Tropical forests are growing faster than scientists thought due to rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
A Nasa-led study has found that tropical forests are absorbing 1.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide every year as they photosynthesise and grow.

And this is far more than is absorbed by the vast areas of boreal forest that encircle the Arctic.

The researchers claim their findings show that rainforests like the Amazon are essential for soaking up excess greenhouse gases, and play a far greater role than had been previously realised.

Brent crude plunged below $57 per barrel briefly on Tuesday, marking a new five-and-a-half-year low as traders bet that the global oversupply of oil will continue deep into 2015.

The benchmark has fallen more than 45pc since June and is on track for its worst year since 2008, while oil traded in the US is now poised to crash through the $50 per barrel level.

"Oil bulls are having another hard week as Brent oil dropped to $56.90, a new five-year low, as lingering worries over supply excess overwhelmed fear of Libya supply disruptions," said Peter Rosenstreich, head of market strategy at Swissquote.
Crude prices have plummeted since the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) agreed in November to leave its production quotas unchanged at 30m per day, effectively triggering a price war with producers outside the Middle East-dominated cartel.

Opec countries led by Saudi Arabia - which pump a third of the world's crude - are concerned about the loss of market share to shale oil drillers in the US and ballooning supply outside the group.

U.S. is pretty pathetic.  They're always in the spotlight too.  Just a matter of time before economic collapse and a mess in that country.

Peter Lawler has wondered if maybe Rand Paul will be tough to beat for the Republican nomination. Paul is well positioned to inherit his father’s voting base, but his father’s voting base was not nearly large enough to be a real threat to win the Republican nomination.

There are several factors that make Rand a potentially more formidable candidate than his father. He doesn’t come across as a fanatic and a sectarian. He has a chance to reach beyond his father’s voting base to conservative voters who are frustrated with the establishment and don’t see anyone else who is standing up to the GOP’s Washington elites.

Paul is also helped by the peculiar dynamics of 2016. Ted Cruz could conceivably challenge Rand Paul for the party’s anti-establishment voters but, as Henry Olsen has pointed out, Cruz actually has a pretty narrow path to the nomination and could get taken out early in Iowa by Ben Carson. It is quite possible that Rand Paul could emerge from Iowa and New Hampshire as the only breathing alternative to the establishment candidates. Rand Paul could end up being both the Ron Paul of 2016 and the Rick Santorum of 2016. It is also possible that the Republican establishment will fail to coalesce around one candidate and that the establishment Republican vote will either split several ways going into South Carolina and/or the establishment candidates will bankrupt and destroy each other in the course of pursuing their ambitions.

That is a lot of ifs. My best guess is that the most likely scenario is one where Paul finishes a very strong second (think Clinton in 2008 rather than Santorum in 2012) to the surviving establishment candidate.

I just wish that the GOP establishment was less of an arm of the Washington business lobbies and that Tom Cotton had a few more years in the Senate.

when you register

you choose your country +
put your number after that and then you will receive a message
after that message you just put the code that was given and thats pretty much it

Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, and even Scott Walker have denounced the U.S. thaw in relations with Cuba, but Rand Paul is breaking with the GOP pack:

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul said Thursday that starting to trade with Cuba "is probably a good idea" and that the lengthy economic embargo against the communist island "just hasn't worked."

Paul became the first potential Republican presidential candidate to offer some support for President Barack Obama's decision to try to normalize U.S. relations with Cuba....

"The 50-year embargo just hasn't worked," Paul said. "If the goal is regime change, it sure doesn't seem to be working and probably it punishes the people more than the regime because the regime can blame the embargo for hardship...."

Here's the key point, I think:

He also said many U.S. farmers would back Obama's moves because the country is a new market for their crops.

Rand Paul really, really wants to win Iowa, and, as Peter Baker noted in The New York Times today, the Obama policy shift is backed by "major agricultural interests."

And if you look at the local press, you get the impression that it's backed by Iowa agricultural interests. Here's a story about the policy change from the Ottumwa Courier:

... Bob Bowman said Iowa farmers stand to benefit, along with several other Iowa industries. And Bowman should know. He's a DeWitt farmer, chairman of the Iowa Corn Promotion board and serves on the Corn Board of the National Corn Grower's Association. He also has firsthand experience in Cuba.

