Federal Reserve Board Closed Meeting on April 5, 2010 (Review by the Board of Governors of the Advance & Discount Rates to be Charged)

Advance Notice of a Meeting under Expedited Procedures

It is anticipated that a closed meeting of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System at 11:30 a.m. on Monday, April 5, 2010, will be held under expedited procedures, as set forth in section 26lb.7 of the Board's Rules Regarding Public Observation of Meetings, at the Board's offices at 20th Street and C Streets, N.W., Washington, D.C. The following items of official Board business are tentatively scheduled to be considered at that meeting.

Meeting date: April 5, 2010

Matters to be Considered:
1. Review and determination by the Board of Governors of the advance and discount rates to be charged by Federal Reserve Banks.

A final announcement of matters considered under expedited procedures will be available in the Board's Freedom of Information and Public Affairs Offices and on the Board's Web site following the closed meeting.

For more information please contact: Michelle Smith, Director, or Dave Skidmore, Assistant to the Board, Office of Board Members at 202-452-2955.

Supplementary Information: You may call 202-452-3206 beginning at approximately 5 p.m. two business days before this meeting for a recorded announcement of any bank and bank holding company applications scheduled for the meeting; or you may contact the Board's Web site at http://www.federalreserve.gov for an electronic announcement about applications and other expedited items, as well as procedural and other information about the meeting.

Dated: April 1, 2010

FLASHBACK: Mohammad "Mo" Alavi Breaches Software Codes at Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station in Arizona

I missed this story when it first happened back in 2007. I wonder if there is any connection with this Palo Verde nuclear power station and all the seemingly related stories that seem to be related to it. Back in '07, Mohammad "Mo" Alavi was a former engineer at the power plant who was accused to illegally taking software codes to his native Iran. Mr. Alavi also downloaded details of control rooms, reactors and designs.

Officers arrested Mohammad "Mo" Alavi, 49, in Los Angeles this month and charged him with one count of violating a trade embargo, which prohibits Americans from exporting goods and services to Iran.

Below are some of the related articles to this Palo Verde nuclear plant, which is the largest nuclear power plant in the country. Is there a connection?

1. Palo Verde Nuclear Engineer With High Security Clearance is Missing! (Possible Connection to Recent Taliban Threats to Arizona & Nevada?)

2. Missing Palo Verde Nuclear Power Plant Engineer Found Dead in Yavapai County, Arizona

3. Taliban Threaten Arizona and Nevada

Source: azcentral.com

Federal Judge Rules That National Security Agency's Warrantless Surveillance Program Was Illegal

Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation v. Obama (MEMORANDUM OF DECISION AND ORDER)

I applaud this decision. I am quite sure that the government will appeal to the Supreme Court this decision in the Northern District of California in federal court where the judge ruled that the National Security Agency’s program of warrant-less surveillance was illegal. To date, President Obama has tried to block efforts to expose this throwback program to the George W. Bush era.

In a 45-page opinion, Judge Vaughn R. Walker ruled that the government had violated a 1978 federal statute requiring court approval for domestic surveillance when it intercepted phone calls of Al Haramain, a now-defunct Islamic charity in Oregon, and of two lawyers representing it in 2004. Declaring that the plaintiffs had been “subjected to unlawful surveillance,” the judge said the government was liable to pay them damages.

Source: Electronic Frontier Foundation ; New York Times

Florida Engineers Design Pill That Signals It Has Been Swallowed

Contact: Rizwan Bashirullah
Rizwan@ufl.edu
352-392-0622
University of Florida

Rx for health: Engineers design pill that signals it has been swallowed

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Call them tattletale pills.

Seeking a way to confirm that patients have taken their medication, University of Florida engineering researchers have added a tiny microchip and digestible antenna to a standard pill capsule. The prototype is intended to pave the way for mass-produced pills that, when ingested, automatically alert doctors, loved ones or scientists working with patients in clinical drug trials.

"It is a way to monitor whether your patient is taking their medication in a timely manner," said Rizwan Bashirullah, UF assistant professor in electrical and computer engineering.

