ACORN has been caught giving tax evasion tips to pimps and prostitutes (performing artists) and advising how to smuggle underage girls into country to work as sex slaves and they are still debating IF the Justice Department should investigate.

Update 1:  Senate blocks Housing and Urban Development Department grants from ACORN. The Department of Housing and Urban Development Grants has given $8.2 million to ACORN between 2003 and 2006, as well as $1.6 million to ACORN affiliates.

A Transportation official said 120,000 submissions from dealers, or about 17 percent, have been approved under the program, which ended on Aug. 24.

Auto dealers have said the delays have squeezed their businesses, leaving them on a short-term hook for rest of the deals.

Cody Lusk, president of the American International Automobile Dealers Association, said many dealers have been waiting for their reimbursements for more than six weeks. “Cash flow is the lifeblood of small businesses. Without it, dealerships can’t take care of their day-to-day expenses — like employee pay.”

Of  the total $2.8 billion assigned to cash for clunkers program, government has reimbursements $500 million to car dealers. The dealers are still on the hook for the rest $2.3 billion.

Read the rest on Elizabethon Star.

Congress has little choice. Failing to raise the cap could lead the nation to default in mid-October, when the debt is expected to exceed its limit, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has said.

Read the full article at The hill here.

In Europe, some manufacturers have conducted advance studies using a so-called “mock-up” vaccine. Mock-up vaccines contain an active ingredient for an influenza virus that has not circulated recently in human populations and thus mimics the novelty of a pandemic virus. Such advance studies can greatly expedite regulatory approval.

What does this mean?

Regulatory authorities have been thinking of ways to fast-track the approval and the licensing of pandemic vaccinations. In some cases, pandemic vaccines are not regarded by regulatory authorities as entirely “new” vaccines, as they build on the technology used to produce vaccines for seasonal influenza. So, in order to get a “new” vaccination out, they just take this old already approved vaccination, insert another influenza virus in it and do these “mock-up” vaccinations on people to get it approved, ready for the next pandemic influenza outbreak.

To make sure these mock-up vaccinations are safe, but in a least of time, special regulatory procedures have been devised. In the USA, for example, fewer data are required when the manufacturer already has a licensed influenza vaccine and intends to use the same manufacturing process for its pandemic vaccine. In the European Union, the European Medicines Agency uses a rolling review procedure whereby manufacturers can submit sets of data for regulatory review as they become available, without having to wait until all data can be submitted together in a single formal application.

The problems I see with this kind of vaccination making:

• You never know beforehand what the new influenza virus will be, so the selection of what new virus to inject in the mock-up vaccination is an educated guess at its best. This is also the reason why seasonal influenza shot does not give immunity against swine flu.
  
• Viral shedding: Whenever one uses a live virus in a vaccine, it can multiply and spread from the host body to infect other people. In this case they are using viruses that have not recently circulated in human populations and therefore could infect people even more easily, possibly causing a new pandemic outbreak.
• Possible health issues of the vaccines are reported as they become available, ie. as people start getting ill from the vaccinations. When it comes to pandemic influenza, mass vaccinations are often considered, so the number of affected people could be very high before the adverse effects are noticed and proven to be caused by the vaccinations.
• The whole notion of WHO working as a spokesperson for big pharmaceutical companies, lobbying in governments to speed up approval procedures in order to get their products on the markets as fast as possible and given to as many people as possible.
  

Read the full article at WHO site here.

Captain Dean Menard, a spokesman for Canadian forces in Kandahar, told in a telephone interview that some of the ordnance used by the Taliban against Canadian tanks “are definitely attributable to the Soviet occupation era” – a reference to mines supplied by the US through Pakistan during the anti-Soviet war. The insurgents have obtained anti-tank weapons from “legacy minefields” dating from the period of Soviet occupation, according to Menard.

The claim by the alleged Taliban commander of new, more effective weaponry supplied by Iran appears to have been deliberate misinformation for the Western press.

Read the full article at the Asia Times Online

At the same sources have also indicated that both Britain and US may have to deploy more forces on the campaign if Canada withdraws all of its 2,800 troops in the next 18 months from the troubled Kandahar Province.

“Unless our partner nations start to pull their weight in terms of combat units then Nato is doomed.”

- Patric Mercel, Tory MP and former infantry commander

Read the full article at Telegraph

The new version would allow the president to “declare a cybersecurity emergency” relating to “non-governmental” computer networks and do what’s necessary to respond to the threat.

The source said that one primary concern was the electrical grid, and what would happen if it were attacked from a broadband connection.

When Rockefeller, the chairman of the Senate Commerce committee, and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) introduced the original bill in April, they claimed it was vital to protect national cybersecurity. “We must protect our critical infrastructure at all costs–from our water to our electricity, to banking, traffic lights and electronic health records,” Rockefeller said.

Probably the most controversial language begins in Section 201, which permits the president to “direct the national response to the cyber threat” if necessary for “the national defense and security.” The White House is supposed to engage in “periodic mapping” of private networks deemed to be critical, and those companies “shall share” requested information with the federal government.

If your company is deemed “critical,” a new set of regulations kick in involving who you can hire, what information you must disclose, and when the government would exercise control over your computers or network.

Read the full article at CNET News.

Virtually every major project includes a healthy cut for the insurgents. Call it protection money, call it extortion, or, as the Taliban themselves prefer to term it, “spoils of war,” the fact remains that international donors, primarily the United States, are to a large extent financing their own enemy.

“Everyone knows this is going on,” said one U.S. Embassy official, speaking privately

Richard Holbrooke, U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, told a press conference in Islamabad last month that drugs accounted for less of a share of Taliban coffers than was previously thought.

“In the past there was a kind of feeling that the money all came from drugs in Afghanistan,” said Holbrooke, according to media reports. “That is simply not true.”

The new feeling is that less than half of the Taliban’s war chest comes from poppy, with a variety of sources, including private contributions from Persian Gulf states, accounting for much of the rest.

But perhaps U.S. officials need look no further than their own backyard.

The manager of an Afghan firm with lucrative construction contracts with the U.S. government builds in a minimum of 20 percent for the Taliban in his cost estimates. The manager, who will not speak openly, has told friends privately that he makes in the neighborhood of $1 million per month. Out of this, $200,000 is siphoned off for the insurgents.

Read the full story at Reuters Blog

Inadequate testing and the possibility of spreading other infections means there is too high a risk patients will sue, the insurers say.

A spokesman for the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, Ronald McCoy, said the wrangling could undermine community confidence in the vaccine’s safety. ”It’s the public’s health that’s at risk here,” he said.

But the insurers believe the distribution of the vaccine in multiple-dose vials exposes people to unnecessary risk of blood-borne infection from other recipients. As well, they believe the possibility of rare side-effects has been inadequately explored.

A White House budget review set for release Aug. 25 will show cumulative deficits over the next decade amounting to $9 trillion, up from $7.1 trillion that the administration predicted in May, the official said on condition of anonymity because the figures haven’t been made public.

The deficit, the difference between government spending and revenue, is financed by borrowing from investors in the U.S. and other countries. The borrowed money is tacked onto the national debt.

Read the full article at Bloomberg.