The Raw Story

Wednesday, 17 December 2014

Economic warfare and ruble exchange rate fluctuations

Russian ruble exchange rate changes have all the ingredients of success detective story. On Monday, 15.12. 2014 ruble weakened to a record low since 1998: the dollar cost 64 rubles and 79 rubles to the euro. In recent years, the price of an euro has been hanging around 50 rubles, or 5 000 rubles withdrawn from an ATM for a night of adventures in St. Petersburg would cost around 100 euros.

Last night, the Russian Central Bank raised its base rate drastically from 10.5 per cent to 17 per cent to curb currency speculation. The price of an euro during the day momentarily exceeded the limit of 100 rubles or 80 rubles for a dollar. Now at the end of the market day the ruble has slightly appreciated: $ 1= 72.60 rubles and 1 euro = 90 rubles. The official rates of the Russian Central Bank before tomorrow's market day are $ 1 = 61.15 rubles and 1 Euro = 76.15 rubles

What is this about?

The economic sanctions imposed by the US and the EU prevent granting of loans to Russian companies with a payment period of more than 30 days. As Russian companies have been borrowing money from the West the entire post-Cold War period at a lower rate of interest and the penalties now prevent loan restructuring and follow-up funding, these companies must now get euros and dollars to take care of their loans, thereby creating more demand for foreign currency in the Russian market and thus weakening the ruble.

Also, the fall in the price of oil reduces Russia's foreign exchange earnings, which in a situation of high demand for currency weakens the ruble.

The Eurasian Economic Union comes into force on January 1, 2015. Most likely at the same time the Russian ruble and foreign exchange markets will change drastically, and the Russian economy will take a distance to the dollar and the euro. Now the West is doing its best to weaken the ruble and thus destabilize the Russian economy and the political system before the end of the year. The maxima of the West is to prevent the emergence of the new economic union and closer cooperation within the BRICS. Taking into account the Christmas holidays, the West has little more than a week to succeed.

What are the Russian authorities doing? Trying their best to defend the ruble and the Russian economy. Their actions are limited by two factors: first, in this battle Russia's foreign currency reserves may be used only minimally (for which there are far better uses), and, secondly, the entire process must take place under the rules of the dollar-based global liberal economic model (because Russia will disconnect from the dollar system only later).

For the rest of the year the going will only get tougher. Even under the liberal economic model the Central Bank of Russia and the government have much stronger measures to stabilize and strengthen the ruble, which they probably will introduced as needed.

Russia will detach itself from the global dollar economy according to earlier plans .Until then it will continue defending the ruble. The West on its part will make every effort to weaken the ruble. What will be the end result? Time will tell - or the stars. I predict that next year will see a surprise!

What might this 2015 surprise be?

The Russian government has already informed Russian banks that the amounts of reserve currency deposits placed by various ministries in Russian banks will be drastically less than during previous years. These funds will instead be used to finance various domestic infrastructure projects. All this means that the Russian government obsessed with saving during all the 2000s and 2010s will become a big spender investing in strategical domestic projects. This will considerably strengthen Russian economy.

Another factor will be the Eurasian Union.

The third factor is a combination of recent Russia-China, Russia-Iran and Russia-India megaprojects and financing from the New Development Bank NDB (formerly referred to as the BRICS Development Bank). Russian President, Government and Bank of Russia have consistently informed the market players that now is the time to concentrate on domestic markets and domestic financial resources. All this will probably mean the unlinking of Russian economy from dollar-dominated Western economy.

Enjoy the cliffhanger!

Comment: And it seems that it's not just the Russian currency that is being hit.

Most worryingly, Russia's problems are starting to spread. Ukraine has been in deep trouble all year and it is now teetering on the edge of collapse; its hard currency reserves dipped below $10bn earlier this month, or about 1.3 months' of import cover. The hryvna is down by some 40% since the start of the year and the only thing holding it up now is the promise of more international bailout money in the new year.

Kazakhstan devalued the tenge in February by 18%, but all the wiggle room it created has now been used up. Fears of another devaluation are mounting fast, as Kazakhstan's economy remains closely tied to Russia's as well as being a major oil exporter.

