Such conditions are widespread at the contract factories cranking out some of the most popular gadgets on the holiday season's gift lists, according to labor rights activists and workers interviewed by GlobalPost.

Whether it's your cherished iPhone, Nokia cell phone or Dell keyboard, it was likely made and assembled in Asia by workers who have few rights, and often toil under sweatshop-like conditions, activists say.

By the time a gadget reaches Apple's flagship store on Fifth Avenue in New York City or any other US retailer, it may have passed through the hands of a heavily indebted Filipina migrant worker on the graveyard shift in Taiwan, a Taiwanese "quality control" worker who'll soon be fired without warning, and a young Chinese worker clocking 80-hour weeks on a final assembly line, at less than a dollar an hour.

Embarrassed companies have vowed to do better. They've drafted "codes of conduct" for their Asian suppliers, and promised more factory audits to catch abuses. But here's the problem, say activists: While such codes may be great public relations, they're not working to fix the problem. WORSE, THE CODES PERMIT THE BIG BRANDS TO PAT THEMSELVES ON THE BACK, even as workers continue to be exploited in the shadowy world of Asian electronics supply chains.

Sale of two metric tons of gold to the Bank of Mauritius, which is the central bank of Mauritius, was conducted on the basis of market prices prevailing on November 11 with proceeds equivalent to 71.7 million dollars, the IMF said. Early this month, the Reserve Bank of India had announced buying 200 metric tons of gold from the IMF for 6.7 billion dollar.

This transaction is part of the total 403.3 metric tons sales approved by the IMF Executive Board in September and adds to the 200 metric tons already sold to the Reserve Bank of India. The money, thus generated would be used by the IMF to fund projects in Africa and other third world countries.

Their remarks came after Israel's interior ministry approved planning applications for the new units. The planning and construction committee authorised the expansion of Gilo, which is built on land captured in 1967. The land was later annexed to the Jerusalem municipality.

In September the White House said it regretted reports that Israel planned to approve new construction in the West Bank. The BBC's Paul Adams in Washington says the conventional wisdom in the US is that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has successfully thwarted Barack Obama's first foray into the stalled Middle East peace process, rebuffing American calls for a complete settlements freeze.

Nearly 500,000 Jews live in more than 100 settlements built on occupied territory in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. "JERUSALEM IS ISRAEL'S CAPITAL AND WILL REMAIN AS SUCH " - Mark Regev - Israeli premier's spokesman.

The decision, announced in a statement released by the US State Department, overturns the position of former President George W Bush's administration, which had opposed such a treaty on the grounds that national controls were better.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the United States would support the talks as long as the negotiating forum, the so-called Conference on the Arms Trade Treaty, "operates under the rules of consensus decision-making." The US lobbying group the National Rifle Association has opposed the treaty.

survivalistboards.com comments:-
By signing international treaties on gun control, the Obama administration can use the US State Department to bypass the normal legislative process in Congress. Once the US Government signs these international treaties, ALL US CITIZENS WILL BE SUBJECT TO THOSE GUN LAWS CREATED BY FOREIGN GOVERNMENTS. These are laws that have been developed and promoted by organizations such as the United Nations and individuals such as George Soros and Michael Bloomberg. THE LAWS ARE DESIGNED AND INTENDED TO LEAD TO THE COMPLETE BAN AND CONFISCATION OF ALL FIREARMS.

Council staff will then be tasked with overseeing the installation of safety devices in homes, including smoke alarms, stair gates, hot water temperature restrictors, oven guards and window and door locks. The draft guidance by a committee at the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) has been criticised as intrusive and further evidence of the "creeping nanny state".

Until now, councils have made only a limited number of home inspections to check on building work and in extreme cases where the state of a house is thought to pose a serious risk to public health. Nice also recommends the creation of a new government database to allow GPs, midwives and other officials who visit homes to log health and safety concerns they spot.

