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Glenn Greenwald
The Guardian 2012-08-29 17:26:00
Mark Mazzetti's emails with the CIA expose the degradation of journalism that has lost the imperative to be a check to power The rightwing transparency group, Judicial Watch, released Tuesday a new batch of documents showing how eagerly the Obama administration shoveled information to Hollywood film-makers about the Bin Laden raid. Obama officials did so to enable the production of a politically beneficial pre-election film about that "heroic" killing, even as administration lawyers insisted to federal courts and media outlets that no disclosure was permissible because the raid was classified. Thanks to prior disclosures from Judicial Watch of documents it obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, this is old news. That's what the Obama administration chronically does: it manipulates secrecy powers to prevent accountability in a court of law, while leaking at will about the same programs in order to glorify the president. But what is news in this disclosure are the newly released emails between Mark Mazzetti, the New York Times's national security and intelligence reporter, and CIA spokeswoman Marie Harf. The CIA had evidently heard that Maureen Dowd was planning to write a column on the CIA's role in pumping the film-makers with information about the Bin Laden raid in order to boost Obama's re-election chances, and was apparently worried about how Dowd's column would reflect on them. On 5 August 2011 (a Friday night), Harf wrote an email to Mazzetti with the subject line: "Any word??", suggesting, obviously, that she and Mazzetti had already discussed Dowd's impending column and she was expecting an update from the NYT reporter. |
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Matt Taibbi
Rolling Stone 2012-08-29 16:16:00
How the GOP presidential candidate and his private equity firm staged an epic wealth grab, destroyed jobs - and stuck others with the bill The great criticism of Mitt Romney, from both sides of the aisle, has always been that he doesn't stand for anything. He's a flip-flopper, they say, a lightweight, a cardboard opportunist who'll say anything to get elected. The critics couldn't be more wrong. Mitt Romney is no tissue-paper man. He's closer to being a revolutionary, a backward-world version of Che or Trotsky, with tweezed nostrils instead of a beard, a half-Windsor instead of a leather jerkin. His legendary flip-flops aren't the lies of a bumbling opportunist - they're the confident prevarications of a man untroubled by misleading the nonbeliever in pursuit of a single, all-consuming goal. Romney has a vision, and he's trying for something big: We've just been too slow to sort out what it is, just as we've been slow to grasp the roots of the radical economic changes that have swept the country in the last generation. |
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| Puppet Masters |
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Tim Dickinson
Rolling Stone 2012-05-24 17:23:00
They're trying to buy a presidency - and they expect a big payoff on their investment Presidential politics has always been a rich man's game. But now, thanks to the Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United that upended decades of limits on campaign donations, financing a presidential race is the exclusive domain of the kind of megadonor whose portfolios make Mitt Romney look middle-class. "I have lots of money, and can give it legally now," Texas billionaire and top GOP moneyman Harold Simmons recently bragged to The Wall Street Journal. "Just never to Democrats." In past elections, big donors like Simmons gave millions for advocacy groups like Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. By law, such groups were only allowed to run issue ads - but instead they directly targeted John Kerry, drawing big fines from the Federal Elections Commission. Now, with the blessing of the Supreme Court, the wealthy can legally hand out unlimited sums to groups that openly campaign for a candidate, knowing that their "dark money" donations will be kept entirely secret. The billionaire Koch brothers, for instance, have reportedly pledged $60 million to defeat President Obama this year - but their off-the-book contributions don't appear in any FEC filings. |
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Glen Ford
Black Agenda Report 2012-08-28 17:07:00
There's no getting around the fact that the United States is the Mother of All Police States. China can't compete in the incarceration business. With four times the U.S. population, it imprisons only 70 percent as many people - about the same number as the non-white prison population of the U.S. Even worse, 80,000 U.S. inmates undergo the torture of solitary confinement on any given day. When U.S. corporate media operatives use the term "police state," they invariably mean some other country. Even the so-called "liberal" media, from Democracy Now to the MSNBC menagerie, cannot bring themselves to say "police state" and the "United States" without putting the qualifying words "like" or "becoming" in the middle. The U.S. is behaving "like" a police state, they say, or the U.S. is in danger of "becoming" a police state. But it is never a police state. Since these privileged speakers and writers are not themselves in prison - because what they write and say represents no actual danger to the state - they conclude that a U.S. police state does not, at this time, exist. Considering the sheer size and social penetration of its police and imprisonment apparatus, the United States is not only a police state, but the biggest police state in the world, by far: the police state against whose dimensions all other police systems on Earth must be measured. |
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Tim Dickinson
Rolling Stone 2012-08-29 17:10:00
Government documents prove the candidate's mythology is just that Mitt Romney likes to say he won't "apologize" for his success in business. But what he never says is "thank you" - to the American people - for the federal bailout of Bain & Company that made so much of his outsize wealth possible. According to the candidate's mythology, Romney took leave of his duties at the private equity firm Bain Capital in 1990 and rode in on a white horse to lead a swift restructuring of Bain & Company, preventing the collapse of the consulting firm where his career began. When The Boston Globe reported on the rescue at the time of his Senate run against Ted Kennedy, campaign aides spun Romney as the wizard behind a "long-shot miracle," bragging that he had "saved bank depositors all over the country $30 million when he saved Bain & Company." In fact, government documents on the bailout obtained by Rolling Stone show that the legend crafted by Romney is basically a lie. The federal records, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, reveal that Romney's initial rescue attempt at Bain & Company was actually a disaster - leaving the firm so financially strapped that it had "no value as a going concern." Even worse, the federal bailout ultimately engineered by Romney screwed the FDIC - the bank insurance system backed by taxpayers - out of at least $10 million. And in an added insult, Romney rewarded top executives at Bain with hefty bonuses at the very moment that he was demanding his handout from the feds. |
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Susanne Posel
Activist Post 2012-08-30 10:24:00
In the San Antonio school district, the Student Locator Project (SLP) is being beta-tested at Jay High School and Jones Middle School - two schools in the Northside district. The SLP includes the use of radio frequency identification technology (RFID) to "make schools safer, know where our students are while at school, increase revenues, and provide a general purpose 'smart' ID card." In order to check out school library books, register for classes, pay for school lunches, the "smart" ID card is being employed to trace and track students and their movements on campuses all across America. By using leverage of educators to coerce school districts to adopt this method of tracking students, the argument for the use of the RFID technology is campus safety, efficient registration, and food and library programs. In Austin, Texas, collaboration with the Global Positioning System (GPS) and RFID technology is being used to deter students from skipping classes. In fact, those students having a negative record with the school they attend are being targeted to be under surveillance. An estimated 1,700 students have already been pledged to the program with parental permission. These students are assigned a "mentor" who oversees the actions of the students and to whom the students must contact on a weekly basis to report to. This is reminiscent of having a parole officer for student who have not committed a crime, yet are being touted as pre-criminals. |
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Russia Today, America
2012-08-30 09:32:00
According to recent reports, the US leads the globe in weapons sales. In 2011, arms deals tripled to a record high resulting in over $66 billion in revenue. In the global market, the US accounts for 79 percent of weapons sales with most of the clientele being in the Persian Gulf. So how did America become the number one sales dealer worldwide? Anthony Shaffer, with the Center for Advanced Defense Studies, joins us with his take on the sales of arms. |
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Press TV
2012-08-30 03:30:00
At least 12 civilians have been killed in an airstrike carried out by the US-led forces in a village in Afghanistan's Ghor province,Press TV reports. Hundreds of civilians have lost their lives in the US-led operations in various parts of Afghanistan over the past few months, with Afghans becoming increasingly outraged at the seemingly endless number of the deadly assaults. The issue of civilian casualties in Afghanistan is highly sensitive and has been a major source of friction between President Hamid Karzai and the United States. |
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Press TV
2012-08-30 01:36:00
Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei says the US and its allies abuse the "illogical, unjust and completely undemocratic" structure of the UN Security Council to impose their bullying on the world. "This is a flagrant form of dictatorship, which is antiquated and obsolete and whose expiry date has passed," Ayatollah Khamenei said during an inaugural speech to the 16th Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit in Tehran on Thursday. The Leader added that the US and its accomplices protect the interests of the West in the name of "human rights", interfere militarily in other countries in the name of "democracy" and target defenseless people in villages and cities with their bombs and weapons in the name of "combating terrorism". Ayatollah Khamenei said torture and assassination are condoned if they are carried out by the US, the Israeli regime and their puppets. |
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Press TV
2012-08-30 01:42:00
Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei says the policies of the Cold War era and the subsequent unilateralism have failed, stressing that a new order is taking shape throughout the world. "In the recent past, we have been witness to the failure of the policies of the Cold War era and the unilateralism that followed it. Having learnt lessons from this historical experience, the world is in transition towards a new international order and the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) can and should play a new role," the Leader said in an inaugural speech to the 16th NAM summit in Tehran on Thursday. The Leader added that the new world order should be based on the "participation of all nations and equal rights for all of them." Ayatollah Khamenei underlined solidarity among all NAM member states as an "obvious necessity" in the current era for establishing this new order. |
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Kristen Gelineau
ABC News 2012-08-30 00:00:00
Australia on Thursday mourned the deaths of five of its soldiers in Afghanistan, three killed by an Afghan army colleague, in the nation's deadliest hours of combat since the Vietnam War. The Australians were killed in two separate incidents just hours apart late Wednesday and early Thursday. The first incident took place at a base in Uruzgan province, when a man in an Afghan army uniform opened fire on Australian soldiers, killing three and wounding two, according to Air Marshal Mark Binskin, vice chief of the Australian Defense Force. Hours later, two Australian soldiers died and a crew member was wounded when their helicopter rolled over while landing in Helmand province. "In a war of so many losses, this is our single worst day in Afghanistan," Prime Minister Julia Gillard said. "Indeed, I believe this is the most losses in combat since the days of the Vietnam War and the Battle of Long Tan. This is news so truly shocking that it's going to feel for many Australians like a physical blow." Eighteen Australian soldiers were killed in the Battle of Long Tan in 1966. Tom Vasey, a spokesman for the Australian War Memorial, said five Australian soldiers were killed in a 14-hour period in 1971 during the Battle of Nui Le, making that the last time so many died so quickly in a combat zone.
