A US federal court has granted Hawaiian lawmakers permission to slash benefits for residents whose families formerly lived on a string of Pacific islands that the US military used as a nuclear test site in the decades after World War II.

The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit removed an injunction Tuesday that prevented the state from reducing the health benefits paid out to residents of Micronesia, Palau, and the Marshall Islands, where a number of people claim they are still suffering from health problems caused by the military tests.

In the years between 1946 and 1958, at least 67 nuclear weapons tests were conducted on the small group of atolls located north of Australia and just east of the Philippines. Over 7,200 Hiroshima-sized bombs were dropped on the Marshall Islands alone. The "Bravo Test" of 1954 dropped a bomb 1,000 times more powerful than the atom bomb used to decimate the Japanese city.

Not long after, families in Micronesia and other Pacific islands began birthing stillborn babies and children with birth defects. Others suffered the early onset of cancer, sterility, and illnesses they likely could have avoided had radiation not permeated the mostly isolated region.

OMG! NATO is warning Russia - and taking steps. (But, Ukraine isn't a member of NATO.)

Granted, NATO has been doing anything politically convenient, anywhere, whenever asked. But now, is the world to wake up and take a closer look at NATO? Why did NATO survive the collapse of the Soviet Union? There is a good question.

How many know that Obama and the Gang started this Ukraine Crisis; Putin didn't. Putin caught Obama and the Gang in the process of enticing the overthrow of the Ukraine government. Obviously, Putin is taking full advantage of the situation, but that is nothing unexpected.

From history, here's the deal:

In 1994, Ukraine was added to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons in the Budapest Memorandum. Under the terms of that memorandum Ukraine gave up possession of any left-over Soviet nuclear weapons (the third largest stockpile in the world) in exchange protection from nuclear attack.

Ukraine's Ukroboronprom and its Spectechoexport subsidiary have shipped upgraded An-32 transports to India despite Ukraine's military and political problems.

Ukroboronprom, a government-owned organization, said the aircraft were allowed by "European partners" to transit their airspace late last month in their journey from Kiev to Kanpur, India. It did not, however, provide details on the route taken after the aircraft departed the Ukrainian capital.

The An-32, manufactured by Ukraine's Antonov, was first produced in the mid-1970s. It is a twin-engine turboprop with a maximum speed of 329 miles per hour and a range of 1,553 miles. The planes were upgraded for India under a 2009 contract with an overall value of about $400 million.

We are about to see whether the successful use of sanctions against Iran can be repeated, and whether they will have sufficient impact to make the Russia of Vladimir Putin draw back from the Ukraine crisis.

Europe and the United States are expected to announce Monday the form of sanctions they intend to apply if Russia goes ahead with the annexation of Crimea after the Sunday referendum in the Black Sea peninsula, which has been part of Ukraine since 1954.

As reports came through of Russian troops massing on Ukraine's border, German Chancellor Angela Merkel last week told the Bundestag, Germany's Parliament, any decision by the Kremlin to change borders by force would meet a very robust response.

"We would not only see it, also as neighbors of Russia, as a threat. And it would not only change the European Union's relationship with Russia," she told Parliament. "No, this would also cause massive damage to Russia, economically and politically."

The monthly minimum wage in Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin will go up by between 11.4 percent and 12.3 percent from Tuesday, the semi-official China News Service reported, as the government continues efforts to boost domestic demand.

The central government has repeatedly pledged to increase workers' share of national income, pushing up wages steadily for more than a decade. It accelerated hikes in 2010 as an economic boom spread to the hinterland and fueled competition for labor.

In the latest hikes, wages will increase the most in Shanghai by 12.3 percent to 1,820 yuan ($290) a month from 1,620 yuan, and 21.4 percent on an hourly basis to 17 yuan from 14 yuan, according to the report on the website www.chinanews.com.

While everyone was gushing over the spectacle on TV of a pro-HFT guy and anti-HFT guy go at it, yesterday afternoon we reported what was by far the most important news of the day, one which was lost on virtually everyone if only until this morning, when we reported that "Monetary Blockade Of Russia Begins: JPMorgan Blocks Russian Money Transfer "Under Pretext" Of Sanctions." This morning the story has finally blown up to front page status, which it deserves, where it currently graces the FT with "Russian threat to retaliate over JPMorgan block." And unlike previous responses to Russian sanctions by the West, which were largely taken as a joke by the Russian establishment, this time Russia is furious: according to Bloomberg, the Russian foreign ministry described the JPM decision as "illegal and absurd." And as Ukraine found out last month, you don't want Russia angry.

