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U.S. Stops Short of Linking Chinese Drywall to Health Problems By MELANIE TROTTMAN WASHINGTON -- Federal product-safety regulators stopped short of linking Chinese-made drywall to health problems and metal corrosion, according to people familiar with results of an investigation scheduled to be released later Thursday. The regulators have determined that sulfur gases emit from Chinese drywall at a higher rate than non-Chinese product, according to the results. But the officials said they need to conduct more studies to determine any connection to health problems or damages. Federal regulators are expected to caution that the results are early stage and could...

China’s infatuation with UFOs and UFO sightings really does match that of the US. A week rarely goes past without the media whipping up frenzy over a UFO event somewhere in the country. Many suspect that China’s government is hiding extensive knowledge of extraterrestrial visitors to earth and it is known that the Chinese authorities do collect UFO footage and photographs for the purpose of identification. This video hit the Internet earlier this year but was largely ignored outside of China. Allegedly this UFO sighting occurred in Beijing in 1995 and was held by the Chinese government for top-secret study...

Turkey is switching to national currencies in trade with Iran and China, ending dependence on the U.S. dollar and the euro for about 20% of its commodity turnover, local media reported on Wednesday. Turkey has already switched to settlements in national currencies with Russia amid weakening confidence in the greenback as the world's major reserve currency. The move was initiated by Turkish President Abdullah Gul during his visit to Moscow in February. Turkey's decision to make settlements with Iran and China in national currencies was announced during a visit to Iran by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The Turkish...

Quote: October 27, 2009 MAYBE MULLAH OMAR IS SIMPLY AFRAID OF THE CHINESE Vahid Brown has the lowdown on the dustup between al-Qaida Core and the Afghan Taliban Posted on 27 October 2009 @ 13:11 GMT

China to launch case against U.S. Big Three automakers Doug Palmer Thu, Oct 29 08:37 AM China has told the United States it is launching a trade investigation that could lead to new import duties on autos and sports utility vehicles made by Chrysler, Ford and General Motors, a U.S. industry official said on Wednesday. The action comes as U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, Trade Representative Ron Kirk and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack are in China for high-level talks aimed at resolving trade irritants between the two countries. President Barack Obama, who will visit China in mid-November, angered Beijing last...

The More They Know Darwin, The Less They Want Darwin-Only Indoctrination According to an international poll released by the British Council, the majority of Americans — 60% — support teaching alternatives to evolution in the science classroom. The percentage is the same for Britons, despite the fact that both countries have been inundated with pro-Darwin media coverage in this super-mega Darwin Year. Of course, the British media reporting this are chagrined. Britain is the birthplace of Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution, and the official-sounding British Council, the UK group behind the “Darwin Now” campaign that commissioned the Ipsos...

THE FUTURIST: In your television interviews and your books, you talk a lot about the wealth transfer to Asia. According to your Web site, it’s one of the key components of your investment strategy at EuroPacific Capital. To what extent do you agree or disagree with some of the scenarios in the Global Trends 2025 report? Peter Schiff: Rising influence in Asia? I definitely agree with that, China more so than Russia. But there are other countries in the equation, like India. Japan will also have more clout in 2025. It won’t only be China and Russia that will see...

China’s September data suggest that the long-term overcapacity problem is only intensifying /snip Industrial policies create overcapacity I agree with the last paragraph, but otherwise I am pretty skeptical about the fight against overcapacity. According to my model of China’s overcapacity problem, the source of the imbalance is a set of industrial policies that systematically shift income from households to producers, and as long as these policies continue there is little chance of resolving the problem of excess production. I have a longish piece coming out next month as a Carnegie Brief on the Carnegie Endowment website, in which I...

A woman died at her apartment late Tuesday after trying to shed a bathrobe that had caught fire, officials said. A passer-by saw the woman, later identified as Linda Gadd, 58, on her balcony, on fire, said Jason Evans, spokesman for Dallas Fire-Rescue. The passer-by climbed up and put out the flames with a fire extinguisher, Evans said. But it was too late. Firefighters were called at about 9 p.m. to the one-alarm fire at the Pavilion Town Place, 7700 W. Greenway Blvd. in north Dallas. The neighborhood is southwest of the intersection of Lovers Lane and Dallas North Tollway...

My Extremely Cute Chinese Communist SpyPosted By Robert J. Avrech On October 28, 2009 @ 6:51 am In Obama, Politics | 6 Comments T- snip-American Journalism Goes Dark—VoluntarilyJournalism died in America when Barack Hussein Obama was running for President.The dinosaur media gleefully surrendered to the cult of personality—standard for leftist politics—and since then normally skeptical journalists have turned into nothing less than a collective Pravda for the Obama White House.- snip- Elite journalists and editors recognize in Obama a kindred spirit, a hard left, big government ideologue who is adept at mouthing—endlessly, tediously and vacuously—all the politically correct rhetoric. Questions...

