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James Corbett
Conspiracy theorists like Zbigniew Brzezinski believe that organizations of interest work behind the scenes to manipulate world politics. They believe that false flag terror events are used to justify wars of aggression on political enemies. They believe that humanitarian rhetoric is used to mask military aggression, as in Syria. In short, they are realistic observers of world politics, just like Zbigniew Brzezinski. Join us today on The Corbett Report as we hear all about the conspiratorial view of history straight from the horse's mouth.The Corbett Report 2013-02-07 15:16:00
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Comment: This is the same Zbigniew Brzezinski who personally saw to it that the information contained in Political Ponerology: A Science on the Nature of Evil, Adjusted for Political Purposes, would not see the light of day for another 20 years:
Once the book was completed in 1984 and a suitable translation made into English, he was unable to get it published. The psychology editors told him it was "too political", and the political editors told him it was "too psychological". He enlisted the help of his compatriot, Zbigniew Brzezinski, who had just previously served as President Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser and who initially praised the book and promised to help get the book published. Unfortunately, after some time spent corresponding Brzezinski became silent, responding only to the effect that it was a pity it hadn't worked out. In Łobaczewski's words, "he strangled the matter, treacherously".18A particularly useful chink in the conspirators' armor is knowledge about how they think. For all his wishful thinking and unflinching self-belief, Brzezinski apparently realized this (well, maybe 'sensed' is a more appropriate term) ... They have already figured out what makes us tick. That's why they deploy 'shock therapy', 'perception management' and 'limbic warfare' against whole populations all the time. This is, after all, what 'psychological operations' are all about. To stand a fighting chance of meeting them on the battlefield of ideas, it is crucial that we arm ourselves with knowledge of what psychopaths are and how psychopathy infects everything. | |
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Glenn Greenwald
Guardian 2013-02-05 13:39:00
The most extremist power any political leader can assert is the power to target his own citizens for execution without any charges or due process, far from any battlefield. The Obama administration has not only asserted exactly that power in theory, but has exercised it in practice. In September 2011, it killed US citizen Anwar Awlaki in a drone strike in Yemen, along with US citizen Samir Khan, and then, in circumstances that are still unexplained, two weeks later killed Awlaki's 16-year-old American son Abdulrahman with a separate drone strike in Yemen. Since then, senior Obama officials including Attorney General Eric Holder and John Brennan, Obama's top terrorism adviser and his current nominee to lead the CIA, have explicitly argued that the president is and should be vested with this power. Meanwhile, aWashington Post article from October reported that the administration is formally institutionalizing this president's power to decide who dies under the Orwellian title "disposition matrix". When the New York Times back in April, 2010 first confirmed the existence of Obama's hit list, it made clear just what an extremist power this is, noting: "It is extremely rare, if not unprecedented, for an American to be approved for targeted killing." The NYT quoted a Bush intelligence official as saying "he did not know of any American who was approved for targeted killing under the former president". When the existence of Obama's hit list was first reported several months earlier by the Washington Post's Dana Priest, she wrote that the "list includes three Americans". | |
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Laura Poitras
The New York Times 2013-01-10 10:46:00
When President Obama pledged to close the Guantánamo Bay prison on his first day in office as president in 2009, I believed the country had shifted direction. I was wrong. Four years later, President Obama has not only institutionalized Guantánamo and all the horrors it symbolizes, but he has initiated new extrajudicial programs, like the president's secret kill list. In September 2012 I read the news that another prisoner at Guantánamo had died, and I knew I had probably met his family. I traveled to Yemen in 2007 with the idea of making a film about a Guantánamo prisoner. I went there with the Guantánamo lawyer David Remes. He met with families and delivered the news of their sons, brothers, fathers and husbands. I had hoped to film the journey of someone being released from Guantánamo and returning home. Five years later, I find myself making that film, but under tragic circumstances. | |
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| Puppet Masters |
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Nikolaj Nielsen
EU Observer 2013-02-07 17:48:00