The falling currencies are no longer just hitting countries that are tied to Russia and the contagion is spreading out, leading some to start talking about a repeat of 1998 when oil prices fell to $10. Last week the Turkish lira sank to its lowest levels against the dollar for a year, despite the fact it is one of the big winners from falling oil prices, as it is heavily dependent on oil and gas imports. Likewise, China, another major energy importer. has watched its currency fall by 26% since May, and 7% since the end of October alone.

Collapsing currencies around the world, coupled with the "death spiral" of selling in the oil markets, is sparking worries that we are coming to the point where things could spin out of control - and not just for Russia.

Want something else to read? How about 'Grievous Censorship' By The Guardian: Israel, Gaza And The Termination Of Nafeez Ahmed's Blog

A lop-sided lobster that lost four legs and both claws has stunned experts by growing them all back in just one month.

Crippled Clawdia stood little chance of survival in the wild before she was found by fishermen.

She was missing all her legs missing on one side, was pregnant, and was also missing both claws.

Taking pity on her the fisherman handed her into experts at the National Lobster Hatchery who nursed her back to health.

They fed her with plenty of nutritious food and after helping her spawn her clutch of eggs were stunned to see how much progress she had made within a month

Clawdia moulted her old shell on Monday to reveal four new full-sized left legs as well as two front claws.

Lobsters commonly grow their legs and claws back but the process normally occurs over the course of a few moults and takes much longer.

Dr Carly Daniels, research and development officer at the sanctuary said: "She didn't come into us that long ago with just four legs and no claws.

"The fishermen brought her into us because they noticed she was looking particularly worse for wear and they thought we would be its best chance.

"We didn't want to release her back into the wild after she had released her eggs as she was very fragile. We fed her up, gave her plenty of protein.

"She moulted on Monday morning. In the process of moulting, the exoskeleton falls off and there is a soft one underneath which slowly hardens.

"In the process of moulting legs and claws can grow back, but it can often take a few moults until they are full length.

"It's not normal that they all grow back at once, but Clawdia was obviously particularly healthy.

"She has grown back all four sets of her walking legs, as well as her claws at the front, though I wouldn't be surprised if these get bigger on her next moult.

"We've never seen a lobster grow back four sets of legs and claws in just one moult. It's amazing."

The National Lobster Hatchery, Padstow, Cornwall, is a marine conservation, research and education charity.

Want something else to read? How about 'Grievous Censorship' By The Guardian: Israel, Gaza And The Termination Of Nafeez Ahmed's Blog

Scientists tracing the horse's genome have found as humans domesticated the wild horse thousands of years ago, they affected the horse's DNA.

Scientists looked at two samples from the Taymyr Peninsula in Siberia, one of which dates back some 16,000 years and the other more than 40,000 years - well before humans domesticated horses.

In their research, two groups of genes covering social behavior, learning capabilities and muscular development, among other traits, could've been key in the domestication process.

They also found that wild subspecies of the domesticated horse, such as the Przewalski's horse, aren't actually ancestors of the domesticated horse, but a sister species that developed concurrently.

By comparing the genetic samples from Siberia with the genome of domesticated horses, scientists were also able to see how human domestication could negatively impact horses - specifically through inbreeding.

Researchers found that by domesticating wild horses, humans created a bottleneck, basically limiting the diversity of the horse's gene pool and opening the door to a number of genetic defects.

Those defects and the other genetic effects of inbreeding are in line with a hypothesis known as the cost of domestication, which says harmful genetic mutations become more common as humans selectively breed species.

The earliest evidence for horse domestication comes from Kazakhstan, where scientists found traces of mare's milk in pottery tracing back some 5,000 years.

The scientists in the study say it shows how sequencing ancient genomes can shed light on how the domestication process works.

Want something else to read? How about 'Grievous Censorship' By The Guardian: Israel, Gaza And The Termination Of Nafeez Ahmed's Blog

A mummy of a 18 months old girl was found

An ancient cemetery in Egypt contains 1 million bodies, according to a team of archeologists who discovered the burial ground. What the site represents remains a mystery, as the scientists are still puzzled about where exactly all the people came from.

"We are fairly certain we have over a million burials within this cemetery. It's large, and it's dense," said Project Director Kerry Muhlestein, an associate professor in the Department of Ancient Scripture at Brigham Young University (BYU). Muhlestein presented his findings at the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities Scholars Colloquium, held in Toronto in November, Live Science reported.

Archaeologists from Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, have been exploring a mysterious cemetery in Egypt for about 30 years. They excavated about 1,700 mummies within the project in Egypt so far. But there is still much work to do.

