I didn't want the glory," he says sheepishly, wearing the same blue Dodgers cap. "We have to help each other out. We kill each other. We fight. We gotta help each other out. I don't feel like a hero. If it was someone else, I'd help them, too."

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Nobody Should Die From Diseases We Know How To Treat
2014-10-22, Daily Good
http://www.dailygood.org/story/864/poem-from-haiti-sriram-shamasunder

Nobody should die from diseases we know how to treat. Currently in all areas of the world over 50,000 people die daily from diseases we can treat. One component of getting good care in very poor places is to have the human capacity and training to deliver good care. Two UCSF Physicians have started a project called the HEAL initiative that aims to address health workforce in resource poor communities. HEAL initiative works at sites domestically and internationally, from Navajo Nation in New Mexico to Liberia and Haiti and India to both improve the quality of care, support and train local health professionals. The work that is about health care but is also beyond health care. It is about solidarity and justice. A simple home visit can shape the way anyone thinks about health. The community health workers sit with patients and discuss what ails them on many levels. When someone can't pay for medicines or health care, what other costs may be suffocating their budget? On arrival to the house, the family structure is revealed, how many people are staying under one roof, what material makes up that roof, straw or tin or concrete? Does the patient own his/her own land? Are there crops rising up from the soil or is the land barren? On one home visit we came across this grandmother (who) inspired this poem Towards Flooding Homes with Dignity. To witness this solidarity and movement towards health as a human right is to witness something precious becoming conferred as a right.

Note: The moving poem Towards Flooding Homes with Dignity is included in the complete article summarized above. Learn more about HEAL from this initiative's website.


Canada, At War For 13 Years, Shocked That A Terrorist Attacked Its Soldiers
2014-10-22, The Intercept
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/10/22/canada-proclaiming-war-12-years...

In Quebec on Monday, two Canadian soldiers were hit by a car driven by Martin Couture-Rouleau, a 25-year-old Canadian who, as The Globe and Mail reported, converted to Islam recently. One of the soldiers died, as did Couture-Rouleau when he was shot by police. Canadas Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney pronounced the incident clearly linked to terrorist ideology." Every time one of these attacks occurs from 9/11 on down Western governments pretend that it was just some sort of unprovoked ... act of violence caused by primitive, irrational, savage religious extremism inexplicably aimed at a country innocently minding its own business. In this case in Canada, it wasnt civilians who were targeted. The driver waited two hours until he saw a soldier in uniform. He seems to have deliberately avoided attacking civilians, and targeted a soldier instead a member of a military that is currently fighting a war. Targeting soldiers who are part of a military fighting an active war is completely inconsistent with the common usage of the word terrorism, and yet it is reflexively applied by government officials and media outlets to this incident in Canada (and others like it in the UK and the US). The term terrorism has become nothing more than a rhetorical weapon for legitimizing all violence by Western countries, and delegitimizing all violence against them. This ... is central to how the west propagandizes its citizenries; the manipulative use of the terrorism term lies at heart of that.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing stories about manipulation of mass media and terrorism from reliable sources.


In Britain, Child Sex Abuse Defies Easy Stereotypes
2014-10-21, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/22/world/europe/in-britain-child-sex-abuse-def...

First there was abuse at the hands of a popular BBC host. There were scandals at private schools and in the church and talk of a pedophile ring in Parliament. Then there was Rotherham. Over the past two years, high-profile revelations of sexual abuse of children have painted a picture of Britain as a place where such abuse is not just endemic but systematically covered up either because the perpetrators are of the very highest status or because the victims are of the very lowest. The main driver of abuse is impunity: Abuse happens in a context of permissibility, said Helen Beckett, an expert on the subject at the University of Bedfordshire. In 2012, it emerged that Jimmy Savile had raped scores of children as colleagues and the police turned a blind eye. Mr. Savile, who was a friend of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, used his charity work to gain access to his victims in schools and hospitals. In July, Britons learned of allegations that Cyril Smith, a former member of Parliament who died in 2010, abused boys in a care home in his constituency. The allegations against him and others were detailed in a file prepared three decades ago by a crusading lawmaker who described a pedophile ring of big, big names. But the file mysteriously disappeared.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing sex abuse scandal news articles from reliable major media sources.