More:

The biggest U.S. bank thwarted a remittance from the Russian embassy in Astana, Kazakhstan, to Sogaz Insurance Group "under the pretext of anti-Russian sanctions imposed by the United States," the ministry said yesterday in a statement on its website. Sogaz lists OAO Bank Rossiya, a St. Petersburg-based lender facing U.S. sanctions over the Ukrainian crisis, as a strategic partner on its website.

Interfering with the transaction was an "absolutely unacceptable, illegal and absurd decision," Alexander Lukashevich, a ministry spokesman, said in the statement.

U.S. President Barack Obama announced the action against Bank Rossiya last month as part of a broadening of sanctions that targeted government officials and allies of Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose associates own Rossiya. The embassy's transaction was for less than $5,000 dollars, a person with knowledge of the dispute said, asking not to be identified because such transfers aren't public.

Did JPMorgan just move the second Cold War into semi-hot status? Very possibly:

"Any hostile actions against the Russian diplomatic mission are not only a grossest violation of international law, but are also fraught with countermeasures that unavoidably will affect activities of the embassy and consulates of the U.S. in Russia," Lukashevich said.

The Russian Foreign Ministry has sharply reacted to the "illegal and absurd" blocking of a Russian diplomatic transaction by US bank JPMorgan Chase due to "sanctions." Moscow warned that such moves might backfire for the US diplomatic mission in Russia.

JPMorgan Chase blocked a money transfer on behalf of the Russian Embassy in Kazakhstan to insurance company SOGAZ, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Aleksandr Lukashevich said in a Tuesday statement. The bank cited sanctions imposed by the US government against some Russian politicians and companies in connection with the situation in Ukraine, he said.

Lukashevich condemned the move as an "absolutely unacceptable, illegal and absurd decision," saying that the sanctions were merely a "pretense."

It didn't take long for Russia to launch the first retaliatory salvo against the unexpected JPMorgan "act of aggression." Moments ago Bloomberg just reported that Sberbank, the largest bank in Russia and all of Eastern Europe, just halted the issuance of consumer loans in foreign currency. Bloomberg adds that "Sberbank, Russia's biggest lender, holds 43.3% of nation's consumer deposits, 32.7% of consumer loans and 32.1% of corporate loans."

Why is this important? Well, it is possible that the biggest Russian bank is running low on foreign reserves with which to issue non-ruble loans, which is rather unlikely for a bank which is defacto part of the Russian financial system. Still, it would be problematic if Russia is indeed telegraphing its commodity-export driven economy is suddenly low on Dollars and/or Europe's artificial, life-supported currency.

And then there is another possibility: as we explained yesterday, "what JPM may have just done is launch a preemptive strike which would have the equivalent culmination of a SWIFT blockade of Russia, the same way Iran was neutralized from the Petrodollar and was promptly forced to begin transacting in Rubles, Yuan and, of course, gold in exchange for goods and services either imported or exported." And this: "One wonders: is JPM truly that intent in preserving its "pristine" reputation of not transacting with "evil Russians", that it will gladly light the fuse that takes away Russia's choice whether or not to depart the petrodollar voluntarily, and makes it a compulsory outcome, which incidentally will merely accelerate the formalization of the Eurasian axis of China, Russia and India."

Judging by the first retaliation, which just showed what Russia thinks of the petrodollar regime by voluntarily isolating itself from it, this is certainly a growing possibility.

In The Unknown Known, Oscar-winning documentarian Errol Morris (The Fog of War) turns his infamous interrotron on former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

He was one of the key architects of the U.S. response to the attacks of September 11^th under President George W. Bush, which included wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The title of Morris' documentary, out April 4, is taken from a controversial response Rumsfeld gave in February 2002 when, as Secretary of Defense, he was prodded about the lack of evidence concerning "reports" propagated by the Bush administration that Iraq was supplying weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups:

"Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know that we know.

There are known unknowns; that is to say, there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns - there are things we do not know we don't know."

South Korea's and the U.S.' attempts to deter North Korean aggression have failed and the threat of armed conflict between the two Koreas is growing, a U.S. expert believes.

Patrick Cronin of the U.S. Center for a New American Security makes the claim in a report released Thursday under the title "If Deterrence Fails: Rethinking Conflict on the Korean Peninsula."

"Kim Jong-un might go to violent new lengths should he think his survival is in jeopardy," the report warns.

"Planning assumptions for responding to provocations or upheaval in North Korea downplay the possibility of escalation and war," it says. "There exists the real peril of near-term deterrence failure affecting South Korea."