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Anthony Gucciardi
Natural Society 2012-08-29 23:37:00
In a telling story highlighting the true face of political corruption, corrupt Indian politicians have successfully stolen more than $14.5 billion worth of food from starving poverty-stricken citizens. Looting over 57,000 tons of food intended for the starving poor, the unpunished corrupt lawmakers and politicians are warehousing the mass amount of food supplies in a government-owned storage facility that spans more than five football fields in length. The blatant corruption has been confirmed in a recent report by mainstream media outlet Bloomberg, which reports that many of the starving 350 million families whose food has been stripped away by the government are currently 'surviving' on less than 50 cents per day. The nefarious government hooligans robbed away the region's five-decade-old public food distribution system which served as virtually the only way in which the struggling families could survive. Law still requires that the 57,000 tons of staple foods are to be distributed among the families, yet nothing has been done by fearful politicians and police. Due to rampant corruption and a serious lack of action, countless members of the nation's government bodies are quiet on this matter and many others. Some, however, have decided to speak out. Naresh Saxena is one such Supreme Court commissioner who has decided that she will not live in fear of corruption. Speaking out against the recent ransacking, she stated:
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Michael Snyder
The American Dream 2012-08-29 21:54:00
The way that the U.S. government treats military veterans is absolutely disgraceful. Men and women that have given everything for this nation are literally being treated like human garbage by their own government. After watching how vets are treated, it is absolutely amazing that anyone is still volunteering to be a part of the military. We pay those in the military like crap, we keep sending our best soldiers back to Afghanistan and Iraq again and again, we don't equip them properly, military suicides are at a record pace, hundreds of thousands of applications for veteran benefits are hopelessly backlogged, homelessness and unemployment among vets is much higher than for the general population, the condition of most VA hospitals is an absolute disgrace, and to top everything off now the Obama administration has started labeling military veterans as "potential terrorists". What you are about to read should make you very angry. The abuse, neglect and outright disrespect that military vets receive from their own government is absolutely shocking. We owe these men and women a great debt for the service that they have performed for our nation, but instead the federal government kicks them to the curb and treats them with no honor whatsoever. The way a nation treats military vets says a lot about the character of that nation, and right now the way that America treats veterans says that we have the character of a steaming pile of manure. Multiple Tours Of Duty The U.S. military just keeps sending young men and women back to Iraq and Afghanistan over and over again without any regard for what the consequences might be. If you can believe it, an astounding 20 percent of all active duty soldiers in the U.S. Army are on at least their third tour of duty. Many others have done four tours of duty or more. The following is from a recent Christian Science Monitor article.... The physical, mental and emotional toll of these multiple tours of duty should not be underestimated. It is absolutely unprecedented in U.S. history for so many men to be sent back into frequent combat situations so repeatedly. The price of this foolishness could potentially be felt throughout our society for decades to come. Record Number Of Suicides The fact that many of our soldiers are spending way too much time in active war zones is a big reason why military suicides are at a record pace so far in 2012. The stress of combat duty builds up over time. The physical, mental and emotional fatigue that comes with serving in combat is immense. Many soldiers see their marriages end, and others are left with severe physical and mental disabilities. At some point many serving in the military cannot take it anymore and they commit suicide. During the month of July, there were 56 suicides in the U.S. military in just 31 days. That is absolutely disgraceful, but very little is being done about the underlying causes of these suicides. |
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RT America
2012-08-28 00:00:00
The use of private contractors allows the US to evade responsibility for violations of international humanitarian legislation, a top Russian diplomat for human rights and democracy said. The comment came from Foreign Ministry Commissioner Konstantin Dolgov as the US Justice Department halted an investigation into the attempted bribing of Iraqi police officials by employees of the Blackwater security company (re-branded as 'Academi' in late 2011). Blackwater attempted to pay $1 million in bribes for new contracts in Iraq, and also to block an investigation into the 2007 murder of 17 Iraqi civilians, including several children, by Blackwater operatives, a statement published on the Russian Foreign Ministry's website said. | |
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Comment:
"Warrior Class": The Blackwater Videos Show Lawless US Contractors Shooting Iraqi Civilians At Random Syrian analyst: Blackwater agents were present at Houla Massacre Lawsuit now accuses Xe (a.k.a. Blackwater) contractors of murder, kidnapping You Can Run but You Can't Hide: Xe, Formerly Known As Blackwater, Changes Name To Academis |
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| Society's Child |
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Yevgeny
Another guest post. Translated from the Russian by Your Humble
Narrator. It's a letter sent in by one young, once optimistic Russian
who finds himself marooned in some blighted Boston exurb in southern New
Hampshire.ClubOrlov 2012-08-14 16:05:00
Dear Dmitry, I hope you don't mind that this is in Russian. I think that this way I can be more completely honest. I am a relatively recent graduate of one of the many faceless post-Soviet institutions of higher learning, with a degree in philosophy. Last year I moved to the USA and married an American woman. The question of when the modern capitalist system is going to collapse has interested me since my student years, and I have approached it from various directions: from the commonplace conspiracy theories to the serious works of Oswald Spengler and Noam Chomsky. Unfortunately, I still can't fathom what it is that is keeping this system going. |
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David Simpson
Press of Atlantic City 2012-08-30 06:35:00
Buena Borough - Hundreds gathered Wednesday night at the roadside shrine to St. Padre Pio, as they do every week. A brother in a long beard and a brown robe spoke about faith over the roar of passing motorcycles. Attendees bowed their heads, some rubbing rosary beads. Others waited in line to touch the glove relic. Marie D'Andrea, who founded the shrine, travels to local hospitals with the relic, which she claims brings miracles. She received the glove, which she said was worn by the Italian monk, from a priest during a trip to Italy. "He said, 'This glove is worth more than your life. You need to really take care of it.' So I'm on top of it," she said. "I'm never going to get another one like it. And we've had so many healings from it." She keeps a book filled with pictures and letters of claimed healings, which she calls the miracle book. Bonnie McCann, of Galloway Township, spoke to the group about her most recent experience with the relic. Her friend, a 47-year-old man, was diagnosed with a brain tumor. It was removed and he developed infections. McCann asked D'Andrea if they could bring the relic to the man. "As true and loving as she is, Marie said, 'Where is he? Let's go right now,'" McCann told the group. The man was in Philadelphia, so D'Andrea let McCann take the relic herself. "I was so honored and I felt so blessed, because quite honestly Marie couldn't tell you my name, but she knew my face," McCann said. |
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The Guardian
2012-08-30 12:50:00
A gas explosion at a coal mine in south-west China has killed 19 miners and trapped dozens more, state media has reported. The Xiaojiawan coal mine in Sichuan province's coal-rich Panzhihua city exploded on Wednesday evening with 152 miners inside, Central China Television (CCTV) said. Rescuers recovered the bodies of 16 miners who died from carbon monoxide poisoning. Three other miners died at a hospital after being pulled to the surface, CCTV said. It did not provide details on the cause of death of those miners. CCTV said 28 miners remained trapped. Owners of Zhengjin Industry and Trade, the company that owns the mine, were in police custody for investigation, the Panzhihua city government said in a statement posted online. |
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Andrew Mach
NBC News 2012-08-30 09:00:00
One man was killed and two others were critically injured after an apparent propane explosion at a home in Connecticut Wednesday. Police said the homeowner, John Wilkinson, 46, called his friend, Anthony Fratino, 47, to help fix a propane leak in the water heater in the basement of his home in New Milford, Conn. The explosion happened around 6:40 p.m., according to reports. Fratino was killed instantly, officials said. Wilkinson and Fratino's 9-year-old son, Nicholas, who was at the home at the time, were rushed to Danbury Hospital in Danbury Conn., with severe lacerations and burns. Nicholas, police said, will soon be transported to a hospital in Boston, more than 150 miles away. |
