PALMER
PARK, Md. - Many people find speed cameras frustrating, and some in the
region are taking their rage out on the cameras themselves.
But now there's a new solution: cameras to watch the cameras. One is already in place, and Prince George's County Police Maj. Robert V. Liberati hopes to have up to a dozen more before the end of the year. "It's not worth going to jail over a $40 ticket or an arson or destruction of property charge," says Liberati. Liberati is the Commander of the Automated Enforcement Section, which covers speed and red-light cameras. Since April, six people have damaged speed cameras. On April 6, someone pulled a gun out and shot a camera on the 11400 block of Duley Station Road near U.S. 301 in Upper Marlboro, Md. Two weeks later, a speed camera was flipped over at 500 Harry S. Truman Drive, near Prince George's Community College. Police believe several people were involved because of the weight of the camera itself. Then in May, someone walked up to a camera on Brightseat Road near FedEx Field, cut off one of the four legs, and left. "I guess that makes a statement, but we were able to just attach another leg," says Liberati. But when someone burned down a speed camera on Race Track Road near Bowie State College on July 3, Liberati and his colleagues began to rethink their strategy. "It costs us $30,000 to $100,000 to replace a camera. That's a significant loss in the program. Plus it also takes a camera off the street that operates and slows people down. So there's a loss of safety for the community," says Liberati The Prince George's County Police Department decided it needed to catch the vandals, or at least deter them. "The roads are choked, there are lots of drivers on them. I think traffic itself is the cause of frustration (towards speed cameras). But, we have a duty to make the roads safe, even if takes a couple extra minutes to get to your destination. Unfortunately, that's the Washington area, the place we live in," says Liberati. Speed cameras themselves can't be used for security because under Maryland law speed cameras can only take pictures of speeding, says Liberati. "We've taken the additional step of marking our cameras to let people know that there is surveillance." Liberati says the cameras aren't a case of Big Brother nor a cash grab, police are simply trying to keep the public safe from reckless drivers. |
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The
Federal Reserve fulfilled expectations of more stimulus for the
faltering economy, taking aim now at driving down mortgage rates until
an improvement in unemployment that the central bank says will be a
problem for several years.
The Fed said it will buy $40 billion of mortgage-backed securities per month in an attempt to foster a nascent recovery in the real estate market. The purchases will be open-ended, meaning that they will continue until the Fed is satisfied that economic conditions, primarily in unemployment, improve. There's strong hints that they'll do Treasurys next," Joe LaVorgna, chief economist at Deutsche Bank Advisors, said in a phone interview from London."They're pulling out all the stops to try to get this economy to gain some traction and, most important, to get unemployment down." Enacting the third leg of quantitative easing will take the Fed's money creation past the $3 trillion level since it began the process in 2008. "The Committee is concerned that, without further policy accommodation, economic growth might not be strong enough to generate sustained improvement in labor market conditions," the Open Market Committee said in a statement. (More: Read the Fed's Full Statement Here.) As a follow-up to the statement, the Fed released its latest economic projections, which foresee slow growth including a jobless rate that stays above 7 percent into 2014. The economic projections expect growth to remain slow but to improve due to the stimulate measures announced Thursday. In addition, the Fed said it will continue its program of selling shorter-dated government debt and buying longer-term securities, a mechanism known as Operation Twist. It also will continue its policy of reinvesting principal payments from agency debt and mortgage-backed securities back into mortgages. The Fed left its funds rate unchanged at near-zero but offered one change in that regard, saying the rate would stay at "exceptionally low levels" until at least mid-2015. "These actions, which together will increase the Committee's holdings of longer-term securities by about $85 billion each month through the end of the year, should put downward pressure on longer-term interest rates, support mortgage markets, and help to make broader financial conditions more accommodative," the Fed statement said. The vote was 11-1, with Jeffrey Lacker voting against the notion of asset purchases as well as setting a time frame for rates. At an afternoon news conference, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke offered a defense of the Fed's QE activities, saying they are not adding to the government budget deficit nor causing runaway inflation. In addition, he addressed concerns that savers are being penalized from low interest rates, saying that the policy has allowed for growth in other areas. "While low interest rates impose some costs, Americans will ultimately benefit most from the healthy and growing economy that low interest rates promote," he said. Bernanke also issued his latest challenge to Washington to get serious about fiscal policy. "We can't solve this problem by ourselves," he said. But Fed critics contended that QE3 will not succeed where its two predecessors failed. "By doing QE3, he has admitted