BEIJING — China will give swine flu vaccinations to thousands of Muslims about to make the annual pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia, state media said, as authorities reported the mainland's third death from the illness. Concerns over the hajj, which attracts about 3 million Muslims every year to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, have led several countries to impose travel bans over fears the mass gathering could speed the spread of swine flu. Arab health ministers in July banned children, the elderly and those with chronic illnesses from attending this year. All of China's 12,700 Muslims making the pilgrimage...

If world powers are not successful in efforts to contain the Iranian nuclear threat, an Israeli strike on Iran could become a reality, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said during a visit to Beirut, the Daily Telegraph reported Monday. The French foreign minister suggested that time was indeed short for a solution to the Iranian threat. "There is the time that Israel will offer us before reacting, because Israel will react as soon as they know clearly that there is a threat." "Israel will not tolerate an Iranian bomb. We know that, all of us," said Kouchner, adding that for...

Exactly when China will uncouple its currency from the greenback is--outside the upper echelons of power in Asia's juggernaut economy--anyone's guess. But that it eventually will as the dollar keeps sinking is a good bet. For more than a year, as the U.S. credit crisis has given way to a global recession, China has pegged its currency to the dollar at an exchange rate of 6.83. Tying the yuan to the world's reserve currency has been good for China's exporters as the dollar depreciates in value against the euro, the yen and other currencies. For the U.S., too, it helps...

Here is obamas puppet master calling for SDRS

Singh to Wen: Dalai Lama an honored guest By John Ruwitch – Sun Oct 25, 7:11 am ET HUA HIN, Thailand (Reuters) – India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh rebuffed China's wishes that it bar the Dalai Lama from traveling to a disputed border area, telling Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao the Tibetan spiritual leader was an honored guest. "I explained to Premier Wen that the Dalai Lama is our honored guest. He is a religious leader. We do not allow the Tibetan refugees to indulge in political activities," Singh told reporters on Sunday, a day after he and Wen held bilateral...

The U.S. military needs better dialogue with China to avoid "mistakes and miscalculations" given an unprecedented military expansion stoking uncertainty in the region, top U.S. defe nse officials said Wednesday.

China Faces 'Economic Slowdown' In 2010 China may face an economic slowdown next year, Stephen Roach, the chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia, has warned. By Rupert Neate Published: 5:18PM GMT 25 Oct 2009 A massive government stimulus package and more than $1 trillion (£613bn) of new bank lending helped the Chinese economy jump 8.9pc in the third quarter. However, Mr Roach warned that China still faces "tough challenges in the years ahead". Speaking in Shanghai over the weekend, Mr Roach said: "China's growth model is much more about supply than demand. It's not a sustainable model for China. It's not...

Oct 22, 2009 — “We have kept the creationist barbarians from the gate,” announced a professor at Hong Kong University triumphantly. A news article in Science this week described tensions in the city over the teaching of evolution. The Darwinists won a vote over a change in wording in the science curriculum that would have “opened the door to teaching creationism and intelligent design in secondary schools.” The door must be shut tight, apparently. Even the possibility of this happening created a furore. Reporter Richard Stone said, “As a year of honoring Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution draws...

Exile groups report the deaths of four Tibetans linked to last year's riots. Chinese authorities have carried out their first executions of Tibetans in connection with the deadly riots that swept Lhasa last year, according to exile groups. As the first reported judicial killings in the region for six years, the news has prompted overseas protests and concerns that proper legal procedures were not followed. The Chinese state media have yet to confirm the executions. However, the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy, based in Dharamsala in northern India, said it had reports that they took place early on...

(For all these stories and more, click on the excerpt link below) 1. BBC News: “Primate Fossil ‘Not an Ancestor’” Remember “Ida,” the missing link that wasn’t? In a Nature letter, scientists attack the lofty claims that surrounded the announcement of the fossil primate. 2. Did the Baby Mammoth, Lyuba, Suffocate in a Dust Storm? In a special guest news analysis, creationist (and mammoth expert) Michael Oard considers the well-preserved mammoth “Lyuba” (whom we first discussed in A Mammoth Discovery). The occasion? Lyuba’s worldwide debut. 3. National Geographic News: “Chimps Display Humanlike Good Will” Chimps, especially mothers and their offspring,...

