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It could become illegal to resell your iPhone 4, car or family antiques
JENNIFER WATERS'S CONSUMER CONFIDENTIAL Archives | Email alerts
Oct. 7, 2012, 2:00 p.m. EDT · CORRECTED
Your right to resell your own stuff is in peril
It could become illegal to resell your iPhone 4, car or family antiques
CHICAGO (MarketWatch) — Tucked into the U.S. Supreme Court’s agenda this fall is a little-known case that could upend your ability to resell everything from your grandmother’s antique furniture to your iPhone 4.
At issue in Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons is the first-sale doctrine in copyright law, which allows you to buy and then sell things like electronics, books, artwork and furniture, as well as CDs and DVDs, without getting permission from the copyright holder of those products.
That’s being challenged now for products that are made abroad, and if the Supreme Court upholds an appellate court ruling, it would mean that the copyright holders of anything you own that has been made in China, Japan or Europe, for example, would have to give you permission to sell it.
Both Ammori and Band worry that a decision in favor of the lower court would lead to some strange, even absurd consequences. For example, it could become an incentive for manufacturers to have everything produced overseas because they would be able to control every resale.
It could also become a weighty issue for auto trade-ins and resales, considering about 40% of most U.S.-made cars carry technology and parts that were made overseas.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/your-right-to-resell-your-own-stuff-is-in-peril-2012-10-04?pagenumber=2
NYT: Europe’s Richer Regions Want Out
CATALONIA may be the catalyst for a renewed wave of separatism in the European Union, with Scotland and Flanders not far behind. The great paradox of the European Union, which is built on the concept of shared sovereignty, is that it lowers the stakes for regions to push for independence.
While a post-national European Union may be emerging out of the euro zone crisis, with a drive for more fiscal union and more centralized control over national budgets and banks, the crisis has accelerated calls for independence from member countries’ richer regions, angry at having to finance poorer neighbors.
Artur Mas, the Catalan president, recently shook Spain and the markets with a call for early regional elections and promised a referendum on independence from Spain, although Madrid considers it illegal. Scotland is planning an independence referendum for the autumn of 2014. The Flemish in Flanders have achieved nearly total autonomy, both administrative and linguistic, but still resent what they consider to be the holdover hegemony of the French-speakers of Wallonia and the Brussels elite, emotions that will be on display in provincial and communal elections Oct. 14.
There are countless things that hold unhappy countries, like marriages, together — shared history, shared wars, shared children, shared enemies. But the economic crisis in the European Union is also highlighting old grievances.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/sunday-review/a-european-union-of-more-nations.html?pagewanted=1&_r=3&emc=eta1&
THERE IS NO HYPERINFLATION IN IRAN – The Real Story Is Much More Interesting
Meanwhile, the Iranian regime is using the current sanctions imposed against it by the West as a weapon to weaken its own fiercest domestic threat – the educated, relatively pro-Western Iranian constituency that comprises the middle class.
In this way, the economic warfare the West has waged against Iran to weaken the regime is actually amplifying the regime's control.
Before we get to that, though, we need to take a look at why there is no hyperinflation in Iran – because what is being confused as hyperinflation by outside observers and the press right now is actually the mechanism through which Iranian leaders are tightening their grip on Iranian society.
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This system allows the government to subsidize the prices on certain critical items, like food, keeping them relatively affordable for the politically-important lower classes.
Iran’s Central Bank has classified a long list of goods into categories with priorities 1 through 10, leaving it to the parallel market to take of all other needs. Priorities 1 and 2 are food and medicine, receiving foreign exchange at the official rate of 12,260 rials per dollar, followed by other categories with lower priorities, which are mostly intermediate goods used in industrial production.
That brings us to the parallel market, where dollars are freely traded based on market rates – this is where the rial has seen its plunge against the dollar in recent weeks.
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Dr. Salehi-Isfahani told Business Insider, "Since 2009, it's become quite obvious that Iran's middle class is not with this government," and that, "when the sanctions come, the government uses its power of allocation of foreign exchange to make sure its base is taken care of, and the people who suffer are the people who are kind of ideologically, in some sense, allied with the West."
