This is no ordinary man but a messiah for the missing children in Pakistan. Anwar Khokhar, who served as a barber to then Pakistani prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, has reunited over 8,500 children with their parents since he took up this cause two decades ago.
via Pakistani man a messiah for missing kids.
By all accounts, the home price boom that began in January 1998, when the previous 1989 peak was finally surpassed, and topped out in June 2006 was extraordinary. The 173% gain in the Case-Shiller 10-City Index (the only monthly data metric that predates the year 2000) in those nine years averaged an eye-popping 19.2% per year. As we know now, those gains had very little to do with market fundamentals, and everything to do with distortionary government policies that mandated loans to marginal borrowers, and set off a national mania for real-estate wealth and a torrent of temporarily easy credit.
via Peter Schiff: Home Prices Are Still Too High – WSJ.com.
In 2012, Canada plans to cut its corporate taxes further, to 15%, bringing combined provincial and federal taxes to about 25%, from a combined average of 42.6% in 2000.
The Canadian government says those cuts will give Canada the lowest overall tax rate on business investment in the Group of Seven Industrialized Nations when deductions and credits are factored in.
via Canada Slashes Business Taxes to Lure Investment – WSJ.com.
Meredith Whitney, the former Oppenheimer analyst whose dead-on predictions on the banking crisis vaulted her to fame, stands by her controversial new call: Massive unrest across the country as the municipal-bond market sells off.
Whitney appeared Sunday on “60 Minutes” to predict defaults in as many as 100 cities and towns, followed by European-style public demonstrations as cities slash budgets in response.
via Meredith Whitney: Muni Defaults, Social Unrest Ahead.
Hybrid and electric cars could be about to get a whole lot noisier as the first generation of electric cars start to reach the US market.
via US Senate votes in favour of noisy electric cars | TheGreenCarWebsite.co.uk.
Toby Ord, 31, has in the past year given more than a third of his earnings, £10,000, to charities working in the poorest countries. He also gave away £15,000 of savings, as the start of his pledge to give away £1m over his lifetime.
via BBC News – Toby Ord: Why I’m giving £1m to charity.
Infinite Banking and other individualized banking systems rely on participating whole life insurance policies, which build up equity and pay dividends. Policy holders pay premiums—which vary based on the amount of the death benefit chosen, along with other factors, such as the age and health of the policy holder—into a whole life insurance policy for a period of five to seven years and let the policy increase in value. This is known as the capitalization phase.
“Generally, we try to fund most of the money into it in the first five years,” Tom McDermott, president of Asset Protectors & Advisors Group, said. “The longer you can allow it to accumulate, obviously, the more you can pull out for retirement savings, the more you can pull out for larger items.”
via The Infinite Banking Concept: Be Your Own Bank.
Young Taimoor, 28, was visiting Pakistan from USA with his wife to spend some time with his family in Lahore, capital of Punjab province, when he was abducted.
A couple of friends of Taimoor were among the accused.
They had committed the crime thinking that he had returned from the US with a lot of money.
via gulfnews : Banker killed for brain after kidnap in Lahore.
One of the first eye-opening revelations from the massive WikiLeaks diplomatic logs release is the length to which the US State Department is being treated as just another of America’s many spying apparatus.
Among the leaks was something called the “National Humint Collection Directive,” a secret document signed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last year. The document orders officials at the State Department to conduct mass surveillance and in some cases outright theft against high ranking UN officials.
Washington also wanted credit card numbers, email addresses, phone, fax and pager numbers and even frequent-flyer account numbers for UN figures and “biographic and biometric information on UN Security Council permanent representatives”.
via US diplomats spied on UN leadership | World news | The Guardian.
Technological progress, with its exponential law of increase, holds the key to the future. Labor displacement will proceed even to automatic factories. The magic of remote control will be commonplace. Humanity’s most versatile servant will be the electron tube. The communication and transportation inventions will smooth out regional differences and level us in some respects to uniformity. But the heterogeneity of material culture will mean specialists and languages that only specialists can understand. The countryside will be transformed by technology and farmers will be more like city folk.
The role of government is bound to grow. Technicians and special interest groups will leave only a shell of democracy. The family cannot be destroyed but will be less stable in the early years of married life, divorce being greater than now. The lives of woman will be more like those of men, spent more outside the home. The principle of expediency will be the dominating one in law and ethics.
via 7 Predictions For The Year 2011 From 1931 Visionaries.
knowledge is power 