that QE1 and QE2 have not been beneficial. Otherwise, there would be no need for QE3," said Michael Pento, president of Pento Portfolio Strategies. "If the unemployment rates stays elevated and inflation exceeds his 2 percent target, what is his next move?" "The language of its policy stimulus leaves us in little doubt that the central bank is trying hard to allay fears over the prospects for inflation, which it continues to see as a low likelihood, as well as its exit strategy," said Andrew Wilkinson, chief economic strategist at Miller Tabak in New York. "The Fed is going all out to say that easy money is here for a very long time. Will markets warm to its latest actions? We think so." Doug Roberts, chief investment strategist at Channel Capital Research, said small-cap stocks, technology shares and precious metals probably will be the chief beneficiaries of QE3. "What QE3 does is inject liquidity," he said. "Right now what you do is follow the Fed." With a summertime rally pinned on hopes for aggressive central bank intervention -- both in the U.S. and Europe -- the Fed instead split the difference Thursday, offering a quantitative easing program the aggressiveness of which will depend on the strength of the recovery. The stock market, which had been slightly positive prior to the decision, shortly after 12:30 p.m., surged while bond yields, particularly farther out on the curve, jumped higher. Gold and other metals gained at least 1 percent across the board while the dollar slid against most global currencies. "The language of its policy stimulus leaves us in little doubt that the central bank is trying hard to allay fears over the prospects for inflation, which it continues to see as a low likelihood, as well as its exit strategy," said Andrew Wilkinson, chief economic strategist at Miller Tabak in New York. "The Fed is going all out to say that easy money is here for a very long time. Will markets warm to its latest actions? We think so."
Though
the Fed is ostensibly politically independent, the decision comes at a
ticklish time with the presidential election less than two months away.
Washington conservatives have been critical of the central bank's money creation, which has caused its balance sheet to swell to $2.8 trillion. They worry that the growing money supply will lead to inflation, which has reared its head in food and energy prices but has remained tame through the broader economy. Bill Gross, who runs bond giant Pimco, said the new round of easing would take the Fed's balance sheet up to nearly $3.5 trillion if the purchases continue for a year. "That potentially is reflationary," he told CNBC. "We're just to have to see if it works." Faced with an unemployment rate stubbornly above 8 percent and other indicators showing only halting signs of recovery, the Fed was pressed into action by a market worried that the nascent recovery was on wobbly ground and needed more stimulus. Two previous rounds of QE had uneven effects on economic growth though they did manage to levitate stock prices by more than 100 percent from their March 2009 lows. |
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Aiming to do away with the need to remember passwords for growing numbers of online services, Intel researchers have put together a tablet with new software and a biometric sensor that recognizes the unique patterns of veins on a person's palm. "The problem with passwords -- we use too many of them, their rules are complex, and they differ for different websites," Sridhar Iyengar, director of security research at Intel Labs, said at the annual Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco on Thursday. "There is a way out of it, and biometrics is an option." Iyengar demonstrated the technology, quickly waving his hand in front of a tablet but not touching it. Once the tablet recognizes a user, it can securely communicate that person's identity to banks, social networks and other services where the person has accounts, he said. Making laptops, tablets and smartphones responsible for identifying users would take that requirement away from individual websites and do away with the need to individually enter passwords into each of them, Iyengar said. "We plan to work with service providers to take full advantage of this," he said. A device using the technology would use built-in accelerometers to detect when a user puts it down, and would then log its owner off to keep unauthorized people from getting in. The palm-identification technology was one of several demonstrations during a keynote address by Intel Chief Technology Officer Justin Rattner at the forum. Rattner runs Intel Labs, which focuses on identifying and solving future technology problems. Rattner also showed prototype technology to improve cell-phone base stations and to efficiently and wirelessly connect devices such as printers, tablets and monitors throughout the home. He debuted a prototype microchip with wifi technology made with digital circuitry instead of analog, a development that has the potential to lead to major improvements in performance and efficiency. The palm-reading technology, still under development, requires new software and biometric sensors built into consumer devices, but does not require the development of any new kinds of chips, Rattner said. The technology works much better than the finger-print scanners found on some laptops today, he said. |
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VIENNA (AP) — The U.N. atomic agency has received new and significant intelligence over the past month that Iran has moved further toward the ability to build a nuclear weapon, diplomats tell The Associated Press.