The cemetery is now called Fag el-Gamous, which means "Way of the Water Buffalo," a title that comes from the name of a nearby road. Archaeologists from Brigham Young University have been excavating Fag el-Gamous, along with a nearby pyramid, for about 30 years. Many of the mummies date to the time when the Roman or Byzantine Empire ruled Egypt, from the 1st century to the 7th century A.D.cemetery]

According to the archaeologists many of the mummies date back to the times when Egypt was a Roman province, from the 1st century BC onward.

Scientists say a nearby village seems too small to produce all these large burial sites. A small pyramid is situated near the cemetery. But it was built more than 4,500 years ago, about 2 millennia before these million mummies were buried.

People buried at the cemetery, which is now called Fag el-Gamous (Way of the Water Buffalo), did not belong to royalty, concluded the researchers. There were no coffins. And the internal organs of the deceased were rarely removed.

Beautifully crafted artifacts were also found

"I don't think you would term what happens to these burials as true mummification. If we want to use the term loosely, then they were mummified," Muhlestein said, adding that they were in fact mummified by the arid natural environment.

However, researchers still found some beautiful items at the burial site. The objects include linen, glass and even colorful booties for a child.

A pair of child's booties were also discovered

"A lot of their wealth, or the little that they had, was poured into these burials," Muhlestein said.

Giants and blondes

During excavation the archeologists discovered a mummy of a 18 months old girl which was "beautifully wrapped in a tunic and with other nice wrappings," the scientists wrote on BYU in Egypt Facebook page.

The researchers say there was evidence that they tried "much of the full mummification process."

"The toes and toenails and brain and tongue were amazingly preserved. We found a wonderful necklace and two bracelets on each arm. The jewelry makes us think it was a girl, but we cannot tell."

"She was buried with great care as someone who obviously loved her very much did all they could to take care of this little girl in burial. Very sad. But they succeeded, it was a beautiful burial."

The scientists found one mummy with a height of more than 2 meters, Muhlestein told the audience in Toronto. The mummy was discovered long before Muhlestein became the project director.

"We once found a male who was over 7 feet (2.1 meters) tall, who was far too tall to fit into the shaft, so they bent him in half and tossed him in," he said.

The researcher later told Live Science that "even with great nutrition, it's really unusual" as generally common people didn't have enough food at that time.

One more mystery of the mummy burials was the large number of blonde and red-headed mummies.

According to Muhlestein, the researchers can use the database to "show us all of the blonde burials, and [it shows] they are clustered in one area, or all of the red-headed burials, and [it shows] they're clustered in another area."

'Perhaps we have family areas or genetic groups [in certain areas], but we're still trying to explore that," he added.

Want something else to read? How about 'Grievous Censorship' By The Guardian: Israel, Gaza And The Termination Of Nafeez Ahmed's Blog

A generous mystery man has made the holiday season a little brighter for employees of two Massachusetts coffee shops.

A man wearing a cowboy hat walked into Marylou's in Hyannis on Saturday and handed the worker behind the counter 15 envelopes, each containing a crisp $100 bill.

Manager Victoria Grandy tells the (http://bit.ly/1zmGccs ) "MERRY CHRISTMAS" was printed in red on the front of each envelope.

Workers didn't recognize the man as a regular, but one employee said he resembled Santa Claus.

A man, believed to be the same person, but this time wearing a ball cap, on Monday handed over eight envelopes containing $100 bills to the workers at the Dunkin' Donuts at the

Those employees also didn't recognize him as a regular.

Want something else to read? How about 'Grievous Censorship' By The Guardian: Israel, Gaza And The Termination Of Nafeez Ahmed's Blog

One of the themes of the writing of Henry Giroux is that more and more Americans are becoming "disposable," recognized as either commodities or criminals by the more fortunate members of society. There seems to be a method to the madness of winner-take-all capitalism. The following steps, whether due to greed, indifference or disdain, are the means by which America's wealth-takers dispose of the people they don't need.

1. Deplete Their Wealth

Recent analysis has determined that of America is in or near poverty. This is confirmed by researchers Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, who point out: "The bottom half of the distribution always owns close to zero wealth on net. Hence, the bottom 90% wealth share is the same as the share of wealth owned by top 50-90 families - what can be described as the middle class."

