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Niall Bradley and Joe Quinn
Sott.net 2012-08-19 00:20:00
Compared to, say, ten years ago, a lot of people today are aware of and talking about psychopaths. On the one hand this is encouraging, but on the other, it's a little troubling. It is heartening to see awareness of psychopathy breach the mainstream frequency fence here and there, but the signal-to-noise ratio, as with all knowledge relevant to the growth and survival of decent human beings, remains high on the 'noise' side. We see ridiculous studies in the news portraying psychopaths as curable and articles making the rounds about how not having a Facebook account may indicate that someone is a psychopath. We've also seen Twitter being touted as a tool for 'spotting psychopaths' and, just today, news that the US justice system is considering acceptance of biological evidence that someone is a genetic psychopath in court with a view to using it to mitigate the sentences of criminal offenders. The reasoning being that psychopaths can't help being psychopaths, that they lack free will and therefore they bear diminished responsibility for their crimes. Well, yeah, that's exactly why they need to be held under lock and key permanently. Perhaps we shouldn't be so surprised that the burgeoning awareness of psychopathy has been vectored away from the truth of the matter in this way. This is an information war after all, so if the psychopaths in positions of power gauge that the 'psychopath awareness train' has left the station, they would naturally be working around the clock to load it with nuclear capabilities in the hope of derailing it, or at least sending it down the wrong track. The name of their game is to misinform people about what psychopaths are really like by trivialising and obscuring the issue: hence the proliferation of junk science that claims psychopaths can be cured, that psychopathology is a harmless evolutionary adaptation, or that psychopaths can be spotted based on analyses of their Twitter feed and Facebook page (or the lack thereof). |
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Leon Watson
Daily Mail, UK 2012-08-19 06:42:00
British intelligence on Syrian troop movements is helping rebels in their fight against President Bashar al-Assad's regime, it was revealed today. The disclosure by a Syrian opposition official is the first indication of British intelligence playing a covert role in the civil war. The official told The Sunday Times the British authorities 'know about and approve 100 per cent' signals intelligence from their Cyprus bases being passed through Turkey to the rebel troops of the Free Syrian Army. 'British intelligence is observing things closely from Cyprus. It's very useful because they find out a great deal,' the official said. 'The British are giving the information to the Turks and the Americans and we are getting it from the Turks.' According to the official, the most valuable intelligence so far has been about the movements of troops loyal to President Assad towards the stricken second city of Aleppo, which is partly controlled by rebels. | |
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Comment: Notice the lip-service to international law at
the end of this article, despite having already made it clear that this
is exactly what they are doing.
State-Sponsored Terrorism - Western Journalists Embedded With 'al-Qaeda' in Syria |
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Matt Williams
The Guardian 2012-08-19 17:29:00
Todd Akin, the Republican nominee for Missouri, causes furore with explanation of his no-exceptions policy on abortion A Republican Senate hopeful sparked outrage on Sunday by suggesting that "legitimate rape" rarely results in pregnancy due to a woman's biological defences. Todd Akin, a member of the House of Representatives and recently appointed Senate nominee for Missouri, made the claim during an interview in which he attempted to explain his no-exceptions policy in regards to abortion. In reference to pregnancy resulting from rape, Akin told KTVI-TV: "First of all, from what I understand from doctors, that is really rare."
He continued: "If it is a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try and shut that whole thing down." But if that "didn't work", then the punishment should be "on the rapist and not attacking the child", Akin added. |
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The End Run
2012-08-17 00:00:00
Jenny Gallagher, a nurse who treated victims of the highly suspicious "Batman" shooting in Aurora, Colorado last month, is dead at age 46. The reported cause of death: drowning. "She worked the morning after the Batman massacre in a very busy unit of the hospital - so she saw everything really, some really bad injuries," her husband Greg reportedly told Ireland's Herald earlier today. The mass-shooting, which left 12 dead and 58 more injured at a midnight premiere of The Dark Knight Rises at Century theater, is widely suspected to have been a black operation (akin to Columbine or the Sikh Temple shooting) based on the available evidence, numerous inconsistencies and implausibilities in the "official story", the timing, and the way the event has been framed (some would say exploited) by certain powerful interests in the media and political arena. See for example... Obama Seeks US Congressional Ratification of UN Global Gun Control Treaty, Susanne Posel (July 16) Colorado Batman shooting shows obvious signs of being staged, Natural News (July 20) James Holmes Batman shooting to justify UN small arms treaty gun grab?, Mike Adams (July 21) Eyewitness: Second Shooter in Batman Massacre, YouTube, (July 21) Witness: Someone let gunman inside Colorado movie theater, CNN/PrisonPlanet.com (July 22) Colorado University Had Identical Drill On Same Day As 'Batman' Massacre, Paul Joseph Watson (July 23) Shooter James Holmes and DARPA Weird Science, Kurt Nimmo/Wayne Madsen (July 24) Fox News Channel Questions Narrative Of 'Batman' Massacre, Infowars/WXIX-Fox19 (July 25) Gun Owners of America President Larry Pratt: Batman Shooting Could be Staged (July 27) James Holmes Is Behaving Like Sirhan Sirhan, Paul Joseph Watson, (July 27) Why Are Republicans Calling To Disarm The American People?, Paul Joseph Watson, (July 30) The Batman op expands: you shot those people, Jon Rappoport (Aug 3) |
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Paul Buchheit
Common Dreams 2012-08-13 10:21:00
A grand delusion has been planted in the minds of Americans, that privately run systems are more efficient and less costly than those in the public sector. Most of the evidence points the other way. Private initiatives generally produce mediocre or substandard results while experiencing the usual travails of unregulated capitalism -- higher prices, limited services, and lower wages for all but a few 'entrepreneurs.' With perverse irony, the corruption and incompetence of private industry has actually furthered the cause of privatization, as the collapse of the financial markets has deprived state and local governments of necessary public funding, leading to an even greater call for private development. As aptly expressed by a finance company chairman in 2008, "Desperate government is our best customer." The following are a few consequences of this pro-privatization desperation: |
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Press TV
2012-08-17 04:57:00
Sen. Claire McCaskill's (D-MO) Republican opponent says that the federal government should stop helping to feed needy children with the school lunch program. Speaking to reporters about the farm bill on Thursday, Senate candidate Todd Akin called to cut off the federal funds used to feed about 650,000 children in Missouri each school day. "Is it something the federal government should do?" Akin said. "I answer it no. ... I think the federal government should be out of the education business." "The problem with the Senate farm bill is the fact that you've got 80 percent of it that isn't a farm bill at all," the Republican noted. |
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Jimmy Carter
The New York Times 2012-06-24 02:36:00
The United States is abandoning its role as the global champion of human rights. Revelations that top officials are targeting people to be assassinated abroad, including American citizens, are only the most recent, disturbing proof of how far our nation's violation of human rights has extended. This development began after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and has been sanctioned and escalated by bipartisan executive and legislative actions, without dissent from the general public. As a result, our country can no longer speak with moral authority on these critical issues. While the country has made mistakes in the past, the widespread abuse of human rights over the last decade has been a dramatic change from the past. With leadership from the United States, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted in 1948 as "the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world." This was a bold and clear commitment that power would no longer serve as a cover to oppress or injure people, and it established equal rights of all people to life, liberty, security of person, equal protection of the law and freedom from torture, arbitrary detention or forced exile. |
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| Puppet Masters |
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Thierry Meyssan
Information Clearing House 2012-08-20 17:08:00
François Hollande's presidential campaign largely consisted of denunciations of the catastrophic policies and garishness of his predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy. He pledged that change would come immediately. One hundred days after his election, Hollande may have altered the style of rule but not the policies which remain the same even as France sinks ever deeper into crisis. The main themes being debated by the French press as well as the manner in which these themes are framed expose the rank submission of the French governing classes to U.S. domination. They also serve to justify that acquiescence. |
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Peter Van Buren
Tom Dispatch 2012-08-16 16:30:00
Imperial Reconstruction and Its Discontents A war and occupation thousands of miles away that lasted seven years and involved more than 1.5 million Americans, military and civilian, has passed into the history books and yet we still know remarkably little about so much of it. Take American military bases in Iraq. There were, of course, none in March 2003 when the Bush administration launched its regime-change invasion with dreams of garrisoning that particular stretch of the planet's oil heartlands for generations to come. At the height of the American occupation, in the face of Sunni and Shiite insurgencies and a bloody civil war, the Pentagon built 505 bases there, ranging from micro-outposts to mega-bases the size of small American towns -- in one case, with an airport that was at least as busy as Chicago's O'Hare International. As it happened, during all but the last days of those long, disastrous years of war, Americans could have had no idea how many bases had been built, using taxpayer dollars, in Iraq. Estimates in the press ranged, on rare occasions, up to about 300. Only as U.S. troops prepared to leave was that 505 figure released by the military, without any fanfare whatsoever. Startlingly large, it was simply accepted by reporters who evidently found it too unimpressive to highlight. And here's an allied figure that we still don't have: to this day, no one outside the Pentagon has the faintest idea what it cost to build those bases, no less maintain them, or in the end abandon them to the Iraqi military, to the fate of ghost towns, or simply to be looted and stripped. We have no figures, not even ballpark ones, about what the Pentagon paid crony corporations like KBR to construct and maintain them. The only vague approximation I ever saw was offered in an engineering magazine in October 2003 by Lt. Col. David Holt, the Army officer "tasked with facilities development" in Iraq. At a moment when U.S. base building was barely underway, he was already speaking of the program being in the "several billion dollar range," adding proudly that "the numbers are staggering." So for the full seven-year figure, let your imagination run wild. |
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Brandon - NYC
Here's more about what he said on his Facebook page. I really don't see what he said that was so bad.FromTheTrenchesWorldReport.com 2012-08-20 16:41:00 Business Insider: The former Marine who was detained by the federal government over Facebook posts critical of the government is being held in a psychiatric ward, Peter Bacqué of the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports. "I'm currently in John Randolph in the psychiatric ward being held against my will," Brandon Raub said in a telephone interview with the Times-Dispatch. "[Authorities] were concerned about me calling for the arrest of government officials." Raub noted that he has been raising questions about 9/11 and signed a petition to reopen investigation of the terrorist attacks. According to Raub's mother, authorities from the FBI, Secret Service and Chesterfield County PD came to their door on Thursday evening, questioned Raub about his Facebook posts, then handcuffed him and placed him in a Chesterfield PD squad car before taking him directly to John Randolph Psychiatric Hospital in Hopewell, Va. Raub, 26, has not been arrested. Both FBI Richmond spokeswoman Dee Rybiski and Secret Service Washington spokesman Max Milien said that there are no charges against Raub. |
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Paul Craig Roberts
Conspiracy theories have now blossomed into what the smug presstitute
media calls a "conspiracy culture." According to the presstitutes,
Americans have to find some explanation for their frustrations and
failings, so Americans shift the blame to the Bilderbergers, the
Rothschilds, the New World Order and so forth and so on.Information Clearinghouse 2012-08-20 16:27:00 Readers will not be surprised that I disagree with the presstitutes. Indeed, the conspiracy culture is the product of the presstitute media's failure to investigate and to report truthfully. I am certain that the Western media is worse than the Soviet media was. The Soviet media devised ways for helping the public to read between the lines, whereas the Western media is so proud to be confidants of the government that they deliver the propaganda without any clues to the readers that it is propaganda. Americans have been fed lies by "their" government and the government's presstitute media for so long that it is not surprising that Americans increasingly believe that there is a conspiracy operating against them. Millions of Americans have been evicted from their jobs, careers, and homes while the crooks who stole from them run free and bankroll the presidential candidates. The world as millions of Americans knew it has come to an end, and no one has been held accountable. The explanation that Americans get from the media is that it is their own fault. They bought houses they shouldn't have bought, and they didn't train for the right jobs. It is not unreasonable for Americans to conclude that a conspiracy is operating against them. |