"They are Western oriented – they want government to compromise, so that they could have travel abroad and have all sorts of things.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/actually-there-is-no-hyperinflation-in-iran-2012-10#ixzz28aiLhxTd
Ketamine for Depression: The Most Important Advance in Field in 50 Years?
In any given year, 7% of adults suffer from major depression, and at least 1 in 10 youth will reckon with the disorder at some point during their teenage years. But about 20% of these cases will not respond to current treatments; for those that do, relief may take weeks to months to come.
There is one treatment, however, that works much faster: the anesthetic and “club drug” ketamine. It takes effect within hours. A single dose of ketamine produces relief of depression that has been shown in studies to last for up to 10 days; it also appears to reduce symptoms of bipolar disorder and suicidal thoughts. Now, a new research review published in Science calls the discovery of these effects of ketamine, “”arguably the most important discovery in half a century” of depression research.
Ketamine doesn’t work the way traditional antidepressants do. Many such drugs affect levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin in the brain, and while the idea that depression is caused by low levels of serotonin or an “imbalance” of other key neurotransmitters has been firmly fixed in the popular imagination, scientists have known for decades that it can’t be that simple. For one, antidepressant drugs change the brain’s neurotransmitter levels immediately, yet depression doesn’t lift for several weeks, a delay that could be potentially deadly.
Another theory is that depression is caused not by neurotransmitter problems per se, but by damage to brain cells themselves in key regions critical to controlling mood. This idea fits nicely with evidence that stress can cause depression, since high levels of stress hormones can cause an overrelease of a neurotransmitter called glutamate, which damages cells and affects exactly the same suspected areas. More support for this theory comes from the fact that all known antidepressants increase cell growth in these areas too, providing an alternate explanation for their therapeutic results.
http://healthland.time.com/2012/10/05/ketamine-for-depression-the-most-important-advance-in-field-in-50-years/
UTAH BOY'S LETTER: 'GROWN-UPS KILLED MY KITTY'
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- An 8-year-old Utah boy wrote a letter to his local newspaper after an animal shelter worker failed to write a note to save his cat from being euthanized. "Yesterday grown-ups killed my kitty, my best friend, when they weren't supposed to," he said.
The letter appeared in The Herald Journal, of Logan, on Thursday. By Friday, it had received the fourth-most comments on the newspaper's website - behind three letters about Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney.
Some berated the shelter for failing to keep the cat safe. Others criticized the family for letting the cat outside, failing to have it on a leash or not looking for the cat at the shelter sooner. Still others faulted the neighbors who had trapped the cat and denied having seen it when asked.
But the boy, Rayden Sazama, just wanted to share his love of his cat, Toothless.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_KITTY_KILLED_CHILDS_LETTER?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2012-10-05-20-14-07
Venezuela election result set to upset global oil politics
According to studies, Venezuela has overtaken Saudi Arabia to become number one in the world for proven oil reserves, largely thanks to the heavy crude found in this vast alluvial plain.
Whether this multi-trillion dollar asset is controlled by Hugo Chávez or the opposition challenger, Henrique Capriles, will influence which countries and companies are given the priority to exploit them and how much drivers around the world pay at the pump. According to a report this year by BP, Venezuela has reserves of 296.5bn barrels, about 10% more than Saudi Arabia and 18% of the global total. At the country's current levels of production, this would last about 100 years.
If Chávez wins – as most polls suggest – he has promised to ramp up production and reduce his country's dependence on the US market by doubling crude exports to Asia. To further this goal, Venezuela plans to build a pipeline through Colombia to the Pacific which would reduce costs and transport times to China and other Asian markets.
Capriles, who has mounted a strong challenge, says he would fire the oil minister, Rafael Ramírez, and rethink how crude is extracted and used. Until now Russian and Chinese companies have struck the biggest deals for future exploitation.
