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| Puppet Masters |
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Hayley Peterson
The father of Ibragim Todashev, who was shot by an FBI agent a week ago
while being quizzed over his links to the Boston bombers, revealed the
extent of his son's injuries in gruesome photographs of his dead body
today.Daily Mail UK 2013-05-30 13:43:00 Outspoken Abdul-Baki Todashev called for an investigation and possible legal action against the agent involved at a press conference in Moscow where he showed the images of his son's body lying in a morgue with up to seven gunshot wounds, including one to the back of the head. His angry calls for justice came as a report claimed the 27-year-old native Chechen was unarmed in the clash with a federal agent in Florida on May 22. Previous reports claimed the US citizen went for the agent with a knife while being interrogated in his home. However, a report by the Washington Post yesterday cited law enforcement officials saying he had no weapon.
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Shamus Cooke
Global Research 2013-05-28 11:10:00
For a president that is executing Bush's "war on terror" against Al-Qaeda and "it's affiliates," it seems odd that President Obama has targeted the secular Syrian government for "regime change." Equally odd is that Obama's strongest military ally on the ground in Syria- the best equipped and effective fighting force against the Syrian Government - is Jabhat al-Nusra, a group that has affiliated itself with al-Qaeda, and aims to turn Syria into an extremist Islamic state that enforces a fundamentalist version of Sharia law. It's difficult to know exactly how al-Nursa received its guns, but one can make an educated guess. For example, The New York Times explained in detail how the CIA has been in a massive arms trafficking operation that has already funneled thousands of tons of guns from Saudi Arabia and Qatar to Syria: Where are the guns winding up in this massive arms trafficking operation? An important question to ask is: which rebels in Syria have guns and which ones don't. The Guardian reports: |
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Jim Muir
BBC 2013-05-28 11:04:00
European Union foreign ministers have said they will not renew an arms embargo on the Syrian opposition, due to expire on Saturday. But there was no immediate decision to send arms to Syrian rebels and all other sanctions remained in force. Even so, Russia said it would "directly harm" the prospects of an international peace conference on Syria. Meanwhile, the BBC has heard evidence that 200 people were killed in a massacre in western Syria this month. Opposition activists said they had documented the civilian deaths in al-Bayda and Baniyas after government troops and militias entered the towns. The government described the operation as a strike against "terrorists". |
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Patrick J. Buchanan
Human Events 2013-05-28 10:51:00
The thrice-promised land it has been called. It is that land north of Mecca and Medina and south of Anatolia, between the Mediterranean Sea and the Persian Gulf. In 1915 - that year of Gallipoli, which forced the resignation of First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill - Britain, to win Arab support for its war against the Ottoman Turks, committed, in the McMahon Agreement, to the independence of these lands under Arab rule. It was for this that Lawrence of Arabia and the Arabs fought. In November 1917, however, one month before Gen. Allenby led his army into Jerusalem, Lord Balfour, in a letter to Baron Rothschild, declared that His Majesty's government now looked with favor upon the creation on these same lands of a national homeland for the Jewish people. Between these clashing commitments there had been struck in 1916 a secret deal between Britain's Mark Sykes and France's Francois Georges-Picot. With the silent approval of czarist Russia, which had been promised Istanbul, these lands were subdivided and placed under British and French rule. France got Syria and Lebanon. Britain took Transjordan, Palestine and Iraq, and carved out Kuwait. Vladimir Lenin discovered the Sykes-Picot treaty in the czar's archives and published it, so the world might see what the Great War was truly all about. Sykes-Picot proved impossible to reconcile with Woodrow Wilson's declaration that he and the allies - the British, French, Italian, Russian and Japanese empires - were all fighting "to make the world safe for democracy." |
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Ludwig Watzal
Dissident Voice 2013-05-27 10:02:00