Brussels - The EU and a large Israeli military contractor are co-funding research to build drones that can stop moving boats and cars. Launched in January, the three-year-long Aeroceptor project, according to its own literature, aims to help law enforcement authorities to stop "non-cooperative vehicles in both land and sea scenarios by means of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles." Israel's ministry of public security, global weapons manufacturer Israel Aerospace Industries and Israeli-based Rotem Technological Solutions are among the list of 12 participants, most of which are based in the EU. German Green MEP Ska Keller told this website that the Aeroceptor projector is a first in the EU because previously EU drones were developed only for surveillance and not for interception. "Are we going to play Battleships now with drones? With the help of the Israeli defence industry?" said Keller, referring to a popular children's game, who is also the Green group's migration and civil liberties spokesperson. The Aeroceptor project received just over €4.8 million in total funding, with the European Commission pitching in €3.5 million. The remainder comes from the consortium's participants. | |
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Mike Adams
Natural News 2013-02-06 15:43:00
In the aftermath of the tragic Sandy Hook shooting, the gun grabbers across America unleashed a full court press to try to wholly disarm American citizens. With the help of the incessantly anti-gun mainstream media, people like Biden, Bloomberg, Cuomo, Feinstein and Obama managed to stir up a frenzy of fabricated fear that promised all our children would be violently gunned down if we didn't immediately agree to turn in all our guns and ammo magazines. The push for gun control, however, has spectacularly backfired. In reality, it has hardened the positions of gun rights advocates while massively increasing the number of AR-15s and other firearms sold across the country. The backfire is far worse than the gun grabbers could have possibly imagined when they launched their efforts on the graves of the dead Sandy Hook children. Here's my analysis of what has factually happened on the gun control front since Sandy Hook. | |
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UK Guardian
The IRA has launched an internal investigation into the existence of an alleged MI6 agent codenamed 'J118', The Observer has learnt.2013-02-07 14:54:00 Martin McGuinness, Sinn Fein's chief negotiator and former IRA commanding officer, has publicly denied he is the agent. The Mid Ulster MP was responding to allegations from former British Army intelligence officer Martin Ingram who claimed McGuinness was MI6's top asset inside the IRA. 'Regardless of the validity of this claim, it is IRA standard operating procedure to investigate,' a top republican source said this weekend. 'The IRA's Derry Brigade has been riddled with informers in the past and any allegation, especially by someone like Ingram, has to be looked at. No one is immune from suspicion, even if the vast majority of republicans don't believe these particular allegations,' he added. McGuinness dismissed Ingram's claim this week, saying he was 'one million per cent confident' that the allegations would be proved to be false. Yesterday Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams rejected the allegations and claimed they were 'dirty tricks' being played by ex-members of the now re-formed Royal Ulster Constabulary and disgruntled British intelligence officers. |
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UK Guardian
Kenyans' lawyers say discovery of files on torture and murder of detainees by colonial officials means courts can hear case.2012-07-16 14:32:00 Three elderly veterans of the Mau Mau insurgency in Kenya have launched the second round of their attempt to sue the British government following the discovery of a secret cache of Foreign Office files that document the torture and even murder of detainees by colonial officials. Round one was won by the trio last year when the high court ruled there was "ample evidence ... that there may have been systematic torture of detainees during the [Mau Mau] emergency", and suggested it would be "dishonourable" for the courts to accept the Foreign and Commonwealth Office's argument that the veterans should be suing the current Kenyan government. |
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UK Guardian
2012-04-18 14:19:00
What better place to bury thousands of documents from former colonies than one of the government's most secure facilities? In June 1957, Eric Griffiths-Jones, the attorney general of the British administration in Kenya, wrote to the governor, Sir Evelyn Baring, detailing the way the regime of abuse at the colony's detention camps was being subtly altered. From now on, Griffiths-Jones wrote, for the abuse to remain legal, Mau Mau suspects must be beaten mainly on their upper body, "vulnerable parts of the body should not be struck, particularly the spleen, liver or kidneys", and it was important that "those who administer violence ... should remain collected, balanced and dispassionate". Almost as an after-thought, the attorney general reminded the governor of the need for complete secrecy. "If we are going to sin," he wrote, "we must sin quietly." | |
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UK Guardian
Abuse was sanctioned by a particular institutional attitude that has never been adequately challenged2012-10-05 07:36:00 In a celebrated speech at Westminster in 1959, then-Tory backbencher Enoch Powell suggested it would be a betrayal of everything England believed its colonial mission was about if the authorities tried to evade responsibility for the massacre of Mau Mau suspects at the Hola detention camp. More than 50 years later, a British government is still trying to evade responsibility for the torture of Kenyans in similar camps throughout the 1950s. |
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RT.com
2013-02-06 18:32:00