Komen is supposed to be curing breast cancer. So why is its pink ribbon on so many carcinogenic products?
2014-10-21, Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/10/21/komen-is-supposed-...

Breast cancer giant Susan G. Komen has found its strangest bedfellow yet in one of the worlds largest oilfield services corporations, Baker Hughes. The two have teamed up for a second year to distribute 1,000 pink drill bits to oil fields worldwide. This is just the latest example of pinkwashing when a company or organization claims to care about breast cancer by promoting a pink-ribbon product but at the same time manufactures or sells products that are linked to the disease. Pinkwashing has become a central component of the breast cancer industry: a web of relationships and financial arrangements between corporations that cause cancer, companies making billions off diagnosis and treatment, nonprofits seeking to support patients or even to cure cancer, and public relations agencies that divert attention from the root causes of disease. The partnership with fracking company Baker Hughes is among the worst examples of Komens pinkwashing so far. More than 700 chemicals are used in the process of drilling and fracking for oil and gas. In a study of about 350 of those chemicals, researchers found that up to half can cause health problems, including nervous, immune and cardiovascular symptoms. More than one-third can disrupt the hormone system. And a quarter of the chemicals, such as benzene and formaldehyde, increase the risk of cancer. Baker Hughes is doing more to cause breast cancer than to cure it. And Komen, with its poisonous partnerships, is giving Baker Hughes and many other companies the perfect pink disguise.

Note: For more along these lines, read this Los Angeles Times article about how fracking introduces carcinogens into drinking water, and see concise summaries of deeply revealing corporate corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.


Nobel Prize winner Kailash Satyarthi: an engineer of freedom
2014-10-21, Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Making-a-difference/Change-Agent/2014/1021/Nob...

Kailash Satyarthi has ... just been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Satyarthi is a hero to many people. [He] has driven the global movement to end child labor. Because of his work, we now know there are 168 million child laborers worldwide. They used to be invisible. Kailash started risking his life for these children more than 30 years ago, when he broke into Indian factories to emancipate them. Early footage of him doing this raid and rescue work showed the world that child slavery exists. Along with his wife, Sumedha, he helped those he rescued to recover and find their place in the world, and he put their stories on the global stage, shaming lawmakers and companies into acknowledging the systemic exploitation of children for economic gain. GoodWeave [is] an organization that he created in 1994. At that time there were over 1 million children weaving carpets in South Asia alone. In exchange for proving that there were no children in their supply chains, carpet sellers could put the GoodWeave label on their products. Since 1995, more than 11 million carpets bearing the GoodWeave label have been sold worldwide, reducing child labor in the carpet industry by an estimated 75 percent. GoodWeave aims to emancipate the last 250,000 children working the carpet looms by 2020.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


4 Banks, Including JPMorgan, Fined in Europe Over Cartel Behavior
2014-10-21, New York Times
http://dealbook.nytimes.com//2014/10/21/4-banks-including-jpmorgan-fined-in-e...

The European Commission on Tuesday fined four major financial institutions 93.9 million euros, or about $120 million, over two types of activity that it deemed as cartel behavior. In one case, the European Commission fined JPMorgan Chase 61.7 million euros for manipulating the Swiss franc Libor benchmark interest rate in an illegal bilateral cartel with the Royal Bank of Scotland. Interest-rate derivatives such as forward rate agreements, swaps, futures and options are financial products intended to help manage interest-rate fluctuations. In December 2013, the European Union fined several global financial institutions a combined 1.7 billion to settle charges that they colluded to fix benchmark interest rates. Regulators accused R.B.S. and JPMorgan of trying to distort the process used to price interest rate derivatives. In a separate settlement also announced on Tuesday, the European Commission said R.B.S., UBS, JPMorgan and Credit Suisse, operated a cartel on bid-ask spreads of Swiss franc interest-rate derivatives, imposing fines worth a total of 32.4 million. from May to September 2007, R.B.S., UBS, JPMorgan and Credit Suisse agreed to quote to clients wider, fixed bid-ask spreads on certain categories of franc interest-rate derivatives. The banks maintained narrower spreads for trades among themselves. The aim was to lower the banks transaction costs and continue the flow of trades between themselves while preventing others from participating on the same terms in the franc derivatives market. Global financial institutions have paid more than $6 billion in fines over manipulating benchmark rates.

