The period of unprecedented American dominion over the world economy and political affairs that started during and after the Second World War has officially ended as German minister of finance has articulated yesterday. Other countries, especially those of European Union, recognized that they are on their own and must make the necessary changes to keep their economies afloat.

Canadian government also noticed the shift of power last year and started to make trade arrangements with various countries of the world in order to make Canadian economy more independent of their troubled neighbor.

This will bring tremendous changes to the global economical system. There will be more international regulations imposed both on the banks and on the stock market trade. The American dollar will be soon fully replaced by the euro as international currency and America will lose many privileges that she enjoyed up to this point in history.

The American people will have to learn to live within their means in order to ensure better future for their families and their country. For far too long they have lived in an illusion of wealth created by easy credit that seemed to have no limits, but now it is time to recognize the reality. I hope that the American public will make the statement by choosing for their new president a man who will be realistic and able to lead the country in a decisively new direction.

Their innate ability to find north is believed to be a relic from the days when their wild ancestors needed an accurate sense of direction to migrate across the plains of Africa, Asia and Europe.

Dr Sabine Begall and colleagues from the University of Duisburg-Essen looked at thousands of images of cattle on Google Earth in Britain, Ireland, India and the USA. They also studied 3,000 deer in the Czech Republic. The deer tended to face north when resting or grazing.

Although, in many cases, the images were not clear enough to determine which way the cattle were facing they were aligned on a north/south axis.

The scientists concluded that they were behaving in the same way as the deer.

Huge variations in the wind direction and sunlight in the areas where the beasts were found meant that the scientists were able to rule out those factors as being responsible for the direction they were facing.

“We conclude that the magnetic field is the only common and most likely factor responsible for the observed alignment,” the scientists wrote in an article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal.

It is already known that many species use the Earth’s magnetic field to navigate across the planet. Examples include migratory turtles, salmon, termites and birds.

Animals are thought to use their own internal magnets made of crystals of magnetite. Homing pigeons have a small amount of the substance on their beaks, which gives them their uncannily accurate powers of navigation.

So, when you hear that AIG has 1 trillion dollars worth of assets, you may wonder why they need a bailout and ask :“Why don't they just sell their own assets?” The key word when you are talking about assets is, liquid. The companies in crisis have illiquid assets. An illiquid asset is not readily saleable due to uncertainty about it's value or it lacks a market in which it can be traded. In other words, no one is going to buy mortgage company assets because the value is uncertain and there are not buyers for the troubled loans.

When a large company is on the verge of a failure that will have vast long term effects, the government views this as “too big to fail.” They will step in for a bailout in order to stop wide spread economic repercussions and panic that result in depressions. What the U.S government is proposing to do in the mortgage bailout will be the largest since the Great Depression. Some may view this government intervention as too far reaching. Others may see it as preservation of the economy. Either way it is happening and the best thing American citizens can do is arm themselves with knowledge.

Right now, President Bush has a 700 billion dollar bailout plan laid out for Congress to approve. Ironically, the plan is on three pieces of paper. The specific details are not being released, but Republicans and Democrats alike are ripping the plan apart. Mainly they are criticizing the plan for it's heavy emphasis on private sector intervention, the tremendous dollar amount, and the lack of check and balance system r/t who is getting this money and where it is going.

Democrats are concerned about the home owners behind these bad loans and are insisting that the plan help more borrowers stay in their homes. They also want a condition to the bailout that will put limits on executive compensation. Where as, Republicans seem more concerned with who, what, when, and where all this money will go. Some Senators are pushing for a committee to oversee where all this money goes, instead of giving the Secretary of Treasury full responsibility of 700 billion dollars. Regardless of the specific disagreements, one thing is agreed upon…..something has to be done now to prevent economic collapse. But, words are only as valuable as the action behind them. Each side is holding out for their specific interests, despite admitting the essentialness of expediency. What both parties seem to be forgetting is that a bailout's purpose is not to help the specific companies and especially not the customers of the companies. It is simply to prevent the specific parties from effecting the entire economy.

