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Technology spoils people’s whims. It tends to cater to every human’s caprices. It feeds on the people’s undying thirst for easy, instant, and convenient. More often than not, it also causes them a lot of trouble—financial trouble through credit card debt—that is.

Credit Card convenience vs. Credit Card debt

We often see people pull out “plastic” to pay for everything they need. Why not? When all it takes is a quick swipe of the card through a little electronic box and a signature then, everything’s okay. You go home happy, content, and almost worry-free. On the other hand, not every one of these people realize that the convenience of using credit cards can lead to a false feeling of financial security. And this realization will strike them as soon as the bills arrive.

In fact, studies show that credit card debt and personal bankruptcies have increases bank profits to the highest level in the last five years. It only shows that more and more credit card holders were unable to manage their finances that lead to credit card debt. If you are a cardholder and having some credit card debt troubles at this early stage, it’ now time to think over the possible outcomes of this minor glitch so that a more serious problem with credit card debt would cease to arise.
Credit card gives people the feeling of invincibility. And it also gives them tons of uncertainty about their financial management capability when they encounter problems with their credit card debt. Although it is true that that credit cards solve financial matters especially when it comes to safety and convenience, credit cards also creates hassle especially when the person using it doesn’t know what you he or she’s getting into.

Indeed, paying off credit card debt may take a long time especially if the person has high interest rates. But, it doesn’t mean that you can do nothing about efficient management of credit card debt. When you find yourself overwhelmed with credit card debt, don’t fall into a pit of depression. You can get through it with discipline and a change in spending patterns. Start eliminating problems with credit card debt by getting tips and techniques on how to pay off your balances easier, how to consolidate of frequently encountered problems, look for free debt consultation agencies that can help you, and try—inch by inch—to rediscover ways on how you can regain your financial freedom by reducing you credit card debt.

The power to eliminate credit card debt

People who are having problems managing their credit card debt or those who are near in bankruptcy often don’t realize that the power to eliminate their credit card debt troubles totally is in their hands. Today, more and more Americans need credit card debt help badly. The main problem is that these families are having difficult times paying high interest for credit card debt. And instead of lifting the burden of credit card debt, more people are paying much in interest every month than that of the actual expenditure.

There are actually more lawful and moral ways to zero-out thousands of dollars in credit card debts. And if you only take the time to research and know your rights and how bankruptcy laws have changed, you will discover that there are valuable facts to eliminate credit card debt. Actually, the possibility of reducing or eliminating the high interest credit card debt is now more possible when a person takes action to get his or her finances back on track.

Apart from knowing your weapon in terminating credit card debt, it is very important that you develop a sense of control and perseverance first. Since credit card debt elimination process requires organization, clarity, and commitment to your own growth, it is a must that you are ready for the responsibility and to stand free and independent.

For those people who consider having a credit card indispensable but afraid of getting one because of the possibility of credit card debt nightmare, you must remember that credit card can be a powerful tool in managing your finances but there will always be glitches when not used properly. Of course, there are countless reasons why you should and shouldn’t get one depending on your needs. Whether you decide to get one or not, managing finances it still takes a sense of good budgeting, willingness to change spending habits, and the humility to avail low interest consolidation loans when you are already burdened by too much credit card debt.

Al-Qaeda still aims to strike inside the United States but home-grown or unaffiliated extremists now “pose an equally serious threat,” FBI chief Robert Mueller warned US lawmakers Thursday.
“Al Qaeda and its affiliates are still committed to striking us in the United States,” Mueller told a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee, pointing to plots to bomb New York City subways and the failed Christmas airline attack.

“Home-grown and lone-wolf extremists pose an equally serious threat,” the Federal Bureau of Investigation director said, citing the shootings at the sprawling Fort Hood army base in Texas.

Experts have warned that a “lone wolf” — an extremist acting alone, without connections to an established network like Al-Qaeda — may be the most difficult threat for authorities to thwart.