Note: For more along these lines, see the excellent, reliable resources provided in our Banking Corruption Information Center.


Your Taxes Funding Nazi War Criminals' Retirement?
2014-10-20, CBS News/Associated Press
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/nazi-war-criminal-social-security-benefits-ap-inv...

Dozens of suspected Nazi war criminals and SS guards collected millions of dollars in U.S. Social Security benefits after being forced out of the United States. Among those receiving benefits were armed SS troops who guarded the network of Nazi camps where millions of Jews perished; a rocket scientist who used slave laborers to advance his research in the Third Reich; and a Nazi collaborator who engineered the arrest and execution of thousands of Jews in Poland. The deals allowed the Justice Department's former Nazi-hunting unit, the Office of Special Investigations, to skirt lengthy deportation hearings. Social Security benefits became tools, U.S. diplomatic officials said, to secure agreements. The Social Security Administration expressed outrage in 1997 over the use of benefits. Austrian authorities were furious upon learning after the fact about a deal made with Martin Bartesch, a former SS guard at the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria. "It was not upfront, it was not transparent, it was not a legitimate process," said James Hergen, an assistant legal adviser at the State Department from 1982 until 2007. "This was not the way America should behave." Neal Sher, a former OSI director, said the State Department cared more about diplomatic niceties than holding former members of Adolf Hitler's war machine accountable.

Note: Explore powerful evidence that the CIA secretly smuggled Nazi war criminals into the US to teach them mind control techniques.


Afghan Poppies Hit Record High Despite $7 Billion US Campaign
2014-10-20, NBC News
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/investigations/afghan-opium-poppies-hit-record-hi...

Opium poppy cultivation has hit an all-time high in Afghanistan despite a 10-year, $7.6 billion effort by the U.S. government to fight it, according to a new report. The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan, who authored the report, warned Secretary of State John Kerry, Attorney General Eric Holder and other top U.S. officials that the gap between expenditures and results should make them rethink their approach. "Given the severity of the opium problem and its potential to undermine U.S. objectives in Afghanistan," said Special Inspector General John Sopko in a letter to the officials, "I strongly suggest that your departments consider the trends in opium cultivation and the effectiveness of past counternarcotics efforts when planning future initiatives." According to SIGAR's report, the value of the opium produced in Afghanistan reached $3 billion in 2013, a 50 percent increase from 2012, and is likely to increase still further in 2014. Some of the increase is due to the use of affordable deep well technology over the past decade to turn 200,000 hectares of former desert in southwestern Afghanistan into arable land. Some of the land is now being used to grow opium poppies. Opium poppy cultivation is used to fund the Taliban and other insurgent groups and stokes corruption, says the report.

Note: A 2002 news article shows that "the Taliban in July 2000, coupled with severe droughts last year, reduced the country's opium yield by 91% in 2001." Yet once the allies defeated the Taliban, opium production hit new records. Do you really think the plan was to eradicate opium? This huge source of income is used to fund all kinds of secret projects. Read powerful evidence that the CIA and US military are directly involved in the drug trade.


Why Did Top Scientific Journals Reject This Dr. Bronner's Ad?
2014-10-20, Mother Jones
http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2014/10/read-dr-bronners-gmo-ad-thats...

David Bronner, CEO of Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps, presides over a company with famously wacky product labels. But Bronner himself, grandson of the founder ... has emerged as a serious, though fun-loving, activist, particularly around pesticides and genetically modified crops. Bronner's writing on GMOs is too hot for the advertising pages of the English-speaking world's two most renowned science journals, Science and Nature - even though a slew of magazines ... accepted the Bronner ad. It consists of a short essay, known in publishing as an advertorial, [and] focuses on how GMO crops have led to a net increase in pesticide use in the United States, citing an analysis by Ramon Seidler, a retired senior staff scientist at the Environmental Protection Agency. Bronner ... first published his critique on Huffington Post, and then decided to publish it as an ad in a variety of high-profile magazines. Science was close to accepting it. An ad sales manager for the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which published the magazine, emailed on September 15 that she would send over paper work "in a bit," adding that "[a]fter you sign it, I can take your credit card info." The price: $9,911.00. But hours later, she wrote back, squashing the deal: "This has gone up the ladder quite far and our CEO along with the board have come back saying that we cannot accept the ad. We're concerned about backlash from our members and potentially getting into a battle with the GMO industry."