An investigation into Miami police officers' on-duty conduct found six officers were ignoring 911 calls while instead kissing their girlfriends, shopping, and drinking coffee. One 911 call involved an unconscious five-month-old baby. Video footage shows Miami police officer Dario Socarras ignoring dispatch orders to save the child, while drinking coffee for nine minutes and lying to the dispatcher about being "en route". Paramedics eventually reached the unconscious child, while Socarras never went - but still, the officer wrote in his daily report that he attended the scene. And Socarras is only one of six officers caught neglecting their duties: after being followed and caught on surveillance video by Internal Affairs, two officers and a sergeant were fired and three were suspended without pay for dereliction of duty from the Miami Dade Police Department. The footage of the incidents documents the department's worst case of delinquency in its history. | |
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Michael Snyder
The Economic Collapse Blog 2013-02-06 18:19:00
Why are corporate insiders dumping huge numbers of shares in their own companies right now? Why are some very large investors suddenly making gigantic bets that the stock market will crash at some point in the next 60 days? Do Wall Street insiders expect something really BIG to happen very soon? Do they know something that we do not know? What you are about to read below is startling. Every time that the market has fallen in recent years, insiders have been able to get out ahead of time. David Coleman of the Vickers Weekly Insider report recently noted that Wall Street insiders have shown "a remarkable ability of late to identify both market peaks and troughs". That is why it is so alarming that corporate insiders are selling nine times as many shares as they are buying right now. In addition, some extraordinarily large bets have just been made that will only pay off if the financial markets in the U.S. crash by the end of April. So what does all of this mean? Well, it could mean absolutely nothing or it could mean that there are people out there that actually have insider knowledge that a market crash is coming. Evaluate the evidence below and decide for yourself... | |
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Stephen C. Webster
Raw Story 2013-02-06 18:25:00
Marijuana users in Colorado may no longer fear arrest but they very well could still lose their jobs after a drug test, a task force set up to recommend rules for legalization decided Tuesday. In other words: Just because Colorado voters approved regulation of marijuana last November doesn't mean your boss did, too. | |
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| Society's Child |
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BBC
2013-02-07 17:36:00
A woman has been tortured and burned alive in Papua New Guinea after being accused of using sorcery to kill a young boy, local media report. The woman, a mother aged 20 named as Kepari Leniata, was stripped, tied up and doused in petrol by the boy's relatives in Mount Hagen in the Western Highlands, said the Nationalnewspaper. She was then thrown onto a fire in front of hundreds of people. Police and firefighters were unable to intervene, the paper said. The Post Courier newspaper said they had been outnumbered by the crowd and chased away. Both newspapers published graphic photos of the incident on their front pages. Provincial police commander Supt Kaiglo Ambane told the National that police were treating the case as murder and would arrest those responsible. | |
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Denver Post
2013-02-07 10:59:00
We come before you today to fend off any notion of rounding up a posse and going after the ferocious animal looming on a small piece of range east of this ol' cowtown. With its bulging muscles, lurid veins and eerie red eyes, the great blue beast has been the bane of many a man, woman and child since it came to town on Feb. 11, 2008. Known to some in these parts as "Blucifer," "Devil Horse," or "The Blue Stallion of Death," it could soon be open season on the creature properly known as "Mustang," the sculpture that stands guard at Denver International Airport. As reported last week by Westword, petitions to remove public art in Denver are accepted after five years - a policy intended to avoid knee-jerk decisions on placement, fit and aesthetic. Though a half-serious effort four years ago drew considerable interest, to our knowledge no one is proposing the piece be sent out to pasture. And we hope no one does. | |
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Bob Smietana
The Tennessean 2013-02-06 17:24:00
A Clarksville man said that he quit his job last week in order to save his soul. Walter Slonopas, 52, resigned as a maintenance worker at Contech Casting LLC in Clarksville after his W-2 tax form was stamped with the number 666. The Bible calls 666 the "number of the beast," and it's often used as a symbol of the devil. Slonopas said that after getting the W-2, he could either go to work or go to hell. "If you accept that number, you sell your soul to the devil," he said. Bob LaCourciere, vice president of sales and marketing for the Revstone Corp., which owns Contech Casting, said that Slonopas' W-2 was labeled with 666 by the company that handles Contech's payroll. It refers to the order in which the forms were mailed out, he said. This isn't the first time that the Satanic number has caused Slonopas trouble at work. During his first day on the job in April 2011, Slonopas was supposed to be assigned the number 668 to use when he clocked in. But the human resources department gave him the wrong number - 666 - instead. Slonopas, who said he became a born-again Christian about 10 years ago, complained and was given a new number. | |
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Jennifer Viegas
Discovery News 2013-02-07 12:43:00