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Naomi Wolf
A software
engineer in my Facebook community wrote recently about his outrage that
when he visited Disneyland, and went on a ride, the theme park offered
him the photo of himself and his girlfriend to buy - with his credit
card information already linked to it. He noted that he had never
entered his name or information into anything at the theme park, or
indicated that he wanted a photo, or alerted the humans at the ride to
who he and his girlfriend were - so, he said, based on his professional
experience, the system had to be using facial recognition technology. He
had never signed an agreement allowing them to do so, and he declared
that this use was illegal. He also claimed that Disney had recently
shared data from facial-recognition technology with the United States military.Guardian.co.uk 2012-08-20 16:21:00 Yes, I know: it sounds like a paranoid rant. Except that it turned out to be true. News21, supported by the Carnegie and Knight foundations, reports that Disney sites are indeed controlled by face-recognition technology, that the military is interested in the technology, and that the face-recognition contractor, Identix, has contracts with the US government - for technology that identifies individuals in a crowd. Fast forward: after the Occupy crackdowns, I noted that odd-looking CCTVs had started to appear, attached to lampposts, in public venues in Manhattan where the small but unbowed remnants of Occupy congregated: there was one in Union Square, right in front of their encampment. I reported here on my experience of witnessing a white van marked "Indiana Energy" that was lifting workers up to the lampposts all around Union Square, and installing a type of camera. When I asked the workers what was happening - and why an Indiana company was dealing with New York City civic infrastructure, which would certainly raise questions - I was told: "I'm a contractor. Talk to ConEd." |
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Paul Craig Roberts
Information Clearinghouse 2012-08-20 12:07:00
My heart goes out to the three Russian women who comprise the Russian rock band, Pussy Riot. They were brutally deceived and used by the Washington-financed NGOs that have infiltrated Russia. Pussy Riot was sent on a mission that was clearly illegal under statutory law. You have to admire and to appreciate the spunk of the young women. But you have to bemoan their gullibility. Washington needed a popular issue with which to demonize the Russian government for standing up to Washington's intention to destroy Syria, just as Washington destroyed Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, and as Washington intends to destroy Lebanon and Iran. By intentionally offending religious worshipers--which would be a hate crime in the US and its European and British puppet states--the talented young women violated a statutory Russian law. Prior to the women's trial, Russian President Putin expressed his opinion that the women should not be harshly punished. Taking the cue from Putin, the judge gave the women, deceived and betrayed by the amerikan-financed NGOs, two years instead of seven years. I am advised that after six months, Putin will see that the women are released. But, of course, that would not serve the propaganda of the Amerikan Empire. The instructions to the Washington-financed fifth column in Russia will be to make any government leniency for Pussy Riot impossible. |
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Glen Greenwald
The Guardian 2012-08-20 15:47:00
Attacking rescuers - a tactic long deemed by the US a hallmark of terrorism - is now routinely used by the Obama administration The US government has long maintained, reasonably enough, that a defining tactic of terrorism is to launch a follow-up attack aimed at those who go to the scene of the original attack to rescue the wounded and remove the dead. Morally, such methods have also been widely condemned by the west as a hallmark of savagery. Yet, as was demonstrated yet again this weekend in Pakistan, this has become one of the favorite tactics of the very same US government. |
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Pratap Chatterjee
The Raw Story 2012-08-20 15:02:00
A new report finds many top executives are taking home more than their corporations pay in taxes - at our expense. Lanai, a tiny resort island in Hawaii, has 18 miles of secluded beaches, no traffic lights and a population of just over 3,000. This summer, Larry Ellison, the CEO of Oracle, a California-based software company, bought 98% of the island for a sum reported to exceed $500m. The Institute for Policy Studies, a Washington DC thinktank, says that a chunk of the money Ellison spent buying Lanai should have paid for elementary school teachers and clean energy jobs, instead of fulfilling the billionaire CEO's vacation fantasies. That's one conclusion of their new report, "The CEO Hands in Uncle Sam's Pocket: How Our Tax Dollars Subsidize Exorbitant Executive Pay", which points out that Oracle took advantage of a 1993 loophole in tax law to designate $76m of Ellison's income as "performance-related pay", which allowed him to avoid paying any taxes on the money. |
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Dr. Paul Craig Roberts
2012-08-16 11:51:00
The morons who rule the American sheeple are not only dumb and blind, they are deaf as well. The ears of the American "superpower" only work when the Israeli prime minister, the crazed Netanyahu, speaks. Then Washington hears everything and rushes to comply. Israel is a tiny insignificant state, created by the careless British and the stupid Americans. It has no power except what its American protector provides. Yet, despite Israel's insignificance, it rules Washington. When a resolution introduced by the Israel Lobby is delivered to Congress, it passes unanimously. If Israel wants war, Israel gets its wish. When Israel commits war crimes against Palestinians and Lebanon and is damned by the hundred plus UN resolutions passed against Israel's criminal actions, the US bails Israel out of trouble with its veto. The power that tiny Israel exercises over the "worlds's only superpower" is unique in history. Tens of millions of "Christians" bow down to this power, reinforcing it, moved by the exhortations of their "christian" ministers. |
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The Washington Post
2012-08-18 01:00:00
The death toll of an al-Qaida suspected attack on a Yemeni intelligence headquarters rose to 20 on Saturday, in the worst such attack in a year that highlights the challenges faced by the country's new leadership as it struggles to bring security and reconcile a military with split loyalties. The attack, in the heart of the port city of Aden, underscored al-Qaida's ability to launch deadly strikes despite a two-month Yemeni military offensive backed by the U.S. that earlier this year dislodged militants who had taken over a string of southern towns near Aden. In a coordinated attack, two groups of masked militants stormed the intelligence building from two sides, firing automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades, according to intelligence officials in the city and witnesses from the adjacent state TV and radio building. While one group clashed with guards of the intelligence building's main gate, a second threw a bomb at a small mosque, killing soldiers who were resting and sleeping inside, officials said. The gunmen then sprayed their victims with bullets before detonating a car bomb in front of the intelligence building, collapsing its facade. | |
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Comment: al-Qaida? More like al-CIA-duh. For more information on state-sponsored terrorism read:
State-Sponsored Terrorism - Western Journalists Embedded With 'al-Qaeda' in Syria The British Empire - A Lesson In State Terrorism |
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Nick Perry
2012-08-20 00:00:00
Wellington, New Zealand - New Zealand Prime Minister John Key announced Monday that the country will withdraw its troops from Afghanistan earlier in 2013 than planned. He said the move is not prompted by the deaths this month of five New Zealand soldiers, including three who were killed Sunday by a roadside bomb. August's deaths account for half of all fatalities suffered by the small contingent of New Zealanders in the nine years they have been stationed in central Bamiyan province, which was comparatively stable until a recent upswing in violence. Key said it was "highly likely" the remaining soldiers from the contingent of 145 would be withdrawn in April 2013. He said discussions for the earlier withdrawal began before the five deaths this month. Murray McCully, New Zealand's foreign affairs minister, had announced in May the troops would be withdrawn "in the latter part of 2013." Key said he wants to bring home the troops as fast as practicable within a timetable that fits in with the coalition partners. "We'll do it as fast as we can, and we'll do it in the way that protects our people as best we can," he said. The U.S.-led NATO forces in Afghanistan plan to end their decade-long combat mission and withdraw almost all troops by the end of 2014. The U.S. this year has been withdrawing a planned 23,000 troops, which would leave 68,000. Key rejected calls to end New Zealand's role in Afghanistan immediately. |
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RT
2012-08-19 22:38:00
Eight people were killed and fifteen wounded by a suicide bombing in the Russian Republic of Ingushetia, according to reports by the country's main law enforcement agency. Both police and civilians were injured in the blast, according to the latest casualty figures. The bombing targeted mourners at a funeral for a police officer killed in a shootout on Saturday. The force of the explosive device was reportedly equivalent to ten kilograms of TNT, and was packed with shrapnel to increase the likelihood of casualties. Earlier reports suggested the force of the bomb was equivalent to three kilograms. "According to preliminary results, it was a suicide bomber who blew himself up at the mourning ceremony," RIA Novosti quoted the secretary of the Region's Security Council as saying. "A head of a man whom nobody was able to identify was found several meters from the site of the bombing," Interfax news agency reported, quoting a source in the Republic's police agency. "It may suggest the attack was carried out by a suicide bomber." |
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Zarar Khan
The Salt Lake Tribune 2012-08-19 00:00:00
Islamabad - American drones fired a flurry of missiles in a Pakistani tribal area bordering Afghanistan Sunday, killing a total of 10 suspected militants, Pakistani officials said. In the first strike, missiles fired from unmanned American spy planes hit two vehicles near the Afghan border, killing at least seven militants, Pakistani intelligence officials said. The strike came in the Mana area of North Waziristan, the officials added. The officials say the area is dominated by Hafiz Gul Bahadur, a commander whose forces often strike U.S. troops in Afghanistan, but they did not know whether his men were the targets of Sundays' strike. A U.S. drone strike Saturday also in North Waziristan killed five Gul Bahadur allies. About 10 hours later on Sunday, two missiles destroyed a home also in the Mana area, killing three militants, the officials said. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the media. The drone program is hotly contested in Pakistan. | |
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Comment: For more information about the use of drones please read:
Celebrating our "Warrior President" Obama's Death Panels: Jeremy Scahill at the Drone Summit Spy in the Sky: Is It Only a Matter of Time Before Drone Technology is Used in Civil Society? Police State: "Robots R'US": Military-Style Drones on 63 Military Bases In The USA |
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Press TV
2012-08-19 22:26:00
US assassination drone strikes have left at least 21 people dead in Pakistan's northwestern tribal region near border with Afghanistan during the past 48 hours, Press TV reports. Pakistani officials told Press TV that nine people were killed after a US drone fired four missiles at two vehicles in Mana area of Shawal district in North Waziristan on Sunday morning. This is while on Saturday twelve people lost their lives when a US drone targeted a building in the same troubled region. Despite Pakistani government's repeated calls on Washington to end the drone attacks, the US government continues its strikes on the tribal regions of the country. |
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Fox News
2012-08-17 00:00:00
Tehran, Iran - Israel's existence is an "insult to all humanity," Iran's president said Friday in one of his sharpest attacks yet against the Jewish state, as Israel openly debates whether to attack Iran over its nuclear program. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said confronting Israel is an effort to "protect the dignity of all human beings." "The existence of the Zionist regime is an insult to all humanity," Ahmadinejad said. He was addressing worshippers at Tehran University after nationwide pro-Palestinian rallies, an annual event marking Quds (Jerusalem) Day on the last Friday of the holy month of Ramadan. The comments are "reminiscent" of a letter written about the Jews and signed by Adolf Hitler in 1919, Rabbi Marvin Hier, Founder and Dean of the Simon Wisenthal Center, says. "Even though Ahmadinejad is attacking the state of Israel, we know what he means," Rabbi Hier said. Israel considers Iran an existential threat because of its nuclear and missile programs, support for radical anti-Israel groups on its borders and repeated references by Iranian leaders to Israel's destruction. Ahmadinejad himself has repeatedly made such calls, as has Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. |
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| Society's Child |
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Saed Bannoura
IMEMC & Agencies 2012-08-17 17:18:00
Palestinian medical sources in Bethlehem reported Thursday that a cab driver, a Palestinian father, mother and their children, from Nahhalin town, near Bethlehem, suffered moderate to severe injuries after fundamentalist Israeli settlers hurled a firebomb at the Palestinian cab. The attack took place when the Palestinian Taxi was driving near the illegal Bat Ayin and Gavot illegal settlements, close to the Gush Etzion settlement block, south the occupied West Bank city of Bethlehem. Medical sources reported that a cab driving a Palestinian family was attacked by extremist settlers who also hurled a firebomb at it leading to six injuries; the wounded six family members received initial treatment in Bethlehem before being moved to the Hadassah Israeli hospital in Jerusalem due to the seriousness of their injuries. | |
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Comment: Attacking four year olds with molotov cocktails - it doesn't get any more evil than that.