Hold the Champagne on China’s Economy By Michael Auslin Thursday, October 22, 2009 Filed under: World Watch, Boardroom, Economic Policy Those who witnessed Japan's spectacular rise and fall in the 1980s should get a familiar feeling watching China these days. This month in Hong Kong, a single bottle of wine sold at auction for $93,000 to a Chinese buyer. No matter how good the vintage, that's not something to pop a cork over and celebrate. Those who witnessed Japan's spectacular rise and fall in the 1980s should be getting a familiar feeling watching China these days. In the eyes of...

The Dragon and the Amoeba 21 October 2009 By Yulia Latynina At a meeting in New York in September, President Dmitry Medvedev and Chinese President Hu Jintao signed a wide-ranging cooperation agreement through 2018. It calls for Russia to become a raw-materials appendage of China. Russia will provide China with raw materials such as coal, iron, gold and manganese, and China-based factories will process it all. In reality, though, this is only a preliminary agreement because the Kremlin has a compulsive fear of China. Russians love conspiracy theories, and they avidly read the apocalyptic prophecies of Alexander Khramchikhin about how...

China's 8.9% Growth? No Way Gordon G. Chang, 10.23.09, 12:01 AM EDT Beijing has spent its way to a sugar high. pic On Oct. 22, Beijing announced that gross domestic product grew by 8.9% in the third quarter of 2009 compared with the corresponding period last year. The National Bureau of Statistics also reported that growth for the first three quarters was up 7.7%. /snip Since last November, Beijing has spent perhaps as much as $900 billion--from its own funds as well as those of the larger state banks--to jump start its $4.3 trillion economy. /snip There are fundamental problems...

WASHINGTON — A leading energy developer said the United States has been excluded from Iraq's revived energy market. ShareThis T. Boone Pickens told Congress that U.S. companies were losing opportunities in the Iraqi crude oil and natural gas sectors to competitors from China and Europe. The senior executive said the United States could lose all influence in the Iraqi oil sector after the military withdrawal in 2011. "They're opening them [oil fields] up to other companies all over the world," Pickens told the Congressional Natural Gas Caucus on Oct. 21. "We leave there with the Chinese getting the oil," he...

CNBC featuring David Goldman Video at Link

China’s Growth Picks Up Speed but Raises Concerns By ANDREW JACOBS and BETTINA WASSENER BEIJING — The Chinese economy, already one of the fastest-growing in the world, picked up more speed during the third quarter, adding fuel to a debate over whether, and when, the Chinese authorities might start reining in stimulus measures. Prompted by vastly increased bank lending, generous government support for exports and a $585 billion stimulus package that is spurring a dizzying array of building projects, the Chinese economy grew 8.9 percent from July to September, up from the year-ago period, according to government figures released Thursday....

On Oct. 22, Beijing announced that gross domestic product grew by 8.9% in the third quarter of 2009 compared with the corresponding period last year. The National Bureau of Statistics also reported that growth for the first three quarters was up 7.7%. The 8.9% figure confirmed the economy's upward trend. Growth, according to official statistics, tumbled to 6.1% in the first quarter, well off the double-digit figures seen in 2007 and the first half of last year. The economy picked up during this year's second quarter, when it expanded 7.9%. Now it is clear that China will attain for 2009...

China recently announced the decommissioning of "Submarine 303." This was a Type 33 boat (a copy of the Russian Romeo class). Romeo was the successor to the Russian Whiskey class boats, which were, in turn, based on the German Type XXI. The German design first showed up in 1943, and was the first modern submarine, in that it was designed to spend most of its time underwater (with just the snorkel device and periscope above water, to bring in air for the diesel engine and crew). The Type XXI was a 1,600 ton (on the surface) sub, compared to the...

Leading Indian politicians have condemned Google, the internet search engine, for publishing a map which cedes parts of the country's Himalayan states to China. Google's satellite map of the border area between India and China show several Indian towns in Arunachal Pradesh listed under their Chinese names as part of the People's Republic of China. Itanagar, the capital of Arunachal Pradesh, is shown on Google Maps as north of a dotted line marking the border between India and China, ie in disputed territory The maps also show the state's southern border with Assam and its northern boundary with China as...

HONG KONG (UCAN) -- The whereabouts of three "underground" priests in northern China, detained by police months ago, are still unknown while another has apparently been persuaded to join the "open" Church, say sources.   Catholics at prayer in northern China (file photo) Fathers Liu Jianzhong, Zhang Cunhui and Zhong Mingchang of Xuanhua diocese were taken away by plainclothes police on June 8, June 14 and Sept. 16 respectively.Local Church sources said that when the priests' family members went to government departments to enquire about them, the authorities denied detaining them and refused family requests to help locate them.Meanwhile, Father Simon Zhang...