“We have also seen US-born extremists plotting to commit terrorism overseas,” such as Mumbai attacks planner David Headley, the US-born son of a former Pakistani diplomat and American woman, said Mueller.

“These terrorist threats are diverse, far-reaching and ever-changing, and to combat these threats, the FBI must sustain our overseas contingency operations and engage our intelligence and law enforcement partners both here at home and abroad,” he said.

Satire and ridicule can help win the fight against Al-Qaeda by stripping it of its glamour and mystique, a team of British researchers argue in a report released in London and in comments to AFP.

Beating the Islamist movement is as much about winning the battle of ideas and undermining Al-Qaeda’s counter-culture cachet as it is about conventional anti-terrorism operations, said the report.

“Terrorism must be defeated through the deliberate ‘toxification’ of the al-Qaeda brand; not by making it seem dangerous, but by exposing it as dumb,” Jamie Bartlett, one of the report’s authors, told AFP.

“Al-Qaeda has to be ridiculed as the equivalent of a middle-aged dad at a school disco: enthusiastic, incompetent and excruciatingly uncool.”

Bartlett, together with Jonathan Birdwell and Michael King, published “The edge of violence, a radical approach of extremism” on the website of the London-based think tank Demos on Friday.

The report summarised two years of work in Britain, Canada, Denmark, France and the Netherlands, which included interviews with 58 people convicted of terror-related offences and with 20 radical, but non-violent Muslims.

Researchers also interviewed 70 Muslims in Canada and 75 local and national experts.

“An increasingly important part of Al-Qaedas appeal in the West is its dangerous, romantic and counter-cultural characteristics,” said an executive summary of the report.

“Young Muslims are drawn, like young people throughout the ages, to excitement, rebellion and a desire to be cool,” Bartlett, who heads up the extremism and violence department at Demos, told AFP.

“But like every anti-establishment movement before it, Al-Qaeda has become cool, with Mr bin Laden cast as the new Che,” he added.

One could not deny that ideology was important to some of Al-Qaeda terrorists, he said.

“But there is a blind spot that people don’t quite see: there is another side for some people which is the call, the idea of adventure.

“You can understand: it’s quite exciting if you are from a rundown banlieue in Lyon or wherever, to go overseas, travel, see the world, get to shoot a gun. It’s not surprising that some young men would be drawn to that.

“This is true of young men the world over: whether it’s in Islam, in football hooliganism or in gangs.”

So while it was important for the police and intelligence agencies to continue their battle against Al-Qaeda, other tactics also had an important role to play.

Part of the battle was to strip the movement of its glamour and mystique, said the report.

Messages “from a range of organisations, should stress that most Al-Qaeda-inspired terrorists are in fact incompetent, narcissistic, irreligious.”

The idea was to demystify terrorist lives and deaths, said Bartlett.

“The average day in the life of an Islamic extremist is similar to that of a petty criminal: tedious, lonely and punctuated by fear.”

Satire was another powerful tool, the report added, noting that it had been used effectively against both the Ku Klux Klan and the British Fascist party in the 1930s.

Satire, however, was not a job for the authorities, but for others in society, it added.

Fighting Al-Qaeda was not about preventing angry young Muslims from rebelling, but about finding ways to channel a natural sense of subversion and radicalism into non-violent areas, the report argued.

It also recommended a liberal approach to fighting Al-Qaeda’s ideology, exposing it to debate rather than suppressing it, but being sure to provide effective counter-arguments.

“The threat of violent radicalisation can never be solved or completely neutralised; it can only be managed,” the report warned.

“Governments must focus on the things it can realistically change, while the lead role must be played by society — individuals, groups, organisations and communities.”

MEXICO CITY (AFP) – – Almost 23,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence in Mexico since the launch of a government crackdown on drug gangs at the end of 2006, a parliamentary source has said.

The new figure of 22,743 deaths was given to lawmakers on Monday during a congressional debate on the controversial use of the army in Mexico’s battle against its powerful drug gangs, the source said, declining to be named.