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Jennifer Welsh
Business Insider 2012-08-30 08:26:00
Department of Homeland Security's Science and Technology Directorate will be conducting tests of a new bioterror sensing system in Boston's Subway system soon. After the subways close at night, a team of researchers will release dead bacteria, of the species Bacillus subtilis, which is non-toxic and doesn't cause disease even when alive. This common, food-grade bacterium is found everywhere in soil, water, air, and decomposing plant matter. They will use the dead bacteria in a simulated biological weapon attack at several stations to test a new set of bioterror sensors. They will use the sensors to monitor the spread of the bacteria through the air in the subway tunnels over the next six months to see if these contractor-created technologies are up to snuff. |
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RT
2012-08-30 00:00:00
Federal authorities have arrested an accused member of the LulzSec hacking group, 20-year-old Raynaldo Rivera of Tempe, Arizona, after indicting him on charges related to a 2011 computer attack waged against Sony. Rivera surrendered to the FBI on Tuesday after a grand jury indictment finalized on August 22 was unsealed. If convicted on the charges of conspiracy and unauthorized impairment of a protected computer, Rivera faces as much as 15 years in prison. Using the online handles "neuron," "royal" and "wildicv," Rivera allegedly participated in a LulzSec-sponsored hack of Sony Corp's Sony Pictures' computer systems. On his personal Facebook page, Rivera describes himself as, "just your common computer geek." By means of a SQL injection attack, the FBI says River assisted in the LulzSec operation that involved illegally accessing the personal records of 37,000 account holders, according to the company, then publishing the information. "Why do you put such faith in a company that allows itself to become open to these simple attacks?" the group said in a press release last June. Authorities say the Sony hack cost the company upwards of $600,000. LulzSec, short for Lulz Security, waged a 50-day-long rampage of hacks and other computer attacks last year before unexpectedly calling it quits in June. Later that fall, authorities announced that the alleged ringleader of the group, 28-year-old Hector Monsegur of New York City, aka Sabu, had been arrested in the midst of the crime spree and had been working as an FBI informant in the months since. The FBI confirmed his cooperation in September to coincide with the announcement that other alleged LulzSec members had been arrested around the globe thanks in part to Sabu agreeing to snitch to the feds in exchange for leniency in regards to his own sentencing. |
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Fox News
2012-08-30 00:00:00
Los Angeles, California - The screams of women and children didn't cause a 100-year-old driver to stop as he backed his large powder blue Cadillac onto a sidewalk across from an elementary school and hit 11 people, including nine children. So people began pounding on his windows screaming for him to stop, a witness said. Alma Solache said she was buying her children an afterschool snack Wednesday just before the accident outside a South Los Angeles school. "He was not paying attention," said Solache, 24, adding that it was at least two or three seconds before the vehicle halted and people began pulling children out from beneath the car. Four of the children were in critical condition when firefighters arrived but they were stabilized and were in serious condition at a hospital, city fire Capt. Jaime Moore said. Everyone was expected to survive, he said. Children's backpacks, shoes, candy and loose change were strewn about the scene behind a discount grocery store across from Main Street Elementary. Police said the driver, Preston Carter, was being very cooperative and drugs or alcohol were not a factor in the crash. |
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Frank Bruni
The New York Times 2012-08-25 00:00:00
I INSTANTLY bought the strip-search. The nude jumping jacks, too. But the spanking? That's the point in the provocative, gripping new movie "Compliance," about the degradation of a restaurant employee, when some people in the audience reportedly shake their heads and walk out. Like them, I was tempted to reject the plausibility of what was happening on-screen. It's hard to swallow. But Compliance asks questions too big - and too relevant to a political season of grandiose persuasion and elaborate subterfuge - to be dismissed or ignored. Although it's playing in just nine theaters nationwide for now, it deserves a higher profile, broader notice and a viewing from start to finish. It's an essential parable of human gullibility. How much can people be talked into and how readily will they defer to an authority figure of sufficient craft and cunning? Compliance gives chilling answers. Made on a modest budget and set during one shift at a fictional fast-food restaurant called ChickWich, it imagines that the manager, a dowdy middle-aged woman, gets a call from someone who falsely claims to be a police officer. (I haven't spoiled much yet but am about to, at least for anyone unfamiliar with the real-life events on which Compliance is based.) The "officer" on the phone tells the manager that he has evidence that a young female employee of hers just stole money from a customer's purse. Because the cops can't get to the restaurant for a while, he says, the manager must detain the employee herself in a back room. He instructs her to check the young woman's pockets and handbag for the stolen money. When that doesn't turn up anything, he uses a mix of threats and praise to persuade her to do a strip-search. And that's just the start. |
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Google
2012-08-29 00:00:00
Sydney - Six people were plucked alive from the ocean by a cargo ship Thursday after an asylum-seeker boat went missing off the Indonesian coast, as hopes faded for the 144 still unaccounted for. The recovery of the survivors by the APL Bahrain, after nearly a day in the water, came after Indonesian rescuers abandoned their search. "We have had confirmation that six survivors have been rescued by a merchant vessel," an Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) spokeswoman told AFP, adding that the distress call they received said 150 were on board. In an update, AMSA said crews at the scene had made sightings of debris, but there were no further reports of survivors or bodies being recovered. Indonesia's National Search and Rescue Agency (Basarnas) received an alert from AMSA early Wednesday that a boat was in distress between Java and Sumatra, 220 nautical miles from the Australian territory of Christmas Island. Basarnas sent two police rescue boats and a helicopter but found nothing and returned to base, only for AMSA to task the Bahrain, which responded to an earlier broadcast to shipping, to attend a broader search area. The captain of the Bahrain said screams and whistles alerted his crew as it scoured the Sunda Strait in darkness. |
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Vivian Luk
Yahoo! News - Canada 2012-08-29 00:00:00
Canada, Vancouver - The B.C. government is warning of a new kind of head hunter targeting Canadian campuses, but the job description requires skills not on offer at the institutions. British Columbia's advanced education minister has sent a letter warning post-secondary schools to keep an eye out for adult entertainment businesses that may try to recruit strippers in exchange for tuition. Naomi Yamamoto wrote this week she's concerned recruiters may attempt to set up booths at post-secondary job fairs across Canada this fall. "Students, who often feel new stresses due to new living environments and managing their own affairs for the first time, may be tempted by these monetary inducements," Yamamoto wrote. "Many initiatives are in place to ensure students have access to our province's world class institutions. It should not be necessary for students to submit themselves to the risks potentially involved in working in the adult entertainment business." She said in her letter that her information comes from a series of news stories out of Windsor, Ont. about the trend occurring at some of the city's campuses. "The concern is our post secondary institutions should be considered safe places for students, and some of these adult entertainment businesses are luring students into what most people would consider risky behaviour," she said later in an interview. "What we're not doing is telling students they can't pursue job opportunities or career opportunities in the adult entertainment business. We're saying we just don't want them aggressively recruiting on our campuses." She also noted in her letter that during the spring, the sex industry suggested it would recruit near Vancouver public schools. |
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Toby Sterling
Time World 2012-08-29 00:00:00