Animal abuse cases usually involve common pets, like dogs and cats, but a South African man was sentenced this week for abusing a great white shark. Leon Bekker of George in the Western Cape pleaded guilty to his contravention of various sections of the Marine Living Resources Act No 18 of 1988. He was charged with "fishing for, collecting, attempting to kill, disturbing, harassing, chumming or attracting using bait or other means, keeping controlling or being in possession of a white shark (Carcharodon carcharias) or part thereof, without a permit." He was sentenced to a fine of 120,000 South African rands ($13,200) or a year in jail. According to the organization Oceans Society, last year in Mossel Bay, Bekker hooked a great white shark in front of onlookers. He and two others then dragged the shark onto the rocks, using both a large hook and also by placing their hands into its gills. The shark lay on the rocks while photographs were taken of Bekker with his catch. (You have to wonder if he was inspired by Go Daddy CEO Bob Parsons, who infamously shot an elephant and had photographs quickly snapped to capture the moment.) | |
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Evan Bleier
Opposingviews.com 2013-02-07 14:02:00
Scottish chef Peter Cumming will spend the rest of his left behind bars after admitting to the High Court in Glasgow that he killed his girlfriend, Lynda Brown. Cumming, 58, stabbed Brown to death while the couple was preparing for a dinner party. According to The Daily News, he flew into a rage after he returned home ready to cook and Brown told him that she had already eaten and wasn't hungry. This sparked an argument between the couple and caused Cumming to become "really angry." That anger prompted him to grab a large knife from the kitchen. | |
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Evan Bleier
Opposingviews.com 2013-02-07 13:54:00
An 8-year-old girl with Down syndrome recently came home from elementary school with her shoes duct-taped to her feet and ankles. For obvious reasons, the girl's parents, Nate and Elizabeth Searcy, wanted to know why their daughter Shaylyn arrived from her life skills program at Westlake Elementary in such a manner. They have yet to receive an answer. | |
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A Colorado firefighter is in hot water after he allegedly set fire to a Colorado town, forcing it to evacuate according to a Feb. 5, 2013 press release from the Elbert County Sheriff's office.Alex J. Averette, 19, was arrested Tuesday for allegedly setting fire to the Colorado town of Elbert on June 24, 2012. The Elbert County Sheriff has spent several months investigating the fire that burned several hundred acres and caused the evacuation of the Town of Elbert and surrounding area. Averette, a volunteer fire fighter and Elbert County resident, is being held responsible for the fire that lasted for 6 operational periods (12 hours each) and utilized over 100 fire and law enforcement personnel from multiple agencies. Averette is being held at the Elbert County Jail on a $50,000.00 bond for the offenses of Intentionally Setting Wildfire, 2nd Degree Arson, Reckless Endangerment, Criminal Mischief and 2nd Degree Criminal Trespass. The June 2012 fire, known as the "County Road 102 Fire", burned for 18 days north of the town of Elbert in the area of County Road 102. | |
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David Wright, Kevin Dolak and Josh Haskell
ABC News - Good Morning America 2013-02-07 00:00:00
Police in Southern California say they suspect that a fired cop is connected to the shootings -- one fatal -- of three police officers this morning, as well as the weekend slayings of an assistant women's college basketball coach and her fiancé in what cops believe are acts of revenge against the LAPD, as suggested in the suspect's online manifesto. Former police officer Christopher Jordan Dorner, 33, who's also a former U.S. Navy reservist, has been publically named as a suspect in the killings of Monica Quan, 28, and her 27-year-old fiancé, Keith Lawrence, Irvine police Chief David L. Maggard said at a news conference Wednesday night. "We are considering him armed and dangerous," Lt. Julia Engen of the Irvine Police Department said. Police say the expert marksman shot at four officers in two incidents overnight, hitting three of them: one in Corona, Calif., and two in Riverside, Calif. Sgt. Rudy Lopez of the LAPD said two LAPD officers were in Corona and headed out on special detail to check on one of the individuals named in Dorner's manifesto. Dorner allegedly grazed one of them but missed the other. "[This is an] extremely tense situation," Lopez said. "We call this a manhunt. We approach it cautiously because of the propensity of what has already happened." The Riverside Police Department said two of its officers were shot before one of them died, KABC-TV reported. The extent of the other's injuries is unclear. Police suspected a connection to Dorner. | ||
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Raw Story
2013-02-06 18:27:00
A nine-year-old Mexican girl has given birth and authorities are looking for the presumed father, who is 17, officials said Wednesday. The girl, identified as Dafne, gave birth by Cesarean section to a baby girl weighing 2.7 kilos (5.7 pounds) and measuring 50 centimeters (20 inches) on January 27 in a hospital in the western state of Jalisco. The girl was not seen by doctors during her pregnancy and was almost in labor when she arrived at the hospital, said Enrique Rabago, director of the Occidente General Hospital where the child gave birth in the town of Zapopan. "It is dismaying that a young girl became pregnant. You shouldn't be pregnant at this age," Rabago told a news conference. | |
