US income inequality at record high

BBC News

10 September 2013 Last updated at 15:06 ET

One street in St Louis, Missouri, has been known to residents as the "dividing line"

The income gap between the richest 1% of Americans and the other 99% widened to a record margin in 2012, according to an analysis of tax filings.

The top 1% of US earners collected 19.3% of household income, breaking a record previously set in 1927.
Income inequality in the US has been growing for almost three decades.

Overall, the pre-tax incomes of the top 1% of households rose 19.6% compared to a 1% increase for the rest of Americans.

And the top 10% of richest households represented just under half of all income in the year, according to the analysis.

Emmanuel Saez at the University of California, Berkeley, one of the economists who analysed the tax data, said the rise may have been in part because of sales of stock to avoid higher capital gains taxes in January.
Mr Saez wrote in an analysis that despite recent policy changes aiming at lessening income inequality, the measures were relatively small in comparison to "policy changes that took place coming out of the Great Depression".

"Therefore, it seems unlikely that US income concentration will fall much in the coming years."

How the American dream is changing

Income counted in the analysis includes wages, private pension payments, dividends and capital gains from the sale of stocks and other assets, but it does not include unemployment benefits or federal public pension benefits, known as Social Security.

While the crash of 2007-09 adversely affected top earners, benefits of rising corporate profits and stock prices since then have largely gone to the richest, according to the study.

Incomes among the richest fell more than 36% between 2007-09, compared with a decrease of 11.6% for the rest of Americans. But in the last three years, 95% of all income gains have gone to the richest 1%. The top 1% of American households had income above $394,000 (£250,000) last year. The top 10% had income exceeding $114,000.

Is Israel running America? Who benefits from the False Flag poison gas attack being used to initiated war with Syria?

We Americans have lost our country now to Israel. Israel dictates U.S. foreign policy. Israel promotes the wars with Israel's enemies using Americans as cannon fodder and money and arms front for them. It's time to talk IMPEACHMENT for the President and all Congressional members fronting for the foreign government of Israel trying to whip up support for another Israel orchestrated False Flag event to push Americans into wars they cannot ever win.

News gets worse: The animals mistaken for spies

BBC Mews
4 September 2013 Last updated at 20:52 ET

Egyptian authorities detained a stork last week on suspicion of espionage, mistaking its migration tag for spying equipment. In fact the stork was innocent - like a number of other animals falsely accused over the years of undercover work, writes Mohamed Madi.

In 2011, Saudi authorities arrested a high-flying vulture on suspicion that it was flying missions for Israel's famously ingenious Mossad agency. And a spate of shark attacks near the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh in 2010 was blamed by one TV station on GPS-controlled predators planted by Israel in order to harm the Egyptian tourism industry.
Iran has also felt threatened by animal agents. In 2007 the Iranian army arrested a team of 14 "spy squirrels" found near a nuclear enrichment plant. Officials said they succeeded in apprehending the suspects "before they were able to take any action".

Licensed to nibble

“The CIA's attempt to implant listening devices into a cat ended in failure when the kitty was run over by a car ”

However, not all reports of pets on patrol are as far-fetched as they seem. Animals have been serving in the military as early as 1908, when Germans first attached cameras to pigeons to take aerial photographs.

Some programmes have been more successful than others. The CIA's attempt to implant listening devices into a cat - dubbed Operation Acoustic Kitty - ended in failure on day one, when the kitty was run over by a car outside the Soviet embassy in Washington DC. The project was estimated to have cost more than $14m.
Another failed project was the equally outlandish Bat Bomb, tried by the US in WWII, where bats were strapped to mini-incendiary devices and dropped over Japan. The idea was for them to roost inside wooden Japanese buildings before bursting into flames. The atomic bomb ultimately proved more effective.
Perhaps the most successful recruits from the animal world have been dolphins. The US and Russia have confirmed the existence of marine mammal training programmes, where dolphins and seals are trained to identify underwater mines and disable enemy swimmers. But just like young soldiers, dolphins have hormones, and can go awol. In March this year Ukraine's Defence Ministry had to deny reports that three military dolphins had escaped and were roaming the Black Sea in search of sex.

At last! Real News! Alaska feline mayor Stubbs the cat suffers dog attack

BBC News

5 September 2013 Last updated at 07:40 ET

Stubbs the cat was elected mayor of Talkeetna 15 years ago

A cat which was elected mayor of an Alaskan town 15 years ago has been badly injured in a dog attack.

Stubbs the cat, mayor of Talkeetna - which has no human mayor - is receiving veterinary care.
The cat, aged 16, was elected in a write-in campaign 15 years ago.
In the wake of Saturday's attack, Stubbs has been left with a punctured lung, bruised hips, a long deep gash on his side and a fractured sternum, the AP news agency reports.
Talkeetna, 115 miles (185km) north of the state's main city, Anchorage, is dotted with artist shops and is said to be the inspiration for the US TV series Northern Exposure.