Obama Has 4 Days to Stop Putin..

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Sanctions for Russia, Obama says

Now that Crimea has “voted,” the Obama administration has unveiled sanctions against Russian and Crimean leaders who are linked to what the West is calling Russia’s invasion and subversion in Crimea. But with a fragile ceasefire set to expire by Friday, the sanctions are unlikely to work in time to head off a conflict.

There are signs that the short-term measures, which include asset freezes and visa bans for Russian government officials and business leaders, will not be biting enough to really put pressure on Putin and his friends.
According to one independent analysis being studied by the Kremlin and reviewed by The Daily Beast, such measures could be a drag on the Russian economy over time and an embarrassment for the Russian government, but would only be an “inconvenience” for the Russian economy in the near term. More drastic measures would include going after Russia’s ability to interact in global financial markets, which the analysis calls “disruptive,” and restrictions on Russian energy exports or trade sanctions, which the analysis says would be “catastrophic.”

The analysis by Macro-Advisory, an investment firm operating in Russia, predicts that the West, especially European countries, will not move to impose “disruptive” or “catastrophic” sanctions on Russia until Putin crosses another red line, such as the outright invasion of Ukraine.

“The key risk [for Russia] is Stage 3, i.e. a ban or restrictions on Russia’s interaction in global financial markets and/or any selected restrictions on trade or investment with Russia,” the report stated. “Investors assume that Stage 4 [catastrophic] sanctions are not yet on the agenda simply because these would also have a negative contagion to several EU countries, and many high-profile companies, as well as indirectly on the global economy.”

President Barack Obama pauses while speaking about Ukraine, Monday, March 17, 2014, in the James Bra …

Meanwhile, the crisis in Crimea continued to unfold Sunday, when a reported 95.5 percent of voters opted in a near-choiceless referendum to leave Ukraine and join Russia. President Obama called Vladimir Putin shortly after the results were announced to reiterate that vote would never be recognized by the United States and the international community. It was a violation of the Ukrainian constitution, Obama added, made under duress of military intervention.

“He emphasized that Russia’s actions were in violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and that, in coordination with our European partners, we are prepared to impose additional costs on Russia for its actions,” a White House read-out of the call said.
The Obama administration's plan to impose those additional costs was set last week. Secretary of State John Kerry revealed, perhaps accidentally, that the U.S. had no intention of waiting for the results of the Crimean referendum and was planning a “very series of serious steps on Monday” against Russia.

Also on Sunday, the Ukrainian government announced that it had struck a truce with the Crimean government and the Russian foreign ministry (which still doesn’t acknowledge that Russian troops have taken over Crimea) that will avoid attacks on Ukrainian bases inside Crimea until March 21. A leaked document reported to spell out the Russian position on Ukraine sets terms the West is not likely to accept as an offer to stave off war

Pro-Russian people celebrate in the central square in Sevastopol, Ukraine, late Sunday, March 16, 20 …

A senior State Department official said this weekend that the administration is not predicting that the coming sanctions will be enough to change Putin’s calculus on Crimea and reverse course the

“I would simply say that there have already been significant costs.  Just take a look at what’s happening to the Russian stock market.  Look at what’s happening to the Russian ruble,” the official said. “So as both – as the United States, Canada, the European Union, others exact further costs, we’ll just have to see what cost-benefit analysis President Putin makes.”

The administration is also bracing for Russian retaliation to the limited sanctions being rolled out Monday. Michael McFaul, who served until last month as U.S. ambassador to Russia, said he expected the Obama administration to announce sanctions against Russian officials in the coming days and that the Kremlin would respond--as they have done in the past--with a sanctions and travel ban list of their own. "They will have their own list and their own people they will sanction in terms of travel and assets in Russia," the former ambassador said "I fear someone like me could be on that list." s

McFaul as ambassador was demonized by Russian controlled media and harassed by the country's intelligence service. His private schedule as ambassador in the past would be shared with Russian media, who would ambush him at public events. In more ominous moves, anonymous videos appeared on the internet accusing McFaul of being a child molester. Because of his work on civil society, Russian hardliners have portrayed him as an agent of influence seeking regime change in Moscow. 

Last year, in response to the U.S. creation of the Magnistky list, a list of Russian human rights violators subject to sanctions, Russia created its own list of Americans banned from traveling to Russia. The list included Bush administration officials including John Yoo, a former US Justice Department official, David Addington, the chief of staff for former vice-president Dick Cheney, and two former commanders of Guantanamo Bay.

