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"For decades, China was viewed by U.S. strategists as a struggling communist nation with a massive population that really did not represent any kind of strategic threat to the United States at all. But that has now dramatically changed. Thanks to trade agreements that are extremely favorable to China, the "Great Dragon" has risen and has become a formidable economic machine. Already accounting for a fifth of humanity, this new economic muscle has also allowed Beijing to dramatically reform and upgrade the Chinese military. Now China is without a doubt a world superpower and it stands poised to be a major player on the world stage during the last days. So just how powerful of an economic force is China now? Well, in 2010 China is expected to replace Japan as the world's second-largest economy. Not only that, but China has overtaken Germany and is now the biggest exporter in the entire world. Let that sink in for a bit. China sells more stuff to other countries than anyone else in the world. That fact alone is enough to make China an economic superpower. Citizens of the U.S. like to think of themselves as the greatest economic superpower, but the reality is that the average American is drowning in debt. In fact, the average American piled up even more debt this past Christmas season buying cheap plastic stuff made in China to exchange with family members around the ole Christmas tree."

"Iran is serious about developing a nuclear bomb and has the ability to produce a primitive, truck-sized version of the bomb this year, the German magaziner Der Spiegel reported on Monday. An intelligence dossier obtained by Der Spiegel shows that there is a secret military branch of Iran's nuclear research program that answers to Tehran's ministry of defense, according to the report. Officials who have read this document - which is currently under review by the U.S., Germany and Israel - claim that it shows that their nuclear program aimed at producing a bomb is well advanced. Advertisement The officials said to Der Spiegel that the truck-sized bomb which they are capable of producing will have to be compressed to a size that would fit into a nuclear warhead for the strategic threat potential they desire. Der Spiegel also wrote that Israel and the West were alarmed by the dossier's revelations, as Iran could reach the compressed level of a nuclear bomb between 2012 and 2014. Tehran has consistently denied that it is enriching uranium for weapons, claiming it is exclusively dedicated to the peaceful use of nuclear technology. Iran has often warned it would retaliate for any attack on its nuclear facilities, which the West suspects form part of a drive to develop bombs. Tehran denies the charge. U.S. and Israel have not ruled out attack of Iran's nuclear site"

"In 2005, General Chi Haotian of China, its "Minister of National Defense" since 1993 to 2003, revealed in his speeches that in China's war on the U.S.A., from one-third to two-thirds of Americans would be poisoned or infected biologically by the Chinese, and their homes and property would be transferred over to Chinese settlers, since the Chinese (and not the Germans, as Chi stipulated in his speech) are the superior race and must have everything best in the world. Anyway, a slave state (China) has this advantage over a free country (the United States): it can reward (enrich!) 100 million or 200 million of its troops and its civilians with what those killed (poisoned and infected) Americans and their ancestors had been acquiring for the past two and a half centuries. In the United States , an American's betrayal of his country to China may well be seen to be his use of his freedom. This certainly applies to the U.S. Presidents, whose elections (which have little to do with the appointment of the prime minister in Britain) contradict the knowledge of mental ability, according to which the value of a thought may include its exclusivity: Einstein said that he was understood by seven people in the world. It was only owing to Einstein's letter to President Roosevelt in 1939 that the Americans got the nuclear bombs before Hitler's Germany completed its nuclear project. "

"BERLIN - Millions of German bank cards have been affected by a "millennium bug"-like problem because they contain software that can't process the number 2010, industry groups said Tuesday. The DSGV group, which represents public-sector banks, said some 20 million debit cards issued by those banks were affected, along with around 3.5 million credit cards - nearly half of the total number of cards issued by those banks. The group said cash machines were adjusted hours after the problem emerged to ensure that customers could withdraw money, but there may still be problems using some debit-card terminals. Those should be fixed by Monday, it said. Problems remain with credit cards and customers should use debit cards instead for now, added the group. The BVR group of cooperative banks said about 4 million debit cards issued by its members - about 15 percent of the total - also were afflicted by the faulty software, although there were no problems withdrawing cash. Its credit cards were unaffected. Another 2.5 million cards issued by German private banks were affected. The problem stemmed from a chip on the cards which, due to a programming fault, wouldn't correctly process the number 2010. Computer experts widely believed that hardware and software systems would fail as the clocks rolled over to the year 2000. The problem, they said, would be caused when computers and other devices, which used only two digits to represent the year, mistook the year 2000 for the year 1900. In the end, however, the so-called "millennium bug" caused few problems."