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World News

Associated Press

Seoul, South Korea - South Korea accepted a North Korean proposal to hold military talks, a Defense Ministry official said Saturday, amid continuing tensions on the divided peninsula.

Ties between the two countries, which are still technically at war, have soured since South Korea's pro-U.S. conservative president, Lee Myung-bak, took office in February with a pledge to get tough with North Korea.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,444010,00.html

Christian Science Monitor

Washington, DC - China's agreement to help Pakistan build two nuclear power plants is prompting warnings that the new US-India civilian nuclear deal is already pushing other countries to pursue their own nuclear relationships.

The concern among South Asia experts and nonproliferation advocates is that the American deal allowing India to pursue an expanded civilian nuclear program with limited safeguards is prompting other countries in a volatile region to seek a similar deal – something the US had said would not happen.

"You can't help but hear about China supplying Pakistan with nuclear power plants and see it as a reaction to the US-India deal," says Michael Krepon, a South Asia nuclear proliferation expert at the Henry L. Stimson Center in Washington. "Pakistan is desperate for energy, as is India, but there are lower-cost and shorter-timeline options for producing it, so there is something else going on here and in the Middle East."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20081024/ts_csm/anukes

Associated Foreign Press

Beijing, China - World leaders vowed Saturday to overhaul the global financial system in the face of recession fears, but US President George W. Bush urged nations to "recommit" to free markets despite economic turmoil.

After a week of growing economic gloom and plunging stock markets, Asian and European leaders meeting in Beijing promised wide-ranging reforms while UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon also called for quick change.

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gOpDN11WAJcjD8Bzn1tVKhxmhGeQ

Christian Science Monitor

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia - The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) Friday announced a slash in oil production of about 5 percent, or 1.5 million barrels a day, in order to shore up rapidly plummeting prices in a grim global economic environment.

Eleven members of the 13-nation oil cartel, meeting in an emergency session at OPEC's headquarters in Vienna, decided to reduce their current collective production of 28.8 million barrels per day effective Nov. 1.

The move came as stock markets around the world tumbled downward. It is unclear by how much, if any, the projected decrease in oil supplies will affect petroleum prices amid a looming global recession likely to severely dampen demand.

OPEC is gambling that the higher prices it is seeking to create won't accelerate that drop-off in demand.

In a statement released at the close of today's meeting, which was moved up from its original date of Nov. 18, OPEC reported that "the financial crisis is already having a noticeable impact on the world economy, dampening the demand for energy, in general, and oil in particular." The association added that it was responding not only to the drop-off in demand, but also to "a dramatic collapse – unprecedented in speed and magnitude" of oil prices. The lower prices, it added, "may put at jeopardy many existing oil projects and lead to the cancellation or delay of others."

In the US, the world's largest oil consumer, demand for petroleum products in the past month averaged 18.6 million barrels a day, down 8.9 percent from the same period last year, according to the US Department of Energy.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/1024/p90s01-wogn.html

Christian Science Monitor

Yiwu, China - Hopes that China's healthy domestic economy might protect it from the effects of the global slowdown are now fading. The export growth reduction coincides with a Chinese real estate slide. "There is a little bit of a cushion, but not enough to save anyone else's bacon," says Arthur Kroeber, who heads Dragonomics, an economic analysis firm in Beijing. "The big economies are going to have to get out of this on their own."

Exports have been a major driver of Chinese economic growth over the past three years, with foreign sales accounting for about one third of the rise in gross domestic product.

Official figures released Monday showed China's growth throttling back to 9 percent over the past three months, down by a quarter from last year's annual rate.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/1021/p01s03-woap.html

Associated Press

Beijing, China - China's premier said Saturday the country will take steps to improve its food safety, saying that tainted milk products that are believed to have killed four babies and sickened thousands of children was a failure of regulation.