"I was down there about five years ago along with Agriculture Secretary Bill Northey. They were begging us to expand trade. We couldn't do that because of some of the restrictions our government placed on trade," Bowman said. "This announcement, I'm excited. Iowa Corn is excited."

It's not just Bowman who is excited. Bob Stallman, president of the American Farm Bureau Federation, released a statement saying the bureau supports the decision to normalize relations.

"Improving trade relations between the U.S. and Cuba will expand access to a market of 11 million consumers for U.S. agriculture. That's good for Cuba and good for America, too. We look forward to working closely with the administration on this issue."

Why do farmers stand to gain so much? Cuba imports a large percentage of its food. That includes food from the U.S., which was allowed after some loosening of restrictions more than a decade ago....

Also, the Business Record has this editorial, written just before the Obama announcement, by Jay Byers and Gene Meyer, respectively the CEO and president of the Greater Des Moines Partnership:

Guest Opinion: Time to lift the Cuba trade embargo

In late October, the Greater Des Moines Partnership, in conjunction with the Ankeny Area Chamber of Commerce and the Urbandale Chamber of Commerce, led a group of 70 Central Iowans on a cultural exploration mission to Cuba.... During the trip, participants were able to observe the Cuban economy firsthand, meet with the Cuban people and learn more about the recently implemented economic reforms. The trip was the latest activity in Partnership efforts dating back almost 15 years to ease travel and trade restrictions with Cuba....

There is no doubt that Cuba's poverty is the direct result of a half century of failed Marxist economic policies. However, the embargo has allowed the Castro regime to blame its problems on Washington, D.C. The U.S. represents a natural trading partner for Cuba and its 11.2 million residents, located just 90 miles from our shores. Due to the embargo, American farmers and businesses have missed out on significant economic opportunities....

Continuing to maintain a trade policy with Cuba based on an antiquated Cold War dispute no longer makes any sense. Ending the embargo would remove Cuba’s excuse for economic failure, help promote a transition to democracy and a free market economy in Cuba, improve the lives of the Cuban people and bring significant economic opportunities to American farmers and businesses.

The time for change is long overdue.

I don't know about the political affiliation of the other guys named above, but Iowa's agriculture secretary, Bill Northey, is a Republican; as noted, he led an agricultural delegation to Cuba a few years ago.

Farmers want to do business with Cuba, more than they want to cling to Cold War-era ideological purity. So I think, at least with regard to Iowa, Rand Paul is making a very smart move.

In addition to all of our wars in the Middle East and the war that has erupted on the streets of America, we are now engaged in a cyber war with North Korea and an economic war with Russia.  Without a doubt, the United States has the capability to do a tremendous amount of damage to both of them.  But what about the damage that they could potentially do to us?  We have a society that is absolutely teeming with soft targets.  Our Internet infrastructure is extremely vulnerable, our debt-based economic system is already teetering on the edge of disaster, and government officials freely admit that security at key facilities such as power plants is sorely lacking.  And these kinds of bitter conflicts have a way of escalating.  The North Koreans and the Russians are both very proud, and neither one is going to back down any time soon.  If a foreign power wanted to really make us hurt, it wouldn’t take much imagination at all.  There are thousands of ways to do it.  So Americans should not just smugly assume that we are untouchable.  In a war, it is often those that are overconfident that get hurt the worst.
...
At this point, Russia is facing a full-blown currency crisis, major banks are starting to fail and economists are forecasting a deep recession for next year…

The central bank bailed out its first victim of the collapsing currency, authorities announced a tax on grain exports to protect domestic stocks and a Reuters poll of 11 economists predicted that Russia’s gross domestic product would fall 3.6 percent next year.

Russia has been hit by what Economy Minister Alexei Ulyukayev recently called a “perfect storm” of plummeting oil prices, sanctions related to its military action in Ukraine, and a flight of investors’ capital — made worse by a lack of structural reforms that means the economy is overwhelmingly dependent on oil revenues.

250,000 piano tuners in Canada? LOL. I doubt that there is 250,000 pianos. What a fucking idiot.