Lastly, I will give you my brief opinion on what I think should happen. The bail out is necessary to prevent worldwide economic turmoil. Normally, I say the government should not intervene when a business is in trouble. However, the wide spread results of what will happen if these businesses fail is a matter of national security . It should be regulated by a committee, not just one man. Allowing one man to dole out billions, is asking for disaster. It should be passed now, without any of the added bonuses that each party wants to stick into it. The bill should not include individual home owners. 95% of homeowners are paying their notes on time. Most of the 5% that are in trouble, are in a bind because they bought something that they couldn't pay for. I sympathize with their plight. Still, it is unfair to take tax dollars from the people who didn't buy what they needed or wanted, but rather what they could afford, to bail out people who bought beyond what they could afford. Personal responsibility is part of life. If someone bought a big screen TV, but then couldn't afford to buy food, would you buy them food….. or tell them to sell their big screen? So, if you can not afford a 500,000 dollar house, sell it and buy or rent what you can afford.

Reasons

First of all, when tragedy strikes there is usually more than just one reason. We need several reasons to be able cause a disaster. In a country like Finland events like this are a major disaster.

School violence in Finland has been very little compared to many other countries. We don't usually have police officers, metal-detactors or security guards to keep things in order. From my own experience (I quit school in 2005), all students and teachers knew each other very well. Due to small number of population school sizes are not gigantic. You can actually get to know almost every students - of course not necessarily in universities!

(False?) sense of security is one factor

It is easy to blame video and pc games for spreading violence. For an actual incident to happen, you need more than that. In normal hands a player of violent video games does not turn into a blood-thirsty psychopath. From this we can draw conclusion that mental problems of the youths is one key factor.

How are mental issues handled in Finland?

It should be noted that in Finland we have several possible risk factors which can cause mental disorders. Foreigners might believe it's all because of the long, cold winter - but that is hardly so. More like, lack of social activities, lack of a social network is a major problem. It is easy to log online and get in touch with radical youths.

From websites offering ideologies is possible to find a "role", "meaning" for a separated, individual existence. Feeding the idea of martyrdom. Also, many western muslim terrorists (yes, who were born and spent their whole lives in western countries) have been seperated from the society and lacking social networks which every youth needs.

Many parents have no idea what is going on in the online world. They have NO idea what kind of websites their kids are viewing. I can tell this also from my own experience. Parents are busy with work, paying their bills, getting food on the table. Is easy to forget sometimes to focus on the bigger issues.

It is easy to blame capitalism, but truth is that still few decades ago young people here communicated more with parents, grand-parents and relatives, families were more united, even marriages more lasting. Parents didn't spend much time outside of their homes. Meals were eaten together. Existed true and real communication. This is one key word here - communication. In a rarely populated country-like Finland-social network becomes highly important. People to talk with, share feelings with, to draw support from-yes, even receive much needed intimacy. We need girlfriends and boyfriends for everyone who needs such! Ones that will stick loyally to their mates, not just for the reason of FUN.

Young people need counsel, direction, identity - a purpose of living and a place in this world. Religion used to give such answers but has lost credibility, especially in Europe and countries like Finland, since the times of Darwin.

The role of authorities and health-care officials

In every school we have health-care officials. But how actively they are searching for individuals with risk behaviour? They are not. I could visit my school nurse once in a week, if I had a need - and there was no one else taking her time. That is passive. Person with problems must ACTIVELY seek for help. This is a problem, because it is not automatic at all.

What happens if or when someone seeks help?

In my town it takes 1-2 years for a person to get psychological treatment. So many patients are on the queue and not enough personel and resources to take care of their needs. We can blame the politicians and authorities for neglecting the citizen's needs. Of course, they consider themselves "innocent" in front of insane violence. But when thinking carefully enough, is easy to feel somewhat differently on this defense.

Health-care does cost - both for the patient and the community. And the community is not providing enough for this. Why it is so?

Financial difficulties

Still in the 1990s Finnish health-care was, undoubtebly, one of the best in the world. Effective, cheap and satisfactory - at least for the most patients. Really, what else could have been needed?