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Stephen C. Webster
The Raw Story 2012-08-20 15:18:00
Crack is whack, and even the most powerful drug gangs in Rio aren't disputing that fact. Amid a painful and violent uptick in crack-cocaine usage and facing increasingly successful police strategies pushing them out of the favelas, the most powerful drug gang in Brazil's capital of Rio de Janeiro has opened up a public relations front, telling members of the press that they will no longer sell crack because it destabilizes communities. Authorities in Rio aren't buying it, however. They believe the new twist in strategy is part of a smokescreen to confuse continued efforts at pacification, a police strategy that's successfully pushed heavily armed drug gangs out of many areas in Rio's notoriously violent slums, where civilians all to often wind up as innocent victims of stray gunfire. Pacification techniques factor heavily into the city's plans to host the 2016 summer Olympics, especially since Brazilian officials do not want visiting athletes or tourists to see the city's open-air drug markets or relatively common violent side. By pacifying areas near where the games will be held, authorities have succeeded in creating a relatively safe public space, gradually winning hearts and minds. |
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Muriel Kane
The Raw Story 2012-08-20 15:13:00
Christine Assange, the mother of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, was due to speak about her son with an Australian Sunday morning radio host when things went terribly wrong. After hearing John-Michael Howson shout down the previous guest, Wikileaks Australian Alliance cofounder Sam Castro, and subject her to what Assange later described as "a torrent of verbal abuse," Assange told him, "I won't be doing an interview with you because you're acting like a pig." Howson then began screaming, "Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!" and Assange hung up on him. Howson claimed afterwards that he had reacted the way he had because Assange was attempting to censor him. "She comes on and says to me she's not going to talk about - that to me shows her trying to censor me," he insisted. "I'm not going to be censored by her, so I said, 'Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!' ... it's a Nazi mentality by these people." |
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NBC Today
2012-08-20 14:30:00
Actress/comedian Phyllis Diller has died at the age of 95, her agent confirmed to NBC News on Monday. "She was a true pioneer," Fred Wostbrock said. "The first female stand-up comedian. She paved the way for everybody. She paved the way for Joan Rivers, Ellen DeGeneres, Chelsea Handler. Phyllis was the first of the first. The first female to play Vegas ... she was on Broadway, she made movies. She did it all." Her longtime manager, Milton Suchin, told The Associated press, "She died peacefully in her sleep with a smile on her face." According to E!, her son Perry found her. She is also survived by two daughters. Diller suffered a near-fatal heart attack in 1999. The cause of her death has not been released. |
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Arturo Garcia
The Raw Story 2012-08-20 14:58:00
In a scene that brought with it echoes of the Los Angeles Police Department's most infamous moment, residents filmed four officers holding down and punching a young man picked up outside his home for allegedly skateboarding on the wrong side of the street. According to KTLA-TV, a protest is being planned for Monday in support of 19-year-old Ronald Weekley Jr. after the beating was captured on a cell phone Saturday. "If you see the videotape, there are about three or four officers on top of my son," Weekley's father, Ronald Weekley Sr., said. "Then an officer comes into view, gets down on the ground and hits him in his face, and that's something you can hear on the tape. The results are, is that he has a broken nose, he has a broken cheekbone and he has a concussion." Weekley was cited with resisting arrest. The footage aired by KTLA shows two officers holding the younger Weekley down and another punching him in the face. A fourth officer standing atop the fray can be seen speaking into his radio. Another officer enters the frame seemingly ordering the unidentified resident filming the incident to move away. It is reminiscent of the seminal video of the traffic stop that propelled Rodney King into the national consciousness. |
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Denise A Justin
Palm Desert veterinary surgeon Donald James Huber was arrested Saturday,
August 4, after a dog locked inside his car allegedly had a seizure and
died of suspected heat exhaustion, according to Riverside County
Sheriff's deputies. (Palm Desert is about 11 miles east of Palm Springs,
California.)Opposing Views 2012-08-06 14:50:00 Palm Desert Police Department responded on August 4 at 9:04 a.m. to a 911 call that a dog was locked in a car in the 42000 block of Washington Street. When deputies arrived, they found the car parked at the Desert Veterinary Specialists Animal Hospital at 42-065 Washington St., with an 8-year-old German shepherd locked inside the vehicle without food and water, sheriff's Sgt. Radek Horkel told reporters. "An officer broke the vehicle window in an attempt to save the dog's life after not being able to locate the dog's owner." Deputy Joshua Morales said that the dog began seizing and died at the scene, according to The Desert Sun.. As deputies were preparing to tow the car away, the dog's owner, Douglas James Huber, 51, of Rancho Mirage, arrived and was taken to the police station for questioning, Horkel said. Huber was confirmed by officials to be a veterinarian. He was then booked at the Riverside County Jail in Indio on a preliminary charge of misdemeanor animal endangerment. Huber has been licensed to practice veterinarian medicine in California since 2004. Before that, he was licensed in Massachusetts since 1987, according to the Sun.. He has no public record of discipline and no criminal record in Riverside County. |
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Holly Carter
KPLCTV 2012-08-14 21:50:00
A local elementary school is trying to implement a new program in their cafeteria. But the palm vein scanner is being met with much opposition from Moss Bluff Elementary parents. "I was very, very mad," said parent Mamie Sonnier. "Disappointed." Many parents felt that way on Monday after reading a letter sent home with their children from Moss Bluff Elementary School. The letter introduced a new program, the palm vein scanner, to move students through the lunch line at a faster rate. With almost 1,000 students, Principal Charles Caldarera says the system will reduce errors. "We are so large," said Caldarera. "With an elementary school, they all come through line, and most of them eat here. It would make us more efficient and more accurate. We've had parents complain in the past, because they felt like their children weren't eating, that we assigned them a charge for the day, and they might have been right." Caldarera says the school is acting on a recommendation from school food service director Patricia Hosemann. But he says the letter gives parents an option. "We sent this letter home for parents to be aware of it, and to let them know that they can opt out," said Caldarera. "They can opt out and say, hey, I don't want my child involved in it. That's quite alright. It won't make any difference. The children will still be able to eat in the cafeteria." |
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Walter Hamilton and Jessica Guynn
Los Angeles Times 2012-08-17 00:00:00
Facebook's stock price slide has raised doubts about Mark Zuckerberg's role as CEO. Some say he should hand the reins to a more seasoned executive. The deepening slide in Facebook Inc.'s stock is fueling talk once considered implausible on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley. Should Mark Zuckerberg, the social media visionary but neophyte corporate manager, step aside as CEO to let a more seasoned executive run the multibillion-dollar company? In that scenario, Zuckerberg would remain as the creative force propelling Facebook's technological innovation. But the 28-year-old would cede the CEO title to someone better suited to overseeing operations and building rapport with finicky investors - mundane but essential duties for which Zuckerberg has shown little appetite or aptitude. "There is a growing sense that Mark Zuckerberg, talented though he may be, is in over his hoodie as CEO of a multibillion-dollar public company," said Sam Hamadeh, head of research firm PrivCo. "While in many cases a company founder can, and does, grow into the job, things are happening so quickly that there is precious little time here for Zuckerberg to do that." Doubts about the Facebook founder intensified Thursday as the stock closed below $20 for the first time. The shares, which slipped to $19.87, have shed nearly half their value since Facebook's disastrous initial public offering three months ago. |
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Sam Kim
The Associated Press 2012-08-18 10:28:00
Seoul, South Korea - A man wielding a box-cutter stabbed or cut eight people at a subway station just outside of South Korea's capital after a teenager confronted him for spitting at him, police said Sunday. No one died in the 10-minute rampage Saturday and the injuries weren't life-threatening, according to three police officers who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to talk to the media. Police arrested a man running away from the station in Uijeongbu, which is home to U.S. and South Korean military bases, the officers said. Such attacks are rare in South Korea. Police identified the suspect as a 39-year-old man surnamed Yoo. Yoo began wielding a box cutter at an 18-year-old man surnamed Park inside the train when the victim confronted Yoo for spitting at him, police said. Infuriated when Park said he would call police, Yoo began brandishing the cutter on a train and then on a station platform until he was arrested, Uijeongbu Police Station said in a statement released Sunday. Yoo, who is unemployed and lives alone, was on his way to find work in Seoul on the subway, police said. |
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news.com.au
A Sudanese cabinet minister was among 31 people killed when an
airplane crashed as it carried a delegation to war-torn South Kordofan
state for Muslim Eid holiday celebrations, officials and state media
said. 2012-08-19 09:50:00
"All people on board were killed," Abdelhafiz Abdelrahim, spokesman for the Sudan Aviation Authority, told AFP. Among the dead was Khartoum's Guidance and Endowments Minister Ghazi Al-Saddiq, the official SUNA news agency said, reporting that 26 people were aboard the aircraft. Speaking on the official Radio Omdurman, Culture and Information Minister Ahmed Bilal Osman said the plane "crashed into a hill" because of bad weather, killing the entire delegation. Mr Abdelrahim said the Russian-made Antonov plane was landing in Talodi town at about 8am local time when "an explosion was heard and the plane was destroyed." Although there have been no reports of major fighting around Talodi in recent weeks, the town has been a key battleground in the war which began in June last year between the government and ethnic rebels of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N). |
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Jim Gomez
ABC News 2012-08-19 00:00:00
About 300 rescuers searched Sunday for Philippine Interior Secretary Jesse Robredo and his two pilots after their small plane crashed into the sea while attempting an emergency landing. An aide of Robredo made a dramatic escape from the plane and was helping in the search, officials said. The four-seat Piper Seneca took off Saturday from central Cebu city, where Robredo had met local officials, and was 30 minutes into the flight to his hometown of Naga city when one of its two engines stalled. The Filipino pilot and Nepali student co-pilot attempted to land in Masbate province but missed the runway by about 500 meters (550 yards), Transport Secretary Mar Roxas said. President Benigno Aquino III flew Sunday with his defense chief and the heads of the national police and the military to Masbate, about 380 kilometers (235 miles) southeast of Manila, to oversee the U.S. military-backed search. Rescuers found a portion of the right wing and a copy of the flight plan underwater in an area where what appeared to be skid marks and metal parts on the seafloor were detected by sonar equipment. Divers and military aircraft suspended their operations before nightfall but planned to focus their search in that area on Monday, Roxas told reporters, adding that the search by boats would continue through the night. Dozens of divers and ships scoured the sea while helicopters crisscrossed overhead all day. Troops and police searched along the coast and a U.S. Navy plane flew over the area twice to look for the wreckage. |
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Associated Press
2012-08-20 00:43:00
Tony Scott, director of such Hollywood blockbusters as "Top Gun," "Days of Thunder" and "Beverly Hills Cop II," died Sunday after jumping from a Los Angeles County Bridge, authorities said. Scott's death was being investigated as a suicide, Los Angeles County Coroner's Lt. Joe Bale said. The 68-year-old Scott jumped from the Vincent Thomas Bridge spanning San Pedro and Terminal Island in Los Angeles, authorities said. U.S. Coast Guard Lt. Jennifer Osburn told the Daily Breeze that a suicide note was found inside Scott's black Toyota Prius, which was parked on one of the eastbound lanes of the bridge. The British-born Scott was producer Ridley Scott's brother. |