Torture allegations against the treatment of Palestinians detainees in Israeli prisons make headlines again. Few days after his arrest, Arafat Jaradat died in Israeli custody. On 27 February 2013, the United Nations Special Rapporteur for human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Richard Falk, called for an international investigation on the death of Palestinian prisoner Jaradat while undergoing interrogation in an Israeli facility. Falk stressed that "the death of a prisoner during interrogation is always a cause for concern, but in this case, when Israel has shown a pattern and practice of prisoner abuse, the need for outside, credible investigation is more urgent than ever. The best approach might be the creation of an international forensic team under the auspices of the UN Human Rights Council." The violations of the human rights of the Palestinians by the Israeli occupying forces have not decreased despite the peace process and there is no difference between the Labor Party and the Likud bloc. The list of the offenses is long: torture, arbitrary killings and arrests, the demolition of houses, the severe restrictions imposed on the freedom of movement by hundreds of check points, violence against Palestinians, land confiscation and the construction of illegal settlements, the "ethnic cleansing" of the Palestinians from East Jerusalem, collective punishments, such as the total closure of the territories like Gaza and curfews, and the bombardments of the people of the Gaza Strip. The list of human rights violations involving Palestinian victims for which the Palestinian Authority (PA) is responsible is similarly long: torture and maltreatment, the denial of fair trials before military courts and the State Security Court, which has the power to issue the death sentence, the intimidation of undesirable persons, the restrictions on the freedom of speech and the press, and the hampering of the work of human rights organizations. Both the Fatah- and the Hamas-led governments use repressive measures in order to control and subdue the population under their reign.1 After Israel began its offensive in Gaza in 2008/09, Hamas took extraordinary steps to control, intimidate, punish, and at times eliminate its internal political rivals and those suspected of collaboration with Israel. The majority of Palestinians executed by other Palestinians during Israel's military operations were men accused of collaboration with Israel. |
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Andrew Bacevich
Guardian 2013-05-28 09:53:00
The Long War? The Second Hundred Years War? What we call the ongoing violence is a key to understanding our times For well over a decade now the United States has been "a nation at war". Does that war have a name? It did at the outset. After 9/11, George W Bush's administration wasted no time in announcing that the US was engaged in a Global War on Terrorism, or GWOT. With few dissenters, the media quickly embraced the term. The GWOT promised to be a gargantuan, transformative enterprise. The conflict begun on 9/11 would define the age. Upon succeeding to the presidency in 2009, however, Barack Obama without fanfare junked Bush's formulation (as he did again in a speech at the National Defense University last week). Yet if the appellation went away, the conflict itself, shorn of identifying marks, continued. Does it matter that ours has become and remains a nameless war? Very much. Names bestow meaning. When it comes to war, a name attached to a date can shape our understanding of what the conflict was all about. To specify when a war began and when it ended is to privilege certain explanations of its significance while discrediting others. Let me provide a few illustrations. With rare exceptions, Americans today characterize the bloodletting of 1861-1865 as the Civil War. Yet not many decades ago, diehard supporters of the Lost Cause insisted on referring to that conflict as the War Between the States or the War for Southern Independence (or even the War of Northern Aggression). The South may have gone down in defeat, but the purposes for which Southerners had fought - preserving a distinctive way of life and the principle of states' rights - had been worthy, even noble. So at least they professed to believe, with their preferred names for the war reflecting that belief. |
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Alyssa Berlin
The New York Observer 2013-05-27 09:46:00
Forget the great outdoors. The Department of Consumer Affairs has sent notice to 17 New York restaurants, telling them that that they will have to close their sidewalk seating areas unless they are willing to comply with the city's zoning regulations. "Please be advised you have 100 business days from and including May 1 to complete one of the following options," the agency notified owners on April 29, reported the New York Post. The restaurants were given the options to get a "certified land survey" to show they're operating on private property, file for a zoning exemption or surrender their permits. |
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PressTV
2013-05-27 09:42:00
Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz is reported to be clinically dead as the monarch is not recently seen in the public. A Saudi journalist working for London-Based Asharq Alawsat says the Saudi monarch has been clinically dead since Wednesday. He also quoted medical sources in Saudi Arabia as saying that the king's vital organs, including his heart, kidneys and lungs, have stopped functioning. Doctors are said to have used a defibrillator on him several times. He is also reported to be alive with the help of a ventilator. The Royal Court has yet to comment on the report of King's death. |
