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David Swanson
War Is Crime 2013-05-27 04:53:00
Imagine if at some point during the 1990s or 1980s the President of the United States had given a speech. And this was his speech: My fellow Americans, I've been regularly shooting missiles into people's houses in several countries. I've wiped out families. I've killed thousands of people. Hundreds of them have been little children. |
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Williams Rivers Pitt
Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance
prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an
organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons
nor property will be safe.Truthout.org 2013-05-26 21:01:00 - Frederick Douglass
I think my daughter's eyes are blue. They might be green. She hasn't been around long enough to tell just yet, but they are certainly something. She recognized me for the first time just a few days ago, and smiled up at me in a simple, sweet way that obliterated my heart. She cannot focus on anything more than a few feet from her face, but that, like everything else about her, will change in time. Someday soon, she will be able to see everything, and tragically, this will be the world within her view. A report released early this year by the organization Oxfam International revealed that the combined income of the richest 100 people in the world is enough to end global poverty four times over, and that the gap between rich and poor has exploded by some 60% in the last 20 years. Rather than hinder this division, the recent global economic crisis has exacerbated it. Money does not disappear, you see, but tends to be translated up the income ladder in times of financial distress. |
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| Puppet Masters |
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Eric W. Dolan
Fox News senior political analyst Brit Hume thinks it is very peculiar
for President Barack Obama to call for executive power to be scaled
back.The Raw Story 2013-05-26 11:11:00 Hume noted on Fox News Sunday that Obama had "made generous use of" drone strikes. "There's an odd quality to this whole thing, and it is almost like he's saying, with regard to the drone policy, 'We need something to stop me before I kill again,'" he explained. "We can see that in his support on an unrelated matter on the shield law for journalists. He's carried out these oversteps in pursuing journalists who are doing their job, and now he says 'we need a shield law,' as if to say we need a law to protect them from us." Obama called for additional oversight of drone strikes on suspected terrorists in a major speech at the National Defense University on Thursday. Earlier this month, the President called for legislation to protect journalists from being coerced into revealing their sources. |
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Nikhil Kumar
The Independent 2013-05-26 00:00:00
The Obama administration has been accused of criminalising the press, as US lawmakers called for an independent investigator to look into the way the Justice Department conducts cases involving reporters. President Barack Obama is facing widespread criticism for the aggressive way in which his government investigates leaks, after it emerged that officials had secretly seized phone records from the Associated Press and monitored personal emails of the Fox News reporter James Rosen. Mr Obama last week directed his Attorney General, Eric Holder, to review the Justice Department's procedures. Mr Holder is due to report back in July - but his position as the head of the department at the centre of the controversy has led lawmakers to question whether he is the right person to lead the review. |
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Global Research News
2013-05-24 16:54:00
The Illinois Ag Dept. illegally seized privately owned bees from renowned naturalist, Terrence Ingram, without providing him with a search warrant and before the court hearing on the matter, reports Prairie Advocate News. Behind the obvious violations of his Constitutional rights is Monsanto. Ingram was researching Roundup's effects on bees, which he's raised for 58 years. "They ruined 15 years of my research," he told Prairie Advocate, by stealing most of his stock. A certified letter from the Ag Dept.'s Apiary Inspection Supervisor, Steven D. Chard, stated: Ingram can prove his bees did not have foulbrood, and planned to do so at a hearing set in April, but the state seized his bees at the end of March. They have not returned them and no one at the Ag Dept. seems to know where his bees are. |
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Melissa Melton
Homeland Security is quickly taking over all our major sporting events.
What's next? Shopping malls? Hospitals? Grocery stores? (Terrorists
gotta eat, after all). Your porch? The TSA has caught a lot of
terrorists you know (or none ever).Activitst Post 2013-05-27 00:00:00
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Agence France-Presse
2013-05-27 09:14:00
IMF chief Christine Lagarde avoided immediate charges Friday but was named an "assisted witness" after French prosecutors grilled her for two days over a state payout to a disgraced tycoon when she was finance minister. "My status as assisted witness is not a surprise," she told reporters. "I have always acted in the best public interest and in accordance with the law." The status of assisted witness falls between that of simple witness and being placed under formal investigation and implies there is some evidence against the person questioned. "My explanations came as a response to the doubts that had been brought up regarding the decisions I had taken at the time," Lagarde said, adding that she was heading back to Washington to brief the board of the International Monetary Fund. Lagarde, 57, was questioned for a total of 24 hours by prosecutors working for a court that probes cases of ministerial misconduct over her 2007 handling of a row that resulted in 400 million euros ($515 million) being paid to controversial business figure Bernard Tapie. Had she been charged Lagarde's future would have been in question, though the IMF expressed confidence in its first woman leader. |
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Rachel Baig
DW 2013-01-16 09:05:00
France has intervened in Mali in an effort to stop the advance of Islamist rebels - at the request of the government in Bamako and with the UN's blessing. But critics accuse Paris of pursuing a neo-colonialist agenda. It's unclear how long France's military campaign in Mali will last, since preventing radical Islamists from taking control of the country requires stabilizing the region for the long term. The Society for Threatened Peoples (STP), a Göttingen-based NGO, has called on France to present a realistic plan for achieving its goals. "After all, the Islamists will use their old strategy and pull back quickly in order to regroup with the protection of mountains and caves," explained STP spokesperson Ulrich Delius. Officially, President Francois Hollande's government says that security interests explain its decision to intervene, and Paris insists it wants to act early to prevent the rebels in Western Africa from becoming a danger to Europe. | |
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Comment: Make no mistake about it; just as France and
friends created 'the terrorist threat' in Libya and Syria, so they did
in Mali and Niger.