Billy Lynch left Dorchester 72 years ago, and they’re pretty sure they’ve finally found him, a long way from home, deep in the ground in China. Staff Sergeant Billy Lynch was a Marine. He grew up on Victory Road, and if you go to the corner of Victory and Neponset Avenue, you’ll see the black street sign with the gold star that commemorates William Joseph Lynch Square. It is a place of honor for a Marine who disappeared 67 years ago. He left Neponset for the Marines in 1937, right out of high school, and never came back. He was...

WASHINGTON -- The Chinese government is ratcheting up its cyberspying operations against the U.S., a congressional advisory panel found, citing an example of a carefully orchestrated campaign against one U.S. company that appears to have been sponsored by Beijing. The unnamed company was just one of several successfully penetrated by a campaign of cyberespionage, according to the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission report to be released Thursday. Chinese espionage operations are "straining the U.S. capacity to respond," the report concludes...

U.S. pressures Japan on military package Washington concerned as new leaders in Tokyo look to redefine alliance Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, with Japanese Defense Minister Toshimi Kitazawa in Tokyo, pushed Japan to stick with a 2006 deal. By John Pomfret and Blaine Harden Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, October 22, 2009 Worried about a new direction in Japan's foreign policy, the Obama administration warned the Tokyo government Wednesday of serious consequences if it reneges on a military realignment plan formulated to deal with a rising China. The comments from Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates underscored increasing concern among U.S....

Researcher whose father found old maps posits 2000 BC voyage to west coast History books tell us that the first Chinese settlers to Canada arrived in Victoria about 150 years ago, but a U.S. researcher says she has solid evidence that they came earlier. Some 4,000 years earlier. That would be 3,500 years before 1492, when European explorer Christopher "Columbus sailed the ocean blue." Or 10,000 years after nomadic hunters from Eastern Siberia crossed the frozen Bering Strait during the Ice Age, a migration taken by modern scholars to account for North America's native population. Charlotte Harris Rees, a retired...

Dollar Hegemony For Another Century By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard October 21st, 2009 Let me stick my neck out. The dollar will still be the world’s dominant reserve currency in 2030, sharing a degree of leadership in uneasy condominium with the Chinese yuan. It will then regain much of its hegemonic status as the 21st century unfolds. It may indeed end the century even stronger than it was at the start. The aging crisis in Asia — and indeed the outright demographic implosion in Japan and China, not to mention China’s water crisis — will soon be obvious to everybody. Talk of...

Charles Darwin admitted that the sudden appearance of fully formed creatures in fossil deposits was one of the biggest problems with his hypothesis that nature generated living creatures through natural selection. His vision of organisms gradually morphing from one kind to another over vast time spans predicted that most fossils should reflect that steady grading from one basic body plan to another. Some scientists believe they have found a creature that bridges one of the many gaps in the fossil record, although it requires a significant reworking of evolutionary theory. The crow-sized pterosaur fossil from China has been named Darwinopterus...

Niall Ferguson: The Dollar Is Finished And The Chinese Are Dumping It Joe WeisenthalOct. 20, 2009, 2:50 PM Economic historian Niall Ferguson warns that China's love affair with the dollar is fading faster than anyone realizes. TechTicker: "The idea they don't have anywhere else to go or would shoot themselves in the foot if there were a steep decline in the dollar or appreciation of their currency reassures many people in Washington ‘we can relax'," he says. "An appreciation of the renminbi may reduce value of their international reserves but increases the value of every other asset the Chinese own,"...

The U.S. is an empire in decline, according to Niall Ferguson, Harvard professor and author of The Ascent of Money. "People have predicted the end of America in the past and been wrong," Ferguson concedes. "But let's face it: If you're trying to borrow $9 trillion to save your financial system...and already half your public debt held by foreigners, it's not really the conduct of rising empires, is it?" Given its massive deficits and overseas military adventures, America today is similar to the Spanish Empire in the 17th century and Britain's in the 20th, he says. "Excessive debt is usually...

A group of illegal immigrants from China is expected to face a judge after being caught near Brownsville. U.S. Border Patrol agents caught three Chinese immigrants near Brownsville on Monday. Criminal complaints filed in federal court records show that the immigrants illegally crossed the Rio Grande from Mexico on Sunday. The immigrants were identified as Jian Qiao Zhen, Chen Yan Hui and Li Xing. The three are expected to appear before U.S. Magistrate Judge Felix Recio in Brownsville at 10:30 a.m. Tuesday.

