The revelation came Tuesday during a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing on the possible security risks surrounding healthcare.gov. “The committee’s been reviewing materials that indicate that some parts of healthcare.gov were not completed before the launch, as we’ve discussed here,” Representative Cory Gardner (Republican for Colorado) said. “What portion of the website remained to be created when you launched on October 1st?”

“I don’t have an exact percentage,” said Henry Chao, deputy chief information officer of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. “I look at it in terms of overall marketplace systems. I think it was a set of priority functions that needed to be in place,” Chao added.

“Well, how much do we have to build today?” Gardner pressed.

“Just an approximation, we’re probably sitting somewhere between 60 and 70 percent,” Chao said.

“Sixty to 70 percent that needs to be built still?” Gardner said.

“We still have to build the payment systems to make payments to issuers in January,” the Obamacare official said before adding, “the online application, verification, determination, plan compare, getting enrolled, generating enrollment transaction – that’s 100 percent there.”

“But the entire system is 60 to 70 percent away from being complete,” Gardner said.

Also, evidence of broader behavioral issues across the intercontinental ballistic missile force, including sexual assaults and domestic violence. The study, provided to the AP in draft form, says that court-martial rates in the nuclear missile force in 2011 and 2012 were more than twice as high as in the overall Air Force. Administrative punishments, such as written reprimands for rules violations and other misbehavior, also were higher in those years.

These indicators add a new dimension to an emerging picture of malaise and worse inside the ICBM force, an arm of the Air Force with a proud heritage but an uncertain future. Concerned about heightened levels of misconduct, the Air Force directed RAND Corp, the federally funded research house, to conduct a three-month study of work conditions and attitudes among the men and women inside the ICBM force. It found a toxic mix of frustration and aggravation, heightened by a sense of being unappreciated, overworked, micromanaged and at constant risk of failure.

Remote and rarely seen, the ICBM force gets little public attention. The AP, however, this year has documented a string of missteps that call into question the management of a force that demands strict obedience to procedures.

Traders in London were left scratching their heads on Wednesday morning when a rapid-fire 10-second spell of selling sent gold prices quoted on a Bloomberg monitor down suddenly by about $10 (£6) to trade near $1,260 an ounce. IG Markets commented that the fall came suddenly following a 2,000-contracts sell order hitting the market, but the incident shows how markets don't always comply to the logic of traders reacting to big news events that are publicly disclosed and that we all know about.

It also illustrates the challenges facing the FCA in investigating alleged rigging of heavily traded commodities or asset classes such as gold and currency, where prices can often shift on the slightest rumour or sniff of bearish sentiment. Traders I spoke to in London this morning were themselves lost for an explanation over the gold price other than to say the drop was triggered by electronic trading, which kicks in when a price crosses a key support level as it did today.

Evidence of collusion and coordinated strategies to fix prices by traders is clearly wrong and should be sanctioned but is it really such a surprise, or indeed a cardinal sin, that traders exchange often unsubstantiated market banter via electronic messenger services to make a buck? The alternative is a market entirely run by computers, which clinically execute trades based on meta-data or programmed triggers. We could then blame the computer, not the human, when mutual funds fail to return the expected 10 percent annual return on your investments.

Hundreds of supporters of the ruling Socialist Party cheered outside the National Assembly as the so-called Enabling Law was passed, while a recording of Maduro's late predecessor, Hugo Chavez, singing Venezuela's anthem rang out inside the hall.

The power to pass laws without congressional approval gives Maduro a political victory in the run-up to December 8 municipal elections, although he still faces a severely distorted economy with embarrassing product shortages and inflation surging to nearly 55 percent.

"I want to thank the majority of patriotic and socialist lawmakers for approving this law that will let us advance, over the next 12 months, in defeating the economic war being waged against our people," Maduro said.

“The cloud” is one of my least favourite internet neologisms. It suggests something fluffy, white and weightless: a global atmosphere within which our email, social network profiles, images and shared files innocently drift. All of which sounds delightful – but the reality is that every cloud is composed of a vast infrastructure of bunker-like rooms, filled with rack upon rack of servers. And the moment you decide to upload something into this global data warehouse – be it photos of your family or precious documents – you give up many of your rights to ownership.

This summer, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak added his voice to the chorus of those alarmed by the implications of the cloud. “I think it’s going to be horrendous. I think there are going to be horrible problems in the next five years,” he opined on a trip to Washington. “With the cloud, you don’t own anything. You already signed it away… the more we transfer everything onto the web, onto the cloud, the less we’re going to have control over it.”