Sadly enough, Finland suffered a heavy economical suppression in 1990-1993. This was, in fact, the worst in any western European country after the Second World War. This was caused by the fall of the Soviet Union - back then the country's biggest trade partner. The Finnish people paid a heavy price for these financial mistakes of the ruling financial experts. Unemployment rate rose from 3.5% to 18%. Social-Economic structures changed for good.

For the Government it seemed "wise" to cut expenses - one easy way to do so was the health-care. Easiest was to cut expenses in the field of mental health and elderly people - people with not much "visible", physical wounds. Short thinking, really.

In addition, as Finland joined the European Union in 1995, taxation has been cut from around 49% to 37%. This, too, means cuts. At the moment Finnish state has a debt of some 50 billion euros. Compared to many other western countries - like Italy or Belgium - this is till not much, but for our politicians it is a shame. "We must cut our foreign debts". And this has been done, in a slow pace.

In reality, the situation in health-care is still far from perfect. Results we see in every day life. Unfortunately, sometimes even in such a radical form as the late school shootings. A tragedy.

Perhaps after one incident it could be considered merely as a coincidence, but after TWO incidents the messages starts to be clear: "Politicians, wake up!"

The Finnish nation needs politicians and authorities that TRULY, deeply care for the needs of the nation. That is the only true solution.

Each person is entitled to their own opinion, and should not be verbally bashed for it.

I do not believe that News Channels, Magazines, and other media should report false information, false accusations, or show biased opinions and partiality.

Many seem to be over stepping the laws of ‘Free Speech.’ I expect to see some near future lawsuits due to this.

I do not believe the Presidential Nominees should be speaking ill of one another or talking about one in a negative fashion - especially in the public eye.

What does that tell us, the public, when the person(s) who want to lead our Country can not even act mature?

Do we not teach our children to be nice to others and not to fight? Do we not teach them to not instigate, not speak ill of others, not start rumors and not lie, because it isn’t nice or good?

Starting rumors, lies, belittling the competition, and poking fun at the entire opposing party is not a way to get more votes. In reality, it just goes to show how immature some people can be.

Instilling good morals and values in our children can already be tough enough at times. We do not need the Government, nor the media, making it more difficult on us.

Our children see this type of behavior on a daily basis on television, in magazines, in schools, and in their communities. They see this behavior is also acceptable and not punishable.

And who will we have to thank when our hard work and good parenting skills have failed us in the long run? But, do you think they will accept the blame? No. They will place the blame on Nintendo games and rap/rock music.

Ventriloquists on the radio

Imagine if you will the bizarre image of ventriloquist Peter Brough marching into a radio station in the UK, in the 1950s complete with his puppet Archie Andrews, and setting up in a studio, ready for their performance. The bizarre, quaint, off-the-wall concept of delivering a ventriloquist act, with its purely visual humor, over the auditory medium of radio, clearly seemed like a good idea at the time – and no one ever picked up on it. Indeed the show picked up an impressive 15 million listeners.

Tell this to someone nowadays and you'll be met with a look of intense disbelief; but it's true. Thankfully the show eventually moved onto television, and just as well really, since paradoxes like ventriloquists performing on the radio run the risk of causing the universe to implode (along with traveling back in time and killing your father). In our series of unfortunate media moments, Archie Andrews' radio show kicks us off to a good start. Let us look at more media weirdness from across the decades.

Nudists and assault courses

In 2000, in celebration of World Naturist Day, Channel 5 and Yorkshire TV made the woeful decision to produce the UK's first ever naked game show; “Naked Jungle”. Keith Chegwin's career as a TV presenter was never quite the same after agreeing to present it. Thankfully it was a one-off edition, but nevertheless those who watched it claim mental scarring that may last their entire life time. The format of having all of the contestants, along with Chegwin himself, appearing entirely naked was supplemented in bad taste by its assault course format.

The contestants were all nudists and seemingly were also unfazed by this. Not so the general public, who were all quite upset by full frontal nudity, along with genitalia so suddenly and indecently being plonked onto their TV screens when before they could have relied on the TV stations to protect them from such debauch material. Needless to say it never happened again, and TV stations are nowadays back to previous levels of self censorship. The program and Chegwin were subsequently condemned in all the newspapers and in the House of Commons. Keith Chegwin has subsequently described his decision to present it as being the worst in his life.