It was a rise of more than 7,000 compared with previous official estimates, and showed 3,365 murders between January and March this year, they added.

Interior Minister Fernando Gomez Montt confirmed in a news conference on Tuesday that new figures had been passed on to lawmakers without giving further details.

The worst-hit regions were in northern areas near the 2,000-mile (3,200-kilometer) border with the United States, which lie on key drug trafficking routes into the lucrative US market, the source said.

Violence has spiked since Mexican President Felipe Calderon launched a military crackdown on organized crime, involving tens of thousands of troops, when he took office after disputed elections at the end of 2006.

A LETTER from a first-class passenger on board the Titanic fetched £55,000 ($84,400) at auction.

The piece was penned by Adolphe Saalfeld, on three sides of stationery from the doomed vessel, to his “wifey”, Gertrude, still home in Britain.

His words give a rare glimpse into day-to-day life on the maiden voyage of the Titanic, which sank on April 15, 1912 with the loss of 1517 lives after hitting an iceberg.

The letter was one of 350 lots of White Star Line memorabilia sold yesterday by auctioneer Henry Aldridge and Son, in Devizes, Wiltshire, Sky news said.

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The letter, composed five days before the disaster, was sold to an unidentified museum in Britain, which has yet to formally announce its purchase.

Explaining the appeal of the artifact, Andrew Aldridge said: “The content is superb. It gives a real first person perspective of what life was like onboard, through the eyes of a first-class passenger, right down to the food, the size of the cabin and the decoration.”

While other letters exist, this is the best example of its kind due to the depth of its detail, he explained.

The letter tells of Mr Saalfeld’s approval of a “luncheon” featuring soup, fillet of plaice, a loin chop with cauliflower and fried potatoes, Apple Manhattan and Rocquefort cheese, “washed down with a large Spaten beer iced”.

A partial transcript of the letter, released by the auctioneer reads: “After leaving (Southampton) at noon we had quite a little excitement, as the tremendous suction of our steamer made all the hawsers of the SS New York snap as we passed her and she drifted on to our boat, a collision being averted by our stopping & our tugs coming to the rescue of the ‘New York’.

“The weather is calm and fine, the sky overcast. There are only 370 First Class passengers. So far the boat does not move and goes very steadily. It is not nice to travel alone and leave you behind. I think you will have to come next time.”

Mr Saalfeld, a German-born businessman who was en route to New York hoping to sell perfume concentrates, apparently name-dropped to good effect when it came to procuring a larger table at dinner.

“The name of my friend, the White Star manager in London, works wonders and I have a small table for two to myself. I made a very good dinner and had two cigars in the smoke room and shall now go to bed as I am tired. But for a slight vibration, you would not know that you are at sea.”

Mr Saalfeld was apparently in the smoking parlour at the time of the collision and survived the sinking, having clambered into Lifeboat No.3.

He later said there was sufficient time to save all on board – if enough lifeboats had been carried.

Mr Saalfeld died in 1926 at Kew Gardens and is buried in London’s Golders Green cemetery.

US President Barack Obama has cancelled plans to travel to Poland for the funeral of President Lech Kaczynski.

A White House statement today cited hazardous flying conditions posed by the ash cloud from the erupting volcano in Iceland.

The cloud has forced huge portions of European airspace to be closed. The fear is that microscopic particles of highly abrasive ash could endanger passengers by causing aircraft engines to fail.

Mr Obama was to leave Washington tonight for Sunday’s state funeral of Kaczynski in Krakow, Poland. The Polish president, his wife and 94 others died in a plane crash last Saturday in western Russia.