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Richard Norton-Taylor
The Guardian 2013-05-30 07:52:00
The war in Afghanistan has cost Britain at least £37bn and the figure will rise to a sum equivalent to more than £2,000 for every taxpaying household, according to a devastating critique of the UK's role in the conflict. Since 2006, on a conservative estimate, it has cost £15m a day to maintain Britain's military presence in Helmand province. The equivalent of £25,000 will have been spent for every one of Helmand's 1.5 million inhabitants, more than most of them will earn in a lifetime, it says. By 2020, the author of a new book says, Britain will have spent at least £40bn on its Afghan campaign, enough to recruit over 5,000 police officers or nurses and pay for them throughout their careers. It could fund free tuition for all students in British higher education for 10 years. Alternatively, the sum would be enough to equip the navy with an up-to-date aircraft carrier group, or recruit and equip three army or Royal Marine brigades and fund them for 10 years. |
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Madison Underwood
AL.com 2013-05-29 07:27:00
The terrorist life, it's not all bombs and glitter. There are expense reports, meetings, and the kind of responsibilities you'd expect from a low-level manager in any organization. A trove of letters found and authenticated by the Associated Press in Mali tell the story of how a man who would come to be responsible for more than 100 deaths was fired from al-Qaida for failing to carry out some of the more mundane aspects of running an international terrorist organization. In one 10-page letter, al-Qaida leadership scolded an ambitious terrorist, the one-eyed Algerian bandit known as Moktar Belmoktar, for failing to attend meetings, for ignoring orders, for missing their phone calls, and for failing to turn in required monthly expense reports, AP reports. But there were other problems as well. Among al-Qaida's complaints with Belmoktar: he didn't charge enough ransom for one hostage, he failed to carry out any "spectacular operations," and he posted messages on Internet forums badmouthing the terrorist organization. | |
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Comment: No this is not satire, but yes the War on Terror is a sick joke. AP found the letters in Mali?
About that siege of the BP gas plant in Algeria in January: 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 |
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Andrew Gavin Marshall
andrewgavinmarshall.com 2013-05-26 00:00:00
The following is my first original piece for The Hampton Institute, "a working class think tank," at which I chair the Geopolitics Division. This essay is meant as an introduction to modern American geopolitics, and a reference piece for future research and published material through The Hampton Institute's Geopolitics Division. Educating yourself about empire can be a challenging endeavor, especially since so much of the educational system is dedicated to avoiding the topic or justifying the actions of imperialism in the modern era. If one studies political science or economics, the subject might be discussed in a historical context, but rarely as a modern reality; media and government voices rarely speak on the subject, and even more rarely speak of it with direct and honest language. Instead, we exist in a society where institutions and individuals of power speak in coded language, using deceptive rhetoric with abstract meaning. We hear about 'democracy' and 'freedom' and 'security,' but so rarely about imperialism, domination, and exploitation. The objective of this report is to provide an introduction to the institutional and social structure of American imperialism. The material is detailed, but should not be considered complete or even comprehensive; its purpose is to function as a resource or reference for those seeking to educate themselves about the modern imperial system. It's not an analysis of state policies or the effects of those policies, but rather, it is an examination of the institutions and individuals who advocate and implement imperial policies. What is revealed is a highly integrated and interconnected network of institutions and individuals - the foreign policy establishment - consisting of academics (so-called "experts" and "policy-oriented intellectuals") and prominent think tanks. |
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| Society's Child |
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Associated Press via Yahoo News
Philadelphia police were involved in a trio of shootings the same day
the city's police commissioner said he is seeking a review of the
department's use of deadly force. The latest shooting happened during a
gun battle Wednesday night in the city's Germantown section while
officers were pursuing at least three suspects, authorities said. The
suspect was killed and a 2-year-old boy also suffered a graze wound.