Note: See the original ad at this link. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on media manipulation and the GMO controversy from reliable major media sources.


The Right Way to Get Angry
2014-10-20, Greater Good
http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/the_right_way_to_get_angry

Anger is best viewed as a tool that helps us read and respond to upsetting social situations. Feeling angry increases optimism, creativity, [and] effective performance. Research suggests that expressing anger can lead to more successful negotiations, in life or on the job. In fact, repressing anger can actually hurt you. Dr. Ernest Harburg and his team at the University of Michigan School of Public Health spent several decades tracking the same adults in a longitudinal study of anger. They found that men and women who hid the anger they felt in response to an unjust attack subsequently found themselves more likely to get bronchitis and heart attacks, and were more likely to die earlier than peers who let their anger be known when other people were annoying. When anger arises, we feel called upon to prevent or terminate immediate threats to our welfare, or to the well-being of those we care about. Altruism is often born from anger; when it comes to mobilizing other people and creating support for a cause, no emotion is stronger. Its a mistake to presume that kindness, compassion, love, and fairness line up on one side of a continuum, and anger, rage, and dislike, on another side. Positivity alone is insufficient to the task of helping us navigate social interactions and relationships. A healthy society is not an anger-free society. The expression of authentic anger can be entirely appropriate with certain people in certain situations. The question is how you do that without letting it go too far.

Note: Read the entire article to learn simple, healthy anger management tricks. Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Vote all you want. The secret government won't change
2014-10-19, Boston Globe
https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2014/10/18/vote-all-you-want-the-secret-gov...

The Obama version of national security looks almost indistinguishable from the one he inherited. Critics tend to focus on Obama himself, but Tufts University political scientist Michael J. Glennon has a more pessimistic answer: Obama couldnt have changed policies much even if he tried. Our government no longer works that way. In a new book, National Security and Double Government, he catalogs the ways that the defence and national security apparatus is effectively self-governing, with virtually no accountability, transparency, or checks and balances of any kind. He uses the term double government: Theres the one we elect, and then theres the one behind it, steering huge swaths of policy almost unchecked. Elected officials end up serving as mere cover for the real decisions made by the bureaucracy. National Security and Double Government comes favorably blurbed by former members of the Defense Department, State Department, White House, and even the CIA. Glennon spoke with Ideas from his office. IDEAS: Where does the term double government come from? GLENNON: Walter Bagehot - the scholar who presided over the birth of The Economist magazine. IDEAS: What evidence exists for saying America has a double government? GLENNON: The documented evidence in the book is substantial there are 800 footnotes. I think the American people ... believe that when they vote for a president or member of Congress or succeed in bringing a case before the courts, that policy is going to change. Policy by and large in the national security realm is made by the concealed institutions.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing stories about questionable intelligence agency practices from reliable sources.


The Cost of Campaigns
2014-10-19, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/20/us/the-cost-of-campaigns.html

Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission in 2010 tossed aside decades of legislative restrictions, freeing corporations and unions to spend as much as they wished. Six months ago, the Supreme Court took its Citizens United decision further. In McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, it struck down long standing caps on what an individual may contribute to all federal candidates, collectively, in any two-year election cycle. With conservative justices dominant, the court expanded the concept that money is equivalent to speech, protected by the First Amendment. Corporations, it said, enjoy the same political rights as individuals. A study by the Sunlight Foundation, an advocate for government transparency, found that 31,385 people that is 1 percent of 1 percent of the United States population accounted for 28 percent of all disclosed contributions in the 2012 elections. This year, an analysis by The New York Times shows, more than half of broadcast advertising in the midterm elections has been paid for by groups that reveal little or nothing about their donors. Overwhelmingly, the main beneficiaries have been conservative organizations.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing election news articles from reliable major media sources. For more along these lines, see the excellent, reliable resources provided in our Elections Information Center.


Are these glimpses of the after-life?
2014-10-19, Daily Mail
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2799385/glimpses-life-brain-surgeon-t...