The United States has one of the highest poverty rates in the developed world. It's much worse since the recession, especially for blacks and Hispanics.

From 2008 to 2013 the stock market, which is largely owned by just 10% of Americans, gained 18% per year. Well-to-do stockholders get capital gains tax breaks, including a carried interest subsidy Robert Reich calls "a pure scam."

The bottom half of America, relying on regular bank accounts, earn about one percent on their savings.

2. Strip Away Their Income

Earnings due to workers for their years of productivity have been withheld by people in power. Based on inflation, the minimum wage should be nearly three times its current level. An investor report from J.P. Morgan noted a direct correlation between record profits and cutbacks in wages.

We hear occasional news about job growth, but low-wage jobs ($7.69 to $13.83 per hour), which made up just one fifth of the jobs lost to the recession, accounted for nearly three-fifths of the jobs regained during the recovery. And it's getting worse. Nine out of 10 of the fastest-growing occupations are considered low-wage, generally not requiring a college degree, including food service, healthcare, housekeeping, and retail sales.

Among rich countries, according to OECD data, the U.S. is near the bottom in both union participation and employee protection laws.

3. Take Away Their Homes

A study by the National Low Income Housing Coalition concluded that an average American renter would need to earn $18.92 per hour - well over twice the minimum wage - to afford a two-bedroom apartment. "In no state," its report says, "can a full-time minimum wage worker afford a one-bedroom or a two-bedroom rental unit at Fair Market Rent." Over one-eighth of the nation's supply of low income housing has been permanently lost since 2001.

Little wonder so many people are homeless: over 600,000 on any January night in the U.S., tens of thousands of children, tens of thousands of veterans, and one of every five suffering from mental illness.

4. Hit Them with Fines, Fees and Fleecings

The poor half of America is victimized by the banking industry, which takes an average of $2,412 each year from underserved households for interest and fees on alternative financial services; by rental centers that charge effective annual interest rates over 100 percent; by payday lenders that charge effective annual interest rates of over 1,000 percent; and by the burgeoning prison industry, which charges prisoners for food, healthcare, phone calls, and even probation monitoring.

On top of all this, bubbly TV personalities rave about all the lottery money just waiting to be taken home. Poor families account for most of the lottery sales.

5. Criminalize Them

Matt Taibbi's recently published book contrasts the targeting of the poor for trivial offenses with a tolerance for the architects of billion-dollar financial crimes.

The U.S. court system is flooded with cases for minor infractions, including loitering charges reminiscent of the infamous Black Codes of post-slavery years. The buildup of arrests has added one out of every three U.S. adults to the FBI's criminal database.

The poor are criminalized for lying down or sleeping in public, for sharing food, for having nowhere to go .

6. Most Insidious: Let Their Children Suffer

The U.S. has one of the highest relative child poverty rates in the developed world. Almost half of black children under the age of six are living in poverty. Nearly half of all food stamp participants are children. The number of homeless children has risen by 50 percent in less than 10 years.

Early education is certainly part of the solution, for numerous studies have shown that pre-school helps all children to achieve more and earn more through adulthood, with the most disadvantaged benefiting the most. But even though the U.S. ranks near the bottom of developed countries in the percentage of 4-year-olds in early childhood education, Head Start was recently hit with the worst cutbacks in its history.

Meanwhile, public schools in the inner-city are being closed to satisfy the profit urges of the privatizers, who view our children as commodities. Said community organizer Jitu Brown after 50 schools were shut down in Chicago: "It has ripped black communities apart."

Americans seek reasons for all the violence in our city streets. With so many "disposable" citizens deprived of living-wage jobs, a meaningful education and equal treatment by our system of justice, rebellion in the form of violence is not hard to understand. The privileged members of society would lash out, too, if they were stripped of everything they own and tossed into the streets.

Want something else to read? How about 'Grievous Censorship' By The Guardian: Israel, Gaza And The Termination Of Nafeez Ahmed's Blog

If the supervolcano underneath Yellowstone National Park ever had another massive eruption, it could spew ash for thousands of miles across the United States, damaging buildings, smothering crops, and shutting down power plants. It'd be a huge disaster.

A super-eruption would be very bad - though also pretty unlikely

But that doesn't mean we should all start freaking out. The odds of that happening are thankfully pretty low. The Yellowstone supervolcano - thousands of times more powerful than a regular volcano - has only had three truly enormous eruptions in history. One occurred 2.1 million years ago, one 1.3 million years ago, and one 664,000 years ago.

