Breaking news 'Egypt is free! Egypt is free!'

Cairo, Egypt (CNN) -- President Hosni Mubarak has decided to stand down as president of Egypt, Vice President Omar Suleiman announced on state television Friday.

Suleiman said the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces will "run the affairs of the country."

Tens of thousands of anti-government protesters exploded in cheers on the streets of Cairo after the announcement.

"Egypt is Free!" they chanted.

A source with close connections to Persian Gulf government leaders told CNN that Mubarak had gone to the Red Sea resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh.

CNN's Ahmir Ahmed, Saad Abedine, Rima Maktabi, Tom Fenton, Anderson Cooper, John King, Jill Dougherty and Ivan Watson and journalist Ian Lee contributed to this report

United Nations Proposes New "Global Currency" called Wocu.

What Exactly is a WOCU?
February 24th, 2010 Gary M. Vasey


The Wocu was apparently conceptualised in 1996, and after much research and discussion over the next decade, whilst the concept was tested for volatility and other characteristics, a detailed plan for the advancement of the Wocu was drawn up; it was introduced in 2009. The Wocu is an apolitical derivative of the exchange rates of the world’s top 20 economies as measured by GDP. The algorithm is weighted in line with these GDPs, resulting in a demonstrably less volatile currency unit. It is re-weighted by the WDX Institute every six months, following the publication by the IMF of its GDP figures. Prices for Wocu currency pairs can be seen on the WDX website, www.wocu.com.

The organization behind the WOCU is The WDX Institute, an independent research body that has been formed and sponsored by the WDX Organisation to further academic research about World Currency Baskets and their application, and in particular the idea of a World Currency Unit. The Institute will also independently monitor the application of the underlying Wocu algorithm developed by the WDX Organisation and will dictate its revision and its constituents.

Why is the WOCU important? Because the new Navitas electronic exchange intends to price marine fuel (bunker fuel) in Wocu, alongside USD, from Q2 2010. Francesca Zerenghi, CEO of Navitas Resources, said, “We are taking a leading role in the development of non-US denominated commodity transactions. Both energy companies and developing countries with significant US dollar exposure will have the opportunity to reduce volatility in their earnings and balance sheet through the use of the Wocu. We became an Early Participation Scheme member of the WDX Organisation Ltd, along with leading foreign exchange companies and securities firms, as we strongly believe that developing markets should have access to a trading platform where they can control their risk much more effectively. Reducing exchange rate fluctuation risk enhances this considerably. ”

Is this the end of the mighty Dollar as the currency used to price commodities? We think not but it is an interesting development.


Read more: http://www.ctrmblog.com/2010/02/what-exactly-is-a-wocu/#ixzz1DWVID0HI

Anti-government protests rock Egypt

By Sherine El Madany and Yasmine Saleh Sherine El Madany And Yasmine Saleh – 30 mins ago

CAIRO (Reuters) – Police fought with thousands of Egyptians who defied a government ban on Wednesday to protest against President Hosni Mubarak's 30-year-old rule, firing rubber bullets and tear gas and dragging away demonstrators.

Protesters burned tires and hurled stones at police as groups gathered at different parts of the capital Cairo. Demonstrators also clashed in other cities around Egypt. In Suez, east of Cairo, protesters torched a government building.

The scenes were unprecedented in the country, one of the United States' closest Middle East allies, and follow the overthrow two weeks ago of another long-serving Arab strongman, Tunisian leader Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, in a popular revolt.

Activists had called on people to rally again after a "Day of Wrath" on Tuesday of anti-government rallies across Egypt in which three protesters and one policeman were killed.

Demonstrators complain of poverty, unemployment, corruption and repression and, inspired by the Tunisian revolt, demand that Mubarak step down.

"The people want the regime to fall," protesters chanted.

Security forces have arrested about 500 demonstrators over the two days, an Interior Ministry source said. Witnesses said officers, some in civilian clothes, hauled away people and bundled them into unmarked vans. Some were beaten with batons.

Police fired shots into the air near the central Cairo court complex, witnesses said. In another area, they drove riot trucks into a crowd of about 3,000 people to force them to disperse.

A protester in the center of Cairo told Reuters: "The main tactic now is we turn up suddenly and quickly without a warning or an announcement. That way we gain ground.""

Social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook have been a key means of communications for the protesters. Egyptians complained Facebook and Twitter were subsequently blocked, but many accessed them via proxies. The government denied any role.

COORDINATED PROTESTS

Showing their determination to continue, a new Facebook group was created calling for a protest on Friday, the Egyptian weekend. It secured 18,000 supporters within hours.

A Facebook spokesman in London said it had not seen any major changes in traffic from Egypt. Twitter confirmed its site was blocked on Tuesday.

The coordinated protests were unlike anything witnessed in Egypt since Mubarak came to power in 1981 after President Anwar Sadat was assassinated by Islamists.

As protests unfolded, Trade Minister Rachid Mohamed Rachid, who is also the acting investment minister, canceled a trip to the World Economic Forum in Davos, without giving a reason.

The United States said Egypt was still a "close and important ally." But U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also urged the government to allow peaceful protests and not to block the social networking sites.

"We believe strongly that the Egyptian government has an important opportunity at this moment in time to implement political, economic and social reforms to respond to the legitimate needs and interests of the Egyptian people," she said.