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Aaron Katersky
ABC News 2013-02-06 18:20:00
The children's scooters imported into the United States from China by ZY Wholesale Inc. may have looked like ordinary scooters and basketball sets like ordinary basketball sets but federal prosecutors in Brooklyn said today they contained high levels of lead and toxic chemicals. ZY Wholesale's owner, Chenglan Hu, is one of five New York City-based importers charged with illegally bringing hazardous and counterfeit toys into the country. "For years, the defendants sought to enrich themselves by importing and selling dangerous and counterfeit children's toys without regard for the law or the health of our children," said Loretta Lynch, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York. Just today authorities seized five tractor trailers worth of counterfeit/dangerous goods worth an estimated $10 million to $15 million. | |
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Maria Sudekum
Associated Press 2013-02-06 18:18:00
Authorities found a frail 17-year-old boy handcuffed to a pole in his parents' Kansas City basement, where he said he'd been kept since his father withdrew him from school in September. Police said Wednesday that they were still investigating and hadn't turned over any of their findings to prosecutors for consideration of possible charges. Police have not released the names of anyone involved in the case. The teen was placed in the custody of child services. According to a police report, an officer and social worker who were acting on a phoned-in tip visited the family's home on Monday. When they entered the basement, they heard someone cry out, "I didn't do anything. I didn't do anything. I didn't do anything." "I then observed a thin frail looking male getting out of the fetal position on the concrete floor around a steel support pole," Officer Jonathan Stone wrote in the report. The teen was handcuffed to the pole and looked very thin for his height, with a sunken face and eyes that "had a look of desperation." | |
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| Secret History |
| No new articles. |
| Science & Technology |
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Charles Q. Choi
Space.com 2013-02-07 13:01:00
The main culprit behind the end of the dinosaurs is now widely accepted to be an extraterrestrial collision of epic proportions, one that left behind the gargantuan crater of Chicxulub at Mexico. Evidence for this theory grows more ironclad over time - yet only 30 years ago it was often thought to be nonsense. It took a long battle to win many scientists over, researchers say. One of those researchers is University of California at Berkeley geologist Walter Alvarez, who recalls the resistance to his team's claim that such a major change could happen abruptly instead of gradually. This reasoned skepticism "is exactly what should happen in science," Alvarez told SPACE.com. "Radical new ideas must be challenged and tested, and that really happened extensively with this idea." Dinosaurs ruled the planet for a staggering 135 million years. Their age came to a dramatic end about 65 million years ago in the most recent and most familiar mass extinction - the end-Cretaceous or Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event, often known as the K-T boundary. But the Chicxulub asteroid impact scenario was not immediately accepted when it was proposed. The notion that a cosmic impact from an asteroid or comet triggered this mass extinction began with the discovery of a layer of clay enriched with iridium. This metal is rare on Earth's surface but relatively common in space rocks. Given this "iridium anomaly," the father-son duo of Luis and Walter Alvarez, along with Frank Asaro and Helen Michel, proposed in 1980 that an extraterrestrial collision finished the age of dinosaurs. The elder Alvarez was a Nobel Prize-winning physicist; Asaro and Michel are nuclear chemists. "It flew in the face of the position that geologists and paleontologists at the time had for gradual explanations for everything that happened in the Earth's past, a position that went by the name of uniformitarianism," said Walter Alvarez. "The notion that this mass extinction was caused by an impact, or even the notion that there was a sudden mass extinction, raised a lot of dispute at the time, and people strongly challenged the idea." | |
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RC Christian
Coup Media 2013-01-29 15:22:00
Most people use social media like Facebook and Twitter to share photos of friends and family, chat with friends and strangers about random and amusing diversions, or follow their favorite websites, bands and television shows. But what does the US military use those same networks for? Well, we can't tell you: That's "classified," a CENTCOM spokesman recently informed Raw Story. One use that's confirmed, however, is the manipulation of social media through the use of fake online "personas" managed by the military. Recently the US Air Force had solicited private sector vendors for something called "persona management software." Such a technology would allow single individuals to command virtual armies of fake, digital "people" across numerous social media portals. These "personas" were to have detailed, fictionalized backgrounds, to make them believable to outside observers, and a sophisticated identity protection service was to back them up, preventing suspicious readers from uncovering the real person behind the account. They even worked out ways to game geolocating services, so these "personas" could be virtually inserted anywhere in the world, providing ostensibly live commentary on real events, even while the operator was not really present.
