After Canada Post locked out its postal workers, a full strike ensued. As a result the United States Postal Service will not ship to Canada.
According to the USPS press release, the halt on shipping to Canada began June 18. Mail can still be sent via the expensive USPS Global Express service.
“They did it with no warning. They trapped the public’s mail. It’s unacceptable.”-Denis Lemelin, Canadian Union of Postal Workers
Canada Post shut down all urban mail service today, June 15, after more than a week of strikes by 15,000 postal workers. Ironically Canada Post officials say the shut down is meant to keep them from losing more money: “The price tag was climbing. It was reaching $100 million. We need to do something to jump start the negotiations.”-Anick Losier, Canada Post spokeswoman
If you’re losing money because workers aren’t at work, how do you make that better by shutting down altogether? On top of that Union officials say they reached an agreement with Canada Post bosses and were heading back to work, when they were ‘locked out’: “All postal workers were ready to distribute mail across the country.”-Denis Lemelin, Canadian Union of Postal Workers
So from 15,000 striking postal workers to now 48,000 unemployed postal workers because of Canada Post’s lock out.
Add to the postal workers strike the strike by employees of Air Canada. Today, 3,800 workers walked off the job. Many travelers are being forced to use other air lines.
What’s the main motivation behind the two huge strikes in Canada? Retirement benefits: “We’re Canadians. We deserve our pensions. We’ve worked hard for them.”-Loretta Pasqualini, 30 year employee with Air Canada
Air Canada and Canada Post wants to drastically slash worker’s retirement benefits, as well as other things like pay. Canada Post says they have to cut costs because they’ve been losing money. They blame the internet (very similar to what’s going on with the U.S. Postal Service).
Air Canada strikers started to leave their picket lines when security/police started taking pictures of them. Also, the Canadian government is meeting today to come up with a plan that will force workers back to work, and end collective bargaining!
When the United States sells military aircraft to other countries, the deal normally requires that the aircraft undergo major overhaul/rebuild by U.S. companies. Iran is now offering the same service, for U.S., Russian and Chinese built military aircraft.
The Iran Iraq War of the 1980s, along with increased U.S. sanctions, forced Iran to learn how to rebuild their U.S. made war planes. There are indications that Iran has even built “new” F-14s to replace those lost in the Iran Iraq War. Iran soon learned how to overhaul Russian and Chinese aircraft during the 1990s.
Iranian air force officials say they will now offer their overhaul/rebuild know how to other countries: “We are able to overhaul the planes of our neighboring countries for them. We do have this capability as well.”-Hamidreza Goudini, Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force
Iranian military leaders say the U.S. sanctions are actually good for Iran, because it forced Iran’s industries, military and civilian, to develop much faster than they would have without any sanctions. As a result Iran is a truly independent nation.
Before the 2007-08 Credit Crunch Crisis the United States was far behind the European Union, when it came to new job creation.
According to a Fortune article, from 1999 to 2008 the EU created 14 million new jobs, while the U.S. created 8 million.
On top of that, once the economy started down the drain the United States lost more jobs than were lost in the EU. Percentage wise the EU and U.S. are around 9% unemployment (officially, unofficially the percentages are higher), but when you look at actual numbers the U.S. is leading the way down. As of December 2010, the difference in job losses, between the EU and U.S., are about 7 million.
Several hours after New Zealand was hit with a series of quakes, the eastern islands of Indonesia were hit.
The U.S. Geological Survey reports a 6.2, but local officials are calling it a 6.9 earthquake. No tsunami warnings were issued.
Christchurch, New Zealand was hit by a 5.5 quake, followed by a 6.0 aftershock, then by a 4.9.
The U.S. Geological Survey said the quakes hit in the afternoon, June 13.
Christchurch was hit in February by a devastating 6.3 quake.
Even when turned ‘off’, most of your electronic appliances are still on. That’s because most appliances now contain tiny computers to remember settings, to run clocks, to sense your remote, etc.
