Since it is still very early in the year, I will use this space to give you my trusty predictions for 2005. While none of these are guaranteed and any predictions are always fraught with risks, I’m reasonably sure the majority of them will prove to be quite accurate. They are based on my analysis of the personalities involved and the outcomes of similar situations from the past.

(1) The Iraqi elections will go on as scheduled. This is the one I’m the most sure of. Barring some kind of cataclysmic event, Iraqis will go to the polls on January 30. Because of terrorist activity, which will only intensify as that date draws closer, it is anyone’s guess as to how many Iraqis will actually go to the polls. However, President Bush is bound and determined that these elections will take place on schedule, come hell or high water. I doubt if anyone, other than God Himself, would be capable of changing the President’s mind on this issue.

(2) Michael Jackson will be acquitted. Despite how bad Jackson might look, there’s just not enough evidence linking him to the crime he’s be accused of. Most of the stuff that makes him look so bad has nothing to do with this case. If he is acquitted, he should then do the “moonwalk” on the courtroom steps to rub Jane Velez-Mitchell’s nose in it.

(3) Gas prices will continue to drop. This is simply a matter of supply and demand. Oil and gas prices were way too high for way too long. This caused oil producing nations to cheat on their quotas and export more crude. Refiners increased their output as well to take advantage of the higher prices. As a result, there’s now an oil glut, despite OPEC’s announced cut in production. This will continue to put heavy downward pressure on oil prices. I expect the average price of a gallon of regular gasoline in the U.S. to dip to $1.30 sometime in 2005 before recovering a little.

(4) Al Gore will re-emerge onto the political scene. He will start making more high visibility speeches as well as more appearances on the TV talk show circuit, in preparation for his run for the presidency in 2008. Gore will once again become a formidable candidate for the highest office in the land.

(5) Progress will be made in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza will go on as planned. The new Palestinian Authority leader not be anywhere near the hard-liner that Arafat was. In response, Ariel Sharon will take less of a hard line toward the Palestinians. I’m not saying that 2005 will bring peace between Israel and the PLO, but a step in the right direction will be taken. However, given their history, any progress could be just temporary.

(6) Bush will tackle tax reform, but chicken out on Social Security reform. Social Security reform, at least for 2005, will prove to be too much of a hot potato for the President and for Congress. Tax reform, although difficult itself, is the path of least resistance. I don’t foresee a major overhaul, though. Look for some kind of simplification of the current tax code, along with some version of the Lifetime Savings Account. The Roth 401(k) might finally become a reality as well.

(7) VoIP will start to take off. Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology allows consumers to make phone calls over their broadband internet connections. It is much cheaper and less restrictive that standard phone service. Most people are still not familiar with it but the major phone companies, along with some smaller companies which specialize in that technology, will start to change that in 2005. They are already heavily advertising it on the internet. I expect a major TV, radio, and newspaper ad blitz to begin in early 2005.

(8) The Florida Marlins will stay put, but the Oakland A’s and Minnesota Twins will start looking elsewhere. The Marlins will finalize their deal with the city of Miami for a new baseball stadium. They will then change their name to the Miami Marlins. However, the A’s and the Twins won’t be so fortunate. The A’s will start serious negotiations with San Jose. The Twins will start looking at Las Vegas, Portland, Norfolk, or Monterrey, Mexico as a possible new venue. The Expos’ relocation to Washington was Major League Baseball’s first relocation in 33 years. Now that the genie is out of the bottle, there could be several more in the next five years.

(9) The NHL season will be partially saved. There is no way the NHL wants to become the first major North American sports league to lose an entire season due to a labor dispute. Commissioner Gary Bettman and the owners will temporarily drop their demands for a salary cap and accept a modified version of the players’ latest offer. This will allow the last 35-40% of the season, along with the playoffs, to proceed as scheduled. However, this will just be a short-term deal that will only take the league through the end of the 2005-06 season. Then they’ll be right back to the drawing board.

(10) Next season’s flu shot supply will be plentiful by October. I expect that everyone has learned their lesson from this year’s fiasco. There will be at least one company, possibly two, producing the vaccine in the United States. Congress will pass legislation to ensure that the production and distribution of the vaccine will be less risky for American companies. Also, the FDA will probably do a better job of monitoring worldwide supplies. Enough will be available for anyone in the U.S who wants one.

Terry Mitchell is a software engineer, freelance writer, and trivia buff from Hopewell, VA. He also serves as a political columnist for American Daily and operates his own website - http://www.commenterry.com - on which he posts commentaries on various subjects such as politics, technology, religion, health and well-being, personal finance, and sports. His commentaries offer a unique point of view that is not often found in mainstream media.

With ‘credit crunch’ rapidly becoming an everyday phrase, the Citizen’s Advice Bureaux has conducted a survey to establish the true extent of the debt problem for the UK and the results are quite startling. They have concluded that many people drowning in debt or on the verge of slipping under have got there due to a combination of bad advice, irresponsible lending practices and fraud.

Traditionally UK lenders would only consider giving loans to those who had a stable income, a good credit rating, and who could afford it. But from midway through 2007, lending criteria become more relaxed, meaning that people who would have previously been turned down for credit were advanced significant mortgages and loans.