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Jennifer Lynch
EFF 2013-02-07 15:07:00
The Federal Aviation Administration has finally released a new drone authorization list. This list, released in response to EFF's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit, includes law enforcement agencies and universities across the country, and - for the first time - an Indian tribal agency. In all, the list includes more than 20 new entities over the FAA's original list, bringing to 81 the total number of public entities that have applied for FAA drone authorizations through October 2012. View EFF's updated Map of Domestic Drone Authorizations in a larger window. (Clicking this link will serve content from Google.) Some of these new drone license applicants include: | |
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Richard Chirgwin
The Register 2013-02-01 14:55:00
Thirty years of experiments still haven't proven quantum entanglement Two killjoy researchers from the University of Cambridge have cast doubt on whether quantum cryptography can be regarded as 'provably secure' - and are asking whether today's quantum computing experimentation is demonstrating classical rather than quantum effects. Computer scientists Ross Anderson and Robert Brady have published their discussion at Arxiv, here. In the paper, they examine two key issues in quantum research. As well as looking at the cryptography question, they also examine why quantum computing research is finding it hard to scale beyond three qubits. | |
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Clara Moskowitz
CBS News 2013-02-07 08:52:00
Where most spiral galaxies have two twisting arms, a neighbor of the Milky Way is a four-armed monster. A new photo snapped by the Hubble Space Telescope, combined with observations by amateur astronomers, reveals these arms in stunning detail. The galaxy Messier 106 lies about 20 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Ursa Major (the Great Bear). Hubble scientists released a video of the four-armed galaxy in addition to the new photo. Beneath its pretty pink appearance, Messier 106 is harboring a monster black hole that is hungrily gobbling up matter at the galaxy's center. This black hole, scientists say, may be the key to the galaxy's mysterious extra arms. Spiral arms are bands of material that swirl out from the center of spiral galaxies. Most spiral galaxies have two, but Messier 106 has four. In addition to its prominent pair of main arms made of stars, this galaxy has two thinner wisps of reddish gas spiraling from its center. | |
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Raw Story
2013-02-06 18:31:00
Scientists looking for habitable planets may not have to stray far from our galactic neighborhood, said a new study Wednesday, which calculated an Earth-size planet could be orbiting a red dwarf as near as 13 light years away. "We thought we would have to search vast distances to find an Earth-like planet. Now we realize another Earth is probably in our own backyard, waiting to be spotted," said Harvard astronomer and lead author Courtney Dressing. The researchers based their calculations on planets already discovered by the US super-telescope Kepler, focusing on the question of which "red dwarf" stars could have potentially habitable Earth-size planets in their orbits. Red dwarfs are smaller, cooler and fainter than our solar system's sun - and they are also the most commonly found stars in our galaxy, making up about three of every four stars in the Milky Way. | |
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Ernesto Guido & Nick Howes
M.P.E.C. 2013-C24, issued on 2013 Feb. 6, reports the discovery of the asteroid 2013 CL22(discovery magnitude 16.7) by J75 OAM Observatory, La Sagra on images taken on February 05.06 with a 0.45-m f/2.8 reflector + CCD.Remanzacco Observatory 2013-02-06 18:12:00 2013 CL22 has an estimated size of 30 m - 68 m (based on the object's absolute magnitude H=24.7) and it had a close approach with Earth at about 1.2 LD (Lunar Distances = ~384,000 kilometers) or 0.0031 AU (1 AU = ~150 million kilometers) at 0743 UT on 2013 Feb. 02. This asteroid reached the peak magnitude ~13.1 on February 02 around 1600 UT. We performed some follow-up measurements of this object, from the H06 ITelescopenetwork (near Mayhill, NM) on 2013, Feb. 05.4, through a 0.51-m f/6.9 reflector + CCD. Below you can see our image, stack of 15x15-second exposure, taken with the asteroid at magnitude ~16.9 and moving at ~6.07 "/min. At the moment of the close approach 2013 CL22 was moving at ~ 259"/min.