Amsterdam - The Netherlands scrambled two F16 fighter jets Wednesday to escort a Spanish passenger plane to Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport after air traffic controllers could not make contact with the aircraft's crew. Dutch media initially reported a possible hijacking, but local police and Vueling, the Spanish carrier whose jet was at the center of the scare, later confirmed there was never a hijacking or a hostage situation. "Amsterdam's protocol for security was activated owing to a temporary loss of communication between the plane and air traffic control," Vueling said in a tweet. The Dutch Defense Ministry said the F16s were scrambled when no radio contact could be made with the plane, which was carrying more than 180 passengers. The ministry's statement said that F16s are sent up to "establish visual contact with the crew" whenever a plane is in Dutch airspace and cannot be contacted by radio. After it landed, the Vueling Airbus 320 taxied to a remote corner of Schiphol about 1.5 miles from the main terminal and was immediately surrounded by security personnel and several ambulances. A bus later arrived to ferry the passengers to the airport. National Dutch broadcaster NOS spoke by phone with a person it identified as one of the passengers who said that there was no panic on board. "Everything is calm," the passenger said shortly after the plane landed. |
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Greg Risling
Huffington Post 2012-08-28 09:19:00
Los Angeles - A senior executive at Deutsche Bank has filed a $50 million claim against the city of Los Angeles, alleging he was beaten by two officers during a bizarre incident after they dropped him off at a motel where they ordered him to stay until the following morning. Brian Mulligan, 53, filed the claim, a precursor to a lawsuit, earlier this month, saying his injuries included a broken nose and shoulder. He said he suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and his medical bill could reach $1 million because of his encounter with police. "I think their actions were excessive," Mulligan's attorney, J. Michael Flanagan, said of the officers Monday. "I don't know why they did what they did, but as soon as we file a lawsuit, we can get depositions and find out what they did." Police arrested Mulligan for investigation of resisting arrest, but county prosecutors declined to file charges. A declination letter from prosecutors said Mulligan had been "acting crazy" and was injured after he swung and lunged at officers who restrained him. Police declined comment Monday, citing the pending claim. The strange set of events began on the night of May 15 for the Deutsche Bank vice chairman, who also once served as co-chairman of Universal Studios and chief financial officer of Seagram Co. Flanagan wouldn't say what Mulligan was doing in Highland Park, about 10 miles from his home in La Canada-Flintridge, but maintained his client believes "someone was chasing him." |
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CBC News
WARNING: This story contains disturbing details2012-08-29 05:25:00
A woman from Longueuil, Que., is in a medically induced coma with serious burns to her upper body after she was attacked with acid during a conjugal fight on Sunday. According to Martin Simard of the Longueuil police, Tanya St Arnauld, 29, has burns to 70 per cent of her body caused by a household cleaning liquid, like drain or cement cleaner. Nikolas Stefanatos, 27, of Brossard, Que., has been charged with aggravated assault. His bail hearing was put over at his first court appearance on Monday. |
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Reuters
Nineteen miners were killed and 28 are missing in China after a gas
explosion in a coal shaft, the Xinhua news agency said on Thursday,
marking one of the biggest disasters of the year in the accident-plagued
industry.2012-08-30 00:24:00 Rescue teams from other mines had been sent to the Xiaojiawan Coal Mine in Sichuan province where 107 miners had been rescued after Wednesday's blast, it reported. China's mines are the deadliest in the world because of lax enforcement of safety standards and a rush to feed demand from a robust economy. But the death toll from accidents has been falling, government statistics show. The government work safety watchdog said that 1,973 miners were killed in coal mine accidents last year, according to state media. In 2010, 2,433 people were killed, down from a toll of 2,631 the previous year. Xinhua said the Xiaojiawan mine was owned by Zhengjin Industry and Trade Co., Ltd. Police were questioning the owner. |
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Catharine Paddock, PhD
Medical News Today 2012-08-29 14:00:00
Men should sit down to urinate in the toilet instead of standing up because it helps maintain a cleaner environment, says a Taiwanese government minister. Stephen Shen is Taiwan's minister for Environmental Protection Administration (EPA). He has stirred up a widespread debate on whether men should sit down on the toilet to urinate, like women do. Shen himself maintains he does, both at home and in public toilets. The EPA carries out regular inspections of Taiwan's 100,000 or so public toilets and suggests while many of them are very clean, there is room for improvement. Standing up to urinate causes urine splatter which creates a bad smell, say EPA officials. Local governments in Taiwan are being advised in the next few days to place public notices asking men to sit when urinating. Cindy Sui, of BBC News, Taipei, says the announcement has stirred a lot of online debate. Although social media activity suggests women think it is a good idea, the men are likely to find it hard to change their ways. |
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| Secret History |
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No new articles. |
| Science & Technology |
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Thuy Ong
A bionic eye has given an Australian woman partial sight and researchers
say it is an important step towards eventually helping visually
impaired people get around independently.News Daily 2012-08-30 16:58:00 Dianne Ashworth, who has severe vision loss due to the inherited condition retinitis pigmentosa, was fitted with a prototype bionic eye in May at the Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital. It was switched on a month later. "All of a sudden I could see a little flash ... it was amazing," she said in a statement. "Every time there was stimulation there was a different shape that appeared in front of my eye." The bionic eye, designed, built and tested by the Bionic Vision Australia, a consortium of researchers partially funded by the Australian government, is equipped with 24 electrodes with a small wire that extends from the back of the eye to a receptor attached behind the ear. It is inserted into the choroidal space, the space next to the retina within the eye. "The device electrically stimulates the retina," said Dr Penny Allen, a specialist surgeon who implanted the prototype. "Electrical impulses are passed through the device, which then stimulate the retina. Those impulses then pass back to the brain (creating the image)." The device restores mild vision, where patients are able to pick up major contrasts and edges such as light and dark objects. Researchers hope to develop it so blind patients can achieve independent mobility. |
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April Flowers
RedOrbit 2012-08-30 14:58:00
Around 4.5 billion years ago, the Earth is believed to have collided with an impactor the size of Mars known as "Theia." This collision, current theory says, is what formed the Moon. Scientists have simulated this formation process and reproduced many of the Earth-Moon system properties. However, these simulations have also given rise to a problem known as the Lunar Paradox. According to the Paradox, the Moon seems to be made up of material that would not be expected if the current collision theory is correct. Published in Icarus, a recent study offers some new perspective on the theory in answer to this paradox. In current theory models, analyses of the various simulations of the Earth-Theia collision predict that the Moon should be mostly made up of material from Theia. When materials from the Earth and the Moon are compared, however, there are remarkable similarities. In fact, elements from the Moon show identical isotopic properties to those found on Earth. Since all other known solar system bodies, except the Moon, have a different isotopic composition from the Earth, it is highly unlikely that Theia had an identical isotopic composition. Moreover, for some elements like Silicon, the isotopic composition is the result of an internal process related to the size of the parent body. Given Theia was smaller than Earth, its Silicon isotope composition should have definitely been different from Earth's mantle. |
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Eric Niiler
Discovery News 2012-08-30 05:30:00
Once the subject of sci-fi flicks and techno-thrillers, nanomaterials are now mainstream. These tiny particles can be found in hundreds of consumer products from camping gear to anti-stink socks, while helping medical researchers deliver drugs by fooling the body's defense mechanisms. Nano-silver particles, for example, have become common in both wound dressings and sunscreens. But experts say the rise of nanomaterials is a concern. Compounds at the nano-scale (from 1 to 100 nanometers, or down to 1/100,000 the width of a human hair) often behave differently than at normal size. Metals change color or conduct electricity differently, and may interact with human cells in unusual ways. Scientists worry that not enough testing has been done yet to understand the effects on the environment -- how will tiny particles affect plants and animals that we eat, for example? A study published last week in the journal PNAS by researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara, found that the presence of two nanomaterials used in exhaust gases and fertilizers stunt the growth of soybean plants. The researchers used high doses of zinc oxide (used in cosmetics and ultimately found in waste fertilizers) -- and cerium oxide (used to improve engine performance) in soybean plants grown hydroponically or without soil. The cerium oxide slowed the soybean plant growth rates by blocking a bacteria's ability to fix nitrogen. Plants treated with zinc oxide grew faster, but the zinc built up in leaves and stems. "What this report shows is we have a lot more to learn," said Jennifer Sass, senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council. "They are not well tested. We don't know before these things are already being used." |