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Naharnet
2013-05-23 08:43:00
Twin car bombings at an army base and a French-run uranium mine in northern Niger killed at least 10 people Thursday, in unprecedented attacks claimed by an Islamist group fighting French-led troops in neighboring Mali. The Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) claimed the bombings, calling them punishment for Niger's participation in a French-led military offensive against Islamist extremists who had seized control of northern Mali last year and ruled it under a brutal version of Islamic law for some 10 months. "Thanks to Allah, we have carried out two operations against the enemies of Islam in Niger," MUJAO spokesman Abu Walid Sahraoui told Agence France Presse. "We attacked France and Niger for its cooperation with France in the war against sharia (Islamic law)." | |
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Comment: Fomenting terrorism: Mysterious fatal crash offers rare look at U.S. commando presence in Mali (July 9, 2012)
French special forces 'to protect' Niger uranium mines (Jan 24, 2013) The U.S. was operating in Mali months prior to French incursion: Meet the "intelligence and security command" Blonde haired, blue-eyed American and Canadian 'terrorists' led international 'al Qaeda' brigade in siege on BP gas plant in Algeria, while 'English-speaking Islamic militants of European appearance' roam Mali France launches war in Mali in bid to secure resources, stamp out national rights struggles |
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The Local
2013-05-21 08:35:00
High ranking ministers in the French government can expect a grilling in the coming days as an investigation into a tax fraud scandal got underway on Tuesday. The probe was set up after the former budget minister admitted having a secret bank account. France's parliament on Tuesday kicked off a high-profile public probe into a major tax fraud scandal that has shaken the Socialist government and the squeaky-clean image it is seeking to project. The special parliamentary commission will examine whether the government mishandled the scandal, in which former budget minister Jerome Cahuzac repeatedly lied about owning an undeclared foreign bank account. Political heavyweights such as Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici, Interior Minister Manuel Valls and Justice Minister Christiane Taubira will be given a grilling, as will Cahuzac himself. On Tuesday, journalists at investigative news website Mediapart - which broke the story in December - kicked off proceedings by alleging police interference in the case. |
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David Swanson
War Is Crime 2013-05-27 04:56:00
The United States balances its endless war of terrorism with the institution of an endless "peace process" for Palestine, a process valuable for its peaceyness and interminability. Josh Ruebner's new book, Shattered Hopes: The Failure of Obama's Middle East Peace Process, could just as easily have been called "Fulfilled Expectations: The Success of Obama's Middle East Peace Process," depending on one's perspective. Its story could be summarized: Obama's performance in this area has been of a piece with his performance in every other. Some people became very hopeful about his rhetoric and then very dejected about his actions. In this case, among those getting hopeful were Palestinian negotiators. But they didn't just grow depressed and despondent. They felt no obligation to behave like Democratic voters. They swore off the Hopium and went to work on an international approach through the United Nations that has begun to pay off. Obama began his "peace process" efforts "naively unprepared for the intensity of the pushback from Israel and its supporters in the United States to its demand that Israel freeze settlements," Ruebner writes. But evidence of Obama's mental state is hard to pin down, and I'm not sure of the relevance. Whether Obama began with naive good intentions or the same cynicism that he was, by all accounts, fully immersed in by his second or third year in office, the important point remains the same. As Ruebner explains, Obama employs an all-carrots / no-sticks approach with Israel that is doomed to failure. |
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John Pilger
The Guardian 2013-05-26 13:00:00
Like characters from The Great Gatsby, Britain and the US have arrogantly turned their backs and left a country in ruins The dust in Iraq rolls down the long roads that are the desert's fingers. It gets in your eyes and nose and throat; it swirls in markets and school playgrounds, consuming children kicking a ball; and it carries, according to Dr Jawad Al-Ali, "the seeds of our death". An internationally respected cancer specialist at the Sadr teaching hospital in Basra, Dr Ali told me that in 1999, and today his warning is irrefutable. "Before the Gulf war," he said, "we had two or three cancer patients a month. Now we have 30 to 35 dying every month. Our studies indicate that 40 to 48% of the population in this area will get cancer: in five years' time to begin with, then long after. That's almost half the population. Most of my own family have it, and we have no history of the disease. It is like Chernobyl here; the genetic effects are new to us; the mushrooms grow huge; even the grapes in my garden have mutated and can't be eaten." Along the corridor, Dr Ginan Ghalib Hassen, a paediatrician, kept a photo album of the children she was trying to save. Many had neuroblastoma. "Before the war, we saw only one case of this unusual tumour in two years," she said. "Now we have many cases, mostly with no family history. I have studied what happened in Hiroshima. The sudden increase of such congenital malformations is the same." |
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BBC
2013-05-26 10:56:00
French anti-terrorist investigators are handling the case of a soldier stabbed while on duty near Paris on Saturday evening, prosecutors have confirmed. The soldier was wounded while on patrol in La Defense, a business district west of the French capital. Private First Class Cedric Cordier was approached from behind and stabbed in the neck with a small-bladed knife. Defence Minister Jean Yves Le Drian told reporters that he had been targeted because of his profession. His attacker, said to be a bearded man of North African origin, escaped and a police hunt is under way.
President Francois Hollande said there was no sign so far of a direct link with the killing of a soldier in London on Wednesday, for which two suspected Islamists were arrested. | ||
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Kevin Barrett
Veterans Today/Press TV 2013-05-23 05:20:00
"If you build a country's economy on nothing but the military, as Israel has, you are digging your own grave and those who live by the sword, die by the sword and Israel is very close to dying by the sword." Press TV has conducted an interview with Dr. Kevin Barrett, with the Muslim-Jewish-Christian Alliance from Wisconsin, to shed more light on Zionist settlers' protests against the austerity measures implemented by the Tel Aviv regime. What follows is a rough transcription of the interview. |
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Keven Barret
Press TV 2013-05-25 23:02:00
Malcolm X memorably described the JFK assassination as America's chickens coming home to roost. Now some British chickens have come home to roost in Woolwich. Were elements of the British government complicit in the killing of a British soldier by two apparent "salafi jihadists" - in the same way that elements of the US government killed JFK? Quite possibly. We know that the so-called war on terror is a fraud, and that all of its emblematic incidents, including 9/11, 7/7, Madrid, Bali, Mumbai, and most recently Boston, have been false flag operations by Zionist elements of the Western security services. But Malcolm X's roosting chickens represent more than just official complicity. Malcolm's larger meaning was "what you sow, so you shall reap." And since the British government has been sowing terror all over the world for centuries, including synthetic "Islamic terror," it is only to be expected that some of that terror should return to the island that launched it. |
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CBC News
2013-05-25 06:55:00
Decade-long air campaign peaked under Obama in 2010 President Barack Obama said Thursday that he will engage Congress in exploring a number of options for increased oversight of lethal drone strikes outside of war zones like Afghanistan. The official U.S. figures of number of strikes and estimated deaths remain classified. But, according to the New America Foundation which maintains a database of the strikes, the CIA and the military have carried out an estimated 416 drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen, resulting in 3,364 estimated deaths, including militants and civilians. The Associated Press also has reported a drone strike in Somalia in 2012 that killed one. The think tank compiles its numbers by combining reports in major news media that rely on local officials and eyewitness accounts. | |
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Comment: US President Barack Obama defends his administration's slaughter by drones as legal, effective, and just.