Such a pill is needed because many patients forget, refuse or bungle the job of taking their medication. This causes or exacerbates medical problems, spurs hospitalizations or expensive medical procedures and undercuts clinical trials of new drugs.

The American Heart Association calls patients' failure to follow prescription regimens "the number one problem in treating illness today." Studies have found, for example, that patients with chronic diseases normally take only about half their prescribed medications. According to the American Heart Association, 10 percent of hospital admissions result from patients not following the guidelines on their prescriptions. Other studies have found that not taking medication properly results in 218,000 deaths annually.

So-called "medication compliance" is a big problem for clinical trials, Bashirullah said, because failure to take experiment drugs skews studies' results or renders them meaningless. As a result, researchers often require visual confirmation of participants taking pills, an extremely expensive proposition if hundreds or thousands of people are participating in the trials.

"The idea is to use technology to do this in a more seamless, much less expensive way," Bashirullah said.

Bashirullah, doctoral student Hong Yu, UF materials science and engineering Professor Chris Batich and Neil Euliano of Gainesville-based Convergent Engineering designed and tested a system with two main parts.

One part is the pill, a standard white capsule coated with a label embossed with silvery lines. The lines comprise the antenna, which is printed using ink made of nontoxic, conductive silver nanoparticles. The pill also contains a tiny microchip, one about the size of a period.

When a patient takes the pill, it communicates with the second main element of the system: a small electronic device carried or worn by the patient – for now, a stand-alone device, but in the future perhaps built into a watch or cell phone. The device then signals a cell phone or laptop that the pill has been ingested, in turn informing doctors or family members.

Bashirullah said the pill needs no battery because the device sends it power via imperceptible bursts of extremely low-voltage electricity. The bursts energize the microchip to send signals relayed via the antenna. Eventually the patient's stomach acid breaks down the antenna – the microchip is passed through the gastrointestinal tract — but not before the pill confirms its own ingestion.

"The vision of this project has always been that you have an antenna that is biocompatible, and that essentially dissolves a little while after entering the body," Bashirullah said.

The team has successfully tested the pill system in artificial human models, as well as cadavers. Researchers have also simulated stomach acids to break down the antenna to learn what traces it leaves behind. Bashirullah said those tests had determined the amount of silver retained in the body is tiny, less than what people often receive from common tap water.The researchers presented their findings at a conference in Japan last year and are currently at work on a scholarly paper about their research. They have applied for patents, and Bashirullah said a UF spinoff company is seeking to develop the next generation of the pill for FDA testing and commercial development. The research was funded by grants totaling about $700,000 from the National Science Foundation, Convergent Engineering and the Florida High Tech Corridor Council.

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Credits

Writer

Aaron Hoover, ahoover@ufl.edu, 352-392-0186

Writer

Kay Howell

Source

Rizwan Bashirullah, Rizwan@ufl.edu, 352-392-0622

Military Volunteers Get Blasted with New Microwave Energy Beam Weapons

FBI Reportedly Advises All Fifty U.S. State Governors They Will Soon Receive Letters from Extremist Group Demanding Resignations

The Nevada Capitol in Carson City was on lock-down yesterday...the reason?

The Capitol was locked down late Tuesday after the FBI advised the governors of all 50 states they would be receiving letters from an extremist group demanding their resignations.

The letters advises those governors that, if they don't resign, members of the group will come and “commandeer” their offices. It was received by the Capitol Police at noon Monday and immediately turned over to FBI investigators.

It sounds like more hype meant to instill fear in the population. However, that may just be me.

Source: Nevada Appeal

Cuba to Begin Vaccinating More Than 1.1 Million Against H1N1 "Swine Flu"

As we approach the one-year anniversary of the H1N1 "swine flu" hype, are we about to see the cycle repeat itself again this April? For example, Cuba is about to get into the act and begin vaccinating its population after first refusing to take the vaccine.