Toby Gati, the White House senior director for Russia during the Bush administration, said that broad attacks on the Russian economy are not practical but well crafted, targeted sanctions against Russian elites can  have the effecting of placing pressure on Putin if implemented smartly.

“Remember this, unless we are coordinated with the Europeans, the Russians are going to get missed signals,” she said. “The question is how do we want to hurt them. You want to isolate them, you want to make it more difficult for the people who have been getting a free ride on the Western economic system.”

Wastewater Injection Triggered Oklahoma's Earthquake Cascade...

One of Oklahoma's biggest man-made earthquakes, caused by fracking-linked wastewater injection, triggered an earthquake cascade that led to the damaging magnitude-5.7 Prague quake that struck on Nov. 6, 2011, a new study confirms.

The findings suggest that even small man-made earthquakes, such as those of just a magnitude 1 or magnitude 2, can trigger damaging quakes, said study co-author Elizabeth Cochran, a seismologist with the U.S. Geological Survey.

"Even if wastewater injection only directly affects a low-hazard fault, those smaller events could trigger an event on a larger fault nearby," she told Live Science.

The Prague earthquake was the largest of thousands of quakes that rattled Oklahoma in late 2011. Three were magnitude-5 or stronger. The 2011 quakes struck along the Wilzetta fault, a fault zone near Prague. Earthquakes break faults like a boat plowing through thick ice — the fault zips open as the earthquake ruptures the fault, and then seals itself shut behind. Each of the three biggest quakes tore apart a different part of the Wilzetta fault, the researchers said. [Image Gallery: Deadly Earthquakes]
Triggered foreshock

The magnitude-5.7 earthquake near Prague was preceded by a 5.0 quake that hit a day earlier, on Nov. 5. This "foreshock" occurred near an active wastewater disposal well. The wastewater injection triggered the Nov. 5 earthquake, researchers concluded in a study published in March 2013 in the journal Geology. However, the Nov. 6 earthquake was farther from the wells.

"Just because two earthquakes occur close to each other in time and space doesn't necessarily mean they are related," said Cochran, who also co-authored the 2013 Geology study. "We wanted to look one step further and determine whether the stress change from the foreshock actually pushed the main shock rupture plane [the fault] to failure."

Earthquakes linked with fracking are rarely triggered by the actual oil-and-gas extraction. Rather, these quakes are caused by fluid disposal in deep wells. Fracking, short for hydraulic fracturing, involves injecting water, sand and chemicals into the Earth to crack open rock and remove oil and gas. The millions of gallons of waste fluids are usually pumped back into the Earth via deep "wastewater injection wells." The wastewater can lubricate or jack open fractures and faults, triggering earthquakes.

Fault primed

In the new study, the researchers modeled the stress added to the Wilzetta fault by the Nov. 5 earthquake (the foreshock). The findings suggest that the first earthquake primed the fault for another, larger earthquake, which, in this case, hit the next day. The study was published March 7 in the Journal of Geophysical Research.

"When you have an earthquake, the stress goes up in some places and down in other places," Cochran said. "We determined that the mainshock [the Nov. 6 Prague earthquake] occurred in an area that had an increase in stress."

The boom in fracking in the central United States has paralleled an uptick in seismicity, with moderate-size earthquakes increasing in Colorado, Texas, Oklahoma, Ohio and Arkansas. The number of quakes in the central United States has jumped 11-fold in the past 30 years, according to the March 2013 Geology study.

‘Nigeria ATMs are disease dispensers’. Real talk.