They say the intelligence shows that Iran has advanced its work on calculating the destructive power of an atomic warhead through a series of computer models that it ran sometime within the past three years. The diplomats say the information comes from Israel, the United States and at least two other Western countries and concludes that the work was done sometime within the past three years. The time-frame is significant because if the International Atomic Energy Agency decides that the intelligence is credible, it would strengthen its concerns that Iran has continued weapons work into the recent past — and may be continuing to do so. Because computer modeling work is normally accompanied by physical tests of the components that go into a nuclear weapons, it would also buttress IAEA fears outlined in detail in November that Tehran is advancing its weapons research on multiple fronts. "You want to have a theoretical understanding of the working of a nuclear weapon that is then related to the experiments you do on the various components," said David Albright, whose Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security is a frequent go-to source on Iran for Congress and other U.S. government branches. "The two go hand-in-hand." Such computer mock-ups typically assess how high explosives compress fissile warhead material, setting off the chain reaction that results in a nuclear explosion. The yield is normally calculated in kilotons. Any new evidence of Iranian research into nuclear weapons is likely to strengthen the hand of hawks in Israel who advocate a military strike on Iran. They argue that Tehran is deliberately stalemating international efforts at engagement while continuing its clandestine weapons work. Iran denies any interest in nuclear weapons and says suspicions that it ever tried to develop them are based on fabricated U.S, Israeli and other intelligence. At the same time, it has blunted IAEA efforts to investigate such claims for more than five years. It also has scoffed at Western allegations that it is enriching uranium to make the core of nuclear warheads, saying it seeks only to create reactor fuel. But it refuses to accept offers of such fuel from abroad and is now producing material that is easier to turn into weapons-grade uranium than its main, lower-enriched stockpile. The revelations come as Israeli officials are expressing growing alarm over what they see as continuing Iranian progress toward nuclear arms. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu engaged this week in a strident public exchange with the U.S. administration, calling on Sunday for "red lines" to be set for Iran. The calls were rebuffed, and on Tuesday, Netanyahu declared that "those in the international community who refuse to draw a red line on Iran don't have a moral right to place a red light before Israel." Netanyahu said that sanctions were hurting Iran's economy but not nearly enough to compel it to stop the nuclear program, and said negotiations by the international community with Iran on the issue had failed. Israel's position is that airtight sanctions are needed against Iran's central bank and oil exports. Because Asian nations in particular keep buying Iranian oil the country remains a top OPEC oil exporter, even though there are signs that its revenues are down and, with the currency plummeting, standards of living in Iran have fallen. The comments from Netanyahu were the latest suggestion that Israel is considering taking military action on its own to at least slow down Iran's program. That prospect could badly rattle world markets and spark wider war, and is opposed not only in most Western capitals but also among many in Israel's security and political establishment. But Israeli officials have said that with Iran moving facilities underground its window of opportunity is closing while the world dithers with an inadequate sanctions regime. Although some of the new information was said to have been supplied by the United States, it appears to run counter to the stated U.S. position that Iran shut down wide-ranging secret research and development of the components of a nuclear weapons program in 2003. At the same time the U.S. fears that Iran continues to move toward the threshold of making such arms by enriching uranium. Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran's chief IAEA delegate, cut short a telephone request for comment, saying he could not talk because he was in a meeting. In Tehran, meanwhile, Foreign Ministry spokesman Rahmin Mehmanparast told reporters that Iran will start answering the agency's "questions and concerns" only when "our rights and security issues" are recognized. IAEA spokeswoman Gill Tudor said the agency would not comment. But four of six diplomats who spoke to the AP on the issue said an oblique passage in the IAEA's August Iran report saying "the agency has obtained more information which further corroborates" its suspicions alludes to the new intelligence. All six demanded anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss classified information member countries make available to the IAEA. Two of them said the new information builds on what the agency previously knew, not only because the research was apparently performed past 2009 but also because it reflects that Iran has allegedly moved closer to the overall ability to develop a nuclear weapon. The IAEA first outlined suspicions in November that Iran was working on calculating the yield of a nuclear weapon, as part of a 13-page summary of Iran's suspected nuclear weapons work that it said was based on more than 1,000 pages of research and intelligence from more than 10 member nations. It said then that "the modeling studies alleged to have been conducted in 2008 and 2009 by Iran ... (are) of particular concern," adding that the purpose of such studies for calculating anything other than nuclear explosion yields is "unclear to the agency." Albright, of the Institute for Science and International Security, said such computer-run modeling is "critical to the development of a nuclear weapon." |
