China overtook the US last year to become the world's biggest energy user, the International Energy Agency revealed on Monday.
Beijing's new status is expected to make it even more influential in global energy markets, in determining prices and how it is used.
China clinched the top slot more quickly than had been expected because the US has over the past decade far outpaced China in using energy more efficiently. On a per capita basis, the US still uses far more energy than China and remains less efficient than Europe.
Puppet Masters
Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani
The embassy said in a statement that Iran's judicial officials have rejected reports that Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani will be stoned to death.
"According to information from relevant judicial authorities in Iran, she will not be executed by stoning punishment," the embassy said in the statement carried by The Guardian.
The statement also says such a punishment has not been included in the draft Islamic Penal Code being deliberated in the Iranian Parliament.
Israeli men arrested upon arrival on island by officers claiming they came to spy on Dubai citizens
Three Israeli men have been turned out of Mauritius on suspicion they were there on a secret mission to spy on tourists from Dubai, Yedioth Ahronoth reported Monday.
The three arrived on the island, an exotic tourist destination in the Indian Ocean, in order to conclude their trip to the Soccer World Cup.
But they never made it to the turquoise beaches. As soon as they landed immigration officers, who were convinced they were Mossad agents who had come to the island to disturb the peace, placed them under arrest and submitted them to hours of intensive interrogations.
Three Israeli men have been turned out of Mauritius on suspicion they were there on a secret mission to spy on tourists from Dubai, Yedioth Ahronoth reported Monday.
The three arrived on the island, an exotic tourist destination in the Indian Ocean, in order to conclude their trip to the Soccer World Cup.
But they never made it to the turquoise beaches. As soon as they landed immigration officers, who were convinced they were Mossad agents who had come to the island to disturb the peace, placed them under arrest and submitted them to hours of intensive interrogations.
Comment: It's about time nation states begin to take the threat from the Mossad more seriously.
© Unknown
A letter dispatched to French police officials late last winter -- long before the presidential election but somehow kept secret -- revealed that Sarkozy was recruited as an Israeli spy. The French police is currently investigating documents concerning Sarkozy's alleged espionage activities on behalf of Mossad, which Le Figaro claims dated as far back as 1983. According to the author of the message, in 1978, Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin ordered the infiltration of the French ruling Gaullist Party, Union pour un Mouvement Populaire. Originally targeted were Patrick Balkany, Patrick Devedjian and Pierre Lellouche. In 1983, they recruited the "young and promising" Sarkozy, the "fourth man".
© AP Photo/Bassem Tellawi
The ban shows a rare point of agreement between Syria's secular, authoritarian government and the democracies of Europe: Both view the niqab as a potentially destabilizing threat.
"We have given directives to all universities to ban niqab-wearing women from registering," a government official in Damascus told The Associated Press on Monday.
The order affects both public and private universities and aims to protect Syria's secular identity, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the issue. Hundreds of primary school teachers who were wearing the niqab at government-run schools were transferred last month to administrative jobs, he added.
© Agence France Presse
China has surpassed the US to become the world's top energy consumer, new data says
China has surpassed the US to become the world's top energy consumer, new data says
The Asian giant took over the top spot more quickly than expected, but still uses far less energy than the United States on a per capita basis, and is less energy-efficient, the Financial Times reported.
China consumed 2.252 billion tons of oil equivalent of energy in 2009, from sources including coal, nuclear power, natural gas and hydroelectric power -- about four percent more than the United States, the IEA said.
"In the year 2000, the US consumed twice as much energy as China; now, China consumes more than the US," the paper quoted IEA chief economist Fatih Birol as saying.
As the condition of BP's leaking oil well continues to deteriorate rapidly, BP has tried desperately to prevent the Federal Government from monitoring the sea floor for oil and methane leaks.
The Government almost immediately found oil leaking from the sea floor along with multiple methane leaks but did not immediately inform the public of their findings.