Neurosurgeon Dr Eben Alexander was convinced out-of-body experiences were hallucinations until he went into a coma himself and had what he now believes was a glimpse of heaven. Dr Alexander, who has taught at Harvard Medical School, reveals many others have also seen what he described. Dr. Alexander: A near-death experience will change your life in more ways than one. It means you have survived a serious illness or a major accident, for one thing. But the aftermath ... can be even more significant. For me, it was as if my old world was dead and I had been reborn into a new one. Coping with that is hard: how do you replace your old vision of the universe? Many people are going through similar versions of what I went through, and the stories I have heard from other near-death experience witnesses give me courage every day. They are a constant corroboration of everything that was revealed to me how we are loved and cherished much more than we can imagine, how we have nothing to fear and nothing to reproach ourselves for. If you have never seen yourself as a spiritual person, and perhaps did not even believe in God, this new dimension to your understanding has an even greater impact. One of the most extraordinary things about my own glimpse of heaven was that, back in this world, no one was aware of the transformation that I was undergoing. All the monitors and sensors and computers could detect no activity: my brain was flat-lining. New knowledge like this changes us for ever. We evolve into someone fresh.

Note: Learn a lot more about Dr. Alexander on this webpage. Explore an abundance of inspiring resources on near-death experiences.


How Billionaire Oligarchs Are Becoming Their Own Political Party
2014-10-17, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/19/magazine/how-billionaire-oligarchs-are-beco...

Before 2002, parties could accept unlimited donations from individuals or groups (corporations, labor unions, etc.). The McCain-Feingold law, as it came to be known, banned soft-money contributions, and it also prohibited political groups that operate outside the regulated system and its donation limits from running issue ads that appear to help or hurt a candidate close to an election. In 2010, the Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court effectively blew apart the McCain-Feingold restrictions on outside groups and their use of corporate and labor money in elections. That same year, a related ruling from a lower court made it easier for wealthy individuals to finance those groups. What followed has been the most unbridled spending in elections since before Watergate. In 2000, outside groups spent $52 million on campaigns, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. By 2012, that number had increased to $1 billion. The result was a massive power shift. With the advent of Citizens United, any players with the wherewithal, and there are surprisingly many of them, can start what are in essence their own political parties, built around pet causes or industries and backing politicians uniquely answerable to them. No longer do they have to buy into the system. Instead, they buy their own pieces of it outright. Suddenly, we privatized politics, says Trevor Potter, an election lawyer who helped draft the McCain-Feingold law.

Note: To understand the decisive role that money plays in elections politics, read this entire, revealing article. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing election process news articles from reliable major media sources. For more along these lines, see the excellent, reliable resources provided in our Elections Information Center.


Free Pigs From the Abusive Crates
2014-10-17, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/18/opinion/free-pigs-from-the-abusive-crates.html

Would you cram a dog into a crate for her entire life, never letting her out, until you took her to the pound to kill her? Of course you wouldnt, and yet thats effectively what happens to most mother pigs in this country. They spend their lives in what are called gestation crates ... immobilized in these crates until they are taken to the slaughterhouse. Pigs are smart. They learn rudimentary video games as quickly as chimpanzees. When abnormally enclosed, their muscles and bones waste away, and they go insane from boredom. Fortunately, were seeing changes. Were seeing policies to get rid of these crates from the likes of McDonalds, Burger King and Smithfield Foods. Weve also seen bills or initiatives passed in nine states that require that all pigs be given at least enough space to turn around. Its a modest improvement, but the pork producers are fighting it. These laws are bipartisan. A poll conducted last month by Mason-Dixon Polling and Research found that 93 percent of New Jersey voters wanted to see these crates banned. A year ago, Gov. Chris Christie vetoed a ... bill (to ban gestation crates) that had passed the Assembly and Senate by huge bipartisan majorities.

Note: For more along these lines, see this excerpt of a deeply revealing ABC News article about standardized animal cruelty in chicken farming.


Wind Power Blows Away Coal and Gas in Nordic Countries
2014-10-17, Scientific American/Reuters
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/wind-power-blows-away-coal-and-gas-...