Culture Secretary at the time said in the House of Commons: "We have noted in recent days a very considerable concern about some of the content on television, particularly in relation to Channel 5. Government cannot and should not, of course, directly intervene, but I believe that the broadcasters have a commercial and moral duty to take account of the views of the public and I urge them to do so." A Channel 5 spokesman told the press, “We're very surprised Keith Chegwin's private parts have generated so much interest.” Perhaps if Chegwin's private parts had remained private there would have been nothing to be surprised about.

Fair and balanced malicious gossip

Fox news; marching under the banner; “Real journalism, fair and balanced.” Rupert Murdoch has declared war on journalism, and the result is Fox News, a channel that is incapable of impartial news. While all news channels are colored by the prejudices of the countries in which they are based, Fox News takes prejudiced news to a whole new level by acting as the vehicle for one man's views.

Unlikely soap plots

The tortuously long running British soap opera, Coronation Street is no stranger to terrible plots, but managed to take the biscuit (no, the cake) for the most unlikely plot, ever, when over the course of a few years the same infant (Bethany Platt) was kidnapped on 3 different occasions, by 3 different people, all for 3 different reasons. Being abducted once in a lifetime is unlikely enough. What are the odds of that? How can viewers continue to suspend their sense of disbelief knowing this. Could it be that it's time to put this long running soap to bed, and out of its misery? Or perhaps it's part of a much wider plot arc where Bethany is revealed to have a birth mark in the shape of a 666, and will eventually bring death and destruction to the residents of Coronation Street. We can only hope and pray she does it soon.

Hollywood

There is nothing funnier than watching the Hollywood film and music studios only just getting into the swing of using one technology when suddenly it's replaced by another. After weeping blood laced tears over the lost profits from radio, and declaring theft and blue murder, and claiming that all the lost profits would stop music production, a deal was finally struck. Hollywood had only just started to relax after sorting that mess out when suddenly cassette tapes appeared, giving those at home the ability to record music from the radio and play it whenever they want.

Hollywood's British counterparts (the British Phonographic Industry (BPI)) took a hissy fit and came up with the immortal slogan: "Home Taping Is Killing Music" some time in the early 1980s. This British music industry trade group was terrified that the rise in cassette recorder popularity would mean that people would record music from the radio onto cassettes, thus causing a decline in record sales. The logo of a skull and crossbones formed from the silhouette of a cassette, followed by the words “And It's Illegal”. This logo became infamous and entered the public's imagination. Much parodied over the years, the best parody featured a sewing machine.

Unfortunately the home taping logo is copyrighted (surprise surprise), but this parody of it is better.

Though they were never terribly happy about them and tried to sue anything with a record button whenever the opportunity presented itself, Hollywood did eventually get used to tapes. They had only just begun to chill out a bit when CD Roms came crashing along giving the music industry a shiny new medium on which to sell music. For a change Hollywood was quite pleased with this develiopment, and for a time it was all good.

This bubble was promptly burst a few years later with two big developments. The first was cheap CD writers coming standard with “Multimedia PCs”, while the second was a format called MP3. As we should all know by now, living this side of the millennium, before MP3s a music track was about 50MB in size, too big to share in the era of 56k modems (imagine having to wait a month for a song to download). MP3s knocked music files down tenfold making them small enough to share. The apperance of single fee tarifs for internet access (previously it had been pay as you go, 3p per minute on average), made downloading music economically viable for the end users.

If the media industries panicked when tapes first appeared, they went crazy with the advent of MP3 downloading, “file sharing” and peer2peer networks. Rather than tackle the issue at hand and create legitimate services where users could easily access the music they wanted, the music industry romped all over the trust they had built up with the fans over the years by adding Digital Rights management (DRM) to CDs to try and stop file sharing. Invariably all DRM did was get in the way of legitimate customers who had actually bought the product, preventing them from using the tracks in their MP3 players and other such devices (that were just appearing at the time).