Officers were searching for the remaining suspects.2013-05-30 13:40:00 It was the third police-involved shooting in the city on Wednesday and came hours after the police Commissioner Charles Ramsey announced that he is seeking an independent review of the department's deadly force policies. Earlier in the day officers shot a man in the buttocks after police say he pointed a gun; another man was critically injured after he was shot by officers who said he fired at them. Ramsey cited similar reviews done for the Las Vegas and New York police departments by CNA Analysis and Solutions and the RAND Firearm Evaluation group that had led the departments to adopt new training curriculums and new or revised policies. Ramsey said he had reached out to the federal Department of Justice's Office of Community Oriented Policing Services to secure funding and assistance for a review of Philadelphia police practices, training and policies on police-related shootings. |
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Jim Armstrong
CBS Boston 2013-05-24 09:37:00
This Sunday, the streets of Beverly will look just like they always do. And that's the problem, some veterans say. The city has cancelled its annual Memorial Day parade for what's believed to be the first time since the end of the Civil War. Many veterans who were gathered at the Herman A. Spear American Legion Post on Friday night are upset by the decision. "It's not right to me," says Ron Innocenti. He is a Vietnam veteran who has not only marched in the city's Memorial Day parade in the past, he says he has also been its grand marshal. He hates to cancel because of the message it sends to men and women serving now. "It's a slap in the face to them that we're not doing it," he says. "But on the other hand, I can see why we're not doing it because of the age of the veterans we have now." |
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Horace Hines
Jamaica Observer 2013-05-30 07:43:00
'Dat a wickedniss' The Trelawny police have confirmed that a woman in her early 40s has confessed to Monday's murder of her estranged common-law husband's four-year-old daughter, who was beheaded and her body dumped in a sinkhole in Duanvale, ironically as the world celebrates Childs Month. "She has admitted knowledge of it," a high-ranking police officer told the Observer West last night, refusing to give details. The deceased has been identified as Natasha Brown, a student of the Duanvale Basic School. The entire community was plunged into shock and anxiety later Monday after it was discovered that little Natasha did not report for school that day, even though she had left home for the institution. The police who initiated an Ananda alert after they were summoned, subsequently - along with residents - launched a search in the deep rural community. It was later announced that a small human frame was spotted in a sinkhole, located in a rugged terrain in a section of the community called Faith Avenue, which is only accessible by foot. Efforts were then made to fish the body from the sinkhole. |
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Jim Gearhart Show
Jim got this email forward from a listener and had to share this one. It
looks as if Albert Einstein was right. Albert Einstein was fearful of
the growth of technology and its effect on the human race.Here is Albert
Einstein's quote:
Now keep that quote in mind and look at the photos below and tell us that Albert Einstein's prophecy years ago hasn't come true.Jersey 101.5 2013-05-30 04:54:00 Having a Coffee...
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RT
2013-05-30 00:50:00
Ibragim Todashev, who was killed during an FBI interview last week, was unarmed when he was fatally shot, fueling speculation that his association with Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev was enough, in the eyes of police, to be fatal. The death of Ibragim Todashev has been shrouded in mystery since he was mortally wounded during an interview with FBI agents on May 22. Before Wednesday's admission that the 27-year-old was unarmed at the time of his death, investigators offered conflicting accounts of what happened in Todashev's final minutes. Todashev associated with Tamerlan Tsarnaev from mixed martial arts and boxing circles in the Boston area before he moved from Cambridge, Massachusetts to Orlando, Florida. FBI officials maintained he was never a suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing. Investigators did say, however, that the matter would be the subject of a probe that is expected to last for several months. "The FBI takes very seriously any shooting incidents involving our agents and as such we have an effective, time-tested process for addressing them internally," FBI spokesman Paul Bresson said in a statement Wednesday. "The review process is thorough and objective and conducted as expeditiously as possible under the circumstances." |
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Arturo Garcia
The Raw Story 2013-05-29 11:12:00
The widow of a 72-year-old Texas man is searching for answers after Fort Worth police shot and killed him on Tuesday while responding to a burglary call involving a house across the street. "Married 46 years, and, you know, somebody gets a little trigger-happy and away they go," Kathy Waller said to WFAA-TV on Tuesday after her husband, Jerry Waller, was shot inside the couple's garage. Kathy Waller told KHOU the couple noticed police in their Fort Worth neighborhood just after 1 a.m. Tuesday morning. Her husband grabbed his .38-caliber handgun and went downstairs to see what was happening. She said to the station she heard six gunshots afer he opened the garage door. The Dallas News reported on Tuesday that authorities said in a statement that the two officers were "engaged by an adult male armed with a handgun" and shot him in fear for their safety. Jerry Waller was pronounced dead at the scene. |
