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Spain has announced a $79.85bn austerity package that includes tax hikes and spending cuts a day after it won approval from its euro partners for a huge bailout of the country's stricken banks.
Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy told parliament on Wednesday the country's future was at stake as Spain grapples with recession, a bloated deficit and investor wariness of its sovereign debt.
He said the nearly $80bn in savings will be achieved through 2015 by a hike in sales taxes and a series of spending cuts through 2015.
Rajoy explained that the austerity measures were conditions European Union partners demanded in exchange for an emergency bailout of Spain's troubled banks.
He outlined cuts in unemployment benefit and civil service pay and perks in a parliamentary speech interrupted by jeers and boos from the opposition.
"These measures are not pleasant, but they are necessary. Our public spending exceeds our income by tens of billions of euros," Rajoy told parliament.
Seattle apartment of organizers from the Occupy movement. The sleeping residents scrambled to put on clothes as they were confronted with automatic weapons.
The neighbor Natalio Perez heard the attack from downstairs: "Suddenly we heard the bang of their grenade, and the crashing as police entered the apartment. The crashing and stomping continued for a long time as they tore the place apart."
After the raid, the residents pored over the papers handed to them by a detective. One explained: "This warrant says that they were specifically looking for 'anarchist materials' - which lays out the political police state nature of this right there. In addition they were looking for specific pieces of clothing supposedly connected with a May First incident.
The neighbor Natalio Perez heard the attack from downstairs: "Suddenly we heard the bang of their grenade, and the crashing as police entered the apartment. The crashing and stomping continued for a long time as they tore the place apart."
After the raid, the residents pored over the papers handed to them by a detective. One explained: "This warrant says that they were specifically looking for 'anarchist materials' - which lays out the political police state nature of this right there. In addition they were looking for specific pieces of clothing supposedly connected with a May First incident.
An Occupy Wall Street activist is arrested by New York police officers during a protest at Zuccotti Park in New York July 11, 2012.
Eyewitnesses say officers of the New York Police Department (NYPD) were waiting in ambush for Occupy Wall Street protesters returning from the so-called Occupy Guitarmy 99 Mile March in Philadelphia on Wednesday.
At least two protesters were arrested and a woman was injured during the NYPD crackdown on the peaceful demonstrators.
The march was to have concluded at landmark Zuccotti Park when NYPD officers pounced on demonstrators and independent media reporters.
A view of the State Duma lower house of parliament, in Moscow, on April 11, 2012
"The Russian people, like people everywhere, deserve the right to be heard and have a voice in government. That's why we've raised our concerns about the potential passage of this new NGO legislation," said Patrick Ventrell, a spokesman for the US Department of State.
The comments came after Russia's lower house of parliament, the State Duma, has passed the bill in its first reading.
The bill, if passed in the second reading of the state Duma on Friday, would force the NGOs to publish a report of their activities twice a year and carry out an annual financial audit.
© Blake Midnight/U.S. Navy/APThe Ponce, one of the Navy’s oldest transport ships, transits the Persian Gulf en route to Bahrain on July 4.
The keel for the ship, the Ponce, was cast in 1966, and the vessel, nearing the end of its service, was to have been scrapped. But the Ponce was reborn as a floating forward base for staging important military operations across the region - the latest example of the new American way of war.
The first mission of the reborn Ponce was designed to be low profile and defensive, as an operations hub for mine clearing in the Strait of Hormuz, a counter to threats from Tehran to close the vital commercial waterway. In that role, the Ponce will be a launching pad for helicopters, a home to underwater diver teams and a seaborne service station providing fuel and maintenance for minesweeping ships.
But with the relatively simple addition of a modular barracks on the deck, the Ponce can also be a mobile base for several hundred Special Operations forces to carry out missions like hostage rescue, counterterrorism, reconnaissance, sabotage and direct strikes. Even with the addition of the barracks, there is ample room for helicopters and the small, fast boats favored by commandos.
© Gizmodo.com
And without you knowing it.
The technology is so incredibly effective that, in November 2011, its inventors were subcontracted by In-Q-Tel to work with the US Department of Homeland Security. In-Q-Tel is a company founded "in February 1999 by a group of private citizens at the request of the Director of the CIA and with the support of the U.S. Congress." According to In-Q-Tel, they are the bridge between the Agency and new technology companies.
Their plan is to install this molecular-level scanning in airports and border crossings all across the United States. The official, stated goal of this arrangement is to be able to quickly identify explosives, dangerous chemicals, or bioweapons at a distance.
The machine is ten million times faster - and one million times more sensitive - than any currently available system. That means that it can be used systematically on everyone passing through airport security, not just suspect or randomly sampled people.
© Associated Press
That's because interest-rate manipulation might well have kept your town or state from hiring firefighters or teachers, from paving roads or paying for indigent care or after-school programs for your kids -- adding to the human suffering of the economic collapse these same banks caused in the first place.
If it's any consolation, the lawsuits and fines over this manipulation could potentially cost the banks -- which include not only Barclays but Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, and many more -- billions of dollars.
"This could get very ugly in a hurry for some banks," Peter Tchir of TF Market Advisors wrote in a note.
© Reuters//Mario AnzuoniPeople walk past the building where television station KCET used to be housed in Los Angeles, California July 10, 2012.
The center, located near the church's West Coast headquarters in Hollywood, would occupy the nearly five-acre studio property the church bought last year from Los Angeles public TV station KCET for $42 million. The station would elevate the public profile of a religion that has mostly relied on pamphlets and books by its founder, L. Ron Hubbard, to proselytize for new members.
"The church plans to establish a central media hub for our growing world network of churches and to move into the production of religious television and radio broadcasting," said Karin Pouw, a spokeswoman for Church of Scientology International, in an email.
She said there is no timetable for when operations would begin.
Comment:
© unknownLamar Smith
As he signaled last week in a statement for an IP enforcement hearing, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) has introduced a bill that would beef up a Bush Administration IP attaché program, but some are calling it an effort to piece out the Stop Online Piracy Act, which also beefed up the attaché program but was scuttled by a Silicon Valley-led online campaign.
Smith says the current administration has been too lax on intellectual property enforcement, prompting him to introduce the bill. The Intellectual Property Attaché Act would call for the placement of IP attaches in embassies where their presence is most likely to reduce IP infringement.
The bill was being painted by its critics as an effort to reanimate parts of the dead SOPA bill, with zombie references in both a posting on TechCrunch and a USA News & World Report story about that and other online stories on the bill.
If it is the beginning of SOPA the sequel, one unlikely backer is Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), one of SOPA's strongest opponents. He is ready to support the Smith bill, with some modification to exempt fair use, according to a statement his office provided TechCrunch and confirmed to B&C/Multi was his take on the bill.
© Sky News
The extra personnel, the equivalent of an infantry brigade, means that 20,000 servicemen and women will be on duty - that is a fifth of the Army.
Whitehall and defence sources confirmed that G4S, the private company contracted to organise security at the 100 sites for the Olympics had "failed to meet the recruitment and training targets".
They explained: "This means that we have been forced to ask the forces to deliver more people."
A G4S spokeswoman said: "This has been an unprecedented and very complex security recruitment, training and deployment exercise which has been carried out to a tight timescale.
Comment: Talk about Transmarginal Inhibition. There is no extra threat but we will deploy 20,000 troops just to be on the safe side.
Comment: This ship is also part of a larger group of ships (the US Fifth Fleet) in the Persian Gulf.