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Charles Choi
LiveScience 2012-08-30 13:01:00
The genome of a recently discovered branch of extinct humans known as the Denisovans that once interbred with us has been sequenced, scientists said today (Aug. 30). Genetic analysis of the fossil revealed it apparently belonged to a little girl with dark skin, brown hair and brown eyes, researchers said. All in all, the scientists discovered about 100,000 recent changes in our genome that occurred after the split from the Denisovans. A number of these changes influence genes linked with brain function and nervous system development, leading to speculation that we may think differently from the Denisovans. Other changes are linked with the skin, eyes and teeth. "This research will help [in] determining how it was that modern human populations came to expand dramatically in size as well as cultural complexity, while archaic humans eventually dwindled in numbers and became physically extinct," said researcher Svante Pääbo at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. Future research may turn up other groups of extinct humans in Asia "in addition to Neanderthals and Denisovans," Pääbo told LiveScience. Although our species comprises the only humans left alive, our planet was once home to a variety of other human species. The Neanderthals were apparently our closest relatives, and the last of the other human lineages to vanish. However, scientists recently revealed another group of extinct humans once lived at the same time as ours. DNA from fossils unearthed in Denisova Cave in southern Siberia in 2008 revealed a lineage unlike us and closely related to Neanderthals. The precise age of the Denisovan material remains uncertain - anywhere from 30,000 to 80,000 years of age. "The Denisovan genome is particularly close to my heart, because it was the first time that a new group of extinct humans was discovered and defined just from DNA sequence evidence and not from the morphology of bones," Pääbo said. |
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RIA Novosti
2012-08-30 09:18:00
Scientists with the Institute of Astronomy of the Russian Academy of Sciences have recalculated the path of a large asteroid, Apophis; the refined data indicates a significantly low likelihood of a hazardous encounter with Earth, the institute's leading research fellow Viktor Shor said on Wednesday. The Apophis asteroid is approximately the size of two-and-a-half football fields; its orbit is slightly offset to that of Earth's. Discovered in 2004, astronomers have determined that the asteroid will make a very close flyby in 2029 and might even hit Earth. The initial calculation for the asteroid Apophis orbit was made using only two sets of observations. | |
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Comment: It's not large bodies we need to be concerned about. In her book, The Apocalypse: Comets, Asteroids and Cyclical Catastrophes, Laura Knight-Jadczyk writes:
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Tracey Taylor
Berkeleyside 2012-08-30 08:29:00
Many Berkeley residents have been in touch with us today asking about the helicopters that have been flying overhead, across the city and also into Oakland. A call to Berkeley Police Department confirms that the choppers are out measuring baseline radiation levels. The flyovers are part of research by two federal security agencies - the Department of Homeland Security and the National Nuclear Security Administration - to compare aerial and ground based mapping of radioactivity, according to a story in the Contra Costa Times. The National Nuclear Security Administration agency says the project will help local, state and federal authorities'measure radiation. Radioactive sources - such as uranium, radon gas and carbon-14 - have been present in the Earth's crust since it was formed. (Read the NNSA press release.) While the purpose may be worthy, the low-flying choppers - they need to fly at around 300 ft - are not proving popular with everyone. "It's driving me batty," said Berkeleysider Emily Cohen. Update, 6:00pm: Berkeley Police say the helicopter will be making daily flights for five days, between Aug. 27 and Sept. 1, 2012. "The helicopter will fly in a grid pattern over the locations about 300 feet above the ground," they said in a release. |
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Irene Klotz
Yahoo! News - Canada 2012-08-30 02:58:00
In a dazzling and previously undetected display of orbital dynamics, two planets beyond the solar system have been found circling a pair of stars, scientists using NASA's Kepler space telescope said on Wednesday. Unlike single planets orbiting single stars, the planets in the Kepler-47 system, located about 5,000 light years away in the constellation Cygnus, are flying around a "moving target," San Diego State University astronomer Jerome Orosz said in a paper published in this week's Science magazine. As a consequence, when and how long it takes for the planets to orbit their parent stars varies, a telltale sign of so-called "circumbinary orbits." Kepler works by detecting slight dips in the amount of light coming from target stars caused by orbiting planets passing by, or transiting, relative to the observatory's line of sight. Last year, astronomers announced the first planet found to be orbiting a pair of stars. The Kepler-47 family is more complex, with at least two planets circling a pair of stars that whirl around each other every 7.5 days. |
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Jess Emspak
Discovery News 2012-08-28 15:03:00
As Hurricane Isaac heads for shore, people living along the coast are finding ways to batten down the hatches. Nailing sheets of plywood over windows is one such protection. But recycled panels based on the latest military armor might be a better choice. Uday Vaidya, a professor of materials science at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, has been testing recyclable, light thermoplastics and resins -- materials similar to those used in modern armored vehicles. Vaidya's plastic is stronger than steel and weighs a fifth as much. The panels could be used to reinforce a house, not just the windows. They're designed to look like white interior walls and because they're plastic, they don't corrode and never need painting. At Texas Tech University, researchers from the National Storm Shelter Association fired lumber -- two-by-fours weighing about 15 pounds -- at the panels at 100 miles per hour. That's about the speed lumber would reach if tossed about by a category 5 hurricane or a tornado. |
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Charles Q. Choi
OurAmazingPlanet 2012-08-29 12:24:00
Average earthquakes may turn into mega-quakes when rock in a fault weakens much the same way ice does under ice skates, researchers say. The finding by two researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, is based on past research on the friction between rocks in an earthquake fault. Their study confirmed that rock can develop weak points under pressure and suggests that the consequent drop in friction could help release energy. Previous research suggested that during earthquakes, friction between rocks in specific areas of fault zones rapidly lessens, much the way ice skate blades reduce friction by melting icy surfaces as they glide over them. Such a phenomenon could help solve a longstanding mystery: why major fault zones such as the San Andreas Fault generate so little heat from the grinding of rocks compared with the magnitude of the earthquakes they produce. "The process allows highly stressed areas to rapidly break down, acting like the weakest links in the chain," said researcher Kevin Brown. "Even initially stable regions of a fault can experience runaway slip by this process if they are pushed at velocities above a key tipping point." This drop in friction also could help faults release energy. "This may be relevant for how you get from large earthquakes to giant earthquakes," Brown said. |
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| Earth Changes |
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Miguel Llanos
Authorities are considering a controlled breach of a dam along the
Mississippi-Louisiana border due to rising water levels after Hurricane
Isaac made land fall. NBC's Thanh Truong reports.NBC News 2012-08-30 15:32:00
Up to 50,000 people in Louisiana's Tangipahoa Parish were ordered to evacuate Thursday morning when water from Tropical Storm Isaac threatened to overwhelm a dam across the state line in Mississippi. |
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Mashable Watercooler
On August 28, a camera on board the International Space Station captured
footage of Hurricane Isaac from 253 miles above Earth. The video was
taken as the powerful storm swirled towards the southeast coast of
