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| Puppet Masters |
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Katherine Eban
CNN 2013-05-15 17:28:00
The epic inside story of long-term criminal fraud at Ranbaxy, the Indian drug company that makes generic Lipitor for millions of Americans. 1. The assignment On the morning of Aug. 18, 2004, Dinesh Thakur hurried to a hastily arranged meeting with his boss at the gleaming offices of Ranbaxy Laboratories in Gurgaon, India, 20 miles south of New Delhi. It was so early that he passed gardeners watering impeccable shrubs and cleaners still polishing the lobby's tile floors. As always, Thakur was punctual and organized. He had a round face and low-key demeanor, with deep-set eyes that gave him a doleful appearance. His boss, Dr. Rajinder Kumar, Ranbaxy's head of research and development, had joined the generic-drug company just two months earlier from GlaxoSmithKline, where he had served as global head of psychiatry for clinical research and development. Tall and handsome with elegant manners, Kumar, known as Raj, had a reputation for integrity. Thakur liked and respected him. Like Kumar, Thakur had left a brand-name pharmaceutical company for Ranbaxy. Thakur, then 35, an American-trained engineer and a naturalized U.S. citizen, had worked at Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMY) in New Jersey for 10 years. In 2002 a former mentor recruited him to Ranbaxy by appealing to his native patriotism. So he had moved his wife and baby son to Gurgaon to join India's largest drugmaker and its first multinational pharmaceutical company. When he stepped into Kumar's office that morning, Thakur was surprised by his boss' appearance. He looked weary and uneasy, his eyes puffy and dark. He had returned the previous day from South Africa, where he had met with government regulators. It was clear that the meeting had not gone well. |
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Maureen Farrell
CNN 2013-05-24 17:13:00
Stocks have had a stellar year so far. In fact, the rally has gotten so heated that some investors are making bets on a big crash. Universa Investments, which spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year buying crash protection, has attracted a record amount of money into its fund this quarter. "People are starting to recognize that these market moves are unnatural and distorted," said Universa president and chief investment officer Mark Spitznagel, who declined to say how much is spent on crash protection, citing SEC rules. Universa's view that a crash is coming is not widely held, making crash protection cheap, he said. Universa buys this protection in the form of options that generate huge returns when the stock market falls by more than 20%. Universa's adviser, economist and former derivative trader Nassim Taleb calls it 'black swan' hedging. That's apropos considering Taleb coined the phrase 'black swan,' described as an unforeseen event that has an extreme impact, such as the 2008 financial crisis or Japan's 2011 nuclear disaster. Spitznagel says he's pretty confident that the market will crash, or fall by more than 20%, in the next six months -- a year max. |
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Alanna Petroff
CNN 2013-05-27 17:09:00
World stock markets look set to bump around awhile after last week's plunge in Japan before resuming a rally fueled by cheap central bank cash. Investors had a rude awakening last Thursday as the Nikkei index plunged by over 7% in its worst day for two years, leaving some wondering whether the surge in global equities was now over after such a significant pullback. "This is a classic holiday market reversal," said Neil Shah, a director at London's Edison Investment. When investors and traders return to their desks after the long weekend in the U.S. and the U.K., stocks would continue moving higher, he said. Japan, where the benchmark Nikkei index has rallied by more than 70% in less than 12 months, could see a more substantial correction before turning higher again. "I expect another 5% to 10% downside before another march upwards," said Nick Beecroft, senior market analyst at Saxo Capital Markets. The Nikkei fell again on Monday, dropping 3% as a firmer yen weighed on the shares of exporters. But other Asian markets gained ground, as did major indexes in Europe. Central banks, including the Bank of Japan, have been a big driver of the bull market in stocks. With inflation under control and no sign of an acceleration in global growth, there's little chance they'll start turning off the easy money tap any time soon. |
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Jeanne Sahadi
CNN 2013-05-28 17:00:00
The IRS has a big target on its back these days. Its leaders have been pummeled on Capitol Hill over inappropriate targeting of Tea Party groups applying for tax-exempt status. And some Republicans say they want the IRS to stop issuing and enforcing rules related to Obamacare at least until a federal investigation of the case is over. Republicans have tried repeatedly to repeal the Affordable Care Act. And it's unclear whether the IRS scandal will let them slow-walk the law's implementation. Regardless, the push adds to the pressure the IRS is under to help ensure that the law's implementation will not be a "train wreck," as some have contended it could be. This much is known for sure: The IRS is charged with playing a key role in implementing health reform. |
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BBC
2013-05-28 16:56:00
The African Union (AU) has accused the International Criminal Court (ICC) of "hunting" Africans because of their race. It was opposed to the ICC trying Kenya's President Uhuru Kenyatta on charges of crimes against humanity, said Ethiopia's Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn. The AU would raise its concerns with the UN, he added. Mr Kenyatta, who was elected in March, is due to be tried in July. He denies the charges, which arise from accusations that he fuelled violence after disputed elections in 2007. |
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Associated Press
2013-05-27 16:48:00