Analysts said the United States probably wants to avoid adding to political uncertainty by abandoning Mubarak. Egypt's peaceful relationship with Israel is, for it a bulwark of stability in the unsettled region.

Elections are due to be held in September but few had doubted that 82-year-old Mubarak would remain in control or bring in a successor in the shape of his son Gamal.

"Mubarak never experienced this level of public anger and such a rejection of his legitimacy in 30 years of power," said analyst Issandr El Amrani. "This looks quite bad for him."

Father and son both deny that Gamal is being groomed for the job but the Egyptian street does not believe them.

"Gamal, tell your father that Egyptians hate you," protesters yelled in Cairo on Wednesday.

POLITICAL DEMANDS

Hundreds of demonstrators had gathered early on Wednesday outside the morgue in Suez demanding the release of the body of one of the three people killed there.

"The government has killed my son," the Suez protesters chanted outside the morgue. "Oh Habib, tell your master, your hands are soiled with our blood," they said, referring to Interior Minister Habib al-Adli.

Hundreds of protesters also gathered outside Cairo's journalists' union. Police beat some with batons when they tried to break a cordon and protesters on buildings threw stones at police below.

Demands posted on Facebook included the resignation of Mubarak and Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif, the dissolution of parliament and formation of a national unity government.

The prime minister said on Wednesday the government was committed to allowing freedom of expression by legitimate means and said police in Tuesday's demonstrations had acted with restraint.

Egypt's population of 80 million is growing by 2 percent a year. About 60 percent of the population -- and 90 percent of the unemployed -- are under 30 years old. About 40 percent live on less than $2 a day, and a third are illiterate.



Arab League Secretary-General Amre Moussa, a former Egyptian foreign minister, said reform was needed to address Arab citizens' demands for better lives.

"The Arab citizen is angry and we feel broken as citizens. Reform is the name of the game, and reform has to happen now all over the Arab world," Moussa told Reuters in Davos.

Investors fretted over the instability. Egypt's stock market, shut on Tuesday for a holiday, fell 6 percent on Wednesday, the Egyptian pound hit a six-year low against the U.S. dollar and the cost of insuring Egyptian debt against default rose.

(Additional reporting by Dina Zayed, Marwa Awad, Sarah Mikhail, Tom Pfeiffer and Patrick Werr; Writing by Angus MacSwan and Edmund Blair; Editing by Maria Golovnina)

Are chemtrails responsible for the Aflockalypse?

Have you ever wondered why does the weather change so rapidly for day to day? Especially here in Atlanta were the temp rises and drops rapidly and the weather is never predictable. Well it seems spraying poison into the Earths troposphere to control the weather is now causing death upon innocent birds fish and other animals
are we next?

Aflockalypse

Chemtrails

Prince talks about Chemtrails on TV


TheStar ‘Aflockalypse’ now: Hundreds of turtle doves die in Italy

More on chemtrails

Is Facebook the new Census?

Facebook has exploded in popularity over the last 3 years with now over 500 million members worldwide, Facebook could end up reaching the billion member mark in a couple of years. Why is this important? With so many people not using traditional ways of being identified, Facebook is providing a fun new way to be a part of America. With about 300 million people counted by the 2010 census living in America most of them are on Facebook the ones who are not will soon be signing up in the near future. People are listing their family members kids on their online profiles. (Sometime their pets to!). The average user has 130 friends and users are spending over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook expressing their ideas of the world. With about 70% of Facebook users being outside the United States eventually Facebook could be a new world census.

Electronic Pick Pocketing ?

Government's 110 billion dollar printing mistake.

Originally posted on Yahoo News
By Zachary Roth zachary Roth – Mon Dec 6, 9:36 am ET

As a metaphor for our troubled economic and financial era -- and the government's stumbling response -- this one's hard to beat. You can't stimulate the economy via the money supply, after all, if you can't print the money correctly.

Because of a problem with the presses, the federal government has shut down production of its flashy new $100 bills, and has quarantined more than 1 billion of them -- more than 10 percent of all existing U.S. cash -- in a vault in Fort Worth, Texas, reports CNBC.

"There is something drastically wrong here," one source told CNBC. "The frustration level is off the charts."

[Related: Money fair showcases $100,000 bill]

Officials with the Treasury and the Federal Reserve had touted the new bills' sophisticated security features that were 10 years in the making, including a 3-D security strip and a color-shifting image of a bell, designed to foil counterfeiters. But it turns out the bills are so high-tech that the presses can't handle the printing job.

More than 1 billion unusable bills have been printed. Some of the bills creased during production, creating a blank space on the paper, one official told CNBC. Because correctly printed bills are mixed in with the flawed ones, even the ones printed to the correct design specs can't be used until they 're sorted. It would take an estimated 20 to 30 years to weed out the defective bills by hand, but a mechanized system is expected to get the job done in about a year.

[Related: Design firm seeks to rebrand dollar with Obama's image]

Combined, the quarantined bills add up to $110 billion -- more than 10 percent of the entire U.S. cash supply, which now stands at around $930 billion.

The flawed bills, which cost around $120 million to print, will have to burned.

The new bills are the first to include Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner's signature. In order to prevent a shortfall,the government has ordered production of the old design, which includes the signature of Bush administration Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. That, surely, is not the only respect in which the nation's lead economic officials would like to turn back the clock to sometime before the 2008 financial crisis.