Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Thursday 6 September 2012


Thursday, 06 September 2012

SOTT Focus
No new articles.
--- Best of the Web
Adam Serwer
Mother Jones
2012-09-04 15:44:00

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What a difference four years makes.

In 2008, Democrats were eager to draw a contrast with what they then portrayed as Republican excesses in the fight against Al Qaeda. Since then, the Obama administration has in many cases continued the national security policies of its predecessor - and the Democratic Party's 2012 platform highlights this reversal, abandoning much of the substance and all of the bombast of the 2008 platform. Here are a few places where the differences are most glaring:
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Glen Greenwald
The Guardian
2012-09-06 15:29:00

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Excuse me if I don't join in Democrats' sycophantic cheerleading for an Obama presidency that has shredded laws and liberties

For several decades, protection of whistleblowers has been a core political value for Democrats, at least for progressives. Daniel Ellsberg has long been viewed by liberals as an American hero for his disclosure of the top secret Pentagon Papers. In 2008, candidate Obama hailed whistleblowing as "acts of courage and patriotism", which "should be encouraged rather than stifled as they have been during the Bush administration".

President Obama, however, has waged the most aggressive and vindictive assault on whistleblowers of any president in American history, as even political magazines generally supportive of him have recognized and condemned. One might think that, as the party's faithful gather to celebrate the greatness of this leader, this fact would be a minor problem, a source of some tension between Obama and his hardest-core supporters, perhaps even some embarrassment. One would be wrong.

Far from shying away from this record of persecuting whistleblowers, the Obama campaign is proudly boasting of it. A so-called "Truth Team" of the Obama/Biden 2012 campaign issued a document responding to allegations that the Obama White House has leaked classified information in order to glorify the president:
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Mansur Gidfar
Upworthy
2012-09-05 19:43:00
Back in December 2011 during a campaign stop in New Hampshire, Mitt Romney decided to drop by Vietnam War veteran Bob Garon's breakfast table for a quick photo-op. What Romney didn't realize is that Garon was sitting with his husband, whom he had married just a few months earlier.

What followed might be the single greatest "oblivious Romney" moment of the entire campaign. Enjoy.
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Puppet Masters
Dana Hull
Mercury News
2012-09-01 17:31:00

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Monsanto fully supports the labeling of foods with genetically engineered products.

In the United Kingdom.

St. Louis-based Monsanto, a leading producer of genetically engineered seeds and chemicals such as the herbicide Roundup, has donated $4.2 million to efforts to defeat Proposition 37, a controversial measure on the November ballot that would require labeling for genetically engineered foods.

But in the late 1990s, Monsanto ran advertisements in Britain that supported food labeling, which is common in Europe.

The European Union first approved labels for genetically engineered food in 1997, and specific rules covering corn and soy came a year later. Monsanto's ads in Europe apparently ran after the decision to label foods had been made. Labeling rules in the United Kingdom went into effect in early 1999.
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Tom Burghardt
Dissident Voice
2012-09-03 03:05:00
In a story which should have made front page headlines, Narco News investigative journalist Bill Conroy revealed that:
A high-ranking Sinaloa narco-trafficking organization member's claim that US officials have struck a deal with the leadership of the Mexican 'cartel' appears to be corroborated in large part by the statements of a Mexican diplomat in email correspondence made public recently by the nonprofit media group WikiLeaks.
A series of some five million emails, The Global Intelligence Files, were obtained by the secret-spilling organization as a result of last year's hack by Anonymous of the Texas-based "global intelligence" firm Stratfor.

Bad tradecraft aside, the Stratfor dump offers readers insight into a shadowy world where information is sold to the highest bidder through a "a global network of informants who are paid via Swiss banks accounts and pre-paid credit cards. Stratfor has a mix of covert and overt informants, which includes government employees, embassy staff and journalists around the world."

