The Economic Implosion of America is Here.
Winter has only just begun, and many people across the country are already sick of the cold. On the heels of a record-cold December, frigid weather will continue seizing areas from coast to coast through mid- to late January.
Based on this forecast, AccuWeather.com Chief Long Range Forecaster Joe Bastardi says this month could turn out to be the coldest January for the nation as a whole since 1985.
While there has been outstanding regionalized cold in January in recent years, Bastardi points out that the U.S. has not experienced this type of coast-to-coast cold since the 1980s.
Record-smashing cold already gripped a large portion of the West the first few days of the month with snow even falling in Las Vegas Monday. Bitter arctic air has also made a return to the northern Plains, while the East and South experienced a dramatic cooldown since the weekend.
More waves of arctic air will invade the country, starting late this week and continuing through next week and beyond. The period from Jan. 10-20 is when Bastardi expects the core of the cold to be in place, with the northern Plains in the heart of it.
He says places from Chicago to Denver could have one or two days with high temperatures below zero during this time. People in New York City may be looking at one day with highs in the teens, while temperatures potentially fail to rise out of the 20s in Dallas, Texas, and Jackson, Miss., for a day or two.
Bastardi also highlights the potential for rare snow in Seattle and Portland with the upcoming weather pattern.
The cold air coming to Texas starting early next week could affect the state’s citrus industry, according to Bastardi. He thinks Florida citrus, however, should be safe.
This past weekend, AccuWeather.com Expert Senior Meteorologist Alex Sosnowski started warning about the severe cold that is coming and provided more details on just how bad it will be.
Robert Gates, the US defense secretary, recently said China would be able to produce a combat jet by 2020, but if the video is genuine, it would suggest that it may be able to do so a decade or more sooner.
The photographs come amid growing fears over China’s rapidly-expanding military capabilities. Naval experts have expressed concern over the Dong Feng-21D ballistic missile, which is designed to target aircraft carriers in mid-sea – thus denying the United States its traditional military dominance of the Pacific.
Bullion analyst Mark Robinson says this is the biggest and most ambitious task that China has ever announced.
Which countries own the largest quantity of gold reserves right now?
India which recently bought 200 tonnes of gold from IMF has 557 tonnes of gold reserves representing 3% of total forex reserves.
The IMF, which currently holds 3,217 tonnes of gold, is the third-largest official holder of the precious metal, but is not technically a sovereign central bank. The IMF has made gold sales a key element of its new income model aimed at lowering its dependence on lending revenue to cover expenses.
The effects of the disaster that poured millions and millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico last spring will have global ramifications, a Gulf Coast activist recently warned.
“What’s been done in the Gulf is going to eventually affect every single American citizen,” Kindra Arnesen told Project Gulf Impact in a recent interview.
“This isn’t just about the United States. This isn’t just about the Gulf Coast. This is about a whole planet because one hand washes the other,” she added.
Arnesen, a South Louisiana mother who with BP’s invitation toured areas devastated by the Macondo Well explosion, described the negative health effects to which she and others, including oil spill clean up crews, were exposed around the Gulf Coast.
One such crew she encountered had brown spots on their bodies. Her friend on the same crew currently has bruising across her stomach, she said.
Arnesen also noted that the chemicals used in the clean up are known to make animals sterile.
“We’re not that much different than a species in the Gulf,” she said, taking into account the area’s children.
According to the coastal zone director of Plaquemine Parish, the oil spread across the Louisiana shoreline after the well was capped in September from 287 miles in July to 320 miles in late November.
Archaeologists are hoping to save the ruins of the Biblical era Tower of Babel, located in Iraq, and learn how it was built before it crumbled under the weight of confusion.
Following years of devastation under the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein and the ensuing American invasion of Iraq, World Monuments Fund conservationist Jeff Allen told The New York Times this week that archeologists are beginning to work on ancient Babylonian sites and possibly restore some of them.
No one has broached the idea of reproducing the Tower of Babel, which the Creator destroyed because of the generation’s attempt to compete with Him, “make a name for ourselves,” and build a tower to the skies while everyone in the world still spoke one language.
The Bible relates that their effort turned to confusion, with no one understanding anyone else, and that the tower became a self-destructive effort, both physically and morally..
“All this is unexcavated. There is great potential at this site. You could excavate the street plan of the entire city,” said Allen.
As a first step, experts are working on a plan to prevent further deterioration of the mud-brick ruins, which were damaged by Hussein’s personal building projects.
A mound of mud-brick buildings is all that remains of the ancient city in Babylon where the Tower was being built, whose foundations appear to be a square of earthen embankments, measuring 300 feet on each side.
King Nebuchadnezzar II, who reigned nearly 2,600 years ago, tried to rebuild the Tower of Babel to a height of almost 300 feet.
It is not clear whether the original building was actually a “tower,” an English translation of the Hebrew term, or was a “ziggurat,” a stepped pyramid that was common at the time. Building materials consisted of mud and brick because stone was not readily available.