Speaking at a 43-nation Asia-Europe Meeting summit, Wen Jiabao said the milk scandal will spur the introduction of China's first major food safety law and China's food exports will meet international standards.

"Food involves a full process from the farmland to the table, it involves many links and many processes," he said. "In every link and every process we need to put in place effective and powerful regulatory measures."

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5i1PW8Su6EECm-m22gV1dABkLdHJQD941JBA80

Associated Foreign Press

Sanaa, Yemen - Aid operations swung into higher gear in Yemen on Saturday after floods killed at least 58 people and six more died from lightning strikes during two days of fierce storms.

The interior ministry, updating an earlier toll, said at least 58 people died in flooding fed by torrential downpours that hit Hadramaut and Mahara provinces on Thursday and Friday.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20081025/ts_afp/yemenweatherfloods_081025154936

Live Science

An Antarctic mountain range that rivals the Alps in elevation will be probed this month by an expedition of scientists using airborne radar and other Information Age tools to virtually "peel away" more than 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) of ice covering the peaks.

One of the mysteries of the mountain range is that current evidence suggests that it "shouldn't be there" at all.

The researchers hope to find answers there to some basic questions about the nature of the southernmost continent, including the massive East Antarctic Ice Sheet.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,443971,00.html

Discovery News

European diners around 8,000 years ago could enjoy a bowl of instant wheat cereal that, aside from uneven cooking and maybe a few extra lumps, wasn't very different from hot wheat cereals served today, suggests a new study that describes the world's oldest known cooked cereal.

Dating from between 5920 to 5730 B.C., the ancient cereal consisted of parboiled bulgur wheat that Early Neolithic Bulgarians could refresh in minutes with hot water.

"People boiled the grain, dried it, removed the bran and ground it into coarse particles," lead author Soultana-Maria Valamoti told Discovery News.

"In this form, the cereal grain can be stored throughout the year and consumed easily, even without boiling, by merely soaking in hot water," added Valamoti, an assistant professor of archaeology at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece.

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/10/24/cereal-neolithic.html

Washington Post

Washington, DC - The Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) released a study Tuesday showing clearly that the gap between rich and poor is widening in Europe and North America. The report, which covers developments spanning 20 years in 30 countries, contains some interesting nuggets:

• The U.S. has the greatest inequality in the OECD after Mexico and Turkey -- and the gap has grown rapidly since 2000. The richest 10 percent of Americans earn an average of $93,000 (highest in the OECD) - whereas the poorest 10 percent of Americans earn an average of $5,800 (about 20 percent lower than the OECD average).

• Since 2000, income inequality has grown fastest in Germany, although Germany's gap remains below the OECD average.

• British inequalities have been falling since 2000, but the rich-poor gap there is still wider than in three-fourths of OECD countries.

• The rise in inequality is generally due to the rich improving their incomes relative both to low- and middle-income people.

• Older people are much less likely to be poor than in the past. Poverty has shifted from pensioners to young adults and families with children.

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/postglobal/sais/nexteurope/2008/10/rich-poor_gap_widens_in_europe.html

Fox News

Washington, DC - Tuesday we told you about several areas around the planet experiencing record cold and snow pack — in the face of all the predictions of global warming.

Now there is word that all four major global temperature tracking outlets have released data showing that temperatures have dropped significantly over the last year. California meteorologist Anthony Watts says the amount of cooling ranges from 65-hundredths of a degree Centigrade to 75-hundreds of a degree.

That is said to be a value large enough to erase nearly all the global warming recorded over the past 100 years. It is reportedly the single fastest temperature change ever recorded — up or down.

Some scientists contend the cooling is the result of reduced solar activity — which they say is a larger driver of climate change than man-made greenhouse gases.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,333328,00.html

Financial Post

Washington, DC - In yet another sign that the Earth could be heading in to a period of global cooling, NASA reports that the solar wind is now at a 50-year low, the lowest that NASA has seen. This change in solar activity, which began to occur about a decade ago, coincides with the end of the climb in global temperatures that had been underway for decades.

