SAR #14218

US foreign policy seems to be largely based on 'let's pretend'.

Conditional Conditions: If, as Obama claims, it is too early to send the effective Ebola drug to Africa. When will it be too late?
 
Simplifying The Equation: Global warming is driven by the amount of CO2 humans pour into the atmosphere. To reduce global warming we can reduce the amount of CO2 emitted. We can do this by cutting the amount of CO2 each person human emits, cutting the number of humans, or both. Both is most likely to work, least likely to happen.

Now It Can Be Told: Tokyo Electric Power Co. now says that all the fuel rods in reactor 3 at the Fukushima melted down, not the 60% as previously reported. The good news is that they only melted most of the way through the containment vessel. They think. Yet.

Dr. Livingston Presumes: The United States announced on Wednesday plans to spend $110 million a year over the next three to five years to help African nations develop peacekeeping forces that can be rapidly deployed to head off militant threats and other crises that endanger international profits from looting the continent.

Turning Purple: Putin, in response to the latest round of sanctions, has banned the import of all US foods and EU fruit and vegetables. If this doesn't work, he is going to have the entire Russian population hold their breath until the US gives in.

Pocket Change: BofA will pay $17.5 billion to gloss over the fraud they committed while causing the 2008 financial collapse, while the execs get to keep their bonuses and no one goes to jail. Just like Citigroup ($7bn) and JPMorgan/Chase ($13bn). Feel better now?

Vive la France: “Ensuring a woman’s right to control her fertility is fundamental to achieving gender equality.”

Blame It On The Whether: The Italian economy shrank 0.2% in the second quarter, after falling 0.1% in the first. So much for 'out of the woods'. Italy’s current level of production is 9.1% below that in September 2007. Italy is producing less today than it was in 2000. Unemployment in the eurozone stands at 12%, and German factory orders are dropping sharply. Economists believe this to be a temporary setback due to the weather. Or the Ukrainian situation. Mumble, mumble. 
 
Antiseptic: The federal government has stopped reporting incidents when hospitals make life-threatening errors, because... it was too hard for the public to understand the data?

PornO'Graph: The way forward?