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Press TV
2013-05-24 07:04:00
US President Barack Obama has defended his administration's use of drones as legal, effective, and just. "We are at war with an organization that right now would kill as many Americans as they could if we did not stop them first. So this is a just war," Obama said in a major policy speech at Washington's National Defense University on Thursday. "Our nation is still threatened by terrorists," he pointed out, noting that "We must recognize however, that the threat has shifted and evolved from the one that came to our shores on 9/11," he said.The US president claimed the strikes have been effective in targeting militants and have made the United States a safer country. Obama outlined the legal guidelines surrounding the use of unmanned aerial vehicles to wage war in distant lands. "I don't not believe it would be constitutional for the government to target and kill any U.S. citizen...Nor should any president deploy armed drones over US soil. But when a US citizen goes abroad to wage war against American and is actively plotting to kill US citizens...his citizenship should no more serve as a shield than a sniper shooting down an innocent crowd should be protected from a swat team," he said. |
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| Society's Child |
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Chris Matyszczyk
CNet.com 2013-05-25 21:49:00
Speaking at a festival in the U.K., Google's executive chairman offers that the things teens do now will stay with them forever, by way of the Web. He also suggested some people are sharing too much online. It must be peculiar for children of the Internet age. They are the first to have a complete record of their whole lives. They are the first who'll be able to offer concrete proof of every one of their days, friends, and actions. Eric Schmidt worries, however, that they'll be the first who'll never be allowed to forget their mistakes. As the Telegraph reports, Schmidt spoke Saturday at the Hay Festival in the U.K. and offered some sobering thoughts for those addled by online life. He said: "There are situations in life that it's better that they don't exist. Especially if there is stuff you did when you were a teenager. Teenagers are now in an adult world online." Some days, you could hardly describe most of what happens online as "adult." Still, Schmidt says he believes the online world has gone too far in forcing teens to never forget. In bygone times, he said, they were punished, but allowed to grow beyond youthful indiscretions. |
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The Telegraph
2013-05-26 11:49:00
An Italian prosecutor has launched an investigation into how Facebook allowed the publication of insults and bullying posts aimed at a teenager, who later leapt to her death from her third floor bedroom window. Carolina Picchio, 14, from Novara in northern Italy, committed suicide in January after a gang of boys circulated video on Facebook of her appearing drunk and dishevelled in the bathroom at a party. The group, aged between 15 and 17, were said to be friends of Miss Picchio's ex-boyfriend. He had allegedly insulted her on Facebook when she left him days earlier, although he claims to have later apologised. "Isn't what you have done to me enough? You have made me pay too many times," Miss Picchio wrote in a note to the boy which was found in her room by investigators. Before taking her life, she wrote on Facebook: "Forgive me if I am not strong. I cannot take it any longer." The Italian Parent's Association has already filed a criminal complaint in Rome directly against Facebook for allegedly having a role in the instigation of Miss Picchio's suicide. "This is the first time a parent's group has filed such a complaint against Facebook in Europe," said director Antonio Affinita. "Italian law forbids minors under 18 signing contracts, yet Facebook is effectively entering into a contract with minors regarding their privacy, without their parents knowing." Francesco Saluzzo, the Novara prosecutor, said he did not rule out placing Facebook staff under investigation. Mr Saluzzo told The Daily Telegraph he was probing how the videos had stayed online "for days", even after Miss Picchio's friends requested their removal. "There is a procedure for asking for the removal of messages that break rules," he said. "This is an open investigation without named suspects, as yet. Facebook itself is not under investigation. But we could theoretically investigate employees of Facebook who failed to respond to these requests." |
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YouTube
A secret court in the UK has put some people behind bars just for trying
to take care of their own relatives. One woman whose father was
pronounced 'mentally ill' was locked away. But since the hearings are
behind closed doors, it's hard to know why.2013-05-26 00:00:00
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Harriet Alexander, and agencies
A female suicide bomber has blown herself up in Russia's Dagestan region, injuring 11 policemen and passers-by.The Telegraph 2013-05-25 00:00:00
Dagestan, an ethnically mixed, mostly Muslim region between Chechnya and the Caspian Sea, has become the most violent province in the North Caucasus, where insurgents say they are fighting to carve out an Islamic state out of southern Russia. The bomb was detonated after police stopped the car to check the driver's documents, 100 metres from the regional police ministry in the centre of Makhachkala, the regional capital. The city is where Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev's family came from, and the 26-year-old returned there to visit last year. American authorities are currently in the city to investigate Tsarnaev's possible jihadist connections there. Police sources told local media on Saturday the only person killed in the suicide attack was the bomber, whom they identified as the former wife of two militants. It is not unusual for women to carry out suicide bombings in the region, and they are often the widows of militants. |
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Katie Stallard
Residents in a Russian apartment block describe the moment the massive structure came crashing into their homes.sky.com 2013-05-27 11:38:00
A huge construction crane has collapsed onto a block of flats in Kirov, Russia, smashing through several floors of the nine-storey complex. Around 250 people live in the building, including 37 children, but despite extensive damage to the outside there were no reports of injuries. Witnesses described hearing a loud noise and seeing the several ton crane rolling towards them, before it crashed into their flats. Tenants reportedly ran into the hallways for shelter as the crane tore through balconies at the front of building. Seven cars parked outside were badly damaged, one was said to have been crushed into a "shapeless heap of metal". One resident told reporters: "We were in the kitchen and heard a loud rattle. |
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Nick Squires
Telegraph.uk.co 2013-05-21 08:36:00
According to TV2000, a Catholic television channel, the act was carried out in St Peter's Square after Mass on Sunday. Smiling broadly, the Pope initially shook the man's hand, but the South American pontiff's expression changed dramatically after a priest from the Legionaries of Christ, a conservative order, leaned in close and spoke a few words to him. |
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Fiona Govan
Gambian parents have been sentenced to 12 years in prison in Spain
for circumcising their two daughters in a landmark case pitting Spanish
law against African tradition. Telegraph.uk.co 2013-05-23 08:31:00
In what is believed to be the toughest sentence in Europe to date for parents who allowed genital mutilation on their daughters, Binta Sankano and her husband Sekou Tutay, were sentenced to six years for each crime against their young daughters. A panel of judges at the Provincial Court in Barcelona ruled that the parents, both of Gambian nationality and resident in Spain for 20 years, were criminally responsible for the clitoridectomy performed on both their daughters. "The couple deliberately mutilated their young daughters either directly or through a person of unknown identity," said the written judgement. "Female circumcision is not a culture. It is mutilation and discrimination against women." |