"What we're seeing is a long term trend, a steady decrease in pressure that began sometime in the mid-1990s," explains Arik Posner, NASA's Ulysses Program Scientist in Washington DC.

"How unusual is this event?

"It's hard to say. We've only been monitoring solar wind since the early years of the Space Age—from the early 60s to the present. Over that period of time, it's unique. How the event stands out over centuries or millennia, however, is anybody's guess. We don't have data going back that far."

As a result of the diminished solar wind, cosmic rays are entering the Earth's atmosphere in greater number. Research at the Danish National Space Institute shows that cosmic rays increase cloud cover on Earth, and that this cloud cover can have a cooling effect. Does this help explain why global temperatures plateaued a decade ago, and why they are now decreasing?

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2008/09/28/global-cooling-sign-solar-winds-at-50-year-low.aspx

What are we preparing for?

As preparedness/survivalists we're all preparing for "it" to hit the fan, right?

Well what constitutes "hitting the fan"?

Some people look for end of the world scenarios like magnetic polar or axis shifts, asteroid strikes, the rapture or the second coming, alien invasions, and more.

Some people consider the "hitting of the proverbial fan" as global tsunamis, global nuclear war, worldwide earthquakes and plate shifts dropping continents into the oceans, polar ice caps melting and swamping entire continents and more.

Not that any of the above can NEVER happen but how likely are they? What is a more realistic preparedness scenario?

It's the stuff we talk about every week like wildfires, earthquakes, tornados, winter storms, hurricanes, and more.

And then the stuff that's a little less likely to happen but has in the recent past and could again like civil unrest and terrorism.

The problem with preparedness is that you aren't sure something will actually happen. You're preparing for the possibility and mitigating your losses by taking advance measures.

This includes storing food & supplies in your home for a possible long term stay at home without utilities. Preparing your vehicle for the possibility that you may need to use it to get out of town. Having a special bag packed to grab and go with whether you're going to walk or drive, etc.

We've gone over, in past shows, what you should store, we've addressed the individual storage possibilities like sheltering in place, bugging out, staying in shelters and more.

We've addressed the individual emergencies and we've talked about the economy and how it affects preparedness.

The key is that you understand that you MUST prepare in some form.

Local governments suggest 72-hours of supplies. They want you to be prepared to do whatever you're doing, where ever you're doing it for 72 hours without their help.

The American Red Cross and FEMA recommends 2 weeks but would prefer 30 days. That's 2-4 weeks of supplies so that they don't have to help you until then.

Think about it. If there were some sort of national crisis, that's nationwide, do you think FEMA has the manpower and supplies to field everything they have and supply every single person?

They don't and they say so. You need to shoulder some of the responsibility of taking care of yourself. We are NOT a welfare country. We're Americans and we're resilient and we're strong and we've got ingenuity. I say that with all the fiber of my beliefs. But I think we're lazy. TV and video games, easy living (for most), conveniences - we've forgotten how a lot of us grew up and a good percentage of the people have never known hardship. Hardship for kids nowadays would be when the batteries on their cell phones, iPods and video games die and they can't recharge them because the power's out.

I know I'm preaching to the choir here but the word has to get out. You don't have to be afraid to tell people that they need to prepare. That you're family needs to prepare. Get them the FEMA & Red Cross literature. Get them books. If you celebrate a holiday of any sort this season, get everyone the gift of knowledge. Even a subscription to great magazines like Backwoods Home, Mother Earth News, Countryside are good ideas. It gets the idea of preparedness and self reliance out there every month with glossy paper and pretty pictures. Sometimes that's all it takes to remind people of our past in this nation. We are a people who pull themselves up by their bootstraps but now we have the ability to prepare in advance for these things so lets start considering all the possibilities. If you prepare for one you're prepared for some if not most.

This is all under your own control.