One of those informants was a Mexican intelligence officer with the Centro de Investigación y Seguridad Nacional, or CISEN, Mexico's equivalent to the CIA. Dubbed "MX1″ by Stratfor, he operates under diplomatic cover at the Mexican consulate in Phoenix, Arizona after a similar posting at the consulate in El Paso, Texas.

His cover was blown by the intelligence grifters when they identified him in their correspondence as Fernando de la Mora, described by Stratfor as "being molded to be the Mexican 'tip of the spear' in the U.S."

In an earlier Narco News story, Conroy revealed that "US soldiers are operating inside Mexico as part of the drug war and the Mexican government provided critical intelligence to US agents in the now-discredited Fast and Furious gun-running operation," the Mexican diplomat claimed in email correspondence.
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Mark Hosenball
Reuters
2012-09-06 00:00:00

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    New waterboarding allegations detailed
  • CIA says its job is to collaborate with foreign governments
  • U.S. Justice Department recently closed probe of CIA actions
A human rights organization says it has collected evidence of two previously unreported cases in which U.S. agents used waterboarding or a similar harsh interrogation technique on Libyan militants held by American forces in Afghanistan.

In a report released on Thursday, Human Rights Watch also says it acquired new evidence of the extent to which the United States and some of its allies, including Great Britain, allegedly detained exiled opponents of late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and forcibly transferred them back to Libya.

Human Rights Watch said that it assembled its report by interviewing victims and witnesses familiar with alleged abuses and by combing through once-secret archives that became public during the Libyan revolution that led to Gaddafi's ouster and eventual death.

Documents found in the archives following the collapse of Gaddafi's regime included classified correspondence between top Libyan officials and officials from the CIA and Britain's spy agencies MI5 and MI6.

They illustrate how, between late 2003 when Gaddafi agreed to give up his weapons of mass destruction programs, and the 2011 Libyan revolution, Gaddafi and Western intelligence agencies quietly cooperated in battling Islamic militants.

"Not only did the U.S. deliver Gaddafi his enemies on a silver platter, but it seems the CIA tortured many of them first," Laura Pitter, a counterterrorism expert at Human Rights Watch and author of the report, said in a written statement.
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Society's Child
Press Association
2012-09-05 13:48:00

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The inventor of the world wide web has denied there is an "off-switch" which could turn off the internet across the globe.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who launched the web on Christmas Day 1990, said the only way the internet could ever be entirely shut down is if governments all over the world co-ordinated to make it a centralised system.

It comes after moves by the Egyptian government last year to suppress use of the web led to speculation that the Hosni Mubarak regime had found a kill switch for the internet.

Speaking at the launch of the first ever global league table classifying countries which put the web to work best, the 57-year-old computer scientist said: "The way the internet is designed is very much as a decentralised system. At the moment, because countries connect to each other in lots of different ways, there is no one off-switch, there is no central place where you can turn it off.

"In order to be able to turn the whole thing off or really block, suppress one particular idea then the countries and governments would have to get together and agree and co-ordinate and turn it from a decentralised system to being a centralised system. And if that does happen it is really important that everybody fights against that sort of direction."

Sweden has topped the Web Index league table launched by the World Wide Web Foundation, followed by the US in second and the UK in third. Nepal, Cameroon and Mali were the bottom three of 61 countries measured using indicators such as the political, economic and social impact of the web, connectivity and use.
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Yahoo 7 News
2012-09-05 18:12:00

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A woman from the Guangxi province of China is claiming to be 127-years-old, a figure that would eclipse the world's verified oldest person by five years.

Luo Meizhen lives with her only son, who she reportedly gave birth to at the age of 61, says The Daily Mail.

She claims she was born on July 9, 1885 in the Chinese lunar calendar, which this year fell on August 25 in the international calendar.

At a birthday celebration held in her honour, Luo ate a bowl of rice, a piece of duck meat and chicken, two slices of pork and two pieces of cake.

Bama County is famous in China for the longevity of its residents.