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Colin Freeman
A week of disturbances in Sweden's capital has tested the
Scandinavian nation's reputation for tolerance, reports Colin Freeman Telegraph.co.uk 2013-05-25 06:54:00
Like the millions of other ordinary Swedes whom he now sees himself as one of, Mohammed Abbas fears his dream society is now under threat. When he first arrived in Stockholm as refugee from Iran in 1994, the vast Husby council estate where he settled was a mixture of locals and foreigners, a melting pot for what was supposed to be a harmonious, multi-racial paradise. Two decades on, though, "white flight" has left only one in five of Husby's flats occupied by ethnic Swedes, and many of their immigrant replacements do not seem to share his view that a new life in Sweden is a dream come true. Last week, the neighbourhood erupted into rioting, sparking some of the fiercest urban unrest that Sweden has seen in decades, and a new debate about the success of racial integration. |
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ABClocal.go.com
2013-05-27 06:48:00
At least 17 people have been shot over the Memorial Day weekend, and six of them died. The most recent victim was a man shot on the Near North Side just before 3 a.m. Sunday. Chicago police say the 42-year-old victim was shot in the head in the 1000-block of North Branch Street. Another man died after he was shot in the head in a possible drive-by Saturday night in the 7300-block of South Dorchester. |
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John Lichfield
About 400,000 traditionalists take to streets to oppose new lawIndependent.co.uk 2013-05-27 06:44:00
Riot police fought running battles with hard-right protesters in the heart of Paris at the end of a mostly peaceful demonstration against gay marriage. About 200 young people, many of them masked, pelted police lines with bottles, stones, fireworks and flares. The crowd - led bizarrely at one stage by a lone bagpiper - chased and beat up TV crews and press photographers. Police and gendarmes responded with tear gas and baton charges. There were surreal battle scenes on the Esplanade des Invalides beside the foreign ministry as 200 gendarmes in riot gear formed into defensive squares to beat off attacks from running bands of protesters. Although a hard core of about 200 hard-right youths started the fighting, many hundreds of other, soberly dressed, middle-class protesters cheered them on. | |
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Comment: Meanwhile, Hollande has troops in multiple west African countries blowing things up
and causing chaos in order to justify French military presence and
secure Africa's natural resources for French multinationals like Areva,
the world's largest uranium mining/nuclear energy company:
The conflict in Mali has nothing to do with fighting terrorists In addition, French jihadists are waging proxy war on behalf of Hollande in Syria: At least 50 French citizens 'waging jihad in Syria' France's media admits that the Syrian "opposition" is Al Qaida, then justifies French government support to the terrorists But don't mind all this folks, the real issue is gay marriage, so y'all get protesting about this non-issue and we can all congratulate each other on how free we are. |
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Paul Eide
Opposingviews.com 2013-05-26 21:10:00
A 17-year-old high school junior from Oregon planned a Columbine-style attack on his high school, manufacturing six different bombs and hiding them in a secret compartment in his bedroom. Grant Acord will be charged as an adult, said Benton County District Attorney John Haroldson. He said Acord had written plans, a checklist and a specific timeline for the attack. The bombs that investigators found included pipe bombs, Molotov cocktails, a Drano bomb and a napalm bomb, Haroldson said. |
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Cindy Wockner
News.com.au 2013-05-25 14:13:00
For nine months, the midwife had been giving the woman herbs to take and several things indicated she was indeed pregnant. Her stomach had swelled, so had her feet. She had spent many years trying to conceive and now, at 61, she was finally with child, twins in fact - or so she thought. Even when it came time to give birth, the woman still believed she was an expectant mother. She went back to the midwife, was given seeds to chew and started feeling drowsy. The woman, Desope Cecilia, says the midwife told her to start pushing and that soon after she heard the cry of one baby and then another. Her miracle babies. There was even blood, making the delivery scenario all the more real. It wasn't until some time later, when she took the twins to be immunised, that someone smelled a rat and alerted authorities. Tests confirmed that Cecilia was not the mother of the two babies. She had paid 1.5 million naira ($9800) for the services of the midwife, Oby George, in Port Harcourt in Nigeria's south. |
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NewsDaily
2013-05-25 04:56:00
Protesters march against Monsanto across US, dozens of countries in collective anti-GMO rally Marches and rallies against seed giant Monsanto were held across the U.S. and in dozens of other countries Saturday. "March Against Monsanto" protesters say they want to call attention to the dangers posed by genetically modified food and the food giants that produce it. Marches were planned for more than 250 cities around the globe, according to organizers. Genetically modified plants are grown from seeds that are engineered to resist insecticides and herbicides, add nutritional benefits or otherwise improve crop yields and increase the global food supply. Most corn, soybean and cotton crops grown in the United States today have been genetically modified. But some say genetically modified organisms can lead to serious health conditions and harm the environment. In the U.S., hundreds of people held marches in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York. In Washington, D.C., protesters wearing yellow-and-black shirts lay on the sidewalk in a bee die-in outside Monsanto's headquarters. Abroad, protests took place in London, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Vienna, Durban, South Africa, and Melbourne, Australia, among other places. In Cairo, a female protester held up a sign reading "I am not a science experiment." Monsanto Co., based in St. Louis, said Saturday that it respects people's rights to express their opinion on the topic, but maintains that its seeds improve agriculture by helping farmers produce more from their land while conserving resources such as water and energy. |
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Michael Allen
Opposingviews.com 2013-05-24 20:41:00
Some sixth grade students at Hillsdale Elementary School in North Highlands, California, may face felony charges for child porn for passing around a naked photo of a female classmate (video below). The Twin Rivers School District said that the nude photo had been sent to cell phones of some students who forwarded it to more cell phones and posted to a Facebook group. Hillsdale Elementary School principal Renee Scott-Femenella called the Twin Rivers Police Department over the incident, reports CBS Sacramento. |
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The Extinction Protocol
2013-05-25 15:08:00
Seven people were injured early Saturday morning in southeastern Missouri after two freight trains collided, taking out a nearby overpass. A Union Pacific train t-boned a Burlington Northern train at an intersection, Scott County Sheriff Rick Walter told KFVS-TV. The collision, which occurred around 2:30 a.m., caused one of the trains to derail and hit a pillar under the overpass, collapsing it. There were no cars on the overpass when it collapsed, but Trooper Clark Parrott with Missouri Highway Patrol said two vehicles crashed after coming upon the bridge after it had fallen. Five people from those cars were taken to the hospital with arm and ankle fractures. A train conductor and locomotive engineer on the Union Pacific train were also injured. Six of the victims were treated and released. A seventh remains hospitalized in good condition. One of the drivers, Christopher Cantrell, 22, said he didn't see the bridge had collapsed until it was too late. At least a dozen Union Pacific train cars and an unknown number of Burlington Northern cars derailed in the accident. The Union Pacific train was hauling auto parts from Salem, Ill., to Arlington, Texas, according to Union Pacific spokesperson Calli Hite. The Burlington Northern train was hauling scrap metal, according to a spokesperson. The crash, which occurred near Chaffee, Mo., also ignited a fire that crews were able to extinguish quickly. The National Transportation Safety Board has been dispatched a team to investigate the incident. The collision comes just two days after a span of an Interstate 5 bridge over the Skagit River in Washington collapsed - caused when an oversized truck hit an overhead girder - and just over a week after a commuter train derailed in Bridgeport, Conn., suspending rail service along the heavily traveled New York-Boston corridor. - USA Today | |