Sen. Rand Paul, Kentucky Republican, has delivered a knock out punch against Sen. Marco Rubio to normalization of relations with Cuba to benefit the United States. The punch was as decisive as Muhammad Ali’s knock out of George Foreman in the Rumble in the Jungle 40 years ago. Mr. Rubio’s presidential ambitions are over.

The Florida senator’s implacable hatred of Fidel Castro and Cuba’s Communist regime has driven him to anti-democratic tirades and to a policy of Cuban ostracism that sneers at Presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.  His child-like immaturity and conflicting loyalties between Cuba and the United States disqualify him for the White House.

Mr. Rubio is the son of Cuban immigrants who fled under the dictatorship of Fulgencia Batista.  He has apparently forgotten that as a U.S. citizen and senator, his sole allegiance is to the U.S. Constitution and to the general welfare of the people of the United States. If there is a conflict between Mr. Rubio’s sympathies for the Cuban people and the best interests of the United States, he is required to abandon the former in favor of the latter.

The United States forged an alliance with Joseph Stalin during World War II to advance the interests of the United States, not to advance the cause of human rights or democracy in the Soviet Union.

On this day, Seoul’s daytime mercury level was at minus six degrees Celsius, but adding in the wind chill factor, it stood at minus 15. Estimates from Seoul’s meteorological center put Pyongyang’s temperatures at minus seven but the wind chill value would have pushed that down to 15 to 20 degrees below freezing. It’s hard to imagine how cold people at the event would have been.
...
The ceremony began with Kim Jong Eun and senior officials entering and closed with their departure, so even the highest of ranks would have been out in the excruciating cold for at least an hour.

Throughout the event, it was profoundly evident that 86-year-old Kim Yong Nam, Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme People’s Assembly, was struggling with the frigid temperature as he stood next to Kim Jong Eun. Kim Yong Nam would not have been alone in his discomfort. Kim Ki Nam, a secretary of the Chosun Workers’ Party, is 85; Choe Thae Bok, Chairman of the Supreme People’s Assembly, is 84; and many other senior officials in their 70s and 80s would have suffered in wind chill values at minus 15 degrees. From what was displayed on screen, Kim Jong Eun seemed to be the most resilient to the cold
...
Why did Kim insist on holding the event outdoors?

Why did Kim Jong Eun insist on holding the event outdoors despite the harsh weather? On this day, KCTV provided unprecedented special commemorative coverage from the wee morning hours, and the country also held a nationwide silent tribute at noon--the  first  held since 2012. It seems that Kim was determined to hold a large-scale event to mark the day. As some say, it could be his way of wrapping up his father’s era and laying the groundwork to open up a full-fledged era of his own.

As the author sees it, this event could be a result of his newly found confidence after purging his uncle Jang Song Taek. Regardless of how low the mercury plunges and whether tens of thousands have to suffer in the cold, it could have been a display of his absolute power, able to determine anything with one simple utterance. Most people who attended the ceremony are likely suffering from a cold, and the question is: what are they thinking now?

Next year, Sen. Rand Paul will reintroduce a bill that goes after the federal programs that send military-grade equipment to local police departments, staff for the Kentucky Republican told BuzzFeed News.

Paul’s decision to keep bill, which was crafted by the retiring Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn, alive will be a significant test for the political viability of the issue. Paul will be trying to force a Republican-controlled Senate to examine federal programs that funnel millions in grant money and surplus to arm local police forces with weapons and vehicles designed for the battlefield. Paul’s expected presidential run, which will likely launch next year, could put the issue back on the national agenda as well.

Coburn’s bill — which is very similar to legislation Democratic Rep. Hank Johnson of Georgia has vowed to reintroduce in the House next Congress — targets a small fraction of the millions of dollars worth of military surplus shipped by the Pentagon to local law enforcement each year under the Defense Department’s so-called 1033 program. Most of the surplus equipment is mundane — office furniture, uniforms, etc. But the most controversial 1033 shipments see vehicles and weapons used by the U.S. armed forces sent to local police. Coburn’s bill would ban that practice while keeping the non-lethal surplus flowing.