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| Earth Changes |
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Denise Lavoie and Holly Ramer
New England blizzard: Forecasters are predicting more than 2 feet of snow in New England, and blizzard conditions, including high winds, blowing snow, and coastal flooding. A major winter storm heading toward New England may not be one for the record books, but even some of the nation's snow-hardiest people should proceed with caution, according to at least one expert.Christian Science Monitor 2013-02-07 08:56:00
As much as 2 feet of snow could fall on a region that has seen mostly bare ground this winter, the National Weather Service said. That's exciting for resort operators who haven't had much snow this year. The storm would hit just after the 35th anniversary of the historic blizzard of 1978, which paralyzed the region with more than 2 feet of snow and hurricane force winds from Feb. 5-7. "This has the potential for being a dangerous storm, especially for Massachusetts into northeast Connecticut and up into Maine," said Louis Uccellini, director of the weather agency's National Centers for Environmental Prediction. | |
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Associated Press
2013-02-06 17:08:00
Anchorage, Alaska - Alaska's Cleveland Volcano is heating up and scientists are on alert in case it sends up an ash cloud that could threaten trans-Pacific flights. The Alaska Volcano Observatory detected elevated surface temperatures Jan. 24 at Cleveland's summit. Satellite data obtained last week indicated that a growing lava dome on the floor of the summit crater had reached about 328 feet, or 100 meters, in diameter. The summit crater itself is nearly 10 times that size, said Chris Waythomas of the U.S. Geological Survey. "It does this from time to time and it's a fairly small lava dome," he said Wednesday. "It's not gigantic." Lava domes form a lid on a volcano chamber that holds magma. When they grow big enough, lava domes can become unstable and collapse. Decompression of the magma chamber can lead to an explosion as the conduit inside the volcano suddenly becomes unsealed and gasses escape. | |
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| Fire in the Sky |
| No new articles. |
| Health & Wellness |
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Rebecca Boyle
PopSci 2013-02-07 15:01:00
Immune cells are like the Hatfields and McCoys of our bodies--once wronged, they never, ever forget. This is how we gain immunity, and it's why vaccines work: Immune cells develop a memory of an invading pathogen, and they build an alert system to find and fight it should it ever return. But a new study by Stanford researchers adds a new wrinkle to this long-held immune theory. It turns out immune cells can develop this memory-like state even for pathogens they've never met. This may come from exposure to harmless microbes -- or the memories may actually be borrowed from other, more experienced cells. The findings could help explain why babies and small children are so susceptible to infectious diseases. They haven't been exposed to enough ever-present, mostly harmless pathogens yet, and it's the constant scuffle with these bugs that gives adult T cells a sort of cellular precognition. "It may even provide an evolutionary clue about why kids eat dirt," said the study's lead author, Stanford microbiologist and immunologist Mark Davis. Kids are drawn to dirt because they've got to expose their fledgling immune systems to something, to help build up their defenses. Davis and his coauthors studied a group of T cells called CD4 cells, which are the same ones targeted by HIV. CD4 cells hang out in our bloodstreams and stand sentinel, sounding the cellular alarm when they spot something that doesn't belong. There are two basic classes of CD4 cells: Naive cells, which haven't been exposed to a particular bug and might take a while to mount a response, and memory-type cells, which have done battle with a pathogen and are on the lookout for it again. The memory cells can prompt action within a few hours, while naive cells might take days or even weeks--meanwhile, we're sick. | |
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Scott LaFee
University of California - San Diego 2013-02-07 16:03:00
Accumulation appears to progressively disrupt neuronal function and viability. Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine say overexpression of a protein called alpha-synuclein appears to disrupt vital recycling processes in neurons, starting with the terminal extensions of neurons and working its way back to the cells' center, with the potential consequence of progressive degeneration and eventual cell death. The findings, published in the February 6, 2013 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience, have major implications for more fully understanding the causes and mechanisms of Parkinson's disease (PD), a neurodegenerative movement disorder that affects an estimated one million Americans. "This is an important new insight. I don't think anybody realized just how big a role alpha-synuclein played in managing the retrieval of worn-out proteins from synapses and the role of alterations in this process in development of PD," said principal investigator Mark H. Ellisman, PhD, professor of neurosciences and bioengineering and director of the National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research (NCMIR), based at UC San Diego. Parkinson's disease is characterized by the gradual destruction of select brain cells that produce dopamine, a neurotransmitter involved in regulating movement and emotion. Symptoms include increasing loss of muscle and movement control. While most cases are sporadic - that is, their causes are unknown - there are also inherited forms of PD linked to specific gene mutations and modifications. | |
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Raw Story
2013-02-06 18:29:00
Alzheimer's disease cases in the US will nearly triple in the next 40 years, according to new projections Wednesday that suggest there will be nearly 14 million sufferers by 2050. In 2010, there were just 4.7 million people with Alzheimer's disease in the United States. The researchers who made the projections attribute the predicted increase to the high numbers of "baby boomers" - the especially large generation born after World War II - who are now reaching old age. More than half of those with the disease by 2050, some seven million people, will be 85 or older, the researchers said. | |
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Jonathan Weiss