"We have to revise every deal. I think they are agreements that are not functioning," he said. During the campaign, he has also said he would halt subsidised oil shipments to Cuba, Belarus, Nicaragua and Syria. Critics say he is a stalking horse for US interests.
http://m.guardiannews.com/world/2012/oct/06/venezuela-election-result-oil-politics?cat=world&type=article
Study: Number Of Gay And Bisexual TV Characters At Highest-Ever Level
NEW YORK (AP) — The number of gay and bisexual characters on scripted broadcast network TV is at its highest-ever level in the season ahead, according to the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. The total on cable television is also going up.
ABC has the highest amount, with 10 out of 194, or 5.2 percent, of their regular characters identified as LGBT.
After leading last year, Fox ranks second with six LGBT characters out of 118 total series regulars, or 5.1 percent.
CBS was saluted as much improved, with four out of 142 LGBT series regulars, or 2.8 percent, up from 0.7 percent last year. Among CBS’s new fall series is “Partners,” a comedy about two childhood friends and business partners, one of whom is gay and in a relationship. The network’s lineup represents “an authentic and conscious effort by CBS to improve its diversity,” the study said.
http://washington.cbslocal.com/2012/10/05/study-number-of-gay-and-bisexual-tv-characters-at-highest-ever-level/
Sounds promising.
Congress to probe security flaws for Libya diplomats
Lt. Col. Wood has told CBS News and congressional investigators that his 16-member team and a six-member State Department elite force called a Mobile Security Deployment team left Libya in August, just one month before the Benghazi assault. Wood says that's despite the fact that US officials in Libya wanted security increased, not decreased.
Wood says he met daily with Stevens and that security was a constant challenge. There were 13 threats or attacks on western diplomats and officials in Libya in the six months leading up to the September 11 attack.
A senior State Department official told CBS News that half of the 13 incidents before September 11 were fairly minor or routine in nature, and that the Benghazi attack was so lethal and overwhelming, that a diplomatic post would not be able to repel it.
Wood, whose team arrived in February, says he and fellow security officials were very worried about the chaos on the ground. He says they tried to communicate the danger to State Department officials in Washington, D.C., but that the officials denied requests to enhance security.
http://m.cbsnews.com/fullstory.rbml?catid=57527150&feed_id=29&videofeed=null
Tom Friedman on the debate...
The first, and the most dangerous threat to Obama’s re-election, is a critical mass of voters saying this: “Barack Obama, nice man, good father, great that we finally elected an African-American. He tried hard. But you know what? I just want to try something new, even if I don’t know it will work.”
That sentiment is deadly for Obama. As long as Romney didn’t seem like a credible alternative, Obama kept it at bay, even though the economy has stagnated. But Romney reawakened that mood by the confident and crisp way he talked about the mechanics of how jobs are created — through start-ups, small businesses and entrepreneurship — and the catalytic power of markets. His presentation crackled with a freshness and a sense of possibility that was completely missing in Obama’s monotone discussion of health care, deficits and government programs. And where Obama had a chance to talk about how his own green jobs initiative has actually spurred all kinds of innovations and start-ups, he whiffed. (As some have noted, it is too bad the debate rules didn’t allow him to phone a friend.)
I confess, spending time with inventors, social entrepreneurs and people who start companies really floats my boat — and I am not alone. If there has been one consistent weakness to this president’s public messaging, it is that it is often lacking in any excitement about innovation and entrepreneurship — the real drivers of our economy. In recent years, all net new jobs in America have come from start-ups.
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Your closing statement was awful: If you re-elect me, I will “fight every single day on behalf of the American people and the middle class.” That’s a given! What great inspiring journey are you going to take the whole country on to invent the future and spark more good jobs?
The other Obama weakness exploited by Romney was the country’s political paralysis. Obama is right — most of that gridlock was orchestrated by the Republicans to make him fail. But the fact is, a lot of Americans today look at our politicians and feel as though we’re the children of permanently divorcing parents — and they are sick of it. There is a longing to see our politicians working together again. So when Romney spoke about how he met with Democrats once a week as Massachusetts governor to get stuff done, that surely touched a hopeful chord with some voters. Obama needs to stress that he, from his side, aspires to restore bipartisanship and has a plan to overcome paralysis and pull the country together in a second term.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/opinion/sunday/friedman-can-i-phone-a-friend.html?_r=0
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