We Are Awake

Until Chinese president Xi Jinping can stabilize the economy and liberalize domestic policy, China’s influence over the rest of the world is limited. What do the fluctuations in China’s capital market mean for the global economy? As can be seen in the recent   stock market slide , capital markets outside of China were impacted, but quickly rebounded. Make no mistake, whatever happens in China certainly ripples across the globe, but until such time as Chinese president Xi Jinping can stabilize the economy and liberalize domestic policy, China in actual terms will not become a true global power. China is the second largest economy in the world. It is pumping money into countries all over the globe and those investments come with strings attached. As China expands its foothold into Africa, Middle East, Australia and further into Asia, they may find that they will not be able to sustain that type of expansion if the economy at home is not stable. Xi Jinping is caught betw...

                                                       Alexander Litvinenko LONDON — The killers of former Russian agent Alexander Litvinenko may have harmed the health of thousands of Londoners as they trailed radioactive polonium-210 around the city, a lawyer for British police said Thursday. Richard Horwell told an inquiry into Litvinenko’s death that the killing — which police blame on two Russians directed by elements in the Kremlin — may have exposed “hundreds if not thousands of Londoners” to radioactive contamination. “We will never know how dangerous the exposure of polonium to the public at large will be and what long-term effects will be visited on Londoners,” Horwell said. Litvinenko, a KGB officer-turned-Kremlin critic who fled to Britain in 2000, died in 2006, three weeks after drinking tea laced with polonium-210 at a Lond...

At the center of one of the most controversial conspiracy theory lies the notorious Apollo 20 mission, along with the strange things it found on the far side of the Moon. In 1972, NASA shut down the Apollo Program. Budget cuts due to money being needed elsewhere and the public losing its interest was the official explanation. But not everyone was convinced this was the truth. Many conspiracy theorists became convinced the space program continued covertly and that Apollo 18 and 19 found evidence of extraterrestrial presence on the Moon, but Apollo 19 was lost due to a catastrophic collision. Despite running into problems as well, Apollo 20 succeeded in recovering alien technology as well as a humanoid female in suspended animation. In 2007, several videos were posted on YouTube by William Rutledge, a man claiming to have been one of the Apollo 20 astronauts. Initially, he gave few details regarding the controversial videos showing long-deserted structures on the Moon and an ...

A new self-filling water bottle has been invented that can not only serve as a nifty device for long bike tours and races, but could also offer a new method of fresh water collection in parts of the world where groundwater sources are hard to come by. Developed by industrial designer Kristof Retezar from Austria’s University of Applied Arts, the new device - called the ‘Fontus’ - works best in humid weather, which allows it to condense the moisture in the air into safe, fresh drinking water. Experiments have shown that under the right weather conditions, it can produce 0.5 Litres of water in just under an hour. Retezar explains how it works : In order to achieve condensation, one must cool hot, humid air down. The device has a small cooler installed in its centre called Peltier Element. This cooler is divided in two: When powered by electricity, the upper side cools down and the bottom side gets hot. The more you cool the hot side down, the colder the upper side will get. ...

After the Charleston killings, the confederate flag was removed from state grounds across South Carolina, and this weekend white supremacists will hold a protest rally. Cordelia Lynch meets members of the American National Socialist Movement. Video Below.

Video Below.

An ultrasonic microphone has been developed to help humans communicate in the manner bats and dolphins do through ultrasonic waves. The microphone has been built by scientists of University of California Berkeley physicists, who used graphene to build lightweight ultrasonic loudspeakers and microphones, enabling people to mimic and gauge the distance and speed of objects around them. "Sea mammals and bats use high-frequency sound for echolocation and communication, but humans just haven't fully exploited that before, in my opinion, because the technology has not been there," said researcher Alex Zettl. The study appears online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Speakers and microphones both use diaphragms, typically made of paper or plastic, that vibrate to produce or detect sound, respectively. The diaphragms in the new devices are graphene sheets a mere one atom thick that have the right combination of stiffness, strength and light we...

Even as the first version of its Internet-connected Google Glass didn’t quite take off with consumers and privacy advocates, Google's new   patent   filed at the US Patent and Trademark Office hints at a new technology, possibly incorporated in the Google’s next version of the smart glasses, that could give the wearer Terminator-like vision. The patent, formally titled "Self-Describing Three-Dimensional (3D) Object Recognition and Control Descriptors for Augmented Reality Interfaces", describes the technology that would allow users to receive information about objects they see through the smart glasses. Put simply, if you are wearing the Google Glass with the purported technology fitted inside, you will be able to receive information about things lying in front of your line of vision. From the working of a fax machine to a chair’s height or even the map of the room, the feature will show all the information using augmented reality. Although such a feat...

China has conducted an unexpected military mobility exercise, boarding a People's Liberation Army brigade from the Lanzhou military region on a high-speed train and sending them 300 miles to the western province Xinjiang, home to an insurgency fought between the state and ethnic Uyghur Muslim militants. The high-speed line to Xianjiang is the newest of six in the country, having opened in 2014. The need to move its army fast stems from the geographical enormity of the country and China's relations with neighboring states, of which there are 14. Ongoing border disputes with India, potentially unstable Myanmar to the south, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan to the west, and the country's border with North Korea explain China's striving to evaluate its military's performance in rapid movement, with sights set on the army being able to respond to various types of crises. For a country wit...

Shortly before the Greek crisis summit in Brussels, analysts told us that Greece with its geopolicatal location, IO's membership and southeastern Mediterranean's turmoil poses threat to the EU destabilization, impacting largely the Mediterranean nations. WASHINGTON — A Greek exit from the Eurozone, or Grexit, could set off destabilizing consequences for Europe, especially in its southern, Mediterranean tier because of Athens’ strategic position, experts told us. “Currently, it is safe to argue that Greece’s stability is probably as important to the United States and the European Union (EU) as [it was] in the Cold War years,” International Telematic University Professor of International Relations and European Integration Kyriakos Kouveliotis told Sputnik. Greece’s continuing crucial role is based on three “very important” factors, Kouveliotis said. The first, he said, was the geopolitical location of the...