In Nigeria today, there are over 12,000 ATMs and this number is going to increase to over 20,000 in a few years time. The banks are desperately deploying ATMs all over the major cities, towns, villages, schools, hospitals. These ATMs are deployed with one of the most of important service, which is to dispense cash to customers whenever the customers want cash as
long the customer has the fund available in his or her account.
A low performing ATM is an ATM without cash. Most banks have deployed their ATMs without proper maintenance structure. These include maintaining the technical, aesthetic, the hygiene of the ATMs and the safety of their customers. Some ATMs are found to be worse than public toilets. There was a new study carried on ATMs in USA that found that there are more dangerous disease-causing germs and bacteria on ATMs than that found in Public latrines. If the same study is carried out here in Nigeria, these disease dispensers called ATMs in Nigeria would be far worse.
In situations where the branches are left with the responsibility of maintaining especially hygiene or aesthetics of the ATMs using existing branch cleaners, most branches do not bother about the
aesthetics or the customer as long there is cash available from the ATMs.
The bank should be thinking their ATM is a branch on its own as a customer channel. Every
point of contact with a customer should be as important as the branch itself or head office. Some banks just ignore these simple customer ethics and forget about their most important self-service channel that represents the entire bank as a whole.
For example, take a drive along Awolowo Road at Ikoyi, Lagos, most of the ATMs are filthy, covered in dust and grime especially after a heavy rain. Some banks are not even aware of the importance of the ATMs; some use the security guard houses and use dirty rags to cover their ATMs. Our Nigeria weather and surrounding presents a real challenge since there is so much dust, grit, smug and smoke in the air.
Our culinary or diet, food, habits and clothing means that we wipe our hands on whatever we see. The Cash we even collect from the ATMs are in a bad state, that’s another topic entirely.
According to a famous Microbiologist in the USA who found out that ATMs are the 3rd dirtiest among 7 dirtiest public places. It is number 3 in the list that include Restaurant Menus, Door handles, Public toilets, Soap Dispensers, Lemon Wedges, and Grocery Carts or
trolley.
In some cities such as Port Harcourt, Kano, Abuja, the ATMs are so filthy, you will need to cover your nose to use the ATM. A couple of weeks ago, I visited an ATM along Ligali Ayorinde in Victoria Island, Lagos.
I slot in my ATM card, it took a while to read, then I tried pressing my PIN, but ATM keypads were sticky, I had to force down each key. Also, the visual screen was dusty; I had to bend so close to the visual screen to read the messages on the screen. The worst came, when I had to struggle to take my cards out of the card slot.
This is common all over Nigeria among the 18 banks with functional ATMs. The irony is that the ATM was within a large bank branch complex within a city centre, I can imagine the state of ATMs in places like Ile-Ife, Abaji, Ikenne, Ilesha or Kontagora. Customers visit these ATMs without the knowledge that each key on the keypad they touch contains a concoction of disease causing germs and bacteria, which they eventually pass around.
In the United Kingdom where studies have been conducted, Experts took swabs from the numeric keypads on a string of city centre ATMs around England that are used by thousands of shoppers every day.  They then took similar swabs from the seats of nearby public lavatories and compared the bacteria under microscopes in a lab. The swabs were left to grow overnight and samples from both locations were found to contain pseudomonads and bacillus, bacterias which are known to cause sickness and diarrhoea.
Dr Richard Hastings, a microbiologist for BioCote, a built-in, antibacterial product coating, said:  interested in comparing the levels of bacterial contamination between heavily-used ATM machines and public lavatories. ”We were surprised by our results because
the ATM machines were shown to be heavily contaminated with bacteria; to the
same level as nearby public lavatories”
Some Nigerian banks use branch cleaners without proper training, who cannot differentiate between general cleaning and specialized cleaning. These cleaners use the rags for cleaning toilets, tables and chairs to clean the ATMs. The branch cleaners over time, discolour the ATMs, add more germs and act as transfer agent for external germs into the bank and vice
versa.
CBN has ignored this area but have focus more on other important areas of compliance, e.g. cashless policy, more important than the customers itself. NAFDAC, SON, NMA and other bodies have also not initiated any study on these disease dispensers. Some banks focus more on the quarterly technical support from these ATMs supplier and spend billions of Naira.
The Technical Engineers only focus on the inside of the ATM and do not concern themselves with the beautification or hygiene of the ATM. As long as the software is up to date and any electro-mechanical part is tested and functioning, their business is completed. The Engineer gets signed off from the branch manager and then maybe comes back to the ATM in 3-6 months time to perform another update. Case Studies from ATM manufacturers such as NCR, WINCOR, King Teller and others, shows that regular cleaning is an effective way to optimize the life span of magnetic strip/PIN and CHIP card readers, and exteriors of ATMs. Most CEOs are
oblivious as to why the ATM Support budget is so high and is on increase every year, yet their ATM customer satisfaction survey tells a different story.
The common sense is not common anymore. A simple cleaning schedule using tested products will reduce their ATM Support spending drastically. In the UK, USA and other Modern economy, the cleaning of ATMs are outsourced. This ensures that a high quality of service is maintained throughout the contractual period.
Salim Faroyji  – An Entrepreneur lives in Oshodi, Lagos, (faroyji@yahoo.com)