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Ezra Klein
The Washington Post 2013-05-27 11:27:00
Happy Memorial Day! If your employer is giving you the day off, with pay, pat yourself on the back. You're one of the lucky ones! As this graph from the Center for Economic and Policy Research shows, the United States is the only developed country that doesn't guarantee its workers either paid vacation or holidays: |
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Kyle Munzenrieder
Miami New Times 2013-05-29 15:09:00
Florida - Fourteen-year-old Tremaine McMillian didn't threaten police. He didn't attack them. He wasn't armed. All the black teenager did was appear threatening by shooting Miami-Dade police officers a few "dehumanizing stares," and that was apparently enough for the officers to decide to slam him against the ground and put him in a chokehold. During Memorial Day weekend, McMillian was rough-housing with another teenager on the sand. Police approached the teen on an ATV and told him that wasn't acceptable behavior. They asked him where his parents were, but MicMillian attempted to walk away. The officer jumped off the ATV, and tried to physically restrain the teen. According to CBS Miami, police say the 14-year-old kid gave them "'dehumanizing stares,' clenched his fists and appeared threatening." McMillian says he was carrying a six-week old puppy at the time and couldn't have been clenching his fists because he was feeding the dog with a bottle. He claims that during the confrontation the dog's front left paw was injured while officer forcibly separated him from the dog. The officer then forced McMillian to the ground and put him in a choke hold. |
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| Secret History |
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Megan Gannon
Live Science 2013-05-30 12:30:00
An ancient Egyptian iron bead found inside a 5,000-year-old tomb was crafted from a meteorite, new research shows. The tube-shaped piece of jewelry was first discovered in 1911 at the Gerzeh cemetery, roughly 40 miles (70 kilometers) south of Cairo. Dating between 3350 B.C. and 3600 B.C., beads found at the burial site represent the first known examples of iron use in ancient Egypt, thousands of years before Egypt's Iron Age. And their cosmic origins were suspected from the start. Soon after the beads were discovered, researchers showed that the metal jewelry was rich in nickel, a signature of iron meteorites. But in the 1980s, academics cast doubt on the beads' celestial source, arguing that the high nickel content could have been the result of smelting. |
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Owen Jarus
LiveScience 2013-05-30 07:09:00
A towering "rain control" site, where shamans would have asked the gods to open up the skies centuries ago, has been discovered in South Africa. Located in a semiarid area of the country, near Botswana and Zimbabwe, the site of Ratho Kroonkop (RKK) sits atop a 1,000-foot-tall (300 meters) hill and contains two naturally formed "rock tanks." These tanks are depressions in the rock created when water weakens the underlying sandstone. When the scientists excavated one of them, they found over 30,000 animal specimens, including the remains of rhinoceros, zebra and even giraffe. "What makes RKK special is that every piece of faunal material found at RKK can in some way be linked to rain control," researcher Simone Brunton, a doctoral candidate at the University of Cape Town, wrote in an email to LiveScience. |
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| Science & Technology |
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Press Trust India
2013-05-30 14:38:00
Washington: Astronomers using data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) have identified 28 new families of asteroids in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter. The findings are a critical step in understanding the origins of asteroid families, and the collisions thought to have created these rocky clans. An asteroid family is formed when a collision breaks apart a large parent body into fragments of various sizes. Some collisions leave giant craters. For example, the asteroid Vesta's southern hemisphere was excavated by two large impacts. Other smash-ups are catastrophic, shattering an object into numerous fragments. The cast-off pieces move together in packs, travelling on the same path around the Sun, but over time the pieces become more and more spread out. "We're separating zebras from the gazelles," said Joseph Masiero of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and lead author of the study. "Before, asteroid family members were harder to tell apart because they were travelling in nearby packs. But now we have a better idea of which asteroid belongs to which family," Masiero said in a statement. |
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA
2013-05-30 14:27:00