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Anjalia Athavaley and Will James
The Wall Street Journal 2012-08-19 08:42:00
Shirley, New York - A small plane crashed Sunday in the middle of a suburban neighborhood in Suffolk County, killing the pilot and one passenger and seriously injuring a second passenger, authorities said. The single-engine plane took off from Brookhaven Calabro Airport around noon and had trouble "almost immediately," crashing less than a mile from the airstrip, said Brookhaven Town Supervisor Mark Lesko, who was at the scene Sunday afternoon. Witnesses said the struggling Socata TB10 plane flew just over the roofs of houses in the heavily wooded hamlet of Shirley, about 65 miles east of Manhattan. It then crashed into a large tree, struck a Dumpster on the ground and burst into flames on Helene Avenue, witnesses said. "I just stood there, and I froze," said Melvin Resto, 24 years old, who watched the scene from his backyard along with his sister, Jacqueline Resto and her boyfriend, Darnell Lee. "I was very traumatized." Mr. Resto and Mr. Lee, 26, a trained aviation electrician, said they rushed out to the crippled plane and used two garden hoses to try to keep flames from engulfing the pilot, who appeared unable to move his legs. |
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Antonio Planas
Las Vegas Review Journal 2012-08-19 04:22:00
A masked man wielding a sword tried to rob a central valley Dairy Queen on Sunday afternoon but was shot and killed by an employee, Las Vegas police said. Homicide Lt. Ray Steiber said that although rare, robbery attempts with swords have occurred in the Las Vegas Valley. "I've seen it before," Steiber said. "It's a deadly weapon in the right hands, and preliminarily, it appears he was using it as a deadly weapon." The identity of the deceased man will be released by the Clark County coroner's office. The incident occurred about 12:15 p.m. When police arrived, the suspect was injured on the ground just outside the doors of the restaurant at 2595 S. Maryland Parkway, near Sahara Avenue. Steiber said the suspect was shot at least twice. |
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USA Today
2012-08-19 00:00:00
Hefei, China - The wife of a disgraced Chinese politician was given a suspended death sentence Monday after confessing to killing a British businessman by poisoning him with cyanide in a case that rocked the country's top political leadership. A suspended sentence is usually commuted to life in prison after several years. Sentenced along with Gu Kailai was a family aide who was given nine years' imprisonment for his involvement in the murder of Neil Heywood, a former family associate, said He Zhengsheng, a lawyer for the Heywood family who attended the sentencing in this eastern China city. The sentencing closes one chapter of China's biggest political crisis in two decades, but also leaves open questions over the fate of Gu's husband, Bo Xilai, who was dismissed in March as the powerful Communist Party boss of the major city of Chongqing. |
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| Secret History |
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Charles Choi
LiveScience 2012-08-20 14:01:00
Newfound pieces of human skull from "the Cave of the Monkeys" in Laos are the earliest skeletal evidence yet that humans once had an ancient, rapid migration to Asia. Anatomically modern humans first arose about 200,000 years ago in Africa. When and how our lineage then dispersed out of Africa has long proven controversial. Archaeological evidence and genetic data suggest that modern humans rapidly migrated out of Africa and into Southeast Asia by at least 60,000 years ago. However, complicating this notion is the notable absence of fossil evidence for modern human occupation in mainland Southeast Asia, likely because those bones do not survive well in the warm, tropical region. Now a partial skull from Tam Pa Ling, "the Cave of the Monkeys" in northern Laos helps fill in this mysterious gap in the fossil record. [See Photos of "Monkey Cave" Fossils] "Most surprising is the fact that we found anything at all," researcher Laura Lynn Shackelford, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Illinois, told LiveScience. "Most people didn't think we'd find anything in these caves, or even in the region where we're working in mainland Southeast Asia. But we're stubborn, gone where no one's really looked before, or at least in almost a century." |
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The Raw Story
2012-08-19 15:15:00
A 63-year-old former engineer may not fit the typical image of a dark-clad assassin with deadly weapons who can disappear into a cloud of smoke. But Jinichi Kawakami is reputedly Japan's last ninja. As the 21st head of the Ban clan, a line of ninjas that can trace its history back some 500 years, Kawakami is considered by some to be the last living guardian of Japan's secret spies. "I think I'm called (the last ninja) as there is probably no other person who learned all the skills that were directly" handed down from ninja masters over the last five centuries, he said. "Ninjas proper no longer exist," he said as he demonstrated the tools and techniques used in espionage and sabotage by men fighting for their samurai lords in the feudal Japan of yesteryear. |
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RT
2012-08-18 00:00:00
A rare work by Pablo Picasso was discovered at Indiana's Evansville Museum, after going unnoticed in storage rooms for a half-century. The masterpiece is about to be given new life as specialists estimate how much it will fetch at auction. The layered glass artwork Seated Woman with Red Hat was created in the 1950s, and was misplaced and kept in storage by the museum since 1963 due to an attribution mistake. "Now that we have a full understanding of the requirements and additional expenses to display, secure, preserve and insure the piece, it is clear those additional costs would place a prohibitive financial burden on the museum," the Evansville Courier & Press quoted R. Steven Krohn, the president of the museum's board of trustees as saying. The work will be sold through a private New York auction house within six months. The piece is one of around 50 similar creations by Picasso. He is believed to have produced the glassworks between 1954 and 1956, while he was living in France. |
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CBC
2012-08-16 21:32:00
A family and their dog named Kitty have stumbled upon one of the most significant fossil finds ever in Nova Scotia. The reptile fossil, affectionately nicknamed "Superstar," is the first of its kind to be found in the province. While out walking along Nova Scotia's fossil-rich Northumberland shore, Patrick Keating, his family, and their dog, Kitty, found a fossilized rib cage, backbone and partial sail. When they went back to the same area a week later, they found the creature's fossilized skull. |
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| Science & Technology |
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Charles Q Choi
ISNS 2012-08-20 15:48:00
The great apes known as bonobos can make stone tools far more varied in purpose than previously known, reaching a level of technological competence formerly assigned only to the human lineage, according to researchers. These findings may shed light on the mental capabilities of the last common ancestor of humans and these apes, scientists added. Bonobos are, with chimpanzees, humanity's closest living relatives. Together bonobos and chimps are part of the group Pan, just as modern humans and extinct species of humans make up the group Homo. Chimpanzees are well-known tool-users, capable of fashioning spear-like weapons from branches for hunting and using stones as hammers and anvils in the wild. Although bonobos in the wild are not known for tool use, in captivity they have shown remarkable capabilities with stone tools. For instance, in the 1990s, researchers taught the male bonobo Kanzi and the female Pan-Banisha how to knap flint -- that is, strike the rocks together to create tools -- and use the resulting stone flakes to cut rope to open a box and to cut leather to open a drum for food. Now scientists reveal that in the intervening years, by practicing on their own, Kanzi and Pan-Banisha have developed a broader stone tool kit for more complex tasks, making them at least a match with chimpanzees in tool use. The researchers challenged Kanzi and Pan-Banisha to break wooden logs and to dig underground, tests similar to tasks the apes might have to carry out to get food in the wild. To break the logs -- an act similar at cracking open bones to get at marrow -- the scientists not only saw these apes use rocks as hammers or projectiles to smash their targets, but also observed them either rotating stone flakes to serve as drills or use the flakes as scrapers, axes or wedges to attack slits, the weakest areas of the log. To root into hard soil, these bonobos used both unmodified rocks and a variety of handmade stone tools as shovels. |
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Jeremy Hsu
InnovationNewsDaily 2012-08-20 11:52:00
A resurrected hover vehicle won't fly through dense forests as effortlessly as the Star Wars speeder bikes from Return of the Jedi, but its intuitive controls could someday allow anyone to fly it without pilot training. The aerial vehicle resembles a science fiction flying bike with two ducted rotors instead of wheels, but originates from a design abandoned in the 1960s because of stability and rollover problems. Aerofex, a California-based firm, fixed the stability issue by creating a mechanical system - controlled by two control bars at knee-level - that allows the vehicle to respond to a human pilot's leaning movements and natural sense of balance. "Think of it as lowering the threshold of flight, down to the domain of ATV's (all-terrain vehicles)," said Mark De Roche, an aerospace engineer and founder of Aerofex. |
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SpaceWeather.com
High above Earth in the realm of meteors and noctilucent clouds, a
strange and beautiful form of lightning dances at the edge of space.
Researchers call the bolts "sprites"; they are red, fleeting, and tend to come in bunches. Jesper Grønne of Silkeborg, Denmark, photographed these specimens on August 15th:2012-08-20 11:59:00
After several years of hunting sprites from my location in Denmark, I finally caught some last week--the first danish Red Sprites ever photographed," says Grønne. "They were located 50 km to 90 km above a thunderstorm some 350 km away over the North Sea. There were 2 flashes, each producing 5-6 individual Red Sprites." "Sprites are a true space weather phenomenon," explains lightning scientist Oscar van der Velde of Sant Vicenç de Castellet, Spain. "They develop in mid-air around 80 km altitude, growing in both directions, first down, then up. This happens when a fierce lightning bolt draws lots of charge from a cloud near Earth's surface. Electric fields [shoot] to the top of Earth's atmosphere--and the result is a sprite. The entire process takes about 20 milliseconds." |
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Charles Q. Choi
OurAmazingPlanet 2012-08-19 12:00:00
Thousands of earthquakes occurring in rapid succession in less than a year under an Antarctic glacier may have been linked to ocean tides, new research suggests. Scientists investigated seismic activity under David Glacier, a large glacier in East Antarctica about 270 square miles (700 square kilometers) in size. The glacier serves as the outlet from which ice from 4 percent of that region's ice sheet drains out toward the sea. To learn more about the foundations and behavior of this glacier, the researchers analyzed seismic data gathered from there over a nine-month period between 2002 and 2003 by the Transantarctic Mountains Seismic Experiment array of 42 seismometers. They identified about 20,000 seismic events during this period that were stronger and lasted longer than the shaking typically seen with glaciers. "The fact these events exist is fairly surprising," researcher Lucas Zoet, a glaciologist at Pennsylvania State University, told OurAmazingPlanet. "This type of seismic behavior had not been observed before in Antarctic outlet glaciers, so one main challenge was just to categorize it initially." The earthquakes also perplexingly occurred at regular intervals about 25 minutes apart. |
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Alan Travis
The Guardian 2012-08-19 16:55:00
Fresh consideration is to be given to the introduction of airport-style mass security screening at mainline rail stations and across London's tube network. The Home Office has launched a search for new and emerging technologies that are capable of rapidly screening huge numbers of passengers and which could be used in major train and tube stations and across the tube network. The new rail and tube screening technology is to be used to detect explosives, guns and knives, being carried by people and in bags, but would also need a capacity to spot chemical and biological materials. The screening equipment needs to be able to scan wheelchairs, prosthetics, crutches, pushchairs and bikes as well as people and their luggage. | |
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Comment: Security Industrial complex in need of fresh
profits after the London Olympics bonanza and the PTB to continue the
encroaching levels of surveillance, control and invasion of privacy.