The ratio of centenarians there is 30.8 per 100,000, far exceeding the international standard of 25 per 100,000 for 'hometowns of longevity' - centenarian-clustered areas recognised by the International Natural Medicine Society.

The 2000 census recorded 74 centenarians, a significant number considering the total population is only 238,000.

Lou's claim to be 127 is likely to be met with a degree of skepticism however.

The verified oldest person in the world turned 116 just last month.
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Colin Todhunter
Global Research
2012-09-05 13:27:00

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Against the backdrop of a glittering Olympics organised by the self congratulatory, back-slapping political classes, the UK was and continues to be in the grip of crisis. The welfare system is under sustained attack, workers' rights are being stripped away and wages continue to fall in real terms. At the same time in 'austerity Britain', however, there's always enough taxpayers' money to pour into the black hole of imperialist wars and the pockets of the profiteers that live off them, courtesy of David Cameron's government of millionaire ministers.

Capitalism, especially the neo-liberal variety, is moribund. It has reached its inevitable increasingly totalitarian dead end. In the 1980s, Britain outsourced much of its manufacturing to cheap labour economies in order to boost profits. To provide a further edge, trade unions and welfare rights were attacked. As wages stagnated (or decreased in absolute terms) and unemployment increased, the market for goods was under threat. The answer lay in lending people money and creating a debt ridden consumer society.
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Reuters
2012-09-06 11:42:00

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At least 60 migrants, most of them Palestinian and more than half of them children, died after their overcrowded boat sank just tens of meters off Turkey's western Aegean coast on Thursday, a district official said.

Tahsin Kurtbeyoglu, governor of the coastal district of Menderes in Turkey's western Izmir province, said an initial investigation showed the small vessel sank around dawn due to overcrowding.

Its destination was unclear but the small Turkish town of Ahmetbeyli from where it left is only a few kilometers from the Greek island of Samos. Greece is a common entry point for migrants trying to get into the European Union.

"The latest death toll we have is 60 people, including 11 men, 18 women and 31 children, including three babies," Kurtbeyoglu told Reuters by telephone.

Turkish media said the reason the death toll was so high was because the women and children were in a locked compartment in the lower section of the vessel, although there was no official confirmation of this.
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Dailymail.uk.co
2012-09-06 07:02:00
A woman who was suffering from depression is believed to have fed herself to the crocodiles at a popular tourist attraction in Thailand.

The 36-year-old Thai woman told her husband that she was going to see a doctor and would then go to popular Crocodile Farm in Samut Prakarn just outside Bangkok.

She never returned home but she was caught on CCTV cameras entering the tourist attraction 20 miles south of the capital.

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Charles Abbott
Planetark.com
2012-09-06 06:57:00
The number of poor Americans who repeatedly ran short of food shot up by 800,000 in 2011 to nearly 17 million compared with 2010, the U.S. government said on Wednesday.

The Department of Agriculture said in a report that about 5.5 percent of Americans, or nearly 17 million, suffered "very low food security" last year, meaning they had to skip meals or not eat for a day because of a lack of money to buy food. That is a rise of 800,000 over the prior year, it said.

The food-security report was released one day after the government said that a record 46.7 million Americans were enrolled for food stamps in June, up by 173,000 in May.

High unemployment and slow growth since the deep 2008-2009 recession has driven enrollment in food stamps, the major U.S. anti-hunger program, to record levels.
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Palestine Chronicle
2012-09-03 02:33:00

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Polluted water in the Gaza Strip is seriously affecting people's health and the situation looks set to get worse, the UN warns in a new report.

Gaza's rapidly growing population of about 1.64 million - expected to increase by 500,000 by 2020 - could soon lose its main source of fresh water, the underground coastal aquifer, which could become unusable by 2016, with the damage irreversible by 2020, it says.

Clean water is limited for most Gazans to an average of 70-90 litres per person per day, compared to the minimum global World Health Organization (WHO) standard of 100 litres a day, according to Mahmud Daher, officer-in-charge of the WHO in Gaza.