The guidance aims to "encourage all practitioners who visit families and carers with children and young people aged under 15 to provide home safety advice and, where necessary, conduct a home risk assessment". It continues: "If possible, they should supply and install home safety equipment."

Matthew Elliott, of the TaxPayers' Alliance, said: "It is a huge intervention into family life which will be counter-productive. Good parents will feel the intrusion of the state in their homes and bad parents will now have someone else to blame if they don't bring up their children in a sensible, safe environment."

While losing 200,000 jobs per month is better than the 700,000 jobs lost in January, current job losses still average more than the per month rate of 150,000 during the last recession. Also, remember: The last recession ended in November 2001, but job losses continued for more than a year and half until June of 2003; ditto for the 1990-91 recession. So we can expect that job losses will continue until the end of 2010 at the earliest. In other words, if you are unemployed and looking for work and just waiting for the economy to turn the corner, you had better hunker down. All the economic numbers suggest this will take a while. THE JOBS JUST ARE NOT COMING BACK.

The long-term picture for workers and families is even worse than current job loss numbers alone would suggest. Now as a way of sharing the pain, many firms are telling their workers to cut hours, take furloughs and accept lower wages. Specifically, that fall in hours worked is equivalent to another 3 million full time jobs lost on top of the 7.5 million jobs formally lost.

This is very bad news but we must face facts. Many of the lost jobs are gone forever, including construction jobs, finance jobs and manufacturing jobs. Recent studies suggest that a quarter of US jobs are fully out-sourceable over time to other countries.

"WE HONESTLY DON'T KNOW WHY THERE HAS BEEN THIS INCREASE," said Amy Branum, health statistician at the National Center for Health Statistics and the study's lead author. Analyzing doctors' records as well as surveys taken by parents, Branum determined that 4 percent of all US children now have food-related allergies. Furthermore, the number of doctor and hospital visits made by children seeking treatment for food allergy issues has tripled since 1992.

Interestingly, when the NCHS expanded its scope to include nonfood allergies, it found that respiratory ailments such as asthma have not increased all that much over the same period, and cases of hay fever actually went down. Eczema, however, had risen 13 percent. Eczema is often triggered by food allergies. Branum said there is no definitive explanation as to what might be causing the rise in reported child food allergies.

A forthcoming federally funded study by the National Institutes of Heath will attempt to identify causal reasons for the increase in food allergies in children by looking at several factors, including breast-feeding, diet and exposure to pets, Branum said. "I don't want to scare anybody, BUT I DO THINK WE'RE SEEING INCREASES IN SOMETHING WE SHOULD START TAKING SERIOUSLY."

The agents, working in Asia to monitor the latest exchange of gunfire between North Korean and South Korean warships, have reported such AN ATTACK WOULD HAVE A DISASTROUS EFFECT ON LONDON'S SHIPPING INSURANCE MARKET – WITH THE POTENTIAL OF BEING FAR LARGER THAN THE LOSSES IN LAST YEAR'S MARKET CRASH.

The fleet, larger than the combined navies of the US and Britain, is anchored in one of the world's least accessible waterways: the remote Johor Coast at the southern tip of Malaysia. Fifty miles east of Singapore, it also is close to Indonesia, the launching point, MI6 agents say, for the next attack by al-Qaida terrorists.

THE VALUE OF THE FLEET IS IN THE BILLIONS OF DOLLARS. But in their equatorial backwater they generally are guarded by only a handful of sailors, often armed with no more than a pistol or rifle to ward off any attack. The fleet consists largely of container ships and tankers. They have been anchored there by their owners and on the advice of the economists of the world's governments because of the global recession. Usually rented out as the camels of the high seas, transporting anything from crude oil to Christmas gifts, the recession has left them out of work.

It said that many nations were now arming to defend themselves in a cyber war and readying forces to conduct their own attacks. While definitions of what constitutes cyber war are not shared, it was clear that many nations were preparing for a future in which conflict was partly conducted via the net. "There are at least five countries known to be arming themselves for this kind of conflict," said Greg Day, primary analyst for security at McAfee Europe.