From the FDIC: TD Bank, National Association, Wilmington, Delaware, Acquires All the Deposits of Three Florida Institutions
TD Bank, National Association (N.A.), Wilmington, Delaware, acquired the banking operations, including all the deposits, of three Florida-based institutions. … AmericanFirst Bank, Clermont; First Federal Bank of North Florida, Palatka; and Riverside National Bank of Florida, Fort Pierce
…
As of December 31, 2009, AmericanFirst Bank had total assets of $90.5 million and total deposits of $81.9 million; First Federal Bank of North Florida had total assets of $393.3 million and total deposits of $324.2 million; and Riverside National Bank of Florida had total assets of $3.42 billion and total deposits of $2.76 billion.
…
The FDIC estimates that the cost to the Deposit Insurance Fund (DIF) for AmericanFirst Bank will be $10.5 million; for First Federal Bank of North Florida, $6.0 million; and for Riverside National Bank of Florida, 491.8 million.
…
These were the 44th, 45th, and 46th banks to fail in the nation this year, and the seventh, eighth, and ninth banks to close in Florida. Prior to these failures, the last bank closed in the state was Key West Bank, Key West, on March 26, 2010.
From the FDIC: People’s United Bank, Bridgeport, Connecticut, Assumes All of the Deposits of Butler Bank, Lowell, Massachusetts
As of December 31, 2009, Butler Bank had approximately $268.0 million in total assets and $233.2 million in total deposits.
…
The FDIC estimates that the cost to the Deposit Insurance Fund (DIF) will be $22.9 million. …. Butler Bank is the 47th FDIC-insured institution to fail in the nation this year, and the first in Massachusetts. The last FDIC-insured institution closed in the state was Ludlow Savings Bank, Ludlow, October 21, 1994.
That makes 5 today.

THE majority of Australians do not believe that fast food chains are making a genuine attempt to promote healthy eating habits with their healthier menu choices, a new poll shows.

The Crosby/Textor poll of 800 people across Australia found that only 24 per cent of adults thought the healthy alternatives were a genuine attempt by fast food outlets to improve customers’ eating habits.

“The results show that people are increasingly looking for proof that fast food corporations have changed,” said joint managing director of Crosby/Textor Mark Textor.

“It takes much more these days to convince them that after decades of business as usual, fast food makers really have moved on to reflect community concern about what we and our children are eating.”

The same poll found that 40 per cent of 18-34 year olds admitted to eating unhealthy takeaway foods in the past week, compared to just 24 per cent for the adult population as a whole.

News from Australia:

PARENTS are sending girls as young as nine to have painful beauty treatments.

Beauticians say that young children are being brought into salons by parents to undergo painful hair removal treatments.

NSW Community Services Minister Linda Burney criticised the paractice, and although she stopped short of calling it abuse, she said that mothers should not force their daughters to mature too quickly.

“Most people would be pretty aghast that girls as young as nine would feel that they need to have their legs waxed,” Ms Burney said.

“It raises the broader issue of children growing up too quickly and brings up the issue of sexualisation of children. Children should be allowed to be children and not feel they need to emulate what they see in gossip magazines and the advertising industry.”

She warned that the sexualisation of young girls through such beauty treatments could lead to depression, anxiety and eating disorders.

Parents needed to use common sense in deciding when the right time was to allow their child to wax, but there was also an onus on the beauty industry, although regulation was not the answer, she said.

“At the end of the day, it is really on the proprietor to make a particular decision about whether they will allow that client in the salon,” Ms Burney said.

Bullied

Ms Burney said that there may be exceptional circumstances, for example, if a child was being teased or bullied because they were particularly hairy.

Child sexualisation expert and humanities and social science lecturer at Charles Sturt University, Emma Rush, said she was “disturbed” parents were taking young children to have the procedure.

“It might seem like a nice thing to do for a little girl, but not at that age. Mid-teens, sure. Children aged nine or younger have not got the cognitive (capacity). They don’t have the need for it. There is the question of whether they are ready to cope with the attention that can attract,” Dr Rush said.

She said girls in primary schools were now exhibiting depression, anxiety and eating disorders, which had all been strongly linked to sexualisation.

“Parents also need to think about the message that this is sending to their children,” she said.

“It is very limiting for a child how much focus there is on looks.”

She said children should never be pressured to undergo such beauty treatments and discouraged from starting them until at least 14.