Saudi Arabia's king has converted the national guard command into the National Guard Ministry and appointed his son Mitab, the commander of the guard, as National Guard Minister. The national guard serves as an elite force to protect the regime. A royal decree issued Monday gave no reasons for the move. It was not clear what changes this would make on the ground. |
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Michael Barone
National Review 2013-05-27 16:31:00
The president uses the overly broad and little-used WWI-era law to go after reporters. There is one problem with the entirely justified if self-interested media squawking about the Justice Department's snooping into the phone records of multiple Associated Press reporters and Fox News's James Rosen. The problem is that what the AP reporters and Rosen did arguably violates the letter of the law. The search warrant in the Rosen case cites Section 793(d) of Title 18 of the U.S. Code. Section 793(d) says that a person lawfully in possession of information that the government has classified as secret who turns it over to someone not lawfully entitled to posses it has committed a crime. That might cover Rosen's source. Section 793(g) is a conspiracy count that says that anyone who conspires to help the source do that has committed the same crime. That would be the reporter. It sounds as though this law criminalizes a lot of journalism. You might wonder how such a law ever got passed and why, for the last 90 years, it has very seldom produced prosecutions and investigations of journalists. |
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Dylan Byers
Politico 2013-05-24 16:13:00
Sharyl Attkisson has problems. The Obama administration won't answer the CBS News correspondent's questions because her investigations - into Benghazi, Fast and Furious, Solyndra - often reflect negatively on it. Some colleagues at CBS News, where she has worked for two decades and earned multiple Emmy awards, dismiss her work because they perceive a political agenda. And now, she says, someone may have hacked into her computers. Attkisson's one piece of solace may come from finally gaining some like-minded colleagues in the media. For years, Attkisson has been one of the few mainstream reporters pursuing critical stories about the Obama administration. Today, as "scandal season" takes hold in Washington, she has seen her longstanding skepticism of the White House and the Justice Department become the conventional attitude among a formerly deferential Beltway press corps. |
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Patrick Wintour
Guardian 2013-05-26 13:28:00
Home secretary outlines measures to prevent radicalisation of British Muslims, including pre-emptive censorship of jihadist sites A dramatic battery of measures to prevent radicalisation of British Muslims was outlined on Sunday by the home secretary, Theresa May, including tougher pre-emptive censorship of internet sites, a lower threshold for banning extremist groups and renewed pressure on universities and mosques to reject so-called hate preachers. May also signalled that she was prepared to do battle with Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister, over his veto of the communications data bill. After four days in which ministers have been praised in some quarters for avoiding a kneejerk response to the killing of soldier Lee Rigby outside his Woolwich barracks in south London, Whitehall swung into action. It has promised a new taskforce, chaired by the prime minister, and a root and branch review of Prevent, the government strategy to combat radicalisation. M15 will also deliver a preliminary report to the intelligence and security committee on how it failed to realise that Michael Adebolajo, one of the Woolwich suspects, represented a serious threat to national security, even though the services had been tracking him for years and at one point sought to recruit him. |
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Kim Willsher
LA Times 2013-05-26 13:24:00
French anti-terrorist investigators are hunting for a man who stabbed a soldier in the throat at a busy Paris shopping and transport center. Detectives are also examining whether there is a link between the attack and the killing of a British soldier who was hacked to death in London on Wednesday. The 23-year-old French soldier, Pfc. Cedric Cordier, was patrolling the busy underground corridors beneath the La Defense arch in the French capital's business district with two other soldiers when an attacker approached him from behind shortly before 6 p.m. on Saturday, authorities said. They said Cordier was stabbed in the neck with a knife or cutter that narrowly missed his carotid artery. The soldier, a member of the Gap 4th Rifle Regiment, was taken to a hospital, where doctors said his life was not in danger. The attacker, who fled into a nearby shopping center, was described as of North African appearance and around 30 years old. He was still being sought on Sunday. The area where the attack occurred adjoins the busy La Defense train station, and is monitored by video cameras run by the city transport network. Investigators are now going through footage from the cameras. French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, who visited Cordier in the hospital a few hours after Saturday's attack, said it was clear the victim was targeted because he was a soldier. Le Drian and Interior Minister Manuel Valls issued a joint statement condemning what they described as a "cowardly attack" on the soldier. |
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Arturo Garcia
Raw Story 2013-05-25 13:12:00
Protesters in more than 50 countries mobilized on Saturday for a series of demonstrations against agricultural business titan Monsanto, far surpassing the organizer's expectations, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. "If I had gotten 3,000 people to join me, I would have considered that a success," activist Tami Canal told the newspaper. Instead, she said the "March Against Monsanto," which originated as a call to action via Facebook on Feb. 28, drew about two million people to demonstrations in 436 cities in 52 countries. "It was empowering and inspiring to see so many people, from different walks of life, put aside their differences and come together today," Canal said to the Sun-Times. "We will continue until Monsanto complies with consumer demand. They