Hurricane Forecasters Stick to "Busy" 2008 Prediction

Willie Drye
for National Geographic News

June 3, 2008

Even as the first named storm of the season is being blamed for four deaths in Belize, forecasters at Colorado State University (CSU) are sticking to their April prediction of a busy Atlantic hurricane season for 2008.

The CSU team today released an updated forecast that predicts eight hurricanes—four of them with winds exceeding 110 miles (177 kilometers) an hour—will form before the season ends November 30.

"Conditions in the tropical Atlantic look quite favorable for an active hurricane season," CSU forecaster Phil Klotzbach said in a prepared statement.

Klotzbach and CSU colleague William Gray think a total of 15 tropical storms will form in the Atlantic Basin, which includes the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico (see map).

Tropical Storm Arthur, the season's first, came ashore Saturday along the Mexico-Belize border.

Although the storm was weakening as it made landfall, heavy rains triggered flash floods that swept away houses and wiped out bridges, according to the Associated Press.

Arthur has since been downgraded to a tropical depression.

U.S. commercial bankruptcies rise to record

Source: Reuters

NEW YORK - U.S. commercial bankruptcies soared 46 percent in May from a year ago and many more are expected as the slowing economy chokes consumers and businesses, according to a bankruptcy management firm.

There were some 5,233 commercial bankruptcy cases last month, up from 3,589 in the year-ago period, according to AACER, a database of U.S. bankruptcy statistics.

Commercial cases include bankruptcy filings from companies, as well as individuals who indicate they are running a business.

"It's a very sizable increase year over year, no doubt about that," said Mike Bickford, president of AACER.

And there are many more bankruptcy filings to come, according to Bickford.

"What we've seen over time using historical models is that (the filings) will stay fairly level from now through the end of August, then we'll see another spike for September and the fall months," said Bickford.

As many as 1.1 million bankruptcy cases, including personal filings, as well as commercial, are expected by the end of the year, he said. That is up from about 800,000 last year.

MAY SPIKE

There were an average 249 commercial filings every day last month. That is the highest monthly rate since new bankruptcy laws took effect in 2005, according to AACER.

A wide range of industries are struggling this year. Higher costs of food and fuel have stifled consumer spending and cut into retailers' profits, while home builders have been slammed by falling home prices. Higher fuel costs have also hurt airlines and transportation-related companies, which have difficulty passing on their higher expenses to customers.

Gadget retailer Sharper Image Corp SHRPQ.PK, Florida-based home builder TOUSA Inc TOUSQ.PK and air carrier Frontier Airlines Holdings Inc FRNTQ.PK are among companies that have filed for bankruptcy protection this year. (Editing by Andre Grenon)

Lawmaker asks McCain to talk with 9/11 theorists

Source: The Arizona Republic

An Arizona state senator is petitioning presumptive GOP presidential nominee John McCain to meet with 9/11 conspiracy theorists, including an adjunct professor from Scottsdale who has been fasting outside McCain's Phoenix office for more than a week.

State Sen. Karen Johnson, a Mesa Republican, delivered a letter to McCain's Senate office Tuesday asking that he sit down with Scottsdale activist Blair Gadsby and a pair of leading members of the 9/11 Truth Movement to consider alternative explanations for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the collapse of the World Trade Center towers. Gadsby's fast outside McCain's Senate office entered its 10th day today.

"There are so many questions left unanswered," said Johnson, who called for a new, independent investigation into the attacks.

She has previously been the focus of media attention for her vocal misgivings about the government account of 9/11. Again Tuesday, she said, "There's no explanation - no legitimate explanation - about why those towers and Building 7 came down."

WTC 7 was the third building to collapse at the complex, though it wasn't directly struck by either aircraft.

Gadsby said he'll maintain his office vigil until McCain pledges to sit down with him, Richard Gage, founder of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, and Steven Jones, a physicist who claims to have done laboratory analysis and found evidence of explosives in the WTC rubble. Their conditions: a pledge of two hours with McCain, plus national media coverage.

Gadsby, an adjunct community college professor, said he's been told by McCain staffers that the senator is too busy to meet. The Republic had no luck Tuesday reaching representatives of either McCain's Senate office or presidential campaign. But he appears unsympathetic to 9/11 conspiracy theorists, and occasionally has sparred with them on the campaign trail over the past year.

He also wrote the foreword to a 2006 book titled Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can't Stand Up to the Facts. It was written by the editors of Popular Mechanics magazine.

"We cannot let these tales go unanswered," McCain wrote, saying that the "9/11 conspiracy movement exploits the public's anger and sadness" and "traffics in ugly, unfounded accusations of extraordinary evil against fellow Americans."

China earthquake death toll rises to 67,183

BEIJING, May 27 (Xinhua) -- The death toll from China's May 12 earthquake increased by more than 2,100 to 67,183 as of midday Tuesday, according to the Information Office of the State Council.

A total of 361,822 people were injured and 20,790 others are missing in the 8.0-magnitude quake that struck the southwestern Sichuan Province on May 12.

More than 45.61 million people were affected and about 15 million have been relocated, according to the office.

As of 7 p.m. on Monday, the quake had left 66,674 dead and 350,133 injured in Sichuan alone. A total of 83,988 people had been rescued and more than 6.7 million had been relocated.

A total of 64,719 bodies had been buried in the province.