Wind power is blowing gas and coal-fired turbines out of business in the Nordic countries, and the effects will be felt across the Baltic region as the renewable glut erodes utility margins for thermal power stations. Fossil power plants in Finland and Denmark act as swing-producers, helping to meet demand when hydropower production in Norway and Sweden falls due to dry weather. The arrival of wind power on a large scale has made this role less relevant and has pushed electricity prices down, eroding profitability of fossil power stations. "Demand for coal condensing power in the Nordic power market has decreased as a result of the economic recession and the drop in the wholesale price for electricity," state-controlled Finnish utility Fortum said. Nordic wholesale forward power prices have almost halved since 2010 to little over 30 euros per megawatt-hour (MWh) as capacity increases while demand stalls on the back of stagnant populations, low economic growth and lower energy use due to improved efficiency. "The Nordic system price will likely more often clear well below the production cost for coal fired power production," said Marius Holm Rennesund Oslo-based consultancy THEMA. "This will, in our view, result in mothballing of 2,000 MW of coal condensing capacity in Denmark and Finland towards 2030," he added. Adding further wind power capacity at current market conditions could lead to power prices dropping towards as low as 20 euros per MWh, the marginal cost for nuclear reactors, Rennesund said.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of key energy news articles from reliable major media sources. To learn about new energy technologies, see the excellent, reliable resources provided in our New Energy Information Center.


Calgary bullied teen's loving response earns her love in return
2014-10-16, Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Family/Modern-Parenthood/2014/1016/Calga...

Caitlin Prater-Haacke of Alberta, Canada was urged by bullies to kill herself, via Facebook post. Instead of sinking into negativity she turned the situation into a positive lesson. Lee Hirsch, director of the documentary Bully, which aired Monday on PBS Monday, is among those lending their support to Caitlin, who was reprimanded by her school for her Positive Post-It Day approach to bullies. In late September, someone broke into Caitlins locker at George McDougall High School in Airdrie, a community just north of Calgary, and wrote a Facebook status using Caitlins iPad that encouraged her to die. Rather than letting the bully win, the 11th grader wrote inspiring, positive, encouraging messages on 800 Post-It notes and left them around her school - with messages like "You're beautiful," "Love yourself," and "You're awesome. Now her campaign has also taken to Twitter with the tag #PositivePostItDay. "Bullying is not necessarily addressed, and people get really down about it, I wanted to do something positive - it was about due time," Caitlin told the Toronto Sun. Caitlins town, led by a mayoral proclamation, banded together to launch a new anti-bullying campaign called Positive Post-it Day which encourages residents to leave anonymous notes of kindness for one another each year on Oct. 9. What I really got out of this story is the way this student chose not to be derailed by this negative experience, said Hirsch. She became a role model to her classmates, teachers, her mayor and her town.

Note: Watch a short video on this inspiring news story.


FBI director attacks tech companies for embracing new modes of encryption
2014-10-16, The Guardian
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/oct/16/fbi-director-attacks-tech-comp...

The director of the FBI savaged tech companies for their recent embrace of end-to-end encryption and suggested rewriting laws to ensure law enforcement access to customer data in a speech on Thursday. James Comey said data encryption such as that employed on Apples latest mobile operating system would deprive police and intelligence companies. Privacy advocates contend Comey is demagoguing the issue. It took a June supreme court ruling, they point out, for law enforcement to abandon its contention that it did not require warrants at all to search through smartphones or tablets, and add that technological vulnerabilities can be exploited by hackers and foreign intelligence agencies as well as the US government. Tech companies contend that their newfound adoption of encryption is a response to overarching government surveillance, much of which occurs ... without a warrant, subject to a warrant broad enough to cover indiscriminate data collection, or under a gag order following a non-judicial subpoena. Comey did not mention such subpoenas, often in the form of National Security Letters, in his remarks. Comey acknowledged that the Snowden disclosures caused justifiable surprise among the public about the breadth of government surveillance, but hoped to mitigate it through greater transparency and advocacy. Yet the FBI keeps significant aspects of its surveillance reach hidden even from government oversight bodies. Intelligence officials said in a June letter to a US senator that the FBI does not tally how often it searches through NSAs vast hoards of international communications, without warrants, for Americans identifying information. Comey frequently described himself as being technologically unprepared to offer specific solutions, and said he meant to begin a conversation, even at the risk of putting American tech companies at a competitive disadvantage.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing stories about questionable intelligence agency practices from reliable sources.


Important Note: Explore our full index to key excerpts of revealing major media news articles on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.