Rights – and content creators’ lack of them – lie at the heart of cloud storage’s worst dangers, something connected in turn to the underlying nature of cloud storage. In the words of Douglas Heaven, writing in New Scientist, “a digital file exists as a state of matter… rather than matter itself.” Your information is not a piece of property in any legal sense. It’s merely the electrical state of a disk owned by somebody else; or, more likely, the state of a large number of different disks scattered across the world, each containing part or all of what may be numerous copies of your information, backed up and accessed and reproduced as necessary to ensure server-side efficiency.

Unfortunately for investors, demographically much of the developed world is in trouble. Japan, Europe and even the United States have seen declining fertility rates in recent decades. Today, all three regions are well below the 2.05 children per woman needed to sustain, let alone grow population. This same issue affects the developing world too. And China is the clear leader for a potential demographic crisis in the coming years.

Today China produces only 1.6 children per woman across the board. If you want to focus on the wealthier segments of the Chinese population, using Hong Kong as a proxy, the numbers are even worse. It is not coincidence that China intends to further loosen its “one child” policy and is also considering the closing of labor camps. Both are welcome developments even if the latter may not be a “done deal.” And both are designed to help boost China’s population.

China needs to produce, on average, 2.05 children per woman to maintain its population and support its ageing citizens. Anything lower then this means a slowdown economically in the future (no matter how much China improves productivity).

This issue also comes with geopolitical consequences. China is surrounded by large regional competitors with much higher fertility rates (India, Pakistan, etc). China has had conflict with one in the past (India). The other (Pakistan) is currently an economic and military ally of China owing to proximity and a common rival (India). But Pakistan’s government is hardly in control of its population which is growing rapidly. Throw Indonesia (also growing rapidly) into the mix and there are going to be a LOT MORE people competing for limited resources in and around China.

Productivity can boost an economy, but in the end you need new people and a new child today takes at least 20 years to become a productive worker and form a new household.

In addition, France has sided with Israel on several important issues, such as demanding that Iran's nuclear weapons program be halted, at all costs. However, according to NGO Monitor, the French government also funds many groups whose stances contradict its own tenets – radical leftist groups that actively demonize Israel, spreading incitement against Israelis and even advocating terror attacks.

In one case, a French court ruled against an NGO that sued French companies that were working on the Jerusalem Light Rail, claiming that the companies were violating French and international law by “abetting the occupation.” The court ruled against the Association France Palestine Solidarité (AFPS) – which had funded the lawsuit with money it received from none other than the French government.

Several French NGOs, including AFPS, CFD-Terre Solidaire, Secours Catholique, and others receive millions of dollars from the French government, which they distribute to groups in Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Nearly all these groups are radically anti-Israel, advocating a complete withdrawal of Israel from all of Judea, Samaria, and Jerusalem, the full repatriation of descendants of Arabs who fled Israel in 1948, reparations to the PA for “six decades of suffering,” and so on.

The influence of anti-Israel groups on the French government has been substantial, judging from the actions of French officials in Israel in recent months.

AFP reports that Khamenei told commanders of the Islamist Basij militia force in Tehran: "the Zionist regime (Israel) is a regime whose pillars are extremely shaky and is doomed to collapse." Responding to Israeli concerns over Iran's nuclear weapons program, Khamenei called Israel "the rabid dog of the region" and claimed Israel poses a threat to the world, not Iran. The Basij crowd responded with cries of "Death to Israel" and "Death to America."

Khamenei had insults for Israeli officials as well. Deputy Foreign Minister Ze'ev Elkin (Likud) on Tuesday backed previous statements that Israel could militarily act alone to defend itself from the Iranian nuclear threat.

Perhaps in response, Khamenei said "the title of human is not worthy of the leaders of the Zionist regime," adding that the Iranian response to a military action would be "a slap in the face they will never forget." Khamenei further said in a live state television broadcast that "any phenomenon that is created by force cannot endure," referring to Israel's numerous defensive wars fought to ensure the country's existence.

The Western alliance claims this is to test the members’ capability and teamwork, mainly for reasons of matching America’s commitment to the alliance, as well as keeping their edge after the Afghan mission is over. The upcoming series of war games comes amid widespread military spending cutbacks throughout NATO, in the wake of the expensive military interventions in places such as Libya and Afghanistan, which were a great drain on resources.

Rainer Rupp, a former German intelligence officer with the HVA, believes that the current exercises should be examined against the background of the Afghan experience and that the upcoming games have little to do with European security or keeping everyone ready for whatever scenarios may come.