"We have respiratory diseases, skin diseases, eye diseases, gastroenteritis, which can all be linked to polluted water," said Mohamed al-Kashef, general director of the international cooperation department in the Gaza health ministry.

According to a UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) 2010 update, diseases associated with water account for about 26 percent of diseases in Gaza. However, Daher is more careful to make the link. "There is no evidence that the current water situation is a major public health problem. But what we know for sure is that viral diseases and parasites are connected to polluted water."
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Christopher Bodeen
Google
2012-09-05 00:00:00

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Beijing - A former police chief whose flight to a U.S. consulate set off China's biggest political scandal in years has been charged with crimes including defection and bribe taking, possibly indicating the turbulent affair is moving closer to a resolution before a key national leadership transition this fall.

Wednesday evening's announcement by state media of the charges against Wang Lijun did not mention Bo Xilai, his one-time boss, who has fallen from power as one of China's top leaders as a result of the scandal.

Wang, the former police chief and vice mayor of the southwestern city of Chongqing, was also charged with "bending the law for selfish ends" and abuse of power, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

Wang set off the scandal by fleeing to the U.S. consulate in the nearby city of Chengdu in early February after being demoted by Bo, the city's powerful Communist Party boss. Xinhua said the Chengdu City Intermediate People's Court had accepted the case, although it did not give a trial date.

During his overnight stay at the U.S. consulate, Wang expressed to the Americans his concerns about the death of British businessman Neil Heywood in Chongqing last November. That prompted the British embassy to request a new investigation, which uncovered that he had been murdered. The case resulted in Bo's dismissal in March and the conviction last month of Bo's wife Gu Kailai for poisoning Heywood, a former family associate with whom Gu had reportedly feuded about money.
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The Smoking Gun
2012-09-05 00:00:00

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Federal prosecutors want Shepard Fairey, the artist who created the Barack Obama Hope poster, to serve time in prison following his misdemeanor conviction for destroying and fabricating documents in connection with a civil lawsuit over the iconic campaign image. In advance of Friday's scheduled sentencing of Fairey in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, the Department of Justice has filed a memorandum arguing that a prison term for the 42-year-old artist would be "appropriate."

However, prosecutors did not specify how long Fairey should be incarcerated (though, statutorily, his punishment would not exceed six months). Additionally, government lawyers have contended that Judge Frank Maas could fine Fairey up to $3.2 million.

"A sentence without any term of imprisonment sends a terrible message to those who might commit the same sort of criminal conduct," wrote prosecutor Daniel Levy in a September 2 memo. "Encouraging parties to game the civil litigation system...creates terrible incentives and subverts the truth-finding function of civil litigation."

Fairey, seen in the above mug shot, has admitted destroying electronic records and creating fake documents in an effort to thwart a copyright lawsuit brought by the Associated Press, which contended that Fairey had based the Hope image on a photo taken by an AP lensman.
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The Times of Israel
2012-09-05 00:00:00

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State does not authorize mohels, requires that parents be informed of the procedure's medical risks before consenting.

One of Germany's 16 states has declared circumcision legal, but only if performed by doctors - not, as required by Jewish law, by mohels.

Berlin, Germany's capital and itself a state, is the first to declare the practice legal following a Cologne court ruling in June that non-medical circumcisions on children amounted to a criminal offense, according to DPA, a German news wire. National legislation is pending to legalize circumcision.

State Justice Minister Thomas Heilmann made the announcement Wednesday, saying he felt it necessary to allay fears in this "difficult transitional period," the Associated Press reported.

The Berlin state has authorized only doctors, and not mohels, to perform circumcisions. National legislation could authorize mohels. The state also required that parents be informed of the procedure's medical risks before consenting, and that doctors do everything possible during the procedure to reduce pain and limit bleeding.

