The International Monetary Fund has slashed its outlook for the U.S. economy and global growth through 2012.

In its September 2011 World Economic Outlook, released Tuesday, the international lending organization said it now expects the U.S. economy to grow just 1.5 percent this year and 1.8 percent in 2012, down from its June forecast of 2.5 percent in 2011 and 2.7 percent in 2012.


Overall, advanced economies are facing anemic growth of only 1.6 percent in 2011, the IMF said in its latest forecast, adding that the global economic recovery is slowing, with world growth projected at 4 percent in both 2011 and 2012, down from over 5 percent in 2010.

"The global economy is in a dangerous new phase," the IMF said. "Global activity has weakened and become more uneven, confidence has fallen sharply recently, and downside risks are growing."

I have been following the scientific research on psychopathy by Canada's Professor Robert Hare for some years given his seminal work on demonstrating that the common notions of psychopathy are grossly over-simplistic and one-dimensional. In their purest form Psychopaths literally are, as the title of one of Professor Hare's books suggests, "without conscience" but are not all like some Hannibal Lecter stereotype or likely to end up in prison or secure mental institution. Psychopaths are an aberrant minority or human sub-group that can be highly intelligent and able to assess and mimic normal human emotions and empathy so as to disguise their true nature from society, colleagues and even spouses. Intelligent psychopaths can in fact teach themselves to intellectually understand normal cooperative emotional human beings in considerable detail without sharing or feeling normal human emotions and sympathy - which are viewed by psychopaths as weaknesses and not the long-term communal human survival traits/strategies that they actually are.

Professor Hare pointed out that psychopaths thrive in the fields of big-business and politics and can create mayhem therein. Intelligent psychopaths can be very charming and charismatic and find their way into various positions of leadership because of such outward characteristics that are combined with single-minded and determined ruthlessness. Unfortunately, such charisma and decisiveness has beguiling broad appeal to non-psychopaths who do not have the either the time or inclination to undertake or audit various leadership responsibilities themselves. Psychopaths seek to be in positions of power, crave malign thrills and enjoy manipulating others and derive a sense of superiority from such pursuits.

Professor Hare coined the term "snakes in suits" to describe such individuals amongst the professional classes who are a major threat to wider humanity. Moreover, as Professor Hare postulated, there is increasing evidence of both a genetic predisposition and learned-behaviour component to psychopathy which is why it is often manifest within family dynasties and fostered by certain political, institutional and social regimes/environments. Researchers into criminal International Banking and Neo-Malthusian Eugenics will have little doubt that such psychopathy is a major factor within malign architects of of our rapidly assembling global 'New World Order'. Al Gore, whose pseudo-scientific claims on anthropogenic global warming were dismissed by the UK High Court, and Tony Blair, whose misrepresentations on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction led to war, have both for example been cited as exhibiting unrepentant psychopathic white-collar traits.

China could step in to help rescue Europe from its debt crisis after holding top-level talks with Italy's finance minister.

The Italian government confirmed on Tuesday that Giulio Tremonti had met the head of China Investment Corp, the country's sovereign wealth fund, in Rome last week. It is understood that Tremonti asked the Chinese delegation to consider buying Italy's sovereign debt and making strategic investments in Italian companies.

The Italian treasury declined to give details of the meeting, but traders were encouraged that Beijing might use its financial muscle to help the eurozone.

News of the talks came as Barack Obama warned that the world economy would suffer badly if Spain and Italy were sucked deeper into the European debt crisis.

As if having the U.S. lose its stellar credit rating wasn't enough, the Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating whether some hedge funds and specialized trading firms profited from the debt downgrade through alleged insider trading, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday.

The newspaper, quoting people familiar with the matter, said the probe is focusing on firms that bet stocks would plummet (as they did) after Standard & Poor's slashed the U.S. debt rating a notch to AA+ from AAA on Aug. 5.

The article didn't name specific companies. It said, however, that a person familiar with the matter told the Wall Street Journal that investigators were asking who at the firms had heard first about the debt downgrade, how they got that information and when they got it. The SEC declined to comment, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Israel Given Two Bites of the Apple

Almost all the factual findings, as well as the legal analysis and conclusions of the recently leaked UN Secretary General's Panel of Inquiry into the "Flotilla Incident" on May 31, 2010 (Palmer/Uribe Panel) directly contradict those of an earlier UN report of the Human Rights Council Fact-Finding Mission (FFM, whose conclusion that Israel's blockade of Gaza, including the naval blockade is illegal, was just reaffirmed on September 13, 2011 by five independent UN rights Special Rapporteurs. In line with all statements Secretary- General Ban Ki-moon has made about Gaza, the Goldstone report, and statements by other international agencies, including the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), these UN international law experts rejected the Palmer/Uribe conclusions and demanded that "[t]he Israeli blockade of Gaza must end immediately and the people of Gaza must be afforded protection in line with international law."