Medical Daily 2013-02-06 14:12:00
The New York Times has published an article citing a report that indicates that many companies do not wish to acknowledge that there are nano-particles in their food products, nor pledge to keep their foods free from such molecules. Nano-particles are small molecules that have shapes that are not usually seen in nature and that scientists are just beginning to understand their full consumer and scientific potential. These nano-molecules can enter the food chain through food packaging and certain food products, but many companies fail to acknowledge using them even though research indicates that they may be harmful for human health. According the report "As You Sow," many companies don't even know if their food products contain these potentially harmful nano-materials. Studies have found that these small scale materials may be harmful in living mice and incultured cells in a laboratory setting and are ubiquitius in consumer products. They have been see in in the blood after they have been breathed in, or ingested and can infiltrate areas of the body usually not permeable to molecules, such as the brain. | |
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Michael Harper
RedOrbit 2013-02-06 17:56:00
Bacon grease - or lard - was once a mainstay in old-fashioned, country kitchens. While there are those purists out there who insist on using it to bake their biscuits or cook their beans, many who are looking to clean up their diet have been switching to vegetable fats. In fact, it's long been believed that replacing these animal fats is a heart healthier option. The American Heart Association (AHA), for example, favors replacing these saturated fats with vegetable fats of the omega-6, polyunsaturated variety. New analysis of these beliefs, however, has found that these recommendations may have been "misguided." In reconsidering these claims, researchers studied the cases of 458 men who had experienced a coronary event, such as a heart attack. Of these men, 16 percent who had replaced animal fats with omega-6 polyunsaturated fats found in corn, sunflower and safflower oil died from heart disease. In contrast, only 10 percent of those who did not substitute their fats died as a result of a coronary event. Dietitians have been recommending people replace their saturated fat with oils rich in polyunsaturated fatty acids for half a century. Health authorities around the world have even suggested increasing the amount of omega-6 polyunsaturated fats in order to stave off heart disease and avoid coronary events. | |
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| Science of the Spirit |
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Tia Ghose
LiveScience 2013-02-06 17:05:00
On a scale of one to 10, you probably think you're a seven. And you wouldn't be alone. While it's impossible for most people to be above average for a specific quality, people think they are better than most people in many arenas, from charitable behavior to work performance. The phenomenon, known as illusory superiority, is so stubbornly persistent that psychologists would be surprised if it didn't show up in their studies, said David Dunning, a psychologist at Cornell who has studied the effect for decades. It happens for many reasons: Others are too polite to say what they really think, incompetent people lack the skills to assess their abilities accurately, and such self-delusions can actually protect people's mental health, Dunning told LiveScience. | |
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| High Strangeness |
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Daniel Okpole
Compass Newspaper 2013-02-07 17:41:00
With what could be termed the aftermath of cross-breeding between man and animal, was recorded on Tuesday in Minna the Niger State capital, as a human-like creature was discovered in the uterus of a butchered ewe (female sheep) at the Kuta market. The incident which occurred in the early hours of Tuesday is the second so far witnessed by livestock dealers in recent times, with the first incident in 2011. According to the butcher Alidu Maiyanka "it was around 10:30 in the morning that I discovered the monstrous creature after slaughtering an ewe I bought on Monday from Kuta." Alidu, on becoming faced with the mystery, said he contacted his colleagues who came also to catch a glimpse of what had happened after which several people started trooping in from Minna and its environs. An eyewitness, who is also a butcher, Gambo Adbullahi said before the ewe was slaughtered, there was no sign that it was pregnant and that the human-like lamb was found in the uterus of the ewe which indicated that the ewe must have had an ectopic pregnancy. | |
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All Africa
Windhoek - The 13-year-old girl Lydia David who is believed to be 'possessed' by demons after she suffered from a strange affliction that caused her to vomit stones, bones, human hair and braids, mahangu grain, thorns, soap and other objects is now doing better after she received prayers from more than five pastors from the Pentecostal churches.2013-02-06 19:22:00 Her elder sister Mwaala Shilongo said on Tuesday when the sad story was published inNew Era that she received many calls from pastors of different churches who promised to pray for the girl, because they believed she was possessed. "More than five pastors came forward to see my sister and prayed for her day and night, we thank New Era for the story because we really received a lot of prayers." |
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| Don't Panic! Lighten Up! |
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Jennifer Viegas
Discovery News 2013-02-07 12:47:00
Tonik the homeless dog is part poodle, part Shih Tzu and, some are saying, part human. The dog's soulful eyes, expression, and skull shape have many comparing this scrappy, hard knocks dog to a person. Tonik has gained Internet fame as a result, with media outlets from around the world featuring the canine's furry mug in their coverage. We couldn't resist too, given Tonik's ultimate rags to hopeful riches story. He's presently awaiting his forever home at the Homeward Bound Animal Welfare Group, Inc., in Mishawaka, Ind. As his Petfinder entry mentions, "Tonik came to us from a kill shelter in Kentucky and there is a very sweet boy in there who is trying to figure things out and enjoy people. It seems he has not had too much socialization. He is great with other dogs. He is not dangerous, but should not be placed with young children because he will get too overwhelmed." |