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| Secret History |
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No new articles. |
| Science & Technology |
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Amanda Williams
MailOnline 2013-05-27 14:22:00
The revolutionary 'wearable computer' could disrupt crucial cognitive capacity and distract wearers to the point where they miss things which are 'utterly obvious', they say. Daniel J. Simons, is a professor of psychology and advertising at the University of Illinois and Christopher F. Chabris, is a professor of psychology at Union College. Google Glass is a wearable computer with a head mounted display. It can connect with the internet via voice command and display information on the glass 'screens'. In a piece for the New York Times, the two experts examine the dangers the real-time digital distraction could pose. They write: '...most agree that a smartphone-linked display and camera placed in the corner of your vision is intriguing and potentially revolutionary - and like us, they want to try it. 'But Glass may inadvertently disrupt a crucial cognitive capacity, with potentially dangerous consequences.' |
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Seiichi Yoshida
Discovery Date: May 18, 2013Aerith Net 2013-05-27 14:13:00 Magnitude: 17.4 mag Discoverer: Eric J. Christensen (Mt. Lemmon)
The orbital elements are published on M.P.E.C. 2013-K38. |
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David Kirby
TakePart 2013-05-17 13:48:00
Can dolphins detect cancer in people? To some scientists, it's not even a legitimate hypothesis; and to many animal-rights activists, "swim-with-the-dolphin" cancer diagnostic centers would be no less objectionable than any other form of captivity. But what if the rather far-fetched idea were true? What if we tested dolphins and discovered they can detect tiny tumors and abnormal growths in humans, perhaps even those missed by state-of-the-art technology? Instead of X-rays, MRIs and CAT scans, will patients one day be clamoring for cetacean-grams? Probably not. But I, for one, believe the hypothesis is plausible. Others are positively convinced it is fact, including Patricia Stoops of Panama City, Florida, who claims that a captive dolphin named Keppler saved her life after a chance meeting at a swim-with program in the Caribbean. Stoops was on a Carnival cruise in the British Virgin Islands when she eagerly signed up for the "dolphin excursion" on the island of Tortola. She and about 15 others entered the water as a group of captive dolphins approached them and began interacting as normal. But one dolphin, Keppler, took a keen interest in Stoops and refused to leave her alone. "He did a flip in front of me," she told WJHG-TV news in Panama City. "He kept running into me and I explained to the trainer that the dolphin had hit me. He said, 'Oh, that's unusual.' The dolphin trainer said the dolphin detected something wrong with me." |
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DailyGalaxy.com
2013-05-25 15:17:00
Near-Earth Objects (NEO) have long been a dilemma for scientists, especially since the discovery of 99942 Apophis in 2004. Apophis was first believed to be heading directly towards earth, and created a bit of a stir when people realized that it could hit earth in 2029. However, since then, due to several recalculations and lucky happenstances, the asteroid has only a 1 in 45,000 chance of hitting earth. Astrophycisist, Sir Martin Rees pf Cambridge University, has famously speculated that the asteroid risk is just one of many reasons why humankind has only a 50/50 chance of making it into the next century. Even so, he says comets are more frightening of a doomsday prospect. Pound for pound, comets are much more dangerous than asteroids, which have nonetheless gotten more media attention. Comets travel a lot faster through space than Asteroids, which travel at about 25-30 km per second. The speed of a comet approaches a much faster 70 km per second. A relatively small object of just one and a half km in diameter hitting the Earth would release more energy than all the atomic bombs ever detonated and then some. An object of 20 km or more would likely cause mass extinction. A massive dark, asteroid dubbed 1998 QE2 will make its closest pass to Earth on May 31 at 1:59 p.m. Its 1.7 miles long; its surface is covered in a black substance. If it impacted Earth, it would probably result in global extinction. Good thing it is just making a flyby. Scientists are not sure where this unusually large space rock, which was discovered 15 years ago, originated. But the mysterious sooty substance on its surface could indicate it may be a result of a comet that flew too close to the sun, said Amy Mainzer, who tracks near-Earth objects at Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in La Canada Flintridge, Calif. It might also have leaked out of the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, she said. |
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| Earth Changes |
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The Extinction Protocol
Mount Etna is spitting lava more violently than it has in years, and
scientists are baffled as to why. Despite being the world's most-studied
volcano, the Sicilian mountain is also its most unpredictable. The
volcano is raging. Fountains of lava, some taller than the Eiffel Tower,
shoot from its mouth every few weeks, flowing in red-hot streams into
the surrounding valleys. There have been 13 eruptions since the
beginning of February. Mount Etna, 3,329 meters (10,922 feet) high,
towers majestically above the Sicilian city of Catania. In June, the
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
(UNESCO) will decide whether to list it as a World Heritage Site. Etna
is considered the most heavily studied volcano in the world, and it is
thoroughly wired with sensors. In addition to lava, Etna spits out vast
amounts of data - several gigabytes a day, coming from magnetic field
sensors, GPS altimeters and seismic sensors.2013-05-27 17:46:00
Despite this wealth of data, Etna still poses a conundrum to scientists. "The eruptions in recent weeks have been unusually fierce and explosive," reports German volcanologist Boris Behncke, who monitors the mountain together with a few hundred colleagues at Italy's National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV). "There have been lava fountain events in the past, but rarely in such rapid succession." Behncke has fallen under Etna's spell. During the day, he maps the lava flows; at night, he hikes along its slopes. His Twitter hash tag is "@etnaboris." The volcano is the first thing he sees when he looks out of his bedroom window every morning. "This time, the range of ash fall is much wider than usual," says Behncke. A layer of black ash covers cars as far as 50 kilometers (31 miles) away. |
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The Extinction Protocol
A massive earthquake along the New Madrid fault kills or injures 60,000
people in Tennessee. A quarter of a million people are homeless. The
Memphis airport - the country's biggest air terminal for packages -
goes off-line. Major oil and gas pipelines across Tennessee rupture,
causing shortages in the Northeast. In Missouri, another 15,000 people
are hurt or dead. Cities and towns throughout the central U.S. lose
power and water for months. Losses stack up to hundreds of billions of
dollars. Fortunately, this magnitude 7.7 temblor is not real but rather a
scenario imagined by the Mid-America Earthquake Center and the
Institute for Crisis, Disaster and Risk Management at George Washington