For this reason, until a dispositive ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) is issued on the legality of Israel's closure of Gaza, including its naval blockade, and therefore on the lawfulness of Israel's attack on the Mavi Marmara and other flotilla vessels, the findings, conclusions and recommendations of the Palmer/Uribe Panel deserve no deference. States need not heed its recommendation to "dissuade" their citizens from trying to break the blockade. The Free Gaza Movement and other civil society initiatives to challenge the blockade certainly do not intend to abandon our mission; our boats will sail again.

United Nations: Some governments exaggerate the threat of terrorism and over use the "war on terror" title to erode civil rights, Norway's foreign minister told a UN summit on Monday.

The Norwegian minister, Jonas Gare Store, and his counterpart from Indonesia said declaring "war" may be good for a politician's speeches but it does not help to combat militants.

"There is a risk that under certain special circumstances governments can play up the threat and eventually it may threaten civil liberties," Store told a forum of ministers and top officials on the sidelines of a UN summit on counter-terrorism.

"I think we should acknowledge that under the wrong circumstances that can happen," he added when asked if civil rights are damaged in the name of the "War on Terror".

Countries need "the full participation of civil society and democracy" to act as a watchdog on governments, he said. The minister echoed concerns raised in the United States, where President George W. Bush declared the "War on Terror" after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Beware of BEAST decrypting secret PayPal cookies

Researchers have discovered a serious weakness in virtually all websites protected by the secure sockets layer protocol that allows attackers to silently decrypt data that's passing between a webserver and an end-user browser.

The vulnerability resides in versions 1.0 and earlier of TLS, or transport layer security, the successor to the secure sockets layer technology that serves as the internet's foundation of trust. Although versions 1.1 and 1.2 of TLS aren't susceptible, they remain almost entirely unsupported in browsers and websites alike, making encrypted transactions on PayPal, GMail, and just about every other website vulnerable to eavesdropping by hackers who are able to control the connection between the end user and the website he's visiting.

At the Ekoparty security conference in Buenos Aires later this week, researchers Thai Duong and Juliano Rizzo plan to demonstrate proof-of-concept code called BEAST, which is short for Browser Exploit Against SSL/TLS. The stealthy piece of JavaScript works with a network sniffer to decrypt encrypted cookies a targeted website uses to grant access to restricted user accounts. The exploit works even against sites that use HSTS, or HTTP Strict Transport Security, which prevents certain pages from loading unless they're protected by SSL.

The demo will decrypt an authentication cookie used to access a PayPal account, Duong said.

Submarine plant, missile factory among targets

Japan's biggest defence contractor, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, has become the victim of a malware-based hack attack.

The firm said that the attack resulted in the infection of 10 of its sites across Japan, including its submarine manufacturing plant in Kobe and a facility in Nagoya which makes engine parts for missiles. In total 45 network servers and 38 PCs became infected with eight strains of malware, including Trojan horse programs, the Daily Yomiuri reports.

News of the security breaches emerged over the weekend. Mitsubishi said the circumstances of the intrusions - first detected in mid-August - are under investigation, with a report due by the end of the month. In the mean time the firm is playing down suggestions that the malware may have been used to successfully extract industrial secrets via compromised systems.

Never offered an opt-in, though

Google has given the owners of Wi-Fi routers around the world the right to opt out of a registry that the search giant uses to locate mobile phone users.

Currently Google uses location data tied to the unique codes of residential Wi-Fi routers to help triangulate the location of mobile devices.

Google made the change voluntarily, but it's likely it was a pre-emptive move before the search giant was forced to do so by European courts. Google has been embroiled in a legal challenge to the practice from privacy regulators in Germany.

The privacy fight waged by the German government will have benefits globally as Google extends the opt-out offer to people around the world.

The main benefit to Google of tracking the location of phone owners is to allow the company to deliver location-specific adverts. Where Wi-Fi router information is not available, it may use the device's GPS or the signatures of cellphone towers to locate a device.

The opt-out system should be in place by this autumn.

The company's landscaping weed-killer turned out to be a tree-killer.

In the corporate world's tortured language, workers are no longer fired. They just experience an "employment adjustment." But the most twisted euphemism I've heard in a long time comes from DuPont: "We are investigating the reports of these unfavorable tree symptoms," the pesticide maker recently stated.

How unfavorable? Finito, flat-lined, the tree is dead. Not just one tree, but hundreds of thousands all across the country are suffering the final "symptom."