Expect a round of bomb-on-train terror scares to get things moving...
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RedOrbit
2012-08-19 16:31:00
Magnetic turbulence is most likely the reason that solar wind moving away from our sun and our solar system is hotter than it theoretically should be, according to new research from scientists at the University of Warwick. As solar wind leaves the sun and expands beyond the solar system, it should begin to cool off due to the lack of particle collisions to dissipate energy, the university explained in a Friday press release. That isn't actually the case, though, as the solar wind is actually hotter than experts believe it should be, and that phenomenon has stumped researchers for years. In a pair of papers recently published in the journal Physical Review Letters, physicist and lead author Dr. Kareem Osman believes that he has uncovered the answer to the conundrum: magnetic turbulence, which is found in stars, stellar winds, galaxies, and other cosmic entities throughout the universe. Understanding this turbulence is vital to interpreting astrophysical observations, the institute explained, and the solar wind and near-Earth environment offered them an opportunity to examine the relationship between them. "The solar wind is much hotter than would be expected if it were just expanding outward from the Sun. Turbulence is the likely source of this heating," the university said. "For neutral fluids such as fast flowing water, energy dissipation occurs through many microscopic collisions. As is the case for many astrophysical plasmas, the near-Earth solar wind is thin and spread out, which means collisions between particles are rare to the point that the plasma is considered collisionless. A major outstanding problem is how, in the absence of those collisions, does plasma turbulence move energy to small scales to heat the solar wind." |
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Sam Shead
Microscopic molecule within protein holds the key to why our brains are so big.Dailymail.co.uk 2012-08-17 15:36:00 A minute particle within a protein allowed humans to become the most intelligent creatures on the planet, say scientists. It holds the key to understanding why our brains are so much bigger and more complex than any other animal, according to new research. It may also explain how its unequalled mental capacity evolved so rapidly and dramatically, a mystery that has baffled researchers for decades. |
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RedOrbit
2012-08-19 14:08:00
In a recent Reader's Digest article, an Oxford University professor, philosopher, and bioethicist reports that he believes parents have a "moral obligation" to genetically engineer their babies to make sure that they become better people. In the article, Julian Savulescu, who is also the director of the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics and the editor of the Journal of Medical Ethics, said that "screening out personality flaws, such as potential alcoholism, psychopathy and disposition to violence" in fetuses would improve the quality of society, the Huffington Post reported on Thursday. Furthermore, Savulescu argued that parents should be given the option to screen out potential personality flaws in their children in order to make them less likely to "harm themselves and others," and that screening embryos and manipulating specific genes could result in a smarter, wiser, less aggressive and less violent society, Richard Alleyne of the Telegraph added. Alleyne said Savulescu believes that advances in science make it easier and more likely to influence an unborn child's personality, altering DNA and genetic markers in order to enhance positive traits and eliminate negative ones. |
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ScienceDaily
2012-08-18 17:44:00
New research, led by University of Warwick physicist Dr Kareem Osman, has provided significant insight into how the solar wind heats up when it should not. The solar wind rushes outwards from the raging inferno that is our Sun, but from then on the wind should only get cooler as it expands beyond our solar system since there are no particle collisions to dissipate energy. However, the solar wind is surprisingly hotter than it should be, which has puzzled scientists for decades. Two new research papers led by Dr Osman may have solved that puzzle. Turbulence pervades the universe, being found in stars, stellar winds, accretion disks, galaxies, and even the material between galaxies. It also plays a critical role in the evolution of many laboratory plasmas, causing diminished confinement times in fusion devices. Therefore, understanding plasma turbulence is essential to the interpretation of a large body of laboratory, space, and astrophysical observations. The solar wind and near-Earth environment provide an excellent laboratory for the study of turbulence, and are the only in-situ accessible astrophysical plasmas. |
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RT
2012-08-17 00:00:00
A male contraceptive pill could be on the horizon, as a new scientific study reveals a compound capable of blocking sperm production in mice which could one day be used by humans. Scientists from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Baylor College of Medicine have discovered a tiny molecule that yields a quick yet perfectly reversible decrease in sperm count in rodents. The beacon of gender equality, the compound, known as JQ1, infiltrates male testes cells and temporarily made the mice in the experiment infertile as the dose produced fewer and less mobile sperm. The result is non-hormonal birth control; furthermore the effects of it can be reversed or stopped anytime. "Within one to two months [after discontinuing the drug], there was complete restoration in testicular size, sperm number, sperm motility and - importantly - fertility," Dr. James Bradner, an author on the study told the Huffington Post. "The litter size was normal, and there were no obvious, adverse symptoms in these animals," he added. Dana Farber researchers originally created the JQ1 as a means to block out cancer causing genes, but the results from the initial testing made them seek advice from contraceptive specialists at Baylor to see if the mice formula could be repeated in men. In the new study, published in the Cell journal, researchers showed how JQ1 effectively penetrated the blood-testis boundary in mice, preventing sperm from maturing. |
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| Earth Changes |
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The Daily Star
2012-08-20 17:09:00
PARIS: Five people, including two children, were struck by lightning and seriously injured Monday at an adventure park in the Pyrenees in southwestern France, a local source told AFP. The three adults and two children aged four and 14 had to be taken to hospital after the incident in the commune of Argeles-Gazost, while 25 others suffered lightning shocks. The lightning struck cables at the adventure course just after park officials had begun evacuation procedures because of the weather, said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity. In an incident Sunday, two women in a group of eight were struck by lightning while walking along the beach on the island of Oleron off the Atlantic coast of France. One woman suffered a heart attack, while the other remained conscious in hospital. |
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The Dominion Post
2012-08-20 17:05:00
Wellington was treated to a spectacular lightning display last night as a storm dropped hail stones the size of marbles on the Miramar Peninsula. MetService severe weather forecaster Paul Mallinson said several storms converged south of the city about 5pm. Between 8.15pm and 9pm the combined storm moved from Wellington Airport to Eastbourne before it began to fall apart. About 200 lightning strikes were recorded. The Metservice issued a severe weather watch for the capital, warning there may be surface flooding. MetService forecaster Stephen Glassey said the thunder storm formed about 5pm when a southerly and northerly wind converged, creating lift. Eastbourne resident Richard Mayston said it was some of the most dramatic lightning he had seen in 20 years and the thunder was so intense it shook his house. MetService duty forecaster Mads Naeraa said last night's thunder and lightning storm was an unusual one for Wellington. |
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Anthony Watts
Since we were treated to scads of news articles by the MSM on how many
record highs happened in July, it seems only fair that we report on the
multitude of record lows that occurred this weekend in the USA, and I
doubt we'll see the sort of coverage the highs got. A number of these
record lows go back into the past 100 years or more.
Whats Up With That? 2012-08-20 15:18:00 |
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Vignesh Ramachandran
NBC News 2012-08-20 13:20:00
As a flurry of wildfires rage across the Western United States, firefighters on Monday were trying to gain control of the 15,000-acre Ponderosa fire in Northern California that began over the weekend. Firefighters have only been able to contain five percent of the blaze, which is burning across both Tehama and Shasta counties. The fire began on Saturday after lighting strikes hit the densely forested area about 170 miles north of Sacramento, according to The Associated Press. So far, it has engulfed more than 23 square miles near the Northern Californian towns of Manton, Shingletown and Viola, AP reported. Seven structures have been destroyed. CAL FIRE spokesman Daniel Berlant said at least 3,000 homes remain threatened along with more than 300 other structures, AP said. |
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Garret Ellison
mlive.com 2012-08-18 10:21:00
Saturday: The National Weather Service is now reporting nine waterspouts from two separate storms were witnessed on Lake Michigan. Waterspouts have been spotted over Lake Michigan today and forecasters say it's possible more could spawn tonight and Sunday night. The National Weather Service said three of the tornado-like vortices were reported to them shortly before noon on Saturday, by people who were out on a fishing boat in Lake Michigan this morning. The spouts were spotted about 24 miles west of the South Haven lighthouse. The storms that caused them were small, 15-minute "pop-ups," said William Moreno, a meteorologist in the NWS office in Grand Rapids. Conditions were right this morning for the waterspouts, Moreno said, with a land breeze converging over lake water warmed by the summer heat. |
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US Geological Survey
2012-08-20 01:34:00
Date-Time Sunday, August 19, 2012 at 22:41:50 UTC Monday, August 20, 2012 at 08:41:50 AM at epicenter Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones Location 4.849°S, 144.583°E Depth 77.3 km (48.0 miles) Region NEAR NORTH COAST OF NEW GUINEA, P.N.G. Distances 104 km (64 miles) SSE of Angoram, Papua New Guinea 118 km (73 miles) NNE of Mount Hagen, Papua New Guinea 141 km (87 miles) WNW of Madang, Papua New Guinea 163 km (101 miles) NNW of Goroka, Papua New Guinea |
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Wire Update
Palu, Indonesia - A strong earthquake which struck a remote region of
northern Indonesia on late Saturday afternoon has destroyed dozens of
houses, killing at least four people, disaster management officials said
on Sunday. Several villages have not yet been reached.2012-08-19 00:00:00 The 6.2-magnitude earthquake at 5:41 p.m. local time (0941 GMT) was centered about 12 kilometers (7.4 miles) southeast of Sigi Biromaru, the main town of Sigi Regency in Central Sulawesi province. It struck about 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) deep, making it a shallow earthquake, according to the country's seismological agency. Rescue workers reached the remote area on Sunday and said damage and casualties were reported in at least nine villages, although efforts were still underway to determine if there are more casualties. "The impact of the earthquake as we have recorded so far is four people dead, seven people seriously injured, and 51 homes severely damaged," a spokesman for Indonesia's National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) said. |
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VCstar.com
Three small earthquakes near Santa Paula were reported early Sunday
after six that struck near the same area Saturday, according to the U.S.
Geological Survey.2012-08-19 14:55:00 Sunday's first earthquake was reported at 12:05 a.m. and registered a 2.0 on the Richter scale. It was centered six miles north-northwest of Santa Paula and eight miles east of Ojai, and struck 7.5 miles deep, the agency reported. A 2.0 magnitude quake struck at 12:06 a.m. It was six miles northwest of Santa Paula, six miles east-southeast of Ojai and 12.1 miles deep, officials said. |
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Daily Mail
2012-08-19 00:00:00
A lightning strike on a Lake Superior beach killed a nine-year-old Wisconsin boy and injured seven others, Minnesota authorities said Sunday. All eight were on a sailboat that took refuge from a rapidly approaching thunderstorm on the end of Minnesota Point, near the Superior Entry to the Duluth-Superior harbor, about 5:30 p.m. on Saturday, the St. Louis County Sheriff's Office said in a news release. Lighting struck before they could get off the boat, but one person was able to call 911. Law enforcement and rescue agencies rushed to the site, which was about two miles from the nearest road to Duluth, by boat and ATV. A boy identified as nine-year-old Luke Voigt from Iron River, Wisconsin, was flown to a hospital in Duluth, where he was pronounced dead. |
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The Washington Post
2012-08-18 00:00:00
San Francisco - Thousands of people have been told to leave their homes as a wildfire burning Sunday in thick forest threatened rural communities in far Northern California. The fire that sparked around 11:30 a.m. Saturday has destroyed four homes and consumed nearly 11 square miles near the towns of Manton, Shingleton, and Viola, fire spokesman Daniel Berlant said. About 3,500 homes spread out across a rural area along the border of Tehama and Shasta counties are threatened, he said. "A good majority are immediately threatened and a good number are in the path of the fire," Berlant said Sunday. "We will be battling it hard today to protect as many of those homes as possible." The cause of the fire has not been determined, but officials said it started after a series of lightning strikes in the area. John Cluff, 42, told the Redding Searchlight that he was forced to flee his home before the evacuations were issued. He went back for his dog about 3:30 p.m. "The fire basically chased me out of the property," he said. "All I could see was black smoke and flames." The Shasta County Sheriff's Department has declared a State of Emergency for the county, with evacuations expected to continue through Sunday. The Red Cross has set up an evacuation center in Redding, about 35 miles to the west of the fire. The fire, burning in a rugged area of thick forests about 170 miles north of Sacramento, is one of handful of new fires burning in Northern California. |
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Seattlepi
2012-08-19 04:19:00
Two men were swept into rain-swollen creeks in Dallas and Fort Worth after thunderstorms brought up to 4 inches of rain to the area over the weekend. By Sunday, authorities believed they had recovered one man's body. Fort Worth Fire Department spokesman Richard Harrison told The Associated Press a body was found in the search area Sunday afternoon but has not been positively identified as the missing man. Harrison said that a witness told them the man was swept away Saturday night after stepping into a creek on the east side of the city to cool off. Lt. Jerome Henry of Dallas Fire Rescue told The Dallas Morning News the search resumed Sunday for a man swept away in White Rock Creek. Witnesses say the man was fishing Saturday night when he lost his footing while walking across a concrete barrier to the other side of the creek |
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Mark Prigg
Daily Mail, UK 2012-08-17 15:50:00
Australian scientists say there is now "striking evidence" of extensive southward migration of tropical fish and declines in other species due to climate change, in a major ocean report card. Compiled by more than 80 of Australia's leading marine experts for the government science body CSIRO, the snapshot of global warming's effects on the island continent's oceans warned of 'significant impacts'. 'Climate change is already happening; widespread physical changes include rapid warming of the southeast and increasing flow of the east Australia current,' the report said. | |
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Comment: Ocean acidification and changing water
currents could rapidly alter our climate within a very short timespan -
and humanity's CO2 input would have nothing to do with it.
Fire and Ice: The Day After Tomorrow |
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Margery A. Beck
It's hard to tell what frustrates Todd Eggerling more - the weather or Congress.Associated Press 2012-08-19 13:23:00
Searing temperatures and drought scorched Eggerling's land in southeast Nebraska, leaving little grass to feed his 100 cattle. Then Congress left for a five-week break without agreeing on aid to help ranchers through one of the worst droughts in the nation's history. That means it will be September before Eggerling and other ranchers can even hope for disaster aid legislation that includes cash to buy feed until they would normally send their cattle to feedlots or slaughter in the fall or winter. For some, it's already too late. Out of grass and out of cash, they've sold their animals. For others, time is rapidly running out as they try to hold on. Their decisions will affect the price and supply of meat for months, perhaps years, to come. "I'd like to see every one of the senators and congressmen go out into one of these widespread, drought-stricken areas and spend a day," said Eggerling, 44, of Martell, Neb. "Walk around and see the effects of what's going on. Look at the local economies and see what's going to happen to them. Then they can go back to Washington with a real perspective and say, 'Hey; we need to do something.'" |
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Fars News Agency
An earthquake measuring 4.1 on the Richter scale struck the town of
Banak, in Bushehr province, Southern Iran on Saturday evening.
2012-08-19 02:14:00
The Seismological center of Bushehr province affiliated to the Geophysics Institute of Tehran University registered the quake at 23:47 hours local time (19:47 GMT). The epicenter of the quake was located in an area 52.07 degrees in longitude and 27.89 degrees in latitude. There are yet no reports on the number of possible casualties or damage to properties by the quake. Iran sits astride several major faults in the earth's crust, and is prone to frequent earthquakes, many of which have been devastating. The worst in recent times hit Bam in southeastern Kerman province in December 2003, killing 31,000 people - about a quarter of its population - and destroying the city's ancient mud-built citadel. The deadliest quake in the country was in June 1990 and measured 7.7 on the Richter scale. About 37,000 people were killed and more than 100,000 injured in the northwestern provinces of Gilan and Zanjan. It devastated 27 towns and about 1,870 villages. Tehran alone sits on two major fault lines, and the capital's 14 million residents fear a major quake. |
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Terra Daily
2012-08-19 09:50:00
At least nine people were killed, thousands of homes damaged and swathes of farmland flooded as Typhoon Kai-Tak swept across northern Vietnam, authorities said Sunday. The storm, which made landfall late Friday, brought strong winds and heavy rains that inundated several densely populated communities including part of the capital Hanoi. Five people were swept away by floodwaters while one woman died when a landslide buried her house while she was sleeping in Bac Giang province, according to the government's central committee on flood and storm control. A taxi driver was killed by a toppled tree while two people were electrocuted by a falling electricity cable, it said. Nearly 12,000 houses were damaged and 23,000 hectares (56,800 acres) of cropland were flooded, according to the committee. |
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| Fire in the Sky |
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sheilaaliens.net
Filmed from four all-sky cameras in Japan, August 19th, 2012.2012-08-19 08:39:00
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| Health & Wellness |
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Vic Shayne Phd.
Greenmedinfo.com 2012-08-20 16:25:00
The Paleo - prehistoric, or early human - diet seems to create more questions than answers. This is because its premise is based on a theory that eating like primitive humans is the closest diet to perfect. But the biggest problem comes in an attempt to identify what early bipeds really ate without considering a host of other important factors ranging from stomping grounds to food availability and everything in between. |
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ScienceDaily
A study conducted in Mongolian schoolchildren supports the possibility
that daily vitamin D supplementation can reduce the risk of respiratory
infections in winter. In a report that will appear in the journal Pediatrics
and has received early online release, an international research team
found that vitamin D supplementation decreased the risk of respiratory
infections among children who had low blood levels of vitamin D at the
start of the study.2012-08-20 14:44:00 "Our randomized controlled trial shows that vitamin D has important effects on infection risk," says Carlos Camargo, MD, of Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), the study's corresponding author. "In almost 250 children with low blood levels of vitamin D during winter, we found that taking a daily vitamin D supplement cut in half the risk of a respiratory infection." Several recent investigations have suggested that vitamin D -- best known for its role in the development and maintenance of strong bones -- has additional important roles, including in immune function. Studies led by Camargo and other researchers have associated higher vitamin D levels with reduced risk of respiratory infections such as colds or flu, but such observational studies cannot prove that the vitamin actually protects against infection. That kind of evidence must come from randomized controlled trials comparing two similar populations that either do or do not receive an intervention such as vitamin D supplementation. The first such trial, in Japanese schoolchildren, had equivocal results, showing a reduction in the risk of one type of influenza but no effect on another type, so many organizations have called for further randomized trials to settle the issue. |
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ScienceDaily
2012-08-20 14:38:00
The underlying causes of Alzheimer's disease are not fully understood, but a good deal of evidence points to the accumulation of β-amyloid, a protein that's toxic to nerve cells. β-amyloid is formed by the activity of several enzymes, including one called BACE1. Most Alzheimer's disease patients have elevated levels of BACE1, which in turn leads to more brain-damaging β-amyloid protein. In a paper published August 15 in The Journal of Neuroscience, researchers at Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute (Sanford-Burnham) found that BACE1 does more than just help produce β-amyloid -- it also regulates another cellular process that contributes to memory loss. This means that just inhibiting BACE1's enzymatic activity as a means to prevent or treat Alzheimer's disease isn't enough -- researchers will have to prevent cells from making it at all. "Memory loss is a big problem -- not just in Alzheimer's disease, but also in the normal aging population," said Huaxi Xu, Ph.D., professor in Sanford-Burnham's Del E. Webb Neuroscience, Aging, and Stem Cell Research Center and senior author of the study. "In this study, we wanted to better understand how BACE1 plays a role in memory loss, apart from β-amyloid production." To do this, Xu and his team used a mouse model that produces human BACE1. Mice produce a different type of β-amyloid, one that's far less toxic than the human version. So, in this system, they could look solely at how BACE1 functions independent from β-amyloid formation. If BACE1 only acted to produce β-amyloid, the researchers would expect to see no effect when mice produce human BACE1 -- since mouse β-amyloid isn't very toxic, extra BACE1 would be no big deal. Instead, they saw that the enzyme still impaired learning and memory, indicating a secondary function at work. |
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ScienceDaily
2012-08-20 14:33:00
Scientists have cracked a molecular code that may open the way to destroying or correcting defective gene products, such as those that cause genetic disorders in humans. The code determines the recognition of RNA molecules by a super-family of RNA-binding proteins called pentatricopeptide repeat (PPR) proteins. When a gene is switched on, it is copied into RNA. This RNA is then used to make proteins that are required by the organism for all of its vital functions. If a gene is defective, its RNA copy and the proteins made from this will also be defective. This forms the basis of many terrible genetic disorders in humans. RNA-binding PPR proteins could revolutionize the way we treat disease. Their secret is their versatility -- they can find and bind a specific RNA molecule, and have the capacity to correct it if it is defective, or destroy it if it is detrimental. They can also help ramp up production of proteins required for growth and development. |
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ScienceDaily
Research has found that declines in temporal information processing
(TIP), the rate at which auditory information is processed, underlies
the progressive loss of function across multiple cognitive systems in
the elderly, including new learning, memory, perception, attention,
thinking, motor control, problem solving, and concept formation. In a
new study, scientists have found that elderly subjects who underwent
temporal training improved not only the rate at which they processed
auditory information, but also in other cognitive areas. The study is
published in the current issue of Restorative Neurology and Neuroscience.2012-08-20 14:30:00 "Our study showed for the first time significant benefits of temporal training on broad aspects of cognitive function in the elderly. The results were long-lasting, with effects confirmed 18 months after the training," says lead investigator Elzbieta Szelag, Professor, Head of Laboratory of Neuropsychology, Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology, and Warsaw School of Social Sciences and Humanities (www.swps.pl), Warsaw, Poland. Thirty subjects between 65 and 75 years of age were randomly assigned to three groups. One group received temporal training using Fast ForWord Language® (FFW), a program composed of several computer games designed to improve memory, attention, and sequencing abilities. The program was developed to help children who have trouble reading, writing, and learning. The second group participated in non-temporal training by playing common computer games. The third group, the control, underwent no training. |
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ScienceDaily
The more that we understand the brain, the more complex it becomes. The
same can be said about the genetics and neurobiology of psychiatric
disorders. For "Mendelian" disorders, like Huntington disease, mutation
of a single gene predictably produces a single clinical disorder,
following relatively simple genetic principals. Compared to Mendelian
disorders, understanding bipolar disorder has been extremely
challenging. Its biology is not well understood and its genetics are
complex.2012-08-20 14:23:00 In a new paper, Dr. Inti Pedroso and colleagues utilize an integrative approach to probe the biology of bipolar disorder. They combined the results of three genome-wide association studies, which examined the association of common gene variants with bipolar disorder throughout the genome, and a study of gene expression patterns in post-mortem brain tissue from people who had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. The findings were analyzed within the context of how brain proteins relate to each other based on the Human Protein Reference Database protein-protein interaction network. "None of our research approaches provides us with sufficient information, by itself, to understand the neurobiology of psychiatric disorders. This innovative paper wrestles with this challenge in a creative way that helps us to move forward in thinking about the neurobiology of bipolar disorder," commented Dr. John Krystal, Editor of Biological Psychiatry. |
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Paul Fassa
NaturalSociety 2012-08-19 14:28:00
It is very encouraging to see a mainstream medicine insider with impressive credentials come out and confirm what some of us outsiders have known for a while. Dr. Dwight Lundell has been a heart specialist MD and surgeon for 25 years, having performed 5,000 open heart surgeries. He was Chief Surgeon at the Banner Heart Hospital in Mesa, AZ, and he ran a successful private practice. This is how he begins his personal testimony: "We physicians with all our training, knowledge and authority often acquire a rather large ego that tends to make it difficult to admit we are wrong. So, here it is. I freely admit to being wrong." Dr. Dwight Lundell and his Current Perspective on Heart Health Dr. Lundell has seen through the cholesterol myth and hoax, the low fat diet scam recommended by medical authorities, and the high adverse risks without benefits of statin drugs. From his experience as a heart specialist, he realizes that statin drugs are much more dangerous than high cholesterol. He maintains that lowering cholesterol unnaturally invites other health issues. Our bodies need cholesterol for cell walls, nervous system sheathing, and brain matter. Cholesterol is part of our necessary physiology. Cholesterol is also converted into various hormones by the endocrine system. Recent research also points to statin drugs leading to Alzheimer's disease; but this is not necessarily a side effect. This is the result of statin drugs' working as they should, lowering cholesterol, which the brain and nervous system need to build and maintain healthy tissues. Dr. Dwight Lundell points to low fat diet recommendations as a major factor for raising cardiac and diabetes issues statistics nationally. He points out that healthy fats do exist and they're important. Medical dietary recommendations have expanded an already toxic food industry by promoting unhealthy fats. |
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Sayer Ji
GreenMedInfo 2012-08-19 14:21:00
Did you know that the multi-billion drug category known as "acid blockers," despite being used by millions around the world daily, may not work as well as the humble ginger plant in relieving symptoms of indigestion and heartburn? Ginger is a spice, a food, and has been used as a medicine safely for millennia by a wide range of world cultures. Research on the health benefits of ginger is simply staggering in its depth and breadth. In fact, the health benefits of ginger have been studied extensively for over 100 health conditions or symptoms, making it one of the world's most versatile, evidence-based remedies. The biomedical literature on acid blockers, on the other hand, is rife with examples of the many adverse health effects that come with blocking stomach acid production with xenobiotic, patented drugs, i.e. proton pump inhibitors and H2 antagonists. What started out as "heartburn" - which in its chronic form is now called "acid reflux" or "gastroesophageal reflux disorder" - soon becomes stomach acid barrier dysfunction, when these drugs remove the acid which protects us from infection, helps to break down food, and facilitate the absorption of minerals and nutrients. The list of 30+ harms is extensive, but here are a few of the most well-established adverse effects you may not be aware of:
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Fiona Macrae
A parasite found in cats is tampering with people's brains and driving them to suicide, research suggests.DailyMail.Co.Uk 2012-08-17 14:03:00 Scientists have shown that men and women infected with a bug that breeds in cats' stomachs and worms into people's brains are seven times more likely to attempt suicide than others. They say that Toxoplasma gondii may tinker with the delicate chemistry of the brain and screening people for it could help identify those at risk of taking their own lives.
The parasite, which is carried by many Britons, has a complicated life cycle but can only breed inside cats. The microscopic eggs are passed on in cat faeces, spreading the infection. |
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Mark Hyman, MD
drhayman.com 2012-03-28 00:00:00
Two seemingly groundbreaking studies, published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine found that type 2 diabetes, or "diabesity", could be cured with gastric bypass surgery. The flurry of media attention and medical commentary hail this as a great advance in the fight against diabetes. The cure was finally discovered for what was always thought to be a progressive incurable disease. But is this really a step backwards? Yes, and here's why. No one is asking the most obvious question. How did the surgery cure the diabetes? Did the surgeons simply cut out the diabetes like a cancerous tumor? No. The patients in the studies changed their diet. They changed what they put in their stomach and that's something that doesn't require surgery to change. If they had surgery and they didn't stop binging on donuts and soda they would get violently ill and vomit and have diarrhea. That's enough to scare anyone skinny. If I designed a study that gave someone an electric shock every time they ate too much or the wrong thing, I could reverse diabetes in a few weeks. But you can get the benefits of a gastric bypass without the pain of surgery, vomiting, and malnutrition. Most don't realize that after gastric bypass diabetes can disappear within a week or two while people are still morbidly obese. How does this happen? It is because food is the most powerful drug on the planet and real whole fresh food and can turn on thousands of healing genes and hundreds of healing hormones and molecules that create health within days or weeks. In fact, what you put on your fork is more powerful than anything you can find in a prescription bottle. The researchers asked the wrong question. It should not have been does surgery work better than medication, but does surgery work better than intensive lifestyle and diet change. Astonishingly, the researchers just compared surgery to medication, which has been proven over and over not to reverse diabetes, and often promotes progressive worsening of the diabetes. Patients who get on insulin gain weight and their blood pressure and cholesterol go up. And in recent studies, those who had the most aggressive medical therapy to lower blood sugar had higher rates of heart attack and death. These two new studies on gastric bypass should have included a treatment group that had intensive lifestyle therapy as well as medical therapy or surgery. Lifestyle change and changes in diet work faster, better, and cheaper than any medication and are as effective or more effective than gastric bypass without any side effects or long term complications. These changes are not easy, but then neither is gastric bypass. |
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Dr. Mark Hayman MD
drhyman.com 2012-03-01 00:00:00
Recently, I attended a convention of the American Diabetes Association in New York City where the main booth heralded a breakthrough "cure" for diabetes. Excited to think I might learn something new, I hustled right over. Imagine my dismay when all the information at the booth was about weight-loss surgery! Do we need a cure? Absolutely! Is surgery a one-size-fits-all solution for diabetes? No way. I understand the desire to find a solution. After all, Type 2 diabetes is looming as the biggest epidemic and public health issue in human history. Close to 300 million people are affected worldwide and another 150 million forecast to be diagnosed by 2030. The reason? Obesity. Yes, obesity is a tenacious problem but surgery is only a Band-Aid solution, albeit one that is growing in popularity. In the last decade alone, the rate of weight-loss surgeries performed each year in the United States has increased from 10,000 to 230,000. But how many of the 1.7 billion overweight citizens of the world can afford gastric bypass? And how many of those will regain the weight? I have seen many patients go under the knife for these procedures only to gain back the weight they lost, plus some. Weight-loss surgery may seem like a panacea, but it won't solve the underlying hormonal and metabolic imbalances that are driving the diabetes and obesity. My patient Alan is a prime example. Alan has been overweight since he was 6 years old and has never experienced a day without ravenous hunger. At age 40, he had gastric-bypass surgery and shrunk from 450 to 250 pounds. The size of his stomach changed, but his overall lifestyle did not. Eventually, he gained back 100 pounds. Even with a stomach the size of a walnut, he managed to gain weight one tiny, fattening bite at a time. By the time he landed in my office, he was 60 years old and tired of juggling all the complications of weight-loss surgery. |
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Dr. Mark Hyman, MD
drhyman.com 2012-05-22 00:00:00
In a shocking new study published online in Pediatrics this week, researchers found that from 2000 to 2008, the number of teenagers aged 12 to 19 with pre-diabetes or diabetes increased from 9% to 23%. Yikes, one in four kids have either pre-diabetes or diabetes - what I like to call diabesity. How did this happen? Just 15 years ago, less than 3% of new cases of childhood diabetes were Type 2 (or what we used to call adult onset), now it is nearly 50% of all new cases of diabetes in kids. In this study of 3,383 children, the most shocking finding was not just the exploding rates of pre-diabetes and Type 2 diabetes in children, which alone should make us all stop whatever we are doing and become health activists, it was the fact that 13% of kids of normal weight were either pre-diabetic or diabetic. We need to stand up in our homes, communities and schools and create healthy environments for kids. We need to take back our kid's taste buds, our kitchens and our homes, which have been hijacked by the food industry and ban anything except real food. We need to lobby to change food marketing to kids, tax soda, limit access to junk food in our schools and neighborhoods, and protect our children, their future, our global economic competitiveness, and our national security. Sick kids have been shown to have an achievement gap doing less well in school and throughout their lives. And a full 75% of military recruits are not fit to serve. |
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Lisa Garber
NaturalSociety 2012-08-18 17:11:00
Remember the '70s when doctors equated eggs with cholesterol and heart disease? A recent Canadian study involving over 1,200 adults published in the peer-reviewed journal Atherosclerosis says that eating eggs yolks is about as bad as smoking cigarettes when it comes to advancing coronary heart disease. We're already seeing cracks in the theory. In the study, researchers recorded the number of eggs eaten and packs of cigarettes smoked as recalled by each adult (average age 62). Everyone in the study had been referred to a vascular prevention clinic at a Canadian hospital, meaning their heart health (and the habits that led them there) was already in question. The researchers found that, as expected, plaque build-up in their subjects' carotid artery thickened with age, and even correlated with smoking and egg-eating habits. Publications like The Daily Mail and Fox News have reported blindly on the matter, but thankfully there are others out there suspiciously raising eyebrows. The UK's National Health Service points out some of the study's limitations, including:
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Case Adams, Naturopath
GreenMedInfo 2012-08-18 05:00:00
In a nine-year population study, Canadian researchers have determined that at least two fluoroquinolone-based antibiotics - commonly given to patients with respiratory infections, diarrhea, conjunctivitis and other infections - cause acute liver damage. The research comes from Toronto's Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences, the University of Toronto, and the Ontario Departments of Medicine and Healthy Policy, Management and Evaluation. The research team was led by David N. Juurlink, M.D., Ph.D., a professor of clinical pharmacology at the University of Toronto and a leading liver disease researcher. The researchers analyzed liver injury cases for different antibiotics over nine years in a hospital population from Ontario. The antibiotics studied included moxifloxacin, levofloxacin, cefuroxime axetil and ciprofloxacin. They studied cases where patients were prescribed antibiotics at some point between 2002 and 2011. They matched the patients with other patients of the same age and sex that were given other antibiotics. Liver damage cases were compared to patients prescribed the antibiotic clarithromycin. None of the study population had a history of liver injury or disease prior to the study. The researchers found that those patients given the moxifloxacin antibiotic had more than double the risk of acute liver injury, while those given levofloxacin had almost twice the risk of liver damage when compared to those taking clarithromycin. Moxifloxacin and levofloxacin are both fluoroquinolones. The study population yielded 144 patients who suffered from severe liver injury inside of 30 days from the time they began taking one of these antibiotics. Of those 144 patients, over 60% of them - 88 patients - died of liver complications as a result of their use of these antibiotics. |
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| Science of the Spirit |
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Megan Gannon
LiveScience 2012-08-20 16:23:00
We tend to recall life's big events more vividly than everyday moments, and new research suggests this occurs because meaning influences how clearly we see something as well as how well we remember it later. "We've discovered that we see things that are emotionally arousing with greater clarity than those that are more mundane," psychology researcher Rebecca Todd said in a statement from the University of Toronto. "Whether they're positive - for example, a first kiss, the birth of a child, winning an award - or negative, such as traumatic events, breakups, or a painful and humiliating childhood moment that we all carry with us, the effect is the same." For the study, Todd and her colleagues first had participants look at pictures of three different types of scenes: emotionally arousing negative scenes, such as images showing violence or mutilation; emotionally arousing positive scenes, which included mild erotica; and neutral scenes, such as pictures of people on an escalator. The pictures were overlaid with varying amounts of "visual noise," akin the snow on an old television screen, and participants were asked to rate how much noise was in each image. |
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University of Toronto
2012-08-20 16:25:00
Have you ever wondered why you can remember things from long ago as if they happened yesterday, yet sometimes can't recall what you ate for dinner last night? According to a new study led by psychologists at the University of Toronto, it's because how much something means to you actually influences how you see it as well as how vividly you can recall it later. "We've discovered that we see things that are emotionally arousing with greater clarity than those that are more mundane," says Rebecca Todd, a postdoctoral fellow in U of T's Department of Psychology and lead author of the study published recently in the Journal of Neuroscience. "Whether they're positive - for example, a first kiss, the birth of a child, winning an award - or negative, such as traumatic events, breakups, or a painful and humiliating childhood moment that we all carry with us, the effect is the same." "What's more, we found that how vividly we perceive something in the first place predicts how vividly we will remember it later on," says Todd. "We call this 'emotionally enhanced vividness' and it is like the flash of a flashbub that illuminates an event as it's captured for memory." By studying brain activity, Todd, psychology professor Adam Anderson and other colleagues at U of T, along with researchers at the University of Manchester and the University of California, San Diego found that the part of the brain responsible for tagging the emotional or motivational importance of things according to one's own past experience - the amygdala - is more active when looking at images that are rated as vivid. This increased activation in turn influences activity in both the visual cortex, enhancing activity linked to seeing objects, and in the posterior insula, a region that integrates sensations from the body. "The experience of more vivid perception of emotionally important images seems to come from a combination of enhanced seeing and gut feeling driven by amygdala calculations of how emotionally arousing an event is," says Todd. |
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American Psychological Association
2012-08-20 16:14:00
Children as young as 3 apparently can tell the difference between whining and when someone has good reason to be upset, and they will respond with sympathy usually only when it is truly deserved, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association. "The study provides the first evidence that 3-year-olds can evaluate just how reasonable another person's distressed reaction is to a particular incident or situation, and this influences whether they are concerned enough to try to do something to help," said the study's lead author, Robert Hepach, MRes, of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. The study was published online in the APA journal Developmental Psychology. The experiment involved 48 children, split evenly between girls and boys, from 36 to 39 months old. Researchers recorded reactions of each child as he or she witnessed an adult acting upset in one of three contexts: when the distress was justified, when it was unjustified and when the cause of the distress was unknown, the study said. For the experiment, two adults met with each child and engaged in various situations in which one of the adults would display distress by frowning, whimpering or pouting. Their distress was in response to specific incidents of apparent physical harm, material loss or unfairness. In each case, the child witnessed the adult either experiencing something that should cause distress or reacting to something that occurred in a similar context but was much less serious. Children who witnessed the adult being upset due to a real harm or injustice showed concern for him, intervened on his behalf and checked on him when he later expressed distress out of their view. |
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University News
University of Bath 2012-08-18 05:16:00
Choosing to ignore advertising may lend it greater power, reveals a new book which explores how we process advertising - at both a subconscious and semi-conscious level. Dr Robert Heath, a pioneer in the field of brand communications from the University of Bath's School of Management, explains the hidden power of advertising using the latest research in experimental psychology and cognitive neuroscience. His book, entitled Seducing the Subconscious: The Psychology of Emotional Influence in Advertising exposes how much advertising affects our everyday decisions and how little we realise it is happening. Dr Heath explains why the most successful advertising campaigns are not those we love or hate or those with messages that are interesting or new, but campaigns that are able to effortlessly slip under our radar and influence our behaviour without us knowing. Dr Heath said: "It may seem counter-intuitive, but the best way to avoid advertising affecting us this way is to embrace it. The more attention you give it, the more you can counter-argue what you see and hear, and the less it will affect you." "It may be tedious, it may be annoying, and it may make your life a bit uncomfortable. But at least you'll know you haven't been subconsciously seduced." | |
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Comment: For further information see this Sott article: Unplug Yourself: How Advertising and Entertainment Shapes Your Subconscious
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| High Strangeness |
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ppphhhiiissshhh
YouTube 2012-08-07 08:34:00 Comment: There is no description with this video. Almost half-way through the video a red light appears and, then, after the red light "turns off" there is a strange object where the light was.
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Iceland Review Online
2012-08-19 16:16:00
The district council of Fljótsdalshérað municipality in East Iceland has appointed a 13-person investigative commission to evaluate whether the infamous lake monster Lagarfljótsormurinn is the phenomenon filmed by Hjörtur Kjerúlf, farmer at Hrafnkelsstaðir, last winter. Hjörtur's video of an object or creature that appeared to wriggle like a worm in the river Jökulsá í Fljótsdal which runs into the lake Lagarfljót, the monster's alleged habitat, garnered significant attention, resulting in foreign television crews coming to Iceland to try and catch the monster on camera, ruv.is reports. This summer, Hjörtur has made claim to ISK 500,000 (USD 4,200, EUR 3,400), a prize in a competition the local municipality launched 15 years ago on photos of Lagarfljótsormurinn. The prize was never paid out because none of the photos entered were thought to show the monster. However, the district council at the time promised that if the monster would ever be caught on camera, the photographer would be entitled to the prize. |
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Richard Gray
The Ministry of Defence will no longer investigate UFO sightings
after ruling there is "no evidence" they pose a threat to the UK despite
a senior aviation official admitting the country is visited by one
unidentified flying object a month. The Telegraph 2012-08-19 08:29:00
Those who have long feared an invasion from Mars or further afield can relax - at least, that is, if they believe the Ministry of Defence. An end has been ordered to all official investigations of Unidentified Flying Objects, or UFOs, after the ministry ruled they do not pose a threat to the nation's security. It comes as the head of UK Air Traffic Control admitted the country is visited by around one unidentified flying object a month. Asked on BBC Radio 4's Today programme about the existence of UFOs, Mr Deakin confirmed they were still being seen by his staff. He said: "Occasionally there are objects identified that do not conform to normal traffic patterns. It does not occupy a huge amount of my time. There are approximately one a month." Yet despite this, the MoD insists it will no longer investigate UFO sightings. |
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Bangkok Post
Surin - Locals have urged the Fine Arts Department's office in Nakhon
Ratchasima to return ancient objects to the Changpee temple ruins after
the mysterious deaths of several senior monks and local leaders in
Sikhoraphum district.2012-08-18 08:55:00 The locals believe the guardians of the 3,000-year-old temple ruins in tambon Changpee are angry after statues and ancient objects were taken from the ruins by the Nakhon Ratchasima-based Fine Arts office and other state agencies during an excavation of the site in November 2010. Chainarong Thonglor, head of Ban Changpee village, recently invited nine Buddhist monks to perform a ceremony to pray to guardians of the temple ruins for their forgiveness following the deaths of 10 senior monks and other residents of the village. Most died from unknown causes, said Mr Chainarong. Many residents are gripped with fear following these mysterious deaths, and want the Fine Arts office to return the ancient statues and other objects to the temple ruins, he said. |
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Leighton Buzzard Obserer
A UFO sighting in Leighton Buzzard has been reported following witnesses
saying they saw an unusual object travelling slowly through the sky.2012-08-18 08:23:00 Jo Jefferson claims that she saw a cylindrical shaped object, which had a centre square of an orange glow while stopped at traffic lights in her car on Wednesday at 6.20pm. She said: "When the lights turned to green, I pulled over to a safe spot and got out of my car. "A gentleman in his car had followed me and he too got out and came and spoke to me about the 'object' as he had also seen it. " The intrigued spectators were then joined by four other people who claimed they too saw the UFO. Jo added: "We all agreed it was not a plane, helicopter or Chinese Lantern as it had no wings, propellors or fins on it. "We all saw clearly that it was a dull grey in colour, but we couldn't give any size as not too sure how far away it was. "We couldn't hear any noise, again, because of the distance. "It travelled exceedingly slow." Did you see anything unusual in the sky on Wednesday? If so, let us know what you saw. |
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Graeme Donohoe
The Scottish Sun 2012-08-15 21:37:00
Baffled hillwalkers fear ALIENS have landed - after mysterious slime started appearing in the countryside. They have discovered a strange jelly... and some experts believe it's landed from space. The first report of an unidentified fluid object was in the Pentland Hills near Edinburgh, triggering a flood of similar sightings. Now National Geographic Channel documentary Wild X Files attempts to solve the mystery after they had the weird samples analysed by scientists. Paranormal investigator Steve Mera is convinced he was dealing with aliens after a sample he collected DISAPPEARED. He said: "I was dumbfounded. I had no idea what it was. "I thought 'let's get some samples.' The next morning, I saw the sample jar and I did a double take as there was nothing in it. It was there the night before, now it was empty." Steve was sure he was dealing with star jelly left over from a meteor shower. He said: "It comes from space." |
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| Don't Panic! Lighten Up! |
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Agence France Presse
2012-08-18 16:04:00
A French quadruple amputee has swum from the US to Asia in the final part of a quest to link all continents. Philippe Croizon, 44, braved strong currents and near-freezing temperatures on Friday to swim the four kilometres from the US island of Little Diomede to the Russian island of Big Diomede. He said it took him about one hour and 20 minutes. "This was the hardest swim of my life, with a water temperature of four degrees Celsius and strong currents," the deeply moved Croizon said after reaching the Russian island. "We made it," he added. |