The UK, Germany, France, China and North Korea are known to be developing their own capabilities. The US is known to have an operating manual governing the rules and procedures of how it can use cyber warfare tactics. It is known to have used hack attacks alongside ground operations during the Iraq war and has continued to use this cyber capability while policing the nation.

Mr Day said there was evidence of a growing number of attacks that could be classed as "reconaissance" in advance of a future conflict. The ease with which the tools of such attacks can be gathered and used was worrying, said Mr Day. "To go to physical war requires billions of dollars," he said. "To go to cyber war most people can easily find the resources that could be used in these kind of attacks." THE TARGETS OF SUCH FUTURE CONFLICTS WERE LIKELY TO BE A NATION'S INFRASTRUCTURE, SAID MR DAY, BECAUSE NETWORKS OF ALL KINDS WERE NOW SO EMBEDDED IN PEOPLES' LIVES.

"WHEN THEY WITHHOLD INFORMATION, YOU ALWAYS START ASKING QUESTIONS," Hoekstra told Fox News. "That's what raises red flags. WHAT DO THEY KNOW THAT THEY DON'T WANT US TO KNOW?" Hoekstra linked President Barack Obama's handling of Fort Hood to a chain of other GOP criticisms of the president, including the administration's treatment of detainees and an investigation into possible CIA abuse.

"IT IS A POLITICAL CORRECTNESS THAT IS MAKING IT IMPOSSIBLE FOR US TO IDENTIFY THE REAL THREAT OF HOMEGROWN TERRORISM," he alleged. Hoekstra warned that "we have similar Hasans" in the country. The Michigan Republican has called for his committee to investigate the incident. Chairman Silvestre Reyes (Democrat for Texas) has so far declined, preferring to wait for the conclusion of the joint FBI-Army investigation. Obama has ordered a review of all intelligence on Hasan.

NEWSWITHVIEWS:- A former New York City Detective and Marine put Representative Hoekstra's message more bluntly: "This is another example of the US government being asleep at the wheel. Our President and his minions are doing more to take attention away from the terrorism aspect of this mass-murder than they are to identify the kinks in our armor in this war on terrorism."

"I wouldn't put it past those leaders to 'lose' or 'misplace' evidence of terrorism in this Fort Hood tragedy," he said. "This is a White House that's returned us to the days of Bill Clinton when THE PRESIDENT REPEATEDLY IGNORED THE CULPRITS INVOLVED IN MULTIPLE TERRORIST ATTACKS."

Reading between the lines of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's speech Monday, it's clear the Fed will utterly fail on the second part of its directive for years to come. In other words, WE'RE IN FOR THE MOTHER OF ALL JOBLESS RECOVERIES. Indeed, the best thing Bernanke could say about the unemployment situation is that it "MAY BE GETTING WORSE MORE SLOWLY."

Give the Fed chief this, however: He is remarkably consistent. That's not a knock on the guy - no one wants a bipolar central banker - but the more Bernanke makes the same points again and again, THE MORE IT'S CLEAR US WORKERS ARE DOOMED FOR A GOOD LONG WHILE.

Here are some of the distressing points Bernanke made again Monday at The Economic Club of New York: The official unemployment rate stands at 10.2%. (IT'S MORE LIKE 17.5%, BY THE WAY, IF YOU COUNT THE PEOPLE WHO'VE GIVEN UP LOOKING FOR WORK.) About 8 million folks have seen their jobs in the private sector go poof in the last two years. And worst of all, gross domestic product needs to grow 2.5% a year just to absorb the 100,000 people entering the job market every month.