However, it didn't take long before an "anonymous government official" leaked the those findings to the media.
CBS Channel 12 West Palm Beach reported oil seepage and methane detected around the well.
An anonymous government official said BP is not complying with the government's demand for more monitoring of oil and methane leaks on the sea floor. BP spokesman Mark Salt declined to comment on the allegation, but said "we continue to work very closely with all government scientists on this."But yesterday the Feds finally moved in with their own ships and equipment to monitor the sea floor.
The Government almost immediately found oil leaking from the sea floor along with multiple methane leaks but did not immediately inform the public of their findings.
However, it didn't take long before an "anonymous government official" leaked the those findings to the media.
CBS Channel 12 West Palm Beach reported oil seepage and methane detected around the well.
"Turns out there is a problem, engineers detected seepage and traces of methane in that area around the well."
© Unkown
Psychopath-in-Chief in 1964
Psychopath-in-Chief in 1964
"If this country has been misled, if this committee, this Congress, has been misled by pretext into a war in which thousands of young men have died, and many more thousands have been crippled for life, and out of which their country has lost prestige, moral position in the world, the consequences are very great," Senator Albert Gore Sr. of Tennessee, the father of the future vice president, said in March 1968 in a closed session of the Foreign Relations Committee.
The documents are Volume 20 in a regular series of releases of historical transcripts from the committee, which conducted most of its business in executive session during the 1960s, before the Senate required committee meetings to be public. The documents were edited by Donald Ritchie, the Senate historian, and cover 1968, when members of the committee were anguished over Vietnam and in a deteriorating relationship with the Johnson White House over the war.
© Aaron Russo
- Senator Claire McCaskill, Senate Subcommittee investigating Goldman Sachs (Washington Post, April 27, 2010)
Ever since December 2008, the Federal Reserve has held short-term interest rates near zero. This was not only to try to stimulate the housing and credit markets but also to allow the federal government to increase its debt levels without increasing the interest tab picked up by the taxpayers. The total public U.S. debt increased by nearly 50% from 2006 to the end of 2009 (from about $8.5 trillion to $12.3 trillion), but theinterest
bill on the debt actually dropped (from $406 billion to $383 billion), because of this reduction in interest rates.
One of the dire unintended consequences of that maneuver, however, was that municipal governments across the country have been saddled with very costly bad derivatives bets. They were persuaded by their Wall Street advisers to buy municipal swaps to protect their loans against interest rates shooting up. Instead, rates proceeded to drop through the floor, a wholly unforeseeable and unnatural market condition caused by rate manipulations by the Fed. Instead of the banks bearing the losses in return for premiums paid by municipal governments, the governments have had to pay massive sums to the banks - to the point of pushing at least one county to the brink of bankruptcy (Jefferson County, Alabama).
© EPA
Reunited: Shahram Amiri, centre, hugs his seven-year-old son as Deputy Foreign Minister Hassan Ghashghavi, left, looks on, in Tehran this morning. Amiri was abducted by the CIA and/or the Mossad
Reunited: Shahram Amiri, centre, hugs his seven-year-old son as Deputy Foreign Minister Hassan Ghashghavi, left, looks on, in Tehran this morning. Amiri was abducted by the CIA and/or the Mossad
Shahram Amiri had an emotional reunion with his family in Tehran yesterday, his seven-year-old son barely leaving his father's side. Amiri appeared to be wiping away tears in some photographs.
Amiri, 32, claimed he had been offered $50million by the U.S. to remain in America and 'spread lies' about Iran's nuclear work.
He repeated that he was kidnapped in 2009 when on a pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia and taken to the U.S.
The scientist also said Israeli agents were involved in interrogating him.
Comment: This story was first leaked by Radio Farda, the Iranian branch of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, a CIA propaganda mill, in conjuction with The Media Line, a Zionist propaganda mill. This Jerusalem Post article breached the story of the non-stoning to the mainstream media on June 30.