Louisiana. Isaac made landfall on Tuesday evening, and has since been
downgraded to a tropical storm.2012-08-29 14:59:00
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Anchorage Daily News
Seismologists say a cluster of earthquakes has been detected at a remote
volcano in Alaska's western Aleutian Islands. The Alaska Volcano
Observatory says the quakes began Wednesday evening at Little Sitkin
Volcano and are continuing as of Thursday morning. No eruption has been
detected.2012-08-30 14:53:00 Scientist in charge John Power says there is no direct link to the swarm of earthquakes at Little Sitkin and a cluster of quakes that shook California's Imperial County this week. Powers says Little Sitkin is on an uninhabited island and is far from any populated areas. He says the seismic activity is unusual for Little Sitkin, which may have last erupted in the early 1900s. Powers says the concern about an eruption would be the possible threat posed to aircraft by airborne ash. |
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US Geological Survey
2012-08-29 17:27:00
Strong winds and storm surge from Hurricane Isaac's landfall forced the Mississippi River to flow backwards for nearly 24 hours on Tuesday, August 28. The USGS streamgage at Belle Chasse, Louisiana, showed the Mississippi River flowing upstream at 182,000 cubic feet per second, surging to 10 feet above than its previous height. Average flow for the Mississippi River at Belle Chase is about 125,000 cfs towards the Gulf of Mexico. Although it doesn't happen often, hurricanes can cause coastal rivers to reverse flow. Between the extremely strong winds and the massive waves of water pushed by those winds, rivers at regular or low flow are forced backwards until either the normal river-flow or the elevation of the land stop the inflow. As Hurricane Isaac pushes further inland, it is causing storm surge in the Mississippi River as far north as Baton Rouge, where the river has crested at 8 feet above its prior height. "This reversal of flow of the mighty Mississippi is but one measure of the extreme force of Isaac," said USGS Director Marcia McNutt. "While such events are ephemeral, they are yet another reminder of why we need to respect hurricane warnings." When Hurricane Katrina came ashore in 2005, the Mississippi River also reversed flow, cresting at 13 feet above its previous level, with Baton Rouge reaching 9 feet above its previous stage as well. |
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Daniel Mckenzie
A series of unexplained sounds that have allegedly been heard around the
world have been keeping a number of Hough Green residents awake at
night.Runcorn & Widness Weekly News 2012-08-30 13:43:00 Similar low-pitched sounds have been reported by people in the US, UK, Costa Rica, Russia, Czech Republic, Australia and Manchester since the summer of 2011. Comment: The list is far, far longer than that... In some instances the noises produced a loud rumbling sound like a thunderstorm but in others it is more like a 'groaning'. They have been labelled by many as the 'sound of the Apocalypse' and now it seems they have made their way to Halton. Sue Carman, of Plumley Gardens, sent a recording of the sounds taken from her home to the Weekly News. |
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Comment: First overhead exploding meteors and now strange sounds, it's been a busy week for residents in western England and Wales:
Thousands witness meteor shooting across skies of Greater Manchester on its way to exploding over south Wales |
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Yahoo! News
2012-08-30 13:28:00
This is the moment Britain's extreme 'summer' weather took a terrifying twist. Funnel clouds, twisters and even tornados - where the formation touches the ground - swept through the country from the south. Hundreds of residents spotted this particular formation as it moved up the Severn Estuary and headed inland at Clevedon, Somerset, on Wednesday. | |
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Comment: Monday, 27 August 2012: Exploding meteor in sky over Somerset was 'a beautiful sight'
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Roberto Acosta
mlive.com 2012-08-29 13:25:00
BURTON, MI -- City workers were busy Wednesday afternoon working on a sinkhole that opened up on Center Road near Bristol Road that has redirected traffic in the area. The two-lane section of road heading south on Center Road, right in front of Green Thumb Grow Shop at 3496 S. Center Road, where the hole four feet in diameter opened up will likely be closed until Tuesday, said DPW employee Chris Howser. A Genesys PHO building was opened on Center Road in mid-2010, but amidst the plans was a connection to a county-operated, 30-inch water main across the street. |
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Erik Waxler
ABC Action News 2012-08-29 13:21:00
A sinkhole in Pasco County forces out some homeowners and leaves others worried there could be more damage. |
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Helen Mendes
SciDevNet 2012-08-29 13:08:00
A detailed global database has revealed that the number of landslide-related deaths worldwide has been greatly underestimated by previous surveys. The database was compiled by David Petley, a professor of geography at Durham University's International Landslide Centre, in the United Kingdom. Writing in the journal Geology, Petley reports that a total of 2,620 fatal landslides were recorded worldwide in the period 2004 to 2010. These landslides caused 32,322 deaths - a number over four times higher than the number of deaths indicated by previous databases - Petley writes. "That means that [landslides are a] much more significant global hazard than previously thought," he told SciDev.Net. Landslides occur primarily in Asia, and can have different triggers, including earthquakes, hurricanes and rainfall. "The northern part of South Asia, along the southern edges of the Himalayas, is a hotspot for landslides," Petley said. |
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Reuters
Isaac's whistling winds lashed this city and the storm dumped nearly a
foot of rain on its desolate streets, but the system of levee pumps,
walls and gates appeared to withstand one of the stiffest challenges
yet. To the north and south, though, people had to be evacuated or
rescued as Isaac lingered over Louisiana.2012-08-30 11:05:00 The rain fell almost constantly for more than a day, flooding neighborhoods in a rural part of the state and in neighboring Mississippi. Officials had to respond quickly because the waters were rising fast - even as Isaac meandered slowly northward Thursday on a path toward Arkansas.
President Barack Obama declared federal emergencies in Louisiana and Mississippi late Wednesday, allowing federal aid to be freed up for affected areas. Along the shores of Lake Ponchartrain, officials sent scores of buses and dozens of high-water vehicles to help evacuate about 3,000 people as rising waters lapped against houses and left cars stranded. Floodwaters rose waist-high in some neighborhoods, and the Louisiana National Guard was working with sheriff's deputies to rescue people stranded in their homes. |
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ITVNews.com
2012-08-30 10:21:00
Two people have been injured after a reported lightning strike on two houses in the Pontprennau area of Cardiff. South Wales Fire and Rescue Service say they were called to Gateside Close at 2.24pm this afternoon. Ambulance crews treated one man, Mannan Haq, for reported electric shock, as well as a lady believed to be suffering from hearing loss. Mr Haq, who was visiting his friend at the property, believes he was struck by lightning as he plugged a USB memory stick into the television. He says he saw a flash outside the window and felt a shock travel up his right arm. He said he 'knew he'd been struck by lightning', describing it as 'agony' and a sensation he 'wouldn't wish upon anyone'. |
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US Geological Survey
2012-08-30 09:41:00
Event Time 2012-08-30 13:43:24 UTC 2012-08-30 12:43:24 UTC-01:00 at epicenter 2012-08-30 06:43:24 UTC-07:00 system time Nearby Cities 93km (58mi) NW of Olonkinbyen, Svalbard and Jan Mayen 709km (441mi) NNE of Akureyri, Iceland 939km (583mi) NNE of Reykjavik, Iceland 942km (585mi) NNE of Kopavogur, Iceland 947km (588mi) NNE of Hafnarfjordur, Iceland |
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Rory Carroll & Tom Dart
The Guardian 2012-08-30 08:54:00
New Orleans issues curfew as torrential rain and harsh winds remain serious threat as storm weakens with little relief in sight Heavy rain, high winds and floodwaters swept over Louisiana and Mississippi on Wednesday, as Isaac was downgraded from a hurricane to a tropical storm and a fortified levee system appeared to have saved New Orleans from disaster. Rescuers picked up dozens of residents who had ignored warnings to leave low-lying areas, seven years to the day after hurricane Katrina devastated the city. Power lines were cut and debris littered the streets, prompting authorities in New Orleans to declare a dusk-to-dawn curfew. Louisiana officials said they would intentionally breach a levee in Placquemines parish, south of New Orleans, as Isaac lumbered inland from the Gulf of Mexico. Authorities feared many residents would need help after a night of torrential rain and harsh winds knocked out power to more than 700,000 households and businesses. | |
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Comment: Hurricane Isaac hit New Orleans seven years to
the day Hurricane Katrina levelled the city... is the Universe sending
the US a message?