Hollywood's campaign of calling fans criminals turned the music consumers against them. CD sales dropped while downloads shot through the roof. Meanwhile they sued every file sharing site they could find, to get them shut down. This effectively decentralized the file sharing community, making it impossible for Hollywood to destroy. For every site or service they did manage to shut down, thousands more sprang up in its place.

Rather than act in a grown up manner and embrace the new medium of the Internet, Hollywood still tries to palm their problems off onto everyone else at the slightest mention of the words “file sharing”. They forced Microsoft into putting DRM into Vista, and are trying to force ISPs to police their networks and prevent (and prosecute) file sharers. In this battle, those who are using copyrighted content legitimately (under legal fair use for example) are often caught in the crossfire. Hollywood however is loosing the battle. Every time they invent a more perverted way of stopping users from using their own content in the name of preventing piracy; the anti-piracy measures are cracked within 24 hours, by the first 14 year old to run afoul of the DRM.

Nefarious News

Bloggers have apparently toppled the monopoly the large media companies had on 'the news'. Nowadays reporters from the large news networks are much more afraid of getting something wrong than they once were. In the old days, apparently, a reporter could send back a report and even if it wasn't quite correct, that became the accepted truth anyway, after all, there was no one to challenge it.

With the rise of blogging, the Internet, global information sources, with the slightest slip in facts and a hundred thousand voices can rise up in the midst of the blogsphere to complain about the woeful injustice inflicted upon the truth. Because of this, a leading expert once said that the BBC had lost the plot, claiming that Journalists used to be sure of themselves, but are now much more aware of the many different possible viewpoints – and that apparently made them nervous. Meanwhile the large networks world wide have been closing down as many of their international field offices as possible in order to keep the short sighted corporate bean counters happy. News networks would rather report on Britney Spears et all 95% or more of the time, because quite frankly, it's a lot cheaper than going out into the world and reporting the 'real' news.

Naked News

Saving the best for last, TV studios around the world are starting up Naked News slots, because clearly people can't be trusted to take an interest in what's happening in the world without coercion in the form of beautiful newsreaders stripping off as they deliver the news. Must have been started by those crazy Japanese TV channels! Is this Keith Chegwin's revenge?

Don't believe everything you read

We have all come to realize over the years that much of what we read in newspapers is not actually news. Some newspapers are nothing more than instruments used by political parties to shape the minds of citizens whose votes they seek at election time. Other newspapers are really just cheap celebrity rags that focus on stories that relate to shallow people in the public eye. There might be a war raging in Iraq or a hurricane causing havoc, but you will invariably find celebrities dominating the front pages while real news is consigned to ca few columns on the inside pages.

What might be presented as news is often no more than the personal opinions of either a columnist or of the editor. Some in the public eye have made the mistake of criticizing the press and opened up a can of worms for themselves as the newspaper seeks revenge by exposing any lurid details they can unearth.

Real news on the Internet

The Internet has taken the place of newspapers for some former readers who have had their fill of reading some of the nonsense printed in the name of news. Go online and you can find the facts of news items through genuine news agencies who focus on happenings rather than the people who might be involved, celebrity or not. Sure you will find as much celebrity tat on the Internet as you will in the newspapers but at least you have a greater choice when seeking news.

We have always been warned not to believe everything we read and a mild review of some of the "news stories" of the past decades just confirm that newspapers have long lost their identity as instruments that convey news. Too many have become celebrity rags that appeal more to shallow people who perhaps want to avoid hearing real news stories for one reason or another.

But with all that over I really do not care about the election that much anymore. Sure, I will go cast my vote for the nation's next leader but I really wouldn't like to hear anything else about it until then! Then the other side. This was really never that interest because I knew that the mudslinging is always played down on the “peaceful” republican side. So pretty much senator McCain wrapped up the nomination and trying to make himself less boring and old, named Gov. Palin of Alaska his V.P. Which was entertaining also but has also worn of for me. I am sick of this! I know the election is important but stop shoving this crap down our throats! We don't need a 24 hour strategist on every freaking new channel telling us stuff the we would have already known even if we were hermits! But I digress. Please consider this.