University.2013-05-27 17:46:00
The goal of their 2008 analysis was to plan for a modern recurrence of quakes that happened along the New Madrid fault more than 200 years ago, in 1811 and 1812. No one alive has experienced a major earthquake in the Midwest, yet geologists say it's only a matter of time. That puts a lot of uncertainty on disaster officials. Their earthquake precautions - quake-resistant building codes, for example - have never been reality tested. Some question if enough has been done to strengthen existing buildings, schools and other infrastructure. It is difficult to prepare for a geological catastrophe the public cannot see and has never experienced. "We mostly react to disasters, and it's been extremely rare that we get ahead of things," said Claire Rubin, a disaster response specialist in Arlington, Va. "A lot of hard problems don't get solved. They get moved around and passed along." |
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OneNews, TVNZ
2013-05-27 16:29:00
What would be Wellington's biggest earthquake in 150 years is happening right now - not that you'll feel the jolt. The magnitude-7 equivalent quake, 40km deep, is a "slow-slip" event, when the movement of tectonic plates occurs over hours to months rather than seconds. GeoNet scientists said even their precision instruments were picking very little up from the 100km area of Levin to the Marlborough Sounds, along the plate boundary. Almost imperceptibly, the Pacific and Australian plates had been slipping past each other since January and would continue for up to a year, GeoNet scientist Caroline Little said. "We don't see anything at the surface." Apart from moving a few centimetres further away from Australia, there would be no noticeable impact from this seismic movement. But slow-slip quakes had an undetermined relationship with large earthquakes, which were accompanied or even triggered by slow-slip events "and vice versa", she said. |
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BBC
2013-05-27 15:51:00
The authorities in Chile have ordered the evacuation of more than 2,000 people living near the Copahue volcano in the south of the country. They issued a red alert - the highest possible - saying the volcano could erupt imminently. The evacuation will affect some 460 families living within a 25km (15 miles) radius of Copahue. The 2,965m (nearly 10,000ft) volcano sits in the Andes cordillera, on the border with Argentina. "This red alert has been issued after monitoring the activity of the volcano and seeing that it has increased seismic activity," Interior Minister Andrew Chadwick said in a news conference. "There is a risk that it can start erupting." The BBC's Gideon Long, in the Chilean capital, Santiago, says that thousands of minor earth tremors have been registered in the area in recent days. |
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News.yahoo.com
2013-05-27 08:03:00
A Memorial Day weekend storm has dropped three feet of snow on a New York ski mountain near the Vermont boarder. Whiteface Mountain spokesman Jon Lundin says 36 inches of white powder has blanketed the nearly 5,000-foot tall mountain in the Adirondacks. That has forced the Olympic Regional Development Authority to close Whiteface Veteran's Memorial Highway on the backside of the mountain. |
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Irene Klotz , Paul Bignell
Theindependent.co.uk 2013-05-26 06:38:00
A satellite designed to track severe weather in the US, has failed on the eve of the 2013 Atlantic hurricane season. Experts fear it could not have happened at a worse time. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said the satellite, which provides coverage for the entire US eastern seaboard, is relied upon to track hurricanes threatening cities along the coast. The NOAA gave a warning that this year's hurricane season - the first since hurricane Sandy devastated the New York and New Jersey shorelines last October - is likely to be "extremely active". The Atlantic-Caribbean hurricane season begins this week and lasts for six months. The NOAA has predicted as many as 13 to 20 tropical storms could threaten homes, with half of those likely to strengthen. The NOAA announced that a spare satellite had been activated while attempts are made to fix the failed one, but added there was currently "no estimate on its return to operations". |
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The Guardian
Amateur footage captures a tornado ripping through residential areas
110km southwest of Moscow on Thursday. This is the second twister to hit
Russia in a week, destroying vehicles and leaving houses and business
properties damaged. Trees and electricity poles were ripped up, leaving
local residents without power. There have been no reports of serious
injuries as a result of the storm2013-05-27 04:12:00
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Hilmar Schmund
ABCNews.go.com 2013-05-26 15:31:00
Mount Etna is spitting lava more violently than it has in years, and scientists are baffled as to why. Despite being the world's most-studied volcano, the Sicilian mountain is also its most unpredictable. |
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Sam Cooke
Starting last weekend and into the past week, birders in Duluth
witnessed one of the most dramatic bird "fallout" events in many yearsDuluth News Tribune 2013-05-26 14:29:00
Starting last weekend and into the past week, birders in Duluth witnessed one of the most dramatic bird "fallout" events in many years. Wind, rain and fog coming off Lake Superior forced migrating warblers and other species to take refuge on Park Point, where they flocked in trees and on the ground, resting and searching for food. "It was fantastic," said Duluth birder Mike Hendrickson. "It was one of the best fallouts of migrants in my life, and I've been birding Duluth for 31 years." It was good for birders, but tough on the birds, Hendrickson noted. He saw one dead warbler, but no other dead birds were reported. In a message sent on the Minnesota Ornithological Union listserv, Duluth's Peder Svingen wrote that last Sunday, May 19, he and other birders identified 24 warbler species on Park Point. Only two of the 26 warbler species that can be observed in Duluth were missing, and they were later seen by others. |
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Source
2013-05-25 18:35:00
The wet weather plaguing many parts of the U.S. this holiday weekend has turned fatal in sodden San Antonio. One person is dead, another is missing and nearly a hundred more have been rescued as heavy rain has pummeled the Texas city, causing flash flooding. The majority of rescues were people trapped in their vehicles in low-lying areas of the city, San Antonio Fire Department spokesman Christian Bove told NBC News. Bove confirmed one fatality thus far, a 29-year-old woman who was trapped in her vehicle and tried to escape the rising water by climbing onto the car's roof. She was washed away, and her body was found down the road against a fence. A man who had been trapped in his vehicle is unaccounted for. Weather Channel Meteorologist Nick Wiltgen said San Antonio received 12.16 inches of rain in the 24 hours ending at 11 a.m. Central Time on Saturday. That is just shy of the 24-hour record for the city of 13.35 inches in October 1998. - NBC News |
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The Extinction Protocol
2013-05-25 15:03:00