There, he explains, NATO “could test its interoperability” just as well. However, now, “with NATO countries – especially the United States – leaving Afghanistan beaten like a dog with the tail between its legs, they need to project and show the world that they still have their claws sharpened.” Rupp sees the games as nothing more than “part of a continued effort of… intimidating nations that don’t follow voluntarily the US and European lead.”

Footage showed clouds of heavy smoke, billowing steam and waters roiling over the newly-formed crater. The newly-formed land is off the coast of Nishinoshima, a small, uninhabited island in the Ogasawara chain. It is within the seismically active Pacific "ring of fire".

Jim Dobbin, chairman of Parliament’s All Party Group on Gibraltar, said the heightened tensions in the Mediterranean meant it would only take a trigger-happy “madman” on either side to spark serious retaliation.

He highlighted an “extremely serious” armed standoff earlier this month when a Spanish patrol boat breached a security cordon in Gibraltar’s territorial waters then “rammed a Naval Police Vessel escorting a British Navy ship”.

As Mr Dobbin was issuing the warning, a Spanish survey ship was defying Royal Navy orders to leave Gibraltar's territorial waters. Gibraltar's government has asked London to make a protest to Madrid, and the Spanish Ambassador has been summoned to the Foreign Office. The Spanish boat has now left the Gibraltar waters.

Britain summoned the Spanish ambassador for a dressing down after the ocean survey vessel spent 20 hours defying the Royal Navy’s demands that it depart, escalating the diplomatic tensions over the Rock.

But Tory MP Colonel Bob Stewart, who was the British United Nations commander during the Bosnian war, said that if the Government is serious about defending Gibraltar’s sovereignty it should send major combat units to deter Spanish grandstanding. Former Tory MP Louise Mensch added: ‘The next time a Spanish ship enters Gibraltarian waters and refuses to leave after Royal Navy warnings we should fire on them.’

The long-standing dispute between Britain and Spain has flared up over the past two years. [Spanish] Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has blocked the Spanish-Gibraltarian border and staged numerous incursions into Gibraltarian waters.

And it’s causing parts of the market to behave strangely. Stocks of companies with weak balance sheets are rising twice as fast as stronger ones; junk borrowers get rates lower than their investment-grade counterparts did before the credit crisis; and initial public offerings are doubling on their first day of trading.

While in the minority, some investors say prices have climbed so high it’s possible to look ahead and see an ugly end. Laurence Fink, chief executive officer of BlackRock Inc, the biggest US money manager, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television on November 12 that he feared a bubble and the Fed ought to quit buying so many securities.

“At some point we’ll have to pay the price of this,” said Michael Shaoul, chief executive officer of Marketfield Asset Management LLC in New York. Among the woes Shaoul foresees: “higher inflation, higher interest rates, much more difficult business conditions.”

This maize, known as MON810, has been grown in South Africa for 15 years, where it “failed miserably”. But so as not to call the seed a complete waste, Monsanto and Bill Gates are now pushing it into countries like Mozambique, Uganda, Tanzania, and Kenya — countries that need agricultural help.

“Monsanto got the science completely wrong on this one. Independent biosafety scientists have discovered that the inheritance of resistance in African stem borers is a dominant, not recessive, trait as erroneously assumed,” explained the Director of the ACB Miriam Mayet. “Hence the insect resistance management strategies that Monsanto developed, and accepted by our regulators, based on these erroneous assumptions, were utterly ineffective.”

What this means, simply, is that pests in South Africa developed a massive resistance to the chemicals in the corn, annihilating the one prominent argument for GM crops, that it is resistant to insects. The corn was such a disaster that Monsanto willingly compensated farmers for the pesticides they had to spray on their crops to further fight the insects. Compensation from Monsanto? Weird.

Now, to not waste the waste of a seed, Monsanto has donated the MON810 technology to a “philanthropic” venture of the Gates Foundation and Monsanto called Water Efficient Maize for Africa (WEMA), and they’ve done it royalty-free.

Here is how the pods work: when passengers are ready to leave a terminal, they will be forced into the pods, one at a time. Each passenger must remain in the pod until an electronic voice gives them permission to leave and the door opens. After passing through a pod, passengers may not re-enter the terminal without going through security again.

Currently at most airports, TSA agents stand at terminal exits for safety purposes. The idea is that these new pods will replace such agents, therefore saving money and increasing security. The pods are already being used in the Syracuse International Airport.

Syracuse Airport Commissioner Christina Callahan said, “We need to be vigilant and maintain high security protocol at all times. These portals were designed and approved by TSA which is important.” At Callahan’s airport, the post cost $60 million to install. Of course, some level of security is necessary in any international airport. However, there is a balance to be struck between making passengers safe and making them feel imprisoned or violated.