June's court ruling led many doctors to stop performing circumcisions in order to avoid being prosecuted. So far, complaints based on the ruling have been filed against two rabbis, although one complaint was dropped last week.
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wftv.com
2012-09-05 09:29:00


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Brevard, Florida - WFTV found out a man who was arrested Wednesday after he walked into a Melbourne movie theater dressed as the infamous Batman villain, the Joker, is being held in the jail's mental health ward.

Police said Christoper Sides, 21, of Cocoa, was arrested on a warrant for a previous felony charge. He's being held on bond at the Brevard County Jail.

WFTV learned Sides has been involuntarily committed for mental health issues three times in the last three years.

Sides was arrested Wednesday morning after theater-goers reported a man wearing Joker-like makeup at the Premiere Theater on West Hibiscus Boulevard. The caller said the man was pacing outside the theater before entering the building.

Police said they confronted Sides as he was leaving through the front doors of the theater. According to police, Sides had purchased a ticket to see The Expendables 2.

Police said they learned Sides, who had bright pink hair and white and black face paint, had a warrant for his arrest for failure to appear on a previous misdemeanor charge. He was taken into custody for the warrant and transported to the Brevard County Jail.
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The Globe and Mail
2012-09-05 03:42:00

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A human torso placed in a suitcase and found drifting on Lake Ontario is the latest in a string of body parts discovered in and around Toronto over the past month.

The grisly discovery was made on Wednesday morning by a man and a woman on personal watercrafts, according to area residents. They found the suitcase some two and a half kilometres off Bluffer's Park in Scarborough, pulled it back to land and called police.

The coroner confirmed the remains were human but, so far, police don't know to whom the torso belongs, or whether it is of a man or a woman - questions they hope a postmortem examination on Thursday morning will answer. They are investigating whether the remains are linked to the case of Liu Guahuang, a Scarborough woman whose head and limbs were found in the Credit River in Mississauga and a creek near her home last month.

"We've been in touch with Peel Region police and, until we get the results of the postmortem examination, we can't determine if it's one in the same," Detective Leslie Dunkley said.
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Valerie Schremp
St.Louis Today
2012-09-05 04:10:00

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St. Louis - A man was charged late Wednesday in the fatal stabbing of another man in a fight over a bag of Cheetos on Tuesday night in downtown St. Louis, police say.

David L. Scott, 49, was charged today with second-degree murder and armed criminal action. Authorities say he argued with 42-year-old Roger Wilkes over the Cheetos and stabbed him once in the chest with a knife about 8:50 p.m. Tuesday in the 500 block of Washington Avenue.

Wilkes died later at a hospital.

Police had said they believed both men were homeless, but gave an address for Wilkes in the 4000 block of Delmar Boulevard and an address for Scott in the 200 block of North Ninth Street.
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The Guardian
2012-09-05 00:00:00
Woman was abducted from home, fitted with device and sent into Bank of America branch to get cash, say police.

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A Los Angeles bank manager was strapped to what appeared to be a bomb and sent into her branch to take out money for two thieves who escaped with the cash, authorities said.

The two suspects confronted the manager at her home on Tuesday night and forced her to participate in the robbery, said the Los Angeles county sheriff's office. "The two men took her to her bank on Wednesday morning, telling her that she had to wear this explosive device," said spokesman Steve Whitmore. "They strapped on what appeared to be pipe bomb."

Following the robbery a sheriff's arson and explosives team removed the device from the woman and rendered it safe, Whitmore said. Officials did not identify the bank manager.

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The Washington Post
2012-09-05 07:30:00

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Orange, California - Nadia Lockyer, the estranged wife of state Treasurer Bill Lockyer and a former Alameda County supervisor, was charged with drug possession and child abuse after police found her with methamphetamine in an Orange County house where she was staying with her 9-year-old son, prosecutors said Wednesday.

The charges are the latest in a series of public substance abuse and relationship struggles faced by Lockyer, 41, who until recently was considered a rising star in Northern California government.