A magnitude 5.7 temblor Thursday night was the largest earthquake to shake California since 2008 and has generated curiosity from seismologists. The temblor occurred in a rugged section of Northern California that has not been studied as thoroughly as Southern California and the Bay Area and has less monitoring equipment. Experts said they were surprised the quake was felt over such a large area, and they plan to go to the region to investigate. The magnitude 5.7 quake struck around 8:47 p.m., about 150 miles northeast of Sacramento; its epicenter was about 27 miles southwest of the town of Susanville. The last quake of similar magnitude, recorded at 5.5, struck Chino Hills in San Bernardino County in July 2008, said David Schwartz, an earthquake geologist for the Northern California USGS division in Menlo Park. It caused little damage, but it was the most sizable quake to hit a metropolitan part of California since the much larger and destructive 1994 Northridge quake. Thursday's quake did occur in a zone with known active faults, said David Schwartz, an earthquake geologist for the Northern California USGS division, including a series of faults that extend through the northern end of Lake Tahoe all the way to Oregon. But 5.7 is the strongest magnitude recorded in the area. This mountainous eastern Sierra Nevada region, known for its lakes, rivers and national forests, has had about seven magnitude 4 earthquakes since the 1930s, Schwartz said. Scientists are still studying the intensity of Thursday's shaking and have moved seismographs there from more populated areas to monitor aftershocks. Within minutes of the first quake, more than 7,000 people reported feeling it, from across state borders into Oregon and Nevada and as far south as the San Francisco area, according to the U.S. Geological Survey website. Officials in Susanville and Sacramento said the quake set off a number of home and car alarms and rattled windows. A Chico resident told The Times he felt a slow roll that lasted about 30 seconds.The quake itself was not a huge surprise for Schwartz's USGS division, but "what was interesting was it was felt along an unusual distance," he said. "Earthquakes in different parts of the state are felt over different distances. We just haven't had that many examples of earthquakes in this part of the state, really, for comparison. There are more interesting questions now than we have answers for, at present," he said. - LA Times |
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wildlifeextra.com
Gabon flamingos2013-05-25 10:47:00
The Greater flamingo, Phoenicopterus roseus, a migratory species that had not been reported in Gabon for many decades, has been observed in Gabon's Akanda National Park. The flamingos were spotted on the Gabonese coast during the tour organized as part of the commemoration of the World Migratory Bird Day. The birds were seen on the mudflats of Moka Island; A total of 77 individuals, adults and immature birds, were observed. Apart from the flamingos, dozens of other species were spotted, including pelicans, black skimmers, Curlew sandpiper, yellow-billed stork, herons, storks, various terns, and more. Unlike lesser flamingo, which is occasionally observed in Gabon, the Greater flamingo had completely disappeared from Gabon. Their return to the mudflats of Moka, in March 2013, is a testament to the remarkable richness of the environment, as well as the tranquillity found in the park, now that the Nigerian fishermen who had taken up residence have departed. |
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| Fire in the Sky |
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Scott Sutherland
Geekquinox 2013-05-27 11:03:00
Some sky watchers out to view the grouping of Mercury, Venus and Jupiter got an extra treat on Sunday night as a particularly bright meteor - called a bolide - zipped through the skies a little after 9 p.m. local time. Glimpses of the bolide were reported from Maryland in the U.S., to Ajax, Ontario as it burned up in the atmosphere. People reporting the event on American Meteor Society website called it one of the "brightest fireballs [they'd] ever seen" with a wide, bright flame trail. 'Fireball' is the name given to a meteor that appears to be brighter than Venus - one of the brightest planets in our sky, and a 'bolide' is a fireball that burns so bright that it can outshine the full moon. While spotting a fireball is rare, the meteors that cause them aren't; according to the AMS, several thousand occur in Earth's atmosphere each day. |
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radio-canada.ca
In the following excerpt from radio-canada.ca TV news, a man describes
his car windshield being smacked by a small dark meteorite on May 21,
2013.2013-05-27 06:59:00
Source [From 10'30"] |
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lunarmeteoritehunters.blogspot.com
2013-05-27 06:36:00
Initial Meteor Sighting Reports 18 May 2013 - Tristen Dixon Vilonia, AR 22:45:00 18 May 2013 - J.B., Augusta, Arkansas, USA 22:40:00 18 May 2013 - Michael Schoelzel, Mascoutah, IL, 22:40 cst |
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lunarmeteoritehunters.blogspot.com
2013-05-23 06:23:00
Initial Meteor Sighting Reports 23 May 2013 - Andrew, Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia, 19:35 AUST EST 23 May 2013 - Luke K Moggil, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, approximately 19:30hrs 23 May 2013 - Corbet Tamborine, QLD, Australia, 27.9°S, 153.1°E 19:35 GMT+10 (AUST EST) | |
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lunarmeteoritehunters.blogspot.com
2013-05-24 06:09:00
23 May 2013 - Diane Rourke, Boissevain, Manitoba, Canada 11:53 pm central 23 May 2013 - Charity Woods, Grandview, Manitoba, 23:50 23 May 2013 - C.K., Yorkton, Saskatchewan, Canada 22:50 |
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lunarmeteoritehunters.blogspot.com
2013-05-27 05:02:00
Initial Meteor Sighting Reports 27 May 2013 - Christos Koutentis, Manhattan, NY 00:07, Eastern Standard Time 27 May 2013 - Mike Kelly, Bordentown, NJ, 00:10 EST |
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lunarmeteoritehunters.blogspot.com
2013-05-26 05:09:00
Initial Meteor Reports 26 May 2013 - Jane Meyerhofer, Leesburg, VA. 21:00 26 May 2013 - Alexander Eichenlaub, Bellefonte, PA 21:03 |
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Howard W. Appell
A noise described as a "single loud bang" by many who heard it shook
Groveland Station last Friday, May 17, at about 10 p.m. The noise
reportedly rattled windows and brought persons outside to check what was
going on. There was immediate speculation that it might have been a
great clap of thunder, a low flying plane breaking the sound barrier, a
cannon firing or even a meteor entering the atmosphere.Livingston County News 2013-05-26 01:11:00 However, four days later, after a thorough search of the area where the sound was heard, and after questing many residents, the noise remains as much of a mystery as when it was first heard. Groveland Station resident Charles Keenan related, "It sounded like a black powder cannon or gun to me. It did not seem very far away from my home. The sound was enough to rattle the windows in my house and those of my neighbors who also came out to see what it was." Keenan saw a Groveland fire truck driving down the tracks to investigate behind the houses. According to Livingston County Undersheriff Jim Szczesniak, all that is really known is that a very loud noise was heard by many people in and near Groveland Station. However, those who are claiming to have heard an "explosion" may be making an assumption which is unwarranted. Szczesniak cautions against interpreting the sound as something more dramatic than it actually may have been. |
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Comet fragment wows stargazers with celestial maneuvers over Australia's Sunshine Coast, 20 May 2013
Sunshine Coast Daily
2013-05-22 01:31:00
Up to a dozen people have reported seeing a strange light in the sky over Toogoom on Monday evening. Toogoom resident Maggie MacLeod sparked the influx of reports yesterday when she posted about the "bright, comet-like" UFO on the Fraser Coast Chronicle Facebook page. "It was going down, then sideways and then the tail disappeared," she said. "I went up to a group of people on the beach and pointed it out to them ... by this time it was a big red ball in the sky near where the sun had set. | |
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Comment: The eyewitness descriptions are very
interesting because they synch with historical accounts of comets doing
very strange things high up in the sky during past times of increased
cometary flux. Clearly then the ancients were not imagining things...
they were witnessing the electrical interaction of cometary bodies that
appear to change direction, stand still, suddenly begin spinning, etc.
as they discharge the Earth's atmosphere.
See here and here for recent videos of comet fragments pulling off spectacular celestial maneuvers. Note in particular this video report from a very similar event almost exactly three years ago in the same part of Australia. |
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| Health & Wellness |
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Heidi Stevenson
A study claiming that fish oil provides no benefit in heart disease
is being hyped as the final word on the issue. But is it? No, it is not.