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Eli MacKinnon
Life's Little Mysteries 2012-08-29 04:09:00
Hundreds of racing pigeons have been disappearing over a sleepy pocket of North East England, earning the region a reputation as the "Birdmuda Triangle." On Saturday (Aug. 25), the Telegraph reported, one club of pigeon fanciers released a flock of 230 birds from North Yorkshire. Only 13 birds arrived at their destination in Scotland. Some of the aggrieved hobbyists - who routinely release trained pigeons tasked with finding their way home from distances of hundreds of miles - are now considering grounding their remaining birds until the mystery is solved. Pigeons have long baffled scientists with their uncanny navigational abilities. Earlier this year, researchers at Baylor College identified one component of the birds' internal GPS when they showed that their brains contain a specialized group of cells that measure the strength and direction of the Earth's magnetic field, serving as a compass. But what special property of a triangular region in North East England - marked off by places called Wetherby, Corsett and Thirsk, and measuring 65 miles (105 km) on its longest side - could be capable of short-circuiting a pigeon's sense of home? |
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The Vancouver Sun
2012-08-29 00:00:00
Canada, British Columbia - A 3.0-magnitude earthquake, described as minor by local experts, caused some shaking in Greater Victoria but no recorded damageWednesday afternoon. Seismologist Garry Rogers from the Pacific Geoscience Centre said the quake hit at 3:20 p.m. and was concentrated about 10 kilometres northwest of Colwood, toward Sooke Lake. The earthquake came from about 25 kilometres underground. "It was felt pretty much throughout the area," Rogers said. "We got reports from Sidney to Sooke to all over Greater Victoria." A 3.0-magnitude earthquake, described as minor by local experts, caused some shaking in Greater Victoria but no recorded damage Wednesday afternoon. Source: The Victoria Times Colonist |
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| Fire in the Sky |
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Scott Gustin
A meteor/fireball was spotted over parts of North Carolina around 10 p.m. Wednesday night.Fox8 2012-08-30 00:23:00 Several FOX8 viewers in Greensboro, Lexington and several other cities reported seeing the fireball shoot across the sky shortly before 10 p.m.
Stuart McDaniel posted a photo of the meteor/fireball on his Facebook page. The photo was taken in Lawndale, which is located in Cleveland County. McDaniel also posted a short video of the meteor/fireball shooting across the sky. A website that tracks meteor and fireball sightings reports several people reported the meteor/fireball on Wednesday. The website lists reports from Lexington, Asheville, Chapel Hill, Weaverville, Boone and Charlotte. Most people reported seeing a "bright light" or "green flash" across the sky between 9:45 and 10:15 p.m. Several FOX8 Facebook fans also reported seeing the fireball. "I thought I saw a very bright light shooting across the sky around 9:55 p.m. I was driving and came up on trees around the same time so wondered," Amber Goforth Blue wrote. " I was driving through Winston-Salem on Business 40 when i saw it! Beautiful!" wrote Jenn Jones Lewis. |
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| Health & Wellness |
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ScienceDaily
When the parasite responsible for malaria infects human red blood cells,
it launches a 48-hour remodeling of the host cells. During the first 24
hours of this cycle, a protein called RESA undertakes the first step of
renovation: enhancing the stiffness of the cell membranes.2012-08-30 17:02:00 That increased rigidity impairs red blood cells' ability to travel through the blood vessels, especially at fever temperatures, according to a new study from researchers at MIT, the Institut Pasteur and the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST). This marks the first time that scientists have identified the specific role of the RESA protein in modulating blood circulation in an environment that mimics physiological conditions, and could help researchers determine new strategies to combat malaria, which infects an estimated 300 to 500 million people worldwide each year. The study -- coordinated by MIT's Ming Dao, a principal research scientist in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE); Monica Diez Silva, a research scientist in DMSE; and YongKeun Park, an assistant professor of physics at KAIST -- appears Aug. 30 in Scientific Reports, an online journal of Nature. |
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Catherine J. Frompovich
Activist Post 2012-08-30 16:06:00
Regarding Vaccines, the U.S. Court of Federal Claims for Vaccine Damages, and HHS/FDA Attorney Walter Kyle of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, began representing Plaintiffs with vaccine injuries ten years before the Vaccine Injury Act began, and has argued more than forty cases before the Special Masters of the United States Court of Federal Claims [under the Vaccine Injury Compensation Act] - 42 U.S.C.A. §300aa, et.seq. As a result, Attorney Kyle has unique insight into the nuances of vaccine injury law. To start our interview, may I ask how you became involved in vaccine law? I began representation of vaccine-injured clients in Arkansas in 1977. My first case out of law school was representing a paraplegic mother who acquired paralytic polio from mutated Sabin live trivalent oral polio vaccine [TOPV] viruses shed from her three-month-old infant's diapers. Centers for Disease control classified the woman in the "immune deficient" category of "vaccine associated contact cases" from Type 2 Sabin vaccine. |
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Dr. Osborne
Gluten Free Society 2012-08-30 15:14:00
For years scientists have been investigating the detrimental effects of gluten on brain and nerve tissue. A recent study published in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry is just one more piece of evidence pointing to this overwhelming connection... "Patients with established coeliac disease referred for neurological opinion show significant brain abnormality on MR imaging." |
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Marco Torres
Prevent Disease.com 2012-08-30 15:07:00
In the 1980s, audiologists began cautioning lovers of loud music about hearing loss that could potentially result from use of their Walkman or portable compact disc (CD) players. More than thirty years later, the integration of portable digital devices that play music are more abundant than almost every other electronic device in the world, and all of them have an earphone jack. Scientists from the University of Leicester have shown for the first time how noises louder than 110 decibels (dB) cause cell damage which ultimately leads to hearing loss. Noise-induced hearing loss affects millions and it can be caused by exposure to loud noise over long periods of time, or by loud, short bursts of sound such as gunshots or fireworks. Although people seem to be more aware of the impact of noise on their hearing, it's not clear whether they're changing their behavior, says Nancy Nadler, director of the Noise Center of the League for the Hard of Hearing in New York City. "We need to help people understand how important their hearing is to them before it's too late. Because once you suffer from a noise-induced hearing loss, there's very little you can do. You cannot get your hearing back," at least not under normal circumstances Nadler stresses. The researchers said that earphones or headphones on personal music players can reach noise levels similar to those of jet engines, which can reach 140dB at 100 feet distance. The previous study published in the International Journal of Audiology, demonstrated that teens have harmful music-listening habits when it comes to iPods and other MP3 devices. "In 10 or 20 years it will be too late to realize that an entire generation of young people is suffering from hearing problems much earlier than expected from natural aging," says Prof. Muchnik of TAU's Department of Communication Disorders. |
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Dr. Mercola
Mercola.com 2012-08-30 12:10:00
Thanks to aggressive marketing techniques, pharmaceutical companies are raking in profits from atypical antipsychotic medications - drugs originally approved for mental illnesses that are as serious as they are rare. It's no surprise then that a major portion of the sales of these types of "hard-core" psychiatric drugs come from off-label uses. Drugs such as Seroquel, Zyprexa, Risperdal and Abilify are now increasingly prescribed by psychiatrists and primary-care doctors to treat conditions they were never intended or approved for, such as:
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Source
Scientists are closer to establishing a definitive bacterial cause
for the skin condition rosacea. This will allow more targeted, effective
treatments to be developed for sufferers, according to a review