Bill Lockyer, 71, the state's former attorney general and current treasurer who helped his wife with campaign funding when she won her supervisor seat in 2010, has filed for divorce and is seeking joint custody of their son. She resigned from the seat in April following a string of bizarre public incidents that she blamed on chemical dependency.

Police in Orange received a tip last week that led them to a house where Nadia Lockyer was staying with relatives, district attorney's spokeswoman Farrah Emami said.

Lockyer wasn't home, but officers found methamphetamine and paraphernalia used for smoking it. Later, when they found Lockyer, she showed "objective signs" of meth intoxication and she was arrested, Emami said.
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Secret History
No new articles.
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Science & Technology
April Flowers
RedOrbit
2012-09-06 13:56:00

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An international team of researchers, including physicists from the University of Vienna and the Austrian Academy of Sciences, has achieved quantum teleportation over a record distance of 143 kilometers. The experiment marks a major step towards satellite-based quantum communication.

The team transmitted quantum states between the two Canary Islands of La Palma and Tenerife over a distance of 143 kilometers, beating the previous record of 97 kilometers set by researchers in China just a few months ago. The results of this experiment were published online in Nature.

The purpose of the experiment was not to break the distance record, but to provide the basis for a worldwide information network in which quantum mechanical effects enable the exchange of messages with greater security, and allow certain calculations to be performed more efficiently than with conventional technologies. "In such a (theoretical) future, a "quantum Internet" - facilitated by quantum teleportation - will be a key protocol for the transmission of information between quantum computers."

Quantum states, but not matter, are exchanged between two parties over distances that can be, in theory, arbitrarily long. This process works even if the recipient is unknown. Exchanges such at this can be used for the transmission of messages, or as an operation in future quantum computers.

In quantum computer applications, the photons that encode the quantum states have to be transported reliably over long distances without compromising the fragile quantum state. This experiment, which sets up a quantum connection suitable for quantum teleportation over distances of more than 100 kilometers, opens up new horizons.

Xiao-song Ma, one of the scientists involved in the experiment, says, "The realization of quantum teleportation over a distance of 143 km has been a huge technological challenge."
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Nancy Atkinson
Universe Today / PhysOrg
2012-09-06 11:24:00
Early next year, a comet will come fairly close to Earth and the Sun - traveling within the orbit of Mercury - and it has the potential to be visible to the naked eye. Amateur and professional astronomers alike have been keeping watch on Comet C/2011 L4 PANSTARRS (or PANSTARRS for short), trying to ascertain just how bright this comet may become. It will come within 45 million kilometers (28 million miles) of the Sun on March 9, 2013, which is close enough for quite a bit of cometary ice to vaporize and form a bright coma and tail.

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But just how bright, no one can say for sure. Comets have been known to be very unpredictable (remember the breakup of Comet Elenin?) but some estimates have said this comet could become a naked-eye object, as bright as Vega or Arcturus next March. Right now it is at about Magnitude 12, and skywatchers in the southern hemisphere observers will have a great view as this comet gets closer and brighter, as it will remain high in the sky. But right now, skywatchers in the northern latitudes are saying farewell to Comet PANSTARRS, as it becomes low on the horizon. Astrophotographer Efrain Morales from Puerto Rico took the image above on September 4th, 2012 at 00:31 UTC. "It was very difficult to image due to the forest tree tops and sunset light but I was able to capture it at high magnification," Efrain told us. (He used an LX200ACF 12 inch, OTA, CGE mount, F10, ST402xmi Ccd, Astronomik Ir/UV filter at 2 minutes. )
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Earth Changes
Cavan Sieczkowski
The Huffington Post
2012-09-06 16:30:00

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Well, it certainly is eerie.

Tens of thousands of dead fish, along with dead seagulls, washed up on the shores of Lake Erie on Wednesday afternoon in yet another mysterious mass animal death.