Actually when you turn your electronics ‘off’ you’ve actually put them in a ‘standby mode’. This standby mode accounts for about 6 percent of household electricity use.
NEC and Tohoku University have developed a semiconductor to cut that standby power usage to zero. They say it uses a magnet, instead of electricity, to operate in standby mode. Unfortunately it will be a few more years before it hits the market, but they hope it will cut overall electricity usage by 25%.
“They are unwelcome in Iraq from now on. Their demand to conduct an investigation into the raid is categorically unacceptable and has upset Iraq.“-Ali Al-Dabbagh, Iraqi government spokesman
The U.S. Congressional delegation in Iraq has really put their feet in the their mouths, by showing just how arrogant U.S. officials are when it comes to Iraq.
First, the stupid Kalifornian (sic) Congressman Dana Rohrabacher demanded that Iraq pay for being invaded and occupied by the United States. He said it was to pay back the U.S. for the service of taking out Saddam Hussein, something the Iraqis never really asked for (most of the testimonies before Congress have proven to be faked).
The Kalifornian described the U.S. invasion of Iraq as a sign that we care about Iraqis: “We were hoping that there would be a consideration of a payback because the United States right now is in close to a very serious economic crisis and we could certainly use some people to care about our situation as we have cared about theirs.”-Dana Rohrabacher
Moron Rohrabacher! The only justified “payback” is that Iraq invades the United States and takes out our government!
Second, idiot Congressmen have arrogantly demanded that the United States conduct an investigation into the Iraqi attack on the Iranian refugee Ashraf camp. The Iranian’s were long time refugees in Iraq, but they were also pro-U.S./anti-Iranian rebels who had been using Iraqi territory for training, supply and a safe haven for decades.
The U.S. demand to investigate the Iraqi raid makes it sound like the United States was really using Ashraf camp to stage terrorist raids into Iran, despite denials of such action by our leaders.
The U.S. Embassy in Iraq, has been notified that the Congressional delegation needs to leave NOW.
“Every time we tried to schedule something, we had a storm come through. With the temperature and the moisture, you just can’t do it.”-James Orner, Idaho Transportation Department
Temperatures are finally warming up in eastern Idaho, and ITD officials hope to get ongoing road construction finished, and start new ones.
But just as the weather is warming up for ITD, funding is running out: “In the next few years, we’re going to see a rapid decline in the amount of construction that’s going to be available because there’s less funding available. With gas prices going up, people are driving less, and it’s affecting our revenues.”-Corey Krantz, Idaho Transportation Department
Funding for ITD comes, in part, from state gas taxes.
“The whole thing is a big scandal. People were very unsettled. Every day something different was announced. Now I hear on the radio that it was the sprouts. But people were even buying less fruit. That is simply insane.’’ Riza Cetinkaya, Berlin grocer who says sales have dropped 70%
Out of frustration the German health officials are back to blaming sprouts for the deadly e. coli outbreak. The problem is that they are simply guessing, again.
Officials say the sprouts are the ‘most likely’ source, but at the same time admit the produce has tested negative for e. coli.
How did they come to their conclusion? They made a map showing the concentration of infection cases, then basically concluded that the sprout farm near the center ‘must’ be the source. Police detectives know you can’t rely solely on lines drawn on a map.
Consumer Protection officials then announced that they had found a contaminated container of sprouts, in the trash can of a family that is infected. The officials concluded that it was ‘proof’ that the sprouts were the cause. Is it possible the sprout container itself is the source of contamination? Remember e. coli is spread by contact with fecal matter, or animal/human waste. What else was in the trash can?
One government official, Reinhard Burger, of the Robert Koch Institute, admitted that the window of opportunity to link fecal waste and contact with produce, was gone. So all officials can do now is guess.
The sprout farm, in Lower Saxony, has been shut down and sealed off.