Ashton Carter: U.S. to Begin 'Direct Action on the Ground' in Iraq, Syria

Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said Tuesday that the U.S. will begin "direct action on the ground" against ISIS forces in Iraq and Syria. "We won't hold back from supporting capable partners in opportunistic attacks against ISIL, or conducting such missions directly whether by strikes from the air or direct action on the ground," Carter said in testimony before the Senate Armed Services committee, using an alternative name for the militant group. Carter pointed to last week's rescue operation with Kurdish forces in northern Iraq to free hostages held by ISIS. Carter and Pentagon officials initially refused to characterize the rescue operation...

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NASA to Los Angeles: Get ready for 5.0 quake

((NEWSER) – NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is out with a study predicting that Los Angeles has a 99.9% chance of experiencing an earthquake with a magnitude of 5.0 or greater within the next two and a half years. "There’s enough energy stored to produce about a magnitude 6.1 to 6.3 earthquake" with an epicenter in La Habra, which was hit by a quake in 2014, says a JPL geophysicist, per CBS LA. Earthquake scientists used information from the La Habra quake to make their predictions, and found that there's a 35% chance of an earthquake with a magnitude of 6.0 or greater, the Los Angeles Daily News reports. But other experts aren't convinced;...

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Afghanistan and Pakistan Hit by Huge Earthquake

KABUL, Afghanistan — A deadly earthquake hit northern Afghanistan and Pakistan on Monday afternoon, registering a preliminary magnitude of 7.5 and causing heavy damage in one of the world’s most impoverished and war-torn regions. At least 122 people were reported killed, with 100 or more of them in Pakistan, and that figure seemed likely to rise significantly, officials in both countries said. The quake, which struck at 1:39 p.m., was centered in the Hindu Kush mountain range, about 28 miles southwest of the district of Jurm in Afghanistan and about 160 miles northeast of Kabul, the Afghan capital. The quake’s depth was reported at 132...

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Could you be a 'super-forecaster'?

Political forecasting is among the most vital roles played by the intelligence services: determining which country's government is most likely to collapse in the next few months, or whether a given nation has weapons of mass destruction that render them a threat. But what happens when there's no way to assess the quality of those forecasts – or the people making them? In 2004, the Butler Review on the events leading up to the 2003 Iraq invasion found that the British Government's decision to invade – based on the premise that Saddam Hussein had WMDs – was the result of a major intelligence failure. It is just one example of how the predictions...

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Why Debt and Money Created ‘Out of Thin Air’ Are Necessary, Not Evil

Paul Solman sets the record straight on how he explains economics to himself and to his readers, tackling three different questions about the Federal Reserve, pictured above. Photo courtesy of Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images. Paul Solman sets the record straight on how he explains economics to himself and to his readers, tackling three different questions about the Federal Reserve, pictured above. Photo courtesy of Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images. I am about to address three entirely reasonable questions concerning the Federal Reserve and its monetary policy. But first, let me make a general observation addressed to those...

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