And despite what you sometimes hear in the press, there's no indication that we're due for another "super-eruption" anytime soon. In fact, it's even possible that Yellowstone might never have an eruption that large again.

Even so, the Yellowstone supervolcano remains an endless source of apocalyptic fascination - and it's not hard to see why. In September 2014, a team of scientists published a paper in Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems exploring what a Yellowstone super-eruption might actually look like.

Among other things, they found the volcano was capable of burying states like Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, and Colorado in three feet of harmful volcanic ash - a mix of splintered rock and glass - and blanket the Midwest. That much ash could kill plants and animals, crush roofs, and short all sorts of electrical equipment:

Ash, ash, everywhere

When I called up one of the study's co-authors, Jacob Lowenstern of the US Geological Survey, he stressed that the paper was not any sort of prediction of the future. "Even if Yellowstone did erupt again, you probably wouldn't get that worst-case scenario," he says. "What's much, much more common are small eruptions - that's a point that often gets ignored in the press." (And even those small eruptions are very rare.)

Lowenstern is the Scientist-In-Charge of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory in Menlo Park, California. So I talked to him further about what we actually know about the Yellowstone supervolcano, what its eruptions might look like, and why the odds of disaster are low.

What is the Yellowstone supervolcano?

Lurking beneath Yellowstone National Park is a reservoir of hot magma five miles deep, fed by a gigantic plume of molten rock welling up from hundreds of miles below. That heat is responsible for many of the park's famous geysers and hot springs. And as magma rises up into the chamber and cools, the ground above periodically rises and falls.

The vast, vast majority of Yellowstone eruptions are small

On rare occasions throughout history, that magma chamber has erupted. The vast, vast majority of those eruptions in Yellowstone have been smaller lava flows - with the last occurring at Pitchstone Plateau some 70,000 years ago.

But the reason why Yellowstone gets so much attention is the remote possibility of catastrophic "super-eruptions." A super-eruption is anything that measures magnitude 8 or more on the Volcano Explosivity Index, in which at least 1,000 cubic kilometers (or 240 cubic miles) of material gets ejected. That's enough to bury Texas five feet deep.

These super-eruptions are thousands of times more powerful than even the biggest eruptions we're used to. Here's a chart from USGS comparing the Yellowstone super-eruptions with the Mt. St. Helens eruption of 1980. The difference is staggering:

Super-eruptions vs ordinary eruptions

Yellowstone has had three of these really massive eruptions in its history - 2.1 million years ago, 1.3 million years ago, and 664,000 years ago. The last of those, at Yellowstone Lava Creek, ejected so much material from below that it left a 34-mile-by-50-mile depression in the ground - what we see today as the Yellowstone Caldera:

Location of past Yellowstone super-eruptions

It's worth noting that Yellowstone is hardly the only supervolcano out there - geologists have found evidence of at least 47 super-eruptions in Earth's history. The most recent occurred in New Zealand's Lake Taupo some 26,000 years ago.

More dramatically, there was the gargantuan Toba eruption 74,000 years ago, caused by shifting tectonic plates. That triggered a dramatic 6- to 10-year global winter and (according to some) may have nearly wiped out the nascent human race.

On average, the Earth has seen roughly one super-eruption every 100,000 years, although that's not an ironclad law.

So what would a Yellowstone eruption look like?

Let's reiterate that the odds of any sort of Yellowstone eruption, big or small, are very low. But if we're speaking hypothetically...

The most likely eruption scenario in Yellowstone is a smaller event that produced lava flows (similar to what's happening at Iceland's Bárðarbunga right now) and possible a typical volcanic explosion. This would likely be precipitated by a swarm of earthquakes in a specific region of the park as the magma made its way to the surface.

A super-eruption is capable of sending ash many thousands of miles

Now, in the unlikely event of a much bigger super-eruption, the warning signs would be much bigger. "We'd likely first see intense seismic activity across the entire park," Lowenstern says. It could take weeks or months for those earthquakes to break up the rocks above the magma before an eruption.

And what if we did get a super-eruption - an event that was 1,000 times more powerful than a regular volcanic eruption, ejected at least 240 cubic miles of material, and lasted weeks or months? The lava flows themselves would be contained within a relatively small radius within the park - say, 40 miles or so. In fact, only about one-third of the material would actually make it up into the atmosphere.