Rick Nicholls, Member of Provincial Parliament for the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario, is mystified by the mass Lake Erie animal death, telling NewsNet5: "First thing that crossed my mind, is there any potential danger to humans from a health point of view? Secondly, as I got more and more into it, what's the cause of this sudden fish kill in the lake?"
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Steve Lightfoot
Standard-Times
2012-09-04 16:04:00
State and federal wildlife officials are investigating a series of active dove mortality events in and around the West Texas communities of Midland, Odessa and Big Spring. The cause has yet to be determined, but poisoning has not been ruled out.

Dove samples have been submitted to the U.S. Geological Survey's National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wisc., where initial necropsy findings revealed no conclusive cause of death, according to Dr. LeAnn White, a wildlife disease specialist. Additional disease screening and toxicology test results are pending.

Although there are no known human or animal risks associated with the mortality events at this time, White recommends precautions. One Midland resident reported his dog died shortly after consuming several dead doves, but no autopsy was performed and cause of death was not determined. Conversely, several residents have reported dogs and cats consuming dead doves with no ill effects.

Reports of dead doves and sparrows first surfaced in late July. The total number of birds impacted so far is believed to be less than 250, mostly Eurasian collared dove and white-winged dove.
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Isabella Cota
The Globe and Mail
2012-09-05 18:18:00

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A powerful earthquake rocked Costa Rica on Wednesday, causing the deaths of at least two people, damaging buildings, and briefly triggering a tsunami warning.

Residents of the capital San Jose said phones went down, electricity poles rattled on the streets and water flowed out of pools after the 7.6-magnitude quake. The were also unconfirmed media reports of people being treated for injuries.

A spokesman for the local Red Cross said two people died during the earthquake, one from a heart attack. He was not immediately able to confirm media reports the other person had been crushed under a collapsing wall.

Locals were shocked by the force of the quake, the biggest to hit Costa Rica since a 7.6 magnitude quake in 1991 left 47 dead.
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Fire in the Sky
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Health & Wellness
Tom Philpott
Mother Jones
2012-09-06 15:55:00

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Is organic food little more than a trumped-up marketing scheme, another way for affluent consumers to waste money? A just-released paper by Stanford University researchers - and the reaction to it by the media - suggests as much. (Abstract here; I have a copy of the full study, but can't upload it for copyright reasons.)

"Stanford Scientists Cast Doubt on Advantages of Organic Meat and Produce," declared a New York Times headline. "Organic food hardly healthier, study suggests," announced CBS News. "Is organic healthier? Study says not so much, but it's key reason consumers buy," the Washington Post grumbled.

In reality, though, the study in some places makes a strong case for organic - though you'd barely know it from the language the authors use. And in places where it finds organic wanting, key information gets left out.
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Anthony Gucciardi
NaturalSociety
2012-09-06 14:10:00

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How long have you been using your cellphone? Using a mobile device for any length of time is damaging to some degree, but new research is shedding light on just how significant of an influence extended cellphone use has on the brain.

In a newly-released study conducted at the Örebro Hospita in Sweden, it was revealed that 10 years of cellphone use resulted in an average 290% increased risk of brain tumor development. Interestingly, the tumor development was found on the side of the head in which the cellphone was most used.

It's important to understand that cellphone use has gone up significantly since 10 years ago, meaning that more recent results may show an even higher risk. Statistically, the average person in Britain and many other developed nations will soon have about 2 cellphones each. With the increased number of cellphones on the citizens of the world comes something known as 'second-hand cellphone use'. Just as with smoking, sitting in a bus, airplane, or train will expose you to upwards of several hundred cellphones at one time.

Another key factor is that 10 years ago far less young children were using cellphones - a select few having them as 'emergency' contact devices. Now, it's not uncommon to see children under 10 chatting or texting on their cellphone throughout the day.

It is a well known fact that developing children are more affected by cellphone radiation, with behavioral disorders known to develop from cellphone use at an early age. It is also known that cellphone radiation is actually changing the brain in ways that are not currently understood.
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PF Louis
Natural News
2012-08-31 12:55:00

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EFAs are essential fatty acids, which we need to live but our bodies cannot create. So we need take EFAs from outside sources.