Hospitals have treated 84,810 injured, of whom 54,374 have been discharged, while 16,288 remain hospitalized and 6,363 have been transferred to other parts of the country for treatment.

Signs of the Crossing of Nibiru

Global and Solar System Warming
Earth is heating up lately, but so are Mars, Pluto and other worlds in our solar system, leading some scientists to speculate that a change in the sun’s activity is the common thread linking all these baking events.
Benny Peiser, a social anthropologist at Liverpool John Moores University who monitors studies and news reports of asteroids, global warming and other potentially apocalyptic topics, recently quoted in his daily electronic newsletter the following from a blog called Strata-Sphere:

“Global warming on Neptune's moon Triton as well as Jupiter and Pluto, and now Mars has some [scientists] scratching their heads over what could possibly be in common with the warming of all these planets ... Could there be something in common with all the planets in our solar system that might cause them all to warm at the same time?”
In what is largely a reversal of an August announcement, astronomers today said Pluto is undergoing global warming in its thin atmosphere even as it moves farther from the Sun on its long, odd-shaped orbit.

Pluto's atmospheric pressure has tripled over the past 14 years, indicating a stark temperature rise, the researchers said. The change is likely a seasonal event, much as seasons on Earth change as the hemispheres alter their inclination to the Sun during the planet's annual orbit.
They suspect the average surface temperature increased about 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit, or slightly less than 2 degrees Celsius.

Global Warming on Pluto Puzzles Scientists
By Robert Roy Britt
Senior Science Writer
Mars is being hit by rapid climate change and it is happening so fast that the red planet could lose its southern ice cap, writes Jonathan Leake.
Scientists from NASA say that Mars has warmed by about 0.5C since the 1970s. This is similar to the warming experienced on Earth over approximately the same period.

New Storm on Jupiter Hints at Climate Change
By Sara Goudarzi
Staff Writer
Global Warming Detected on Triton
There may not be much industrial pollution on Neptune's largest moon, but things are hotting up nonetheless...
The Earth is not alone in suffering global warming. According to observations made by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and several ground-based instruments, temperatures on Neptune's largest moon have increased dramatically since the Voyager space probe swung by in 1989. So much so, in fact, that Triton's surface of frozen nitrogen is turning into gas, making its thin atmosphere denser by the day.
"At least since 1989, Triton has been undergoing a period of global warming," confirms astronomer James Elliot, professor of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "Percentage-wise, it's a very large increase."
Elliot and colleagues from the Lowell Observatory and Williams College report their findings in the June 25 issue of the journal Nature. Triton's 5 percent increase on the absolute temperature scale from about -392 to -389 degrees Fahrenheit would be like the Earth experiencing a jump of some 22 degrees Fahrenheit in just nine years.

Myanmar cyclone: Burma death toll jumps to 78,000

The official death toll of the cyclone disaster in Burma has risen to 78,000, as the country's military regime continues block aid from reaching 2.5 million survivors.

According to state television, as of May 15 more than 55,000 people were missing and almost 20,000 have been injured in the worst disaster in the country's history, which hit two weeks ago.

Independent experts have said the actual number is probably far higher, with British officials saying the total dead and missing could be more than 200,000.

The great oil swindle: How much did the Fed really know?

By Mike Whitney Online Journal Contributing Writer Jun 3, 2008, 00:26

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The Commodity Futures and Trading Commission (CFTC) is investigating trading in oil futures to determine whether the surge in prices to record levels is the result of manipulation or fraud. They might want to take a look at wheat, rice and corn futures while they're at it.

The whole thing is a hoax cooked up by the investment banks and hedge funds who are trying to dig their way out of the trillion dollar mortgage-backed securities (MBS) mess that they created by turning garbage loans into securities. That scam blew up in their face last August and left them scrounging for handouts from the Federal Reserve. Now the billions of dollars they're getting from the Fed are being diverted into commodities which are destabilizing the world economy; driving gas prices to the moon and triggering food riots across the planet.

For months we've been told that the soaring price of oil has been the result of Peak Oil, fighting in Iraq, attacks on oil facilities in Nigeria, labor problems in Norway, and (the all-time favorite) growth in China. It's all baloney. Just like Goldman Sachs prediction of $200 per barrel oil is baloney. If oil is about to skyrocket then why has G-Sax kept a neutral rating on some of its oil holdings like Exxon Mobile? Could it be that they know that oil is just another mega-inflated equity bubble -- like housing, corporate bonds and dot.com stocks -- that is about to crash to earth as soon as the big players grab a parachute?

There are three things that are driving up the price of oil: the falling dollar, speculation and buying on margin.

The dollar is tanking because the Federal Reserve's low interest monetary policies have kept interest rates below the rate of inflation for most of the last decade. Add that to the $700 billion current account deficit and a national debt that has increased from $5.8 trillion when Bush first took office to over $9 trillion today and it's a wonder the dollar hasn't gone �Poof� already.

According to a January 4 editorial in the Wall Street Journal: �If the dollar had remained 'as good as gold' since 2001, oil today would be selling at about $30 per barrel, not $99. The decline of the dollar against gold and oil suggests a US monetary that is supplying too many dollars.� Wall Street Journal 1-4-08

The price of oil has more than quadrupled since 2001, from roughly $30 per barrel to $127, WITHOUT ANY DISRUPTIONS TO SUPPLY. There's no shortage; it's just gibberish.