Now put that in the context of this forecast: Economists, on average, expect GDP to grow just 2.9% in all of 2010, according to The Wall Street Journal's economic forecasting survey. That's what Bernanke means when he says growth looks to be "moderate" next year. It seems the New Normal is also rewriting the dictionary. "MODEST" NOW SERVES AS A SYNONYM FOR "NEAR HOPELESS," TOO.

Three of the 22 banks make no small business loans at all. Of the remaining 19 banks, 15 have reduced their small business loan balance since April, when the Treasury department began requiring the biggest banks receiving Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) funding to report monthly on their small business lending.

Over the six months that the reporting requirement has been in effect, the banks have cut their collective small business lending by 4%. Their cumulative balance stood at $258.7 billion as of September 30, according to a Treasury Department report.

Some banks are unapologetic about their cutbacks. SMALL BUSINESS DEFAULTS ARE SOARING, and banks are under pressure to shore up their balance sheets and reduce their exposure to risky loans. Two key small business lenders, CIT Group and Advanta, filed for bankruptcy this month.

While Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said programs such as food stamps softened the impact of an economic recession, anti-hunger groups pointed to the huge increase from the preceding year when 36.2 million people had trouble getting enough food and a third of them occasionally went hungry. "The survey suggested that things could be much worse but for the fact that we have extensive food assistance programs," Vilsack told reporters. "This is a great opportunity to put a spotlight on this problem."

ABOUT 14.6 PERCENT OF US HOUSEHOLDS, EQUAL TO 49.1 MILLION PEOPLE, "HAD DIFFICULTY OBTAINING FOOD FOR ALL THEIR MEMBERS DUE TO A LACK OF RESOURCES" DURING 2008, up 3.5 percentage points from 2007 when 11.1 percent of households were classified as food insecure. About 5.7 percent of households, or 17.3 million people, had "very low food security," meaning some members of the household had to eat less. Typically, food runs short in those households for a few days in seven or eight months of the year, USDA said.

President Barack Obama called the USDA report "unsettling" and vowed to reverse the trend of rising hunger. "Our children's ability to grow, learn, and meet their full potential - and therefore our future competitiveness as a nation - depends on regular access to healthy meals," Obama said in a statement.

The machine packs more than 70,000 chips and can compute 563 trillion calculations per second (teraflops). It is used for petroleum exploration and engineering tasks such as simulating aircraft designs.

However, the fastest machine is the US-owned Jaguar supercomputer, which now boasts a speed of 1.759 petaflops. One petaflop is the equivalent of 1,000 trillion calculations per second. The Cray computer has more than 220,000 chips and is owned by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. It is used to conduct research in climate science, materials science and nuclear energy amongst other areas.

Europe has 153 systems on the list, including the world's fourth most powerful machine. The IBM BlueGene/P supercomputer at the Forschungszentrum Juelich (FZJ) in Germany is the fastest machine outside the US and is able to run at more than 800 teraflops. The UK has the largest number of European machines on the list, with 44 systems.

Welcome to the 2009 bull market — or so many people think. They're buying up shares of everything from Google Inc to Bank of America Corp at a pace not seen since the 1930s. Since March, the Dow Jones industrial average has jumped 57 percent and the Standard & Poor's 500 index has gained 62 percent. Investors are betting on a strong economic recovery. But here's the problem: GOOD NEWS AHEAD COULD BE BAD NEWS FOR THE BULL.

To understand why, consider the very thing that has boosted the market. The US government has spent nearly $1 trillion to stimulate the economy and the Federal Reserve has maintained a policy of keeping interest rates near zero. Those will disappear as the economy's health improves, potentially HALTING THE BULL MARKET BY TAKING AWAY WHAT HAS BEEN ITS CRUTCH — SOURCES OF CHEAP AND PLENTIFUL MONEY.

"Pretty soon the easy money phase could be behind us," said Hugh Johnson, chairman and chief investment officer of Johnson Illington Advisors, an investment firm in Albany, New York. Investors still should heed the potential danger signs of today's market, before their exuberance gets the better of them.