Pasadena, California -- A sequence of radar images of asteroid 1998 QE2 was obtained on the evening of May 29, 2013, by NASA scientists using the 230-foot (70-meter) Deep Space Network antenna at Goldstone, Calif., when the asteroid was about 3.75 million miles (6 million kilometers) from Earth, which is 15.6 lunar distances. The radar imagery revealed that 1998 QE2 is a binary asteroid. In the near-Earth population, about 16 percent of asteroids that are about 655 feet (200 meters) or larger are binary or triple systems. Radar images suggest that the main body, or primary, is approximately 1.7 miles (2.7 kilometers) in diameter and has a rotation period of less than four hours. Also revealed in the radar imagery of 1998 QE2 are several dark surface features that suggest large concavities. The preliminary estimate for the size of the asteroid's satellite, or moon, is approximately 2,000 feet (600 meters) wide. The radar collage covers a little bit more than two hours. The radar observations were led by scientist Marina Brozovic of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. |
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Scott Sutherland
Geekquinox 2013-05-29 19:16:00
Some retirees golf. Some dream of buying a boat and sailing the world. Anton and Maria Chobot spent 30 years of their retirement digging up artifacts of the Clovis culture on their property near Buck Lake, Alberta, and now, they may have provided some of the evidence needed to settle a long debate in the science community. Roughly 13,000 years ago, something touched off the 'Big Freeze' - a 1,300-year-long cold snap formally called the Younger Dryas stadial - that caused major climate changes and droughts. These have been blamed for the extinction of the mammoth and the saber-toothed tiger, and also the downfall of the ancient Clovis culture. However, what that something was has been debated for years. One idea that's proven popular over the years is that a meteorite or comet struck the planet, somewhere around what is now Hudson Bay. However, if something big enough to melt the Laurentide ice sheet had hit the planet there should have been some indication of it, in the form of a crater, or shocked and melted rocks, or 'impact spherules'. And, until recently, the evidence was lacking. |
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| Earth Changes |
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HeraldSun.com.au
2013-05-30 16:08:00
The Institute of Vulcanology warned that the eruption could intensify with ash rising as high as 1000 to 2000 metres, posing a threat to air traffic at Guatemala's international airport. "Ash could spread over Guatemala City due to the direction of the wind," the country's disaster response office said in a statement. The last major eruption of Pacaya, in May 2010, claimed the life of a television journalist, drove thousands of people from their homes and forced the closure of the Guatemala City airport for five days. The 2552 metre-high Pacaya is 50 kilometres south of the capital and one of three active volcanoes in Guatemala. |
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Peter Ferrara
Forbes 2013-05-26 14:58:00
Around 1250 A.D., historical records show, ice packs began showing up farther south in the North Atlantic. Glaciers also began expanding on Greenland, soon to threaten Norse settlements on the island. From 1275 to 1300 A.D., glaciers began expanding more broadly, according to radiocarbon dating of plants killed by the glacier growth. The period known today as the Little Ice Age was just starting to poke through. Summers began cooling in Northern Europe after 1300 A.D., negatively impacting growing seasons, as reflected in the Great Famine of 1315 to 1317. Expanding glaciers and ice cover spreading across Greenland began driving the Norse settlers out. The last, surviving, written records of the Norse Greenland settlements, which had persisted for centuries, concern a marriage in 1408 A.D. in the church of Hvalsey, today the best preserved Norse ruin. Colder winters began regularly freezing rivers and canals in Great Britain, the Netherlands and Northern France, with both the Thames in London and the Seine in Paris frozen solid annually. The first River Thames Frost Fair was held in 1607. In 1607-1608, early European settlers in North America reported ice persisting on Lake Superior until June. In January, 1658, a Swedish army marched across the ice to invade Copenhagen. By the end of the 17th century, famines had spread from northern France, across Norway and Sweden, to Finland and Estonia. Reflecting its global scope, evidence of the Little Ice Age appears in the Southern Hemisphere as well. Sediment cores from Lake Malawi in southern Africa show colder weather from 1570 to 1820. A 3,000 year temperature reconstruction based on varying rates of stalagmite growth in a cave in South Africa also indicates a colder period from 1500 to 1800. A 1997 study comparing West Antarctic ice cores with the results of the Greenland Ice Sheet Project Two (GISP2) indicate a global Little Ice Age affecting the two ice sheets in tandem. |
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IceAgeNow
According to predictions of the French Canal Meteo, there is a 70%
chance of a complete absence of summer in Western Europe this year,
making it one of the coldest and wettest summers since 1816 - almost