In fact, the study is absurdly blatant pseudo science, with two errors
so glaring it's hard to believe they were made. Why do the researchers
do it? Why do they care so little about the truth and your health?GreenMedInfo 2013-05-26 00:00:00
A new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine purports to show that fish oil provides no benefit whatsoever in prevention of heart disease.[1] At first glance, it would appear to be true. The study is, after all, double blind and placebo controlled, not to mention having a significant number of participants. But is it for real, or is there some sleight of hand at work? There's one initial clue that should give pause. The study's endpoints had to be changed. That's always a bad sign. In fact, it breaks the rules of good research. But, they had to do it because they found that their study participants weren't dying as fast as they'd anticipated. Now, if they'd been interested in the truth, they'd have tried to figure out what was wrong. After all, the odds of dying when people have signs of heart disease are pretty well understood. Otherwise, how could they possibly have anticipated the rate at which deaths would occur? Of course, they didn't sit back and wonder what they might be doing wrong. Instead, they just added new end points to their study. |
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Emily Deans, MD
A case study of cola dependency in a woman with recurrent depressionPrimal Docs 2013-05-26 10:42:00
It's not the world's greatest paper. It's a simple case study, just an introduction that proves nothing. The most fascinating thing about the paper is what we don't know about the consumption of cola, addiction, and mood. So let's jump in. There is a 40 year old woman who has been on antidepressants for many years, and in addition drinks up to 3 liters of soda every day. She craves soda of a particular brand and has been unable to cut down her consumption in spite of the fact that it is probably interfering with her sleep, and she's developed metabolic syndrome. She feels the soda gives her an energy and mood boost. In fact she meets official criteria for dependence (which are official and written out and require physical dependence and withdrawal syndrome among some other symptoms, but what it all boils down to is continued use despite harm). After a serious exacerbation of her depression, she is referred to an outpatient clinic for treatment. They work on slowly reducing her soda consumption. Low and behold, she sleeps better, feels better, has better energy, and her depression gets better. She still drinks a bit of soda, but not the massive amounts. She loses weight and stops having metabolic syndrome. She was able to wean off her antidepressant medication and felt good. Success. |
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Nadia-Elysse Harris, JD
Medical Daily 2013-05-26 11:59:00
"It would be nice if you stopped trying to trick kids into wanting to eat your food all the time," quipped 9-year-old Hannah Robertson in a conversation with McDonald's CEO Don Thompson at a shareholders meeting in Oak Brook, Ill. The fourth grader, whose mom runs a business that encourages children to make healthy food choices, read from prepared remarks as she said that the fast food chain lures kids into eating junk food by using toys and cartoon characters to promote the meals. "If parents haven't taught their kids about healthy eating, then the kids probably believe that junk food is good for them because it might taste good," said Hannah. Thompson, in a low, calm voice, responded to Hannah by thanking her for her comments then defending the company's food. "First off, we don't sell junk food, Hannah," said Thompson. "My kids also eat McDonald's. They cook with me at home. I love to cook. We cook a lot of fruits and veggies at home." |
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Kevin Drum
Mother Jones 2013-01-01 05:31:00
When Rudy Giuliani ran for mayor of New York City in 1993, he campaigned on a platform of bringing down crime and making the city safe again. It was a comfortable position for a former federal prosecutor with a tough-guy image, but it was more than mere posturing. Since 1960, rape rates had nearly quadrupled, murder had quintupled, and robbery had grown fourteenfold. New Yorkers felt like they lived in a city under siege. Throughout the campaign, Giuliani embraced a theory of crime fighting called "broken windows," popularized a decade earlier by James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling in an influential article in The Atlantic. "If a window in a building is broken and is left unrepaired," they observed, "all the rest of the windows will soon be broken." So too, tolerance of small crimes would create a vicious cycle ending with entire neighborhoods turning into war zones. But if you cracked down on small crimes, bigger crimes would drop as well. |
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| Science of the Spirit |
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Alexander De Foe
The Conversation 2013-05-23 23:44:00
Sarah dreads falling asleep. Moments after she closes her eyes, her body becomes paralysed, and she is unable to move no matter how hard she tries. This has been going on almost every night for three weeks. Sarah has also noticed a dark, ghostly figure standing over her bed from time to time, which seems to be the cause of the paralysis. It's a frightening, agonising experience. Sarah is experiencing a phenomenon called sleep paralysis. Although the condition primarily involves a sense of not being able to move prior to falling asleep, it can also include vivid hallucinations and visions. Sometimes people see a ghost or sense a negative presence in the room during an episode. Others report sleep paralysis as a form of alien abduction or other paranormal activity. Although Sarah reported disturbing hallucinations, she has not been diagnosed with a mental illness. This is not uncommon in accounts of the paranormal; many have a logical explanation, such as perceptual error. In fact, some researchers estimate only half of paranormal or mystical experiences - such as out-of-body experiences, telepathy, intuition and precognition - are associated with a mental disorder. Paranormal experiences may be very distressing, so it's important people have the opportunity to talk about them. Yet, many psychotherapists and psychiatrists lack adequate training and skills to deal with accounts of the paranormal. |
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| High Strangeness |
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19ActionNews
2013-05-27 14:56:00
Kirtland, Ohio - Believer or not, the image behind Erin Potter, a Kirtland girl battling leukemia, is stunning. It certainly stunned her mom. "My reaction immediately, it's Mary, they hear us, she's there," Jen Potter said. The picture of Erin, running with sparklers, was taken in her backyard by a friend just after the family learned that Erin's cancer was back, for the third time, and she was facing a second bone marrow transplant. "I didn't necessarily see it as a sign that Erin is fine and is going to walk out of this, but it's a sign that we're watching over her," Jen added. |
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Jack Quann
Newstalk Ireland 2013-05-22 10:33:00
Daughter of Naoise O'Muiri claims she saw a ghost. The Lord Mayor of Dublin has claimed the Mansion House is haunted. Fine Gael Councillor Naoise O'Muiri has told the Irish Sun that his daughter was once spooked by a ghost in the iconic building which dates back to 1705. He says the 4-year-old experienced the encounter as she walked from her room through the sitting room and into her parent's room in the middle of the night. She said she saw a girl with dark curly hair watching TV and the Mayor is adamant that it was a ghost. |
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The Voice BW
2013-05-22 13:07:00
Teachers at Mathiba Primary School in Maun had to abruptly end classes last week Friday after students reported seeing a hairy little creature. Regional Director for North West District in the Ministry of Education and Skills Development, Acro Maseko said that they had to send students back home after Standard 6 and 7 students claimed to have seen 'a black little hairy creature which resembled a human being.' The incident which happened around 12 noon culminated in ten students treated for shock at a local clinic and released the same day. "We will be holding prayers in the school soon after meeting parents and chiefs but for now we had asked for professional councillors to help. " Maseko further said that although teachers did not see anything, students screamed and ran amok while others fainted which made it hard for classes to continue with classes on that day. "Standard 7 students are about to start exams and events of such nature which spark mass hysteria sometimes happen to them in this area," a teacher said. When quizzed about past incidents, Maseko said that he was new in the area and was not familiar with past incidents. |
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| Don't Panic! Lighten Up! |
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MrForestfilm
YouTube 2013-05-23 01:39:00
Yes, this cat in Clara, Ireland has not only adopted these orphaned baby ducks - she 's even suckles them. "The minute the cat lay down the three ducklings ran underneath her. She stared to purr," the cat's owner Ronan Lally told The Irish Independent. "We lifted her up and two ducklings were latched onto the cat. The cat has all the maternal instinct, she has her paw around them and it is just extraordinary." |