Cuba will begin vaccinating nearly 10 percent of its citizens against swine flu next week, reversing its previous skepticism about the high cost and effectiveness of immunization to combat the virus.

Source: Virgin Islands News Online

Mika Brzezinski Says We Are Killing Our Children the Way We Feed Them

Sorry for the low quality. This was on my TV in the early AM and I was half asleep. Nevertheless, it is interesting to hear the daughter of Zbigniew Brzezinski admit the following things:

"Everybody is fat"

"..got to look at what's in our food and change it."

"We are killing our children the way we feed them"

"I will tell you that the food we give our children across the board in a lot of our Nation's lunch rooms is destroying them --- is destroying them!"

FLASHBACK: Texas Governor Rick Perry Attends 2007 Bilderberg Conference in Istanbul, Turkey (Does This Meeting Violate the Logan Act?)

The above video from Alex Jones is for fun. The below article is for real. Yes, Governor Rick Perry attended the Bilderberg annual meeting back in 2007 in Turkey.

Gov. Rick Perry is flying to Istanbul, Turkey, today to speak at the super-secret Bilderberg Conference, a meeting of about 130 international leaders in business, media and politics.

I also wonder if this meeting by Governor Perry with foreign nationals on foreign soil violates the Logan Act (18 U.S.C.A. § 953).

Source: The Dallas Morning News

Grasshopper Infestation Swarm Could Destroy Western USA Crops

This sounds like a story from the Bible or other epic as farmers in the Western USA are expecting an imminent confrontation with grasshoppers expected to ravage crops. Let's hope and pray that these grasshoppers don't destroy too many food crops.

Farmers and ranchers across the West are bracing for a grasshopper infestation that could devastate millions of acres of crops and land used for grazing.

Source: The Wall Street Journal

Image Source: Paul Anderson (Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License)

Arizona County Seeks Volunteers on April 13, 2010 for Mock Bioterrorist Exercise Simulating Dispensing Medication to Public at Peoria Sports Complex

Just a note from the one person staff here at Remixx World!, Maricopa County is also seeking Arizona State student volunteers for this drill.

###

MARICOPA COUNTY
Public Health
4041 N. Central Ave , Suite 1400
Phoenix, AZ 85012
Ph 602-506-6900
www.maricopa.gov

Maricopa County Seeks Volunteers for Mock BioTerrorist Event

Media Contact: Jeanene Fowler, Public Health: 602-763-5328

Exercise will Simulate Dispensing Medication to Public;

Peoria Sports Complex, April 13, 2010

PHOENIX (March 12, 2010) – In order to practice the effectiveness of emergency plans, Maricopa County Department of Public Health’s Office of Preparedness and Response and the City of Peoria are simulating a bioterrorist event on April 13. The event will allow the county, city and volunteers to see how quickly and effectively they can work together to dispense medication to the public.

In order for this drill to be successful, the county is asking members of the public for their help.

“We need drivers to simply drive around in a specified route and request fake medications for their family,” said Alisa Diggs, program manager for Maricopa County Public Health’s Office of Preparedness and Response. “In order to challenge our team, we will also give drivers scripts so each time they drive through, they represent a different subset of our community such as parents with kids of different ages, those with health conditions and those whose first language is not English.”

Volunteers will be offered dinner and mileage reimbursement for their time and assistance. All that is needed is a car and a valid driver’s license. Volunteers must be at least 18 years of age.

To Volunteer, please contact

Hands on Greater Phoenix at handsonphoenix.org or call 602-973-2212

WHEN

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Requesting volunteers from 2 to 8 p.m.

WHERE

Peoria Sports Complex, 16101 N. 83rd Ave. in Peoria

More information

Please visit www.wearepublichealth.org

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TARP Oversight Chairperson Elizabeth Warren Says Half of All Commercial Real Estate Mortgages Will Underwater by End of 2010

I find Elizabeth Warren more credible than anyone else in President Obama's administration, so I believe her when she says that half of all commercial real estate mortgages will be underwater by the end of 2010. What happens to our economy if Ms. Warren is accurate? I am personally seeing a lot more empty commercial real estate in my neighborhood these days.