200 years.2013-05-30 10:31:00 This would occur because this year's long, late winter has cooled the ocean, which, coupled with weak solar activity in recent months, could have a direct effect on the climate. The last time this happened was in 1816, known as the "year without a summer" or "the year of poverty." At that time the sun was in the midst of the Dalton Minimum, when magnetic activity was extremely low, and Tambora volcano erupted in Indonesia with a column of smoke so thick that it caused a decline in world temperatures. For now, it seems that the predictions are fulfilled. In Spain, temperatures fell this week and will remain below normal, while storms and showers are expected mainly in the north and northeast of the Peninsula and the Balearics, according to the Meteorological Agency (AEMET). AEMET spokesman, Alejandro Lomas, said this week the temperatures will be below normal and precipitation will be "generous" in the far north and much of the northern third. Also, this week in the southern half of the peninsula, thermometers also stay below normal and even expected snowfall in mountain areas. |
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P Gosselin
It's been a cold 2013 so far in Central and Western Europe. Last weekend snow fell in Austria, Germany, and the Czech Republic.NoTricksZone 2013-05-29 21:44:00
Europeans are wondering whatever happened to global warming. Climate institutes, who just years ago predicted warm, snow-less winters, have turned 180° and are now insisting that the Little Ice Age-like conditions that have gripped Europe over the last 5 years are actually signs of global warming after all! Fortunately, very few people believe them. |
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Alex Dunham
If you've been looking forward to spending your Spanish summer sunning
yourself by the pool, don't pack away your winter clothes just yet.The Local, Spanish 2013-05-27 18:07:00 France's main weather channel has announced that there is a 70 percent chance of this summer being cold and wet across Spain, France, Portugal, Germany and Austria. Cold maritime fronts and weak solar activity during the winter months have not only given us a chillier Spanish spring than normal, they're also going to make the summer months unusually dreary and rainy. According to Meteo, June and July are only likely to have short periods of summer heat which will in turn bring heavy storms in August. September and October are likely to register higher average temperatures and less rain, the French weather agency announced on Monday. The year without summer, 1816, is not an old wives' tale. Overcast skies and cold temperatures across the northern hemisphere led to severe crop failures and food shortages in France, England, Ireland and the US during the summer months of that year. |
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| Fire in the Sky |
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Yle Finland
2013-05-30 02:06:00
An unusual light and sound phenomenon that was sighted in Finnish skies in early May has been confirmed as a fireball, in other words a very bright meteor. The light was seen on May 8th in parts of southern and central Finland. The Ursa Astronomical Association estimated on Wednesday that the object was half a metre long and weighed 50 kilos when it entered the earth's atmosphere. | |
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| Health & Wellness |
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Brett Smith
RedOrbit 2013-05-29 23:37:00
Are all the best doctors out on the golf course during the weekend, leaving some major surgeries to their less experienced colleagues? According to a new study in the British Medical Journal, patients who have elective surgery on the weekend are 82 percent more likely to die than if they had undergone the procedure on a Monday. "The first 48 hours after an operation are often the most critical period of care for surgery patients," said lead author Dr. Paul Aylin, from the School of Public Health at the Imperial College London. The latest study adds to a growing body of evidence about the so-called "weekend effect" which suggests a notably higher risk of death if a person is admitted to the emergency room on the weekend compared with a weekday. "So if the quality of care is lower at the weekend as some previous studies have suggested, we would expect to see higher mortality rates not just for patients operated on at the weekend, but also those who have operations towards the end of the week, whose postoperative care overlaps with the weekend," Aylin said. "That is what we found." |
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Sayer Ji
Greenmedinfo.com 2013-05-24 19:18:00
Nothing can replace exercise, but turmeric extract does a pretty good job of producing some of the same cardiovascular health benefits, most notably in women undergoing age-associated adverse changes in arterial health. Despite the general lack of interest by conventional medical practitioners in turmeric's role in preventing heart disease, there is a robust body of published research on its remarkable cardioprotective properties, with three dozen study abstracts on the topic available to view on our database alone: turmeric's cardioprective properties. Last year, we reported on a study published in the American Journal of Cardiology that found turmeric extract reduces post-bypass heart attack risk by 56%. Now, we would like to bring attention to a remarkable study published in the journal Nutrition Research in 2012 that revealed that curcumin, the primary polyphenol in turmeric and which gives the spice its golden hue, is as effective in improving vascular function in postmenopausal women as a moderate aerobic exercise training regimen. [1] | |
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Comment: Additional information on Tumeric Health Benefits:
Turmeric: The Return of The Golden Goddess India's 'holy powder' Finally Reveals It's Centuries-Old Secret Spice of Life: Turmeric Boosts Effects of Chemo in Fighting Tumors Curcumin and Black Pepper Combine to Stop Breast Cancer Tumor Cells Research: Curcumin is a triple negative breast cancer killer Turmeric is the Anti-Aging, Anti-Oxidant, Anti-Inflammatory Super Spice Turmeric can help regenerate the liver, groundbreaking new research Turmeric, Curcumin Naturally Block Cancer Cells Curry-derived molecules might be too spicy for colorectal cancers Weekly Curry 'May Fight Dementia' 'Holy Powder' Makes Your Cell Membranes Behave for Better Health Turmeric repairs damaged liver tissues, promotes overall liver health Turmeric's Powerful Life-Promoting Properties Put Pharmaceuticals to Shame Curry spice 'kills cancer cells' |
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Belfast Telegraph
2013-05-29 18:53:00
The new Sars-like respiratory illness which has killed half of the people who have been infected with it is a "threat to the entire world", the World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned. Experts raised concerns that the disease is "emerging faster than our understanding". The WHO says that since September last year there have been 44 laboratory confirmed cases across eight countries which have resulted in 22 deaths, including two people in the UK, but reports suggest that the figure could be higher. Earlier this week, WHO's director general said that the novel virus, which has been called Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus - or MERS-CoV, is her "greatest concern". Addressing the World Health Assembly in Geneva on Monday, Dr Margaret Chan said: "Looking at the overall global situation, my greatest concern right now is the novel coronavirus. |
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Alexandra Sifferlin
Time 2013-05-29 18:43:00
On Tuesday, a 65-year-old French man died from a SARS-like infection, called novel coronavirus (nCoV). He was the first man in France to die from the infection, which he contracted after visiting Dubai. Meanwhile, health officials in Saudi Arabia - where the virus was first detected in April 2013 - reported five additional cases of the infection. Novel coronavirus is among the family of coronaviruses that cause illnesses that range from the common cold to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). Until last year, the new strain had never before been seen in humans. As of last week, the WHO reported that there have been a total of 49 people infected since September 2012, 27 of whom have died. |
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| Science of the Spirit |
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Roman Krznaric
Management Fortune CNN 2013-05-15 23:27:00
When Frank Parsons opened the world's first career guidance center in Boston in 1908, he began by asking prospective clients 116 penetrating questions about their ambitions, strengths, and weaknesses (and how often they bathed). But then he did something more unusual: He measured their skulls. Parsons was a committed believer in phrenology. If you had a large forehead, he might recommend you become a lawyer or engineer. But if your skull was more developed behind the ears, you were of the "animal type" and best suited to manual work. Career advice has, thankfully, come a long way since then. But now, instead of measuring the outside of people's heads, it has become common to measure the inside using psychometric tests. Personality testing has grown into a major industry and is standard procedure in leadership and management courses, as part of job-interview processes, and, increasingly, in career counselling. But should we really trust such tests to deliver scientific, objective truth? I have some bad news for you: Even the most sophisticated tests have considerable flaws. Take the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), the world's most popular psychometric test, which is based on Jung's theory of personality types. Over two million are administered every year. The MBTI places you in one of 16 personality types, based on dichotomous categories such as whether you are an introvert or an extrovert, or have a disposition towards being logical or emotional (what it calls "thinking" and "feeling"). |
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Seppo
Natural News 2013-05-29 19:42:00
For centuries, the art of breathing has been one of a myriad of tools employed by Yoga masters in order to calm the body and mind, in preparation for meditation, contemplation or simply to remain in control of one's emotions. Long utilized as a spiritual practice, a recent study has now brought the use of breathing as a way to control emotions into the realm of neuroscience. The results are promising and could mean a reduction in the administration of drugs as a form of anxiety, depression and anger management. The study and its findings Carried out at the Universite de Louvain by Dr. Pierre Philippot, the research study focused on two groups with the aim of investigating whether breathing can generate and regulate emotions and their intensity. | |
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Comment: Learn how to control emotions through
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and Rejuvenation Program. Visit the Éiriú Eolas website and give it a try!
Éiriú Eolas Stress Control, Healing and Rejuvenation Program is the modern revival of an ancient breathing and meditation program which is being acclaimed around the world as THE TOOL that will help you to: |
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| High Strangeness |
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