The main damage would come from volcanic ash - a combination of splintered rock and glass - that was ejected miles into the air and scattered around the country. In their new paper, Lowenstern and his colleagues looked at both historical ash deposits and advanced modeling to conclude that an eruption would create an umbrella cloud, expanding even in all directions. (This was actually a surprising finding.)

A super-eruption could conceivably bury the northern Rockies in three feet of ash - devastating large swaths of Wyoming, Idaho, Colorado, Montana, and Utah. Meanwhile, the Midwest would get a few inches of ash, while both coasts would see even smaller amounts. The exact distribution would depend on the time of year and weather patterns:

Modeling the spread of ash from a Yellowstone super-eruption

Any of those scenarios would be terrible news. That much volcanic ash is capable of killing people, plants, and animals and crushing buildings. Even a few inches of ash (which is what much of the country can get) can destroy farms, clog roadways, cause serious respiratory problems, block sewer lines, and even short out transformers. Air travel would have to shut down across much of North America.

An eruption that big would also cool the planet temporarily

A volcanic eruption that big would also have major effects on the global climate. Volcanoes can emit sulfur aerosols that reflect sunlight back into the atmosphere cool the climate. These particles are short-lived in the atmosphere, so the effect is only temporary, but it can still be dramatic.

When Pinatubo erupted in 1991, it cooled the planet by about 1°C (1.8°F) for a few years. The Tambora eruption in 1815 cooled the planet enough to damage crops around the world - possibly leading to famines in some areas. And those were relatively tiny eruptions compared to what a supervolcano is, in theory, capable of.

Yikes! So what are the odds of a Yellowstone super-eruption?

Very, very low. In fact, it's even possible Yellowstone might never erupt again.

'Odds are very high that Yellowstone will be eruption-free for the coming centuries'

Right now, there's no sign of a pending eruption. Yellowstone park does continue to get earthquakes, and the ground continues to rise and fall, but that's nothing out of the ordinary. "Yellowstone is behaving as it has for the past 140 years," the USGS points out. "Odds are very high that Yellowstone will be eruption-free for the coming centuries."

The USGS also notes that, if you simply took the past three eruptions, the odds of Yellowstone erupting in any given year are 0.00014 percent - lower than the odds of getting hit by a civilization-destroying asteroid. But even that's not a good estimate, since it's not at all certain that Yellowstone erupts on a regular cycle or that it's "overdue" for another eruption. In fact, there might never be a big eruption in Yellowstone again.

"The Earth will see super-eruptions in the future, but will they come in Yellowstone? That's not a sure thing," says Lowenstern. "Yellowstone's already lived a good long life. It may not even see a fourth eruption."

Volcanoes, after all, do die out. The magma chamber below Yellowstone is being affected by two opposing forces - the heat welling up from below and the relative cold from the surface. If less heat comes in from below, then the chamber could conceivably freeze, eventually turning into a solid granite body.

It's also worth noting that the volcanic hotspot underneath Yellowstone is slowly migrating to the northeast (or, more accurately, the North American tectonic plate above the hotspot is migrating southwest). You can see the migration below:

The volcanic hotspot is sloooooowly moving northeast

On a long enough time scale, the hotspot will move out from under Yellowstone - and the Yellowstone supervolcano would, presumably, die out. Of course, it's possible that another supervolcano could emerge further in the northeast, but the hotspot would first have to heat up and melt the cold crust first. And that process could take a million years or longer.

"It's hard to get our minds around something like a million years," Lowenstern says. "Humans are a relatively brand-new species. But Earth's been around a very long time, and these systems take a long time to do what they do."

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The Raw Story

Focused on providing independent journalism.

Kiev orders crackdown on Russian TV channels

What I did after police killed my son

Emerging solar plants scorch birds in mid-air

Wednesday, 17 December 2014

Economic warfare and ruble exchange rate fluctuations

Lobster stuns scientists by growing back four legs and both claws in a month

Domestication of horses might have had negative impacts

1 million bodies found in Egyptian cemetery - scientists stumped

Mystery man hands out $100 bills in Massachusetts

Disposable citizens: The 6-step process to throw away the poor half of America

What would happen if the Yellowstone supervolcano actually erupted?

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