“They are [mostly] concentrated in the mid-sized banks,” Warren told CNBC. “We now have 2,988 banks—mostly midsized, that have these dangerous concentrations in commercial real estate lending."

As a result, the economy will face another “very serious problem” that will have to be resolved over the next three years, she said, adding that things are unlikely to return to normalcy in 2010.

You can watch Ms. Warren's full interview with CNBC by clicking this link.

Source: CNBC ; Plus a big fat thanks to Stazel One who provided this news tip.

Redesignation of the Biometrics Task Force as the Biometrics Identity Management Agency (U.S. Army General Orders NO. 2010–06)

Please see the following note before reading further:

DISTRIBUTION: This unclassified publication is available in electronic media only and is intended for the Active Army, the Army National Guard/Army National Guard of the United States, and the U.S. Army Reserve.

Redesignation of the Biometrics Task Force as the Biometrics Identity Management Agency (U.S. Army GENERAL ...

Source: U.S. Army

GENERAL ORDERS
NO. 2010–06 } HEADQUARTERS
DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY
WASHINGTON, DC, 23 March 2010

REDESIGNATION OF THE BIOMETRICS TASK FORCE AS THE BIOMETRICS IDENTITY MANAGEMENT AGENCY

1. The Biometrics Task Force is redesignated as the Biometrics Identity Management Agency. The Director of the Biometrics Identity Management Agency reports to Headquarters, Department of the Army, Deputy Chief of Staff, G–3/5/7.

2. In DOD Directive 8521.01E (Department of Defense Biometrics), the Secretary of Defense designated the Secretary of the Army as the Department of Defense Executive Agent for Department of Defense Biometrics. As the Executive Agent, the Secretary of the Army designated the Director, Biometrics Task Force as the Executive Manager for Department of Defense Biometrics, whose responsibilities are described in Secretary of the Army Memorandum: Designation of the Executive Manager for the Department of Defense Biometrics, dated 22 April 2008.

3. The Biometrics Identity Management Agency shall have fund certification authority while remaining in the Deputy Chief of Staff, G–3/5/7 and OA–22 organizational structure, along with manpower management authority to establish and acquire resources needed to fulfill Executive Manager responsibilities.

4. The Biometrics Identity Management Agency leads Department of Defense activities to prioritize, integrate, and synchronize biometrics technologies and capabilities and to manage the Department of Defense’s authoritative biometrics database to support the National Security Strategy. Through the assigned functions and responsibilities of the Biometrics Identity Management Agency, the Department of Defense achieves a biometrics program that is fully integrated Departmentwide and synchronized across the Services and combatant commands.

[DAMO–ZA]

John M. McHugh
Secretary of the Army

FLASHBACK: Speaker Nancy Pelosi Says End of Rep. Jane Harman's Chairmanship Had Nothing Do with Eavesdropping & Wiretapping Allegations

I always thought that Rep. Harman was an ally of Speaker Pelosi, but I now have my doubts. Nevertheless, Speaker Pelosi still gave the public no hint of any inside rivalries when she pointed out the "reason" why Rep. Harman was not given a prestigious chairmanship back in 2009. I do not normally agree with Speaker Pelosi, but in this rare case, I do, because there is no way I would want to see Rep. Harman as the House Intelligence Committee chair in 2009, 2010 and potentially beyond.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi quashed theories today about why Rep. Jane Harman wasn't given that House Intelligence Committee chairmanship that's become the focus of so many news reports. "The only reason why Jane is not the chairman is because she already served her two terms. It had nothing to do with her position on Iraq; it had nothing to do with donors; it had nothing to do with eavesdropping, wiretapping; it had nothing to do with anything,"

Source: U.S. News & World Report

Six Human Plague Cases in New Mexico in 2009 with One Fatality

Human Plague Cases in New Mexico (2009)

Source: New Mexico Department of Health

Former CIA Officer Robert Steele Stresses the Importance of Blogging Against the Evil Empire