Johanna Budwig, the creator of the Budwig Diet for successfully treating cancer, claimed before she died at age 95 in 2003 that she was given as much grief from the burgeoning heat processed hydrogenated trans-fatty acid cooking and salad oil industry as the cancer industry.

Budwig was a German biochemist whose research pioneered the classifications of fatty acids. She publicly announced often that those trans-fatty oils promoted to 1950s' housewives were worse than unhealthy; they caused disease.
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Mark A. Kastel
The Cornucopia Institute
2012-09-04 12:29:00

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I have enjoyed a virtually exclusive organic diet for the past 30 years. But I was deeply unsettled by a September 4 New York Times article and a similar Associated Press story casting doubt on the value of an organic diet.

In terms of the extra cost and value of eating organically, I have always subscribed to the adage "pay now or pay later." While my personal experience does not provide much in terms of a scientifically legitimate sample size, in the last 30 years, after suffering from pesticide poisoning prompted my shift to an organic diet, I have exceeded my insurance deductible only once, due to an orthopedic injury. And my doctor keeps telling me how remarkable it is that I, at age 57, have no chronic health problems and take no pharmaceuticals.

Unfortunately, the analysis done by Stanford University physicians in the articles noted above did not look "outside the box" as many organic farming and food advocates do.
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Andy Coghlan
NewScientist
2012-09-03 14:38:00

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For the first time, people with broken spines have recovered feeling in previously paralysed areas after receiving injections of neural stem cells.

Three people with paralysis received injections of 20 million neural stem cells directly into the injured region of their spinal cord. The cells, acquired from donated fetal brain tissue, were injected between four and eight months after the injuries happened. The patients also received a temporary course of immunosuppressive drugs to limit rejection of the cells.

None of the three felt any sensation below their nipples before the treatment. Six months after therapy, two of them had sensations of touch and heat between their chest and belly button. The third patient has not seen any change.

"The fact we've seen responses to light touch, heat and electrical impulses so far down in two of the patients is very unexpected," says Stephen Huhn of StemCells, the company in Newark, California, developing and testing the treatment. "They're really close to normal in those areas now in their sensitivity," he adds.
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Science of the Spirit
Linguistic Society of America
2012-09-04 16:22:00
Languages are continually changing, not just words but also grammar. A recent study examines how such changes happen and what the changes can tell us about how speakers' grammars work. The study, "The course of actualization", to be published in the September 2012 issue of the scholarly journal Language, is authored by Hendrik De Smet of the University of Leuven /Research Foundation Flanders. A
preprint version is available online here.

Historical linguists, who document and study language change, have long noticed that language changes have a sneaky quality, starting small and unobtrusive and then gradually conquering more ground, a process termed 'actualization'. De Smet's study investigates how actualization proceeds by tracking and comparing different language changes, using large collections of digitized historical texts. This way, it is shown that any actualization process consists of a series of smaller changes with each new change building on and following from the previous ones, each time making only a minimal adjustment. A crucial role in this is played by similarity.
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ScienceDaily
2012-09-05 00:00:00

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Closer sleeping proximity between fathers and children is associated with a greater decrease in the father's testosterone level, with possible implications for parenting behavior.

The full report is published Sep. 5 in the open access journal PLoS ONE.

Fathers' testosterone levels have been associated with parenting behavior and involvement across species, with higher levels generally associated with lower parental involvement. The authors of the current study, led by Lee Gettler of the University of Notre Dame, studied 362 fathers in the Philippines to determine whether their sleeping arrangements - either sleeping on the same surface as their children, in the same room, or separately - were related to their testosterone levels.
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High Strangeness
Kevin Held
KSDK
2012-09-06 16:16:00
A strange hum, grind, growl or groan is keeping people in West Seattle from getting a good night's sleep.

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Don't Panic! Lighten Up!
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