            All of the following experts expect the U.S. stock market to decline at some point in the future.  One interesting question is whether the dollar will continue to weaken or turn around and become strong. The answer to that question can affect future investment alternatives.              Some experts like Peter Schiff and David Tice believe that the dollar will loose value and we should expect inflation in prices and not lower commodity prices. If the dollar continues to weaken then perhaps as Tice suggests “Being in foreign assets, precious metals, and select equities may prove safer than shorts.”             ...

Chinese officials hint that violent action may be taken to rescue the 25 Chinese crew members aboard a cargo ship seized by Somali pirates on Monday.

China pointing about 1,500 missiles at Taiwan: Taipei official by Staff Writers Taipei (AFP) Oct 19, 2009 China now has about 1,500 missiles pointed at Taiwan, with no signs that the build-up is about to stop anytime soon, a spokesman for the island's government said Monday. The figure includes short-range ballistic missiles and cruise missiles, the defence ministry spokesman told AFP on condition of anonymity. "The number of missiles has been rising. We don't know when it will stop increasing," said the spokesman. He was speaking ahead of the release Tuesday of the ministry's annual report, which will include an...

Set aside Sarah Palin’s calls for “drill baby drill” strategies on the domestic front, for a moment. The ironic results of our foreign excursions of late has been to clear the way for China’s oil company, CNPC to produce more oil and gas. Unlike other oil companies, when you see their logo, witness a country drilling, not a company. Today, President Obama offered incentives to the government of Sudan to behave and cooperate with international peace efforts (see this article in the Christian Science Monitor). Sudan has no need to take heed. China’s there making Sudan’s economy spin higher, improving...

BEIJING, October 14 (RIA Novosti) - Russia is ready to consider using the Russian and Chinese national currencies instead of the dollar in bilateral oil and gas dealings, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday. The premier, currently on a visit to Beijing, said a final decision on the issue can only be made after a thorough expert analysis. "Yesterday, energy companies, in particular Gazprom, raised the question of using the national currency. We are ready to examine the possibility of selling energy resources for rubles, but our Chinese partners need rubles for that. We are also ready to sell...

Earth: An environmental writer mainstreams an idea floating around the green fringe — save the earth by population control and give carbon credits to one-child families. Are we threatened by the patter of little carbon footprints? New York Times environmental writer Andrew Revkin participated in an Oct. 14 panel discussion on climate change with other media pundits titled "Covering Climate: What's Population Got To Do With It?" People who need people they are not. In a recently rediscovered book, "Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment," co-authored with Malthus fans Paul and Anne Ehrlich, Holdren wrote that families "contribute to general social deterioration...

Politics: Move over, John McCain and Olympia Snowe. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina is fast becoming the Democrats' favorite Republican as he partners with John Kerry to push cap-and-trade through the Senate. Earlier this year, eight Republican congressmen made it possible for Waxman-Markey, the 1,400-page job- and economy-killing cap-and-trade legislation, to barely pass the House of Representatives. At the time it seemed dead on arrival in the Senate if it was brought up there this year. Once again, as with their medical plan, the Democrats seek to better the odds by putting a GOP hood ornament on a Democratic clunker....

MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti commentator Alexander Peslyak) - The launch of a Russian Phobos Grunt probe to Mars on October 16 has been delayed until 2011. The delay also affects China's first mission to Mars. The 240-pound Chinese Yinghou-1 spacecraft was to be mounted atop the Russian spacecraft for transport to the Martian orbit, where it was to be released before the Russian spacecraft landed on Phobos.

The 20th century was famously called “the American century”, yet its being so called occurred in an improbable way. The phrase itself was actually not used until Time publisher Henry Luce coined it in a special issue of Life magazine in 1941—by which time 40 percent of the 20th century had already passed. Moreover, 1941 was a year in which the superiority of America and of the American way of life appeared decidedly problematic. Only the year before had the United States finally exited, statistically speaking, the decade of the Great Depression. Nazi Germany’s armies occupied most of Europe, stretching...

"It gets people thinking." Editor's note: President Obama is set to visit China next month.

The conventional wisdom is that China is steaming through the global financial crisis by building on the momentum generated by its 30-year boom. Indeed, ever since it sailed through the last big global crisis—the Asian contagion 10 years ago—Beijing has been feted for uniquely steady helmsmanship in financial storms. So perhaps it's natural for forecasters to assume that the Chinese supertanker of state is not turning sharply now, particularly since it continues to grow rapidly even as other economies sink in the recession. Yet this crisis is different—bigger and more damaging than any seen in generations—and it is exposing limits...