Amos Gilad says next war will be against the home front; Meridor: Arabs questioning congruence between Western, Islamic values.Hezbollah has between 60 and 70 thousand rockets aimed at Israel, Defense Ministry Diplomatic-Security chief Amos Gilad said Monday.Speaking at the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism's World Summit, Gilad said the Lebanese terrorist organization has stockpiled rockets of various types, and its arsenal is far more robust than the one it had prior to the Second Lebanon War. "The next war will be aimed against the home front," Gilad warned. Gilad also blamed Hezbollah for a number of successful and unsuccessful terrorist attacks abroad. Though admitting that the threat from Lebanon is growing, Gilad was largely optimistic about Israel's security situation, citing positive developments in Syria, Egypt and the Gaza Strip. "In Syria, there is good news," Gilad said. "The Golan Heights remains the quietest region in the entire Middle East. Our deterrence capabilities are sufficiently, for the time being, keeping out warring parties in Syria." Gilad also warned that al-Qaida is starting to rear its head in Syria, with a view that the fall of Assad will allow it to open a new terror front against Israel. Turning to Egypt, Gilad said that though there are many terrorist groups actively trying to strike Israel from the Sinai, recently-elected President Mohamad Morsy and his officials remain committed to peace. Gilad called the situation in Gaza "relatively restrained," with Hamas generally holding other Palestinian terror groups back from striking Israel. Gilad also stated that Israel is currently not facing a conventional military threat, a massive improvement over Israel's historical security situation. Intelligence Minister Dan Meridor, who lectured at the same conference, said that the Arab Spring is forcing populations across the Middle East to answer difficult questions about the congruence between Western and Islamic values. "What happens when the majority does not want democracy?" Meridor asked rhetorically. "What happens when the majority does not believe a woman is equal to a man? What happens what it wants the Muslim Brotherhood?" Meridor said the Middle East is experiencing a "battle between Western ideals of freedom and democracy versus traditional conservative and Islamic values." |
Egan-Jones downgrades U.S. credit rating to AA- from AA
(Reuters) - Ratings agency Egan-Jones on Friday downgraded the U.S. country rating to AA-minus from AA, citing the Federal Reserve's latest stimulus program to boost the sluggish economy. The Fed on Thursday said it would pump $40 billion into the U.S. economy each month until it saw a sustained upturn in the weak jobs market. "(The) Fed's QE3 will stoke the stock market and commodity prices but in our opinion (it) will hurt the U.S. economy and, by extension, credit quality," Egan-Jones said in a statement about the latest quantitative easing program. "The increased cost of commodities will pressure profitability of businesses, and increase the costs of consumers thereby reducing consumer purchasing power." Moody's Investors Service currently rates the United States Aaa, Fitch rates the country AAA, and Standard & Poor's rates the country AA-plus. All three of those ratings have a negative outlook. |
Guatemala’s head of emergency evacuations, Sergio Cabanas, said the evacuees were ordered to leave some 17 villages around the Volcan del Fuego, which sits about six miles southwest (16 kilometers) from the colonial city of Antigua, home to 45,000 people. The ash was blowing south-southeast and authorities said the tourist center of the country was not currently in danger, although they expected the eruption to last for at least 12 more hours. Hundreds of cars, trucks and buses, blanketed with charcoal grey cash, sped away from the volcano along the a two-lane paved highway toward Guatemala City. Dozens of people crammed into the backs of trucks. Thick clouds of ash reduced visibility to less than 10 feet in the area of sugarcane fields surrounding the volcano. The elderly, women and children filled old school buses and ambulances that carried them from the area. The agency said lava rolled nearly 2,000 feet (600 meters) down slopes billowing with ash around the Volcan del Fuego, a 12,346-foot-high (3,763-meter-high) volcano whose name translates as “Volcano of Fire.” “A paroxysm of an eruption is taking place, a great volcanic eruption, with strong explosions and columns of ash,” said Gustavo Chicna, a volcanologist with the National Institute of Seismology, Vulcanology, Meteorology and Hydrology. He said cinders spewing from the volcano were settling a half-inch thick in some places. He said extremely hot gases were also rolling down the sides of the volcano, which was almost entirely wreathed in ash and smoke. The emergency agency warned that flights through the area could be affected. There was a red alert, the highest level, south and southeast of the mountain, where, Chicna said, “it’s almost in total darkness.” He said ash was landing as far as 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of the volcano. By Thursday evening, the ash plume had decreased to a little more than a mile high, partly due to rain, which diminished the potential risk to aviation, said Jorge Giron, a government volcanologist. He said ash still continued to fall heavily, however, and advised residents near the volcano but outside evacuation zones to clean their water systems before using them, and not leave their homes because of potential health effects from the ash. He said a red alert would be in effect until 4 a.m. local time. Teresa Marroquin, disaster coordinator for the Guatemalan Red Cross, said the organization had set up 10 emergency shelters and was sending hygiene kits and water. “There are lots of respiratory problems and eye problems,” she said. Many of those living around the volcano are indigenous Kakchikeles people who live in relatively poor and isolated communities, and authorities said they expected to encounter difficulties in evacuating all the affected people from the area. Officials in the Mexican state of Chiapas, on the border with Guatemala, said they were monitoring the situation in case winds drove ash toward Mexico. |