But the CAB report has found that the introduction of mortgage products such as self-certification and high equity, non-status loans made it much easier for those who could not prove their income, and those who had a significant percentage of equity in their homes to get loans. Significantly, many self-certification loans were arranged through mortgage brokers, and the CAB has suggested that they should more accurately be called ‘liar loans’.

The CAB found that many self-certification loans were granted to people who were not required to provide proof of income, had “little or no financial acumen” and also possessed poor credit records. Many of the applicants when interviewed said that brokers made no attempt to stress the serious consequences of not keeping up repayments on their mortgages.

The CAB report was compiled using 1,200 case studies recorded at the UK agency’s 360 advice centres. The organisation gave advice to 57,000 people who had mortgage and secured loans arrears during 2006/07, representing an increase of 11% on the previous year. Furthermore, the research estimates that as many as 770,000 Britons missed at least one secured loan or mortgage payments during the same period.

According to the CAB, the problem firmly stems from the fact that sub-prime lenders offered loans at much higher interest rates to people who couldn’t really afford them. The CAB also concluded that those borrowers had been rejected by the majority of high street banks and building societies, forcing them down the sub-prime route. Many borrowers were unable to keep up repayments on unrealistic loans and the CAB also believes that unfortunately many more are waiting in the wing, ready to come forward in 2008.

Since Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana, Mississippi, and part of Alabama at the end of August of 2005, global warming and the destruction of wetlands have shared in the blame for the devastation of the Gulf Coast. An increase in the temperature of the waters of the Gulf of Mexico is believed to have fueled the storm, substantially increasing its intensity, while the disappearance of wetlands - one U.S. Congresswoman estimated that fully 95 percent of U.S. coastal wetlands have been destroyed by development - has eliminated swamplands which have traditionally acted as a buffer for hurricanes.

Hurricanes travel swiftly over open waters, gathering intensity as they absorb energy from the warm waters of tropical and subtropical waters. As they hit land, however, the hurricanes quickly lose energy as the friction of the land serves to break up the storm and slow down the winds. Swamps and estuaries, with their thick vegetation and dense, almost spongy quality, actually act as a cushion, absorbing tremendous amounts of kinetic energy from the storm as it passes. (Think of a baseball thrown against a hard wall as opposed to a soft, thick pillow - the baseball will bounce off a wall retaining a lot of its energy, but will lose its motion and its kinetic energy entirely in the soft give of the pillow.)

NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) recently rewarded a multimillion-dollar contract aimed at restoring 1400 acres of wetlands in Louisiana’s Lafourche County. The aim is to restore a substantial portion of the wetlands in that area, which has been impacted negatively by construction, natural erosion, and subsidence (sinking of the land because of oil extraction and other human demands on the environment). The largest wetlands restoration project in the U.S. to date, it is just the beginning of a much larger restoration project proposed for the region. The hope is that these restored marshes will ameliorate the impact of the increasingly powerful hurricanes originating in the Atlantic.

Aldene Fredenburg is a freelance writer living in southwestern New Hampshire. She has written numerous articles for local and regional newspapers and for a number of Internet websites, including Tips and Topics. She expresses her opinions periodically on her blog, http://beyondagendas.blogspot.com She may be reached at amfredenburg@yahoo.com

As Americans, we often compare separate events — particularly calamaties — with each other. The recent destruction along America’s delta region by Hurricane Katrina is one such example. Comparison with Hurricane Camille in 1969 and the great Galveston hurricane of 1900 are inescapable as all three storms brought much death as well as widespread destruction along the gulf coast. Still, as I gaze out of my Wake County, North Carolina window this afternoon and look due south I see the gathering clouds from a less powerful hurricane, Ophelia, approaching and wonder if we have underestimated her potential havoc as well. Ophelia is much like Katrina, but probably not in a way you may think.

When Hurricane Katrina formed off of Florida’s coast, not much attention was given to it as it slowly grew from a tropical depression into a tropical storm. By the time the storm hit south Florida, it slammed in as a Category 1 hurricane. Later, as we all know, it slipped into the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico and quickly grew into a Category 5 monster packing sustained winds of 175 mph. We know the rest of the story as several cities now lay in ruins and many hundreds of people are dead.

Lost in all of this is what Katrina did to Florida. The “little” Category 1 hurricane killed eleven people. That’s right, eleven dead. What is the significance of this? Few considered a storm of this magnitude to be a killer. Unfortunately, eleven people are dead because some only perceived the event as a bad windstorm. Comparisons with four larger storms that struck Florida last year and one storm that struck this year likely caused many to minimize Katrina. To their peril.

While Ophelia is not likely to ever gain Katrina’s ultimate strength it still has the potential to kill despite its “weak” status. Believe me, 75 mile per hour winds are nothing to dismiss especially if you are parked underneath a tree and a branch comes crashing down. If it crushes your car you are just as dead as from a tree knocked down by Ophelia as you would be from a much more powerful storm.

To make a long story short, Ophelia may cause death and destruction too. Comparing storms can be helpful, but minimizing destructive ability and death potential is not helpful.

Ophelia is likely to pass to my east, but I am still keeping a watchful eye out of my south facing window. Danger looms and I sense that some are not fully comprehending Ophelia’s deadly potential.

Matthew Keegan is the owner of a successful article writing, web design, and marketing business based in North Carolina, USA. He manages several sites including the Corporate Flight Attendant Community and the Aviation Employment Board. Please visit The Article Writer to review selections from his portfolio.