published in the Journal of Medical Microbiology.2012-08-29 04:53:00 Rosacea is a common dermatological condition that causes reddening and inflammation of the skin mostly around the cheeks, nose and chin. In severe cases skin lesions may form and lead to disfigurement. Rosacea affects around 3% of the population - usually fair-skinned females aged 30-50 and particularly those with weak immune systems. The condition is treated with a variety of antibiotics, even though there has never been a well-established bacterial cause. A new review carried out by the National University of Ireland concludes that rosacea may be triggered by bacteria that live within tiny mites that reside in the skin. The mite species Demodex folliculorum is worm-like in shape and usually lives harmlessly inside the pilosebaceous unit which surrounds hair follicles of the face. They are normal inhabitants of the face and increase in number with age and skin damage - for example, following exposure to sunlight. The numbers of Demodex mites living in the skin of rosacea patients is higher than in normal individuals, which has previously suggested a possible role for the mites in initiating the condition. |
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Diana Yates
Source 2012-08-28 04:18:00
The rhythm of life is driven by the cycles of day and night, and most organisms carry in their cells a common, (roughly) 24-hour beat. In animals, this rhythm emerges from a tiny brain structure called the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) in the hypothalamus. Take it out of the brain and keep it alive in a lab dish and this "brain clock" will keep on ticking, ramping up or gearing down production of certain proteins at specific times of the day, day after day. A new study reveals that the brain clock itself is driven, in part, by metabolism, the production and flow of chemical energy in cells. The researchers focused primarily on a phenomenon known as "redox" in tissues of the SCN from the brains of rats and mice. Redox represents the energy changes of cellular metabolism (usually through the transfer of electrons). When a molecule gains one or more electrons, scientists call it a reduction; when it loses electrons, they say it is oxidized. These redox reactions, the researchers found, oscillate on a 24-hour cycle in the brain clock, and literally open and close channels of communication in brain cells. They report their findings in the journal Science, which also wrote a Perspective on the research. "The language of the brain is electrical; it determines what kind of signals one part of the brain sends to the other cells in its tissue, as well as the other parts of the brain nearby," said University of Illinois cell and developmental biology professor Martha Gillette, who led the study. "The fundamental discovery here is that there is an intrinsic oscillation in metabolism in the clock region of the brain that takes place without external intervention. And this change in metabolism determines the excitable state of that part of the brain." |
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Nicole Giese Rura
The adult human circulatory system contains between 20 and 30 trillion
red blood cells (RBCs), the precise size and number of which can vary
from person to person. Some people may have fewer, but larger RBCs,
while others may have a larger number of smaller RBCs. Although these
differences in size and number may seem inconsequential, they raise an
important question: Just what controls these characteristics of RBCs?Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research 2012-08-28 15:39:00 This question is particularly relevant for the roughly one-quarter of the population that suffers from anemia, which is often caused by flawed RBC production. A better understanding of how RBC production is controlled may offer greater insight into the development and potential treatment of anemia. By analyzing the results of genome-wide association studies (GWAS) in conjunction with experiments on mouse and human red blood cells, researchers in the lab of Whitehead Institute Founding Member Harvey Lodish have identified the protein cyclin D3 as regulating the number of cell divisions RBC progenitors undergo, which ultimately affects the resulting size and quantity of RBCs. Their findings are reported in the September 14 issue of Genes and Development. "This is one of the rare cases where we can explain a normal human-to-human variation," says Lodish, who is also a professor of biology and bioengineering at MIT. "In a sense, it's a window on human evolution. Why this should have happened, we have no idea, but it does." |
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Rachael Rettner
MyHealthNewsDaily 2012-08-29 16:05:00
Two men in Missouri who became severely ill after sustaining tick bites were found to be infected with a new type of virus, according to a study from the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Both men were admitted to hospitals after experiencing high fevers, fatigue, diarrhea and loss of appetite. They were originally thought to be suffering from a bacterial infection, but doubts arose when they didn't improve after being treated with antibiotics. Further tests revealed their blood contained a new virus, which the researchers dubbed the Heartland virus. It belongs to a group called phleboviruses, which are carried by flies, mosquitoes or ticks, and can cause disease in humans. While the genetic material of Heartland virus appears similar to that of other phleboviruses, the particular proteins it produces are different enough to call it a new species, said study researcher Laura McMullan, a senior scientist at the CDC. Because the Heartland virus causes such general symptoms, it could be "a more common cause of human illness than is currently recognized," the researchers wrote in the Aug. 30 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. |
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| Science of the Spirit |
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Clare Wilson
New Scientist 2012-08-29 05:54:00
In The Ravenous Brain Daniel Bor explores consciousness and suggests that its level of activity is linked to several psychiatric conditions. It is a long-standing philosophical conundrum: is consciousness somehow separate from the physical world or merely an illusion conjured up by our complex brains? It took his father's stroke to convince Daniel Bor which side he was on. Bor, who had previously been considering a PhD in the philosophy of mind, opted instead for one in the neuroscience of consciousness. To see his father "robbed of his identity because a small clot on his brain had potently wounded his consciousness" hammered home all too well that the mind really is the output of nothing more than a small sac of jelly. But what an amazing sac of jelly it is. In The Ravenous Brain, Bor takes us on a tour of the fascinating world of consciousness research. He engages in "technological telepathy", taking part in a conversation where he communicates his thoughts using only an MRI brain scanner. He also introduces us to conjoined twins with linked brains, an autistic synaesthete who can memorise the digits of pi up to 22,514 decimal places and chimpanzees that practise sophisticated mind games. As well as providing a primer in the most popular current theories of consciousness, Bor introduces one of his own. This is that consciousness evolved to facilitate information processing, and thus learning and innovation. |
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| High Strangeness |
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Oliver Gee
The Local 2012-08-30 12:35:00
A research team set off for northern Sweden on Thursday to get to the bottom a "Ghost Rocket" sighting from 1980 that has been labelled as "the biggest UFO mystery in the world" and which the Swedish military kept classified for years. The expedition leader and head of UFO-Sweden, Clas Svahn, set off on the trip to Jokkmokk, far northern Sweden on Thursday together with a support team, divers, a film crew, and the original witness who watched the craft land in the water. "I expect to be surprised," Svahn told The Local, explaining that while he is not a "believer", he hopes that the trip can provide answers. "People mistake UFOs with flying saucers. There are many, many reports of strange things in the air, but what we're interested in is explaining what they are. Every answer is a good answer." The craft the team is looking for was seen crash-landing in the south end of a lake in Muddus, back on July 31st, 1980. The witnesses, Bo and Liz Berg, watched as the "elongated, cigar shaped object with two protrusions on its sides" came whizzing by them, turned 180 degrees, and performed a controlled landing in the water, disappearing in a spray of bubbles. The description of the object led the research team to conclude it was a so-called Ghost Rocket - a spacecraft that has long held captured the attention of both UFO investigators and the military alike. Since 1946, witnesses have reported nearly 20,000 unidentified objects in the skies over Sweden, with 1,000 alone in 1946. |
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kentsussex
The orange flashing lights of a UFO were reportedly spotted over Hadlow, near Tonbridge, earlier this month.Tonbridge People 2012-08-30 09:40:00 Writing on uk-ufo.co.uk, the poster (known only as A), said she saw two lights 'moving around and phasing in and out' at 4.30am on August 20. She said: "My husband was in the garden having a cigarette (at 9.30pm the previous evening) and said he saw what looked like a comet or star traveling along in the sky, thought no more of it. "I was watching a movie in the front room, I see a flash what appeared to be a lightning through the window, but it was orange not white as normal,this was approx 3,30am. "I continued to watch the movie thinking maybe there be a storm on way, when the film ended at 4,30am I went into the garden to let the dog out, I see two orange lights thinking it was odd. "They were moving in different patterns, I watched them moving around and phasing in and out, but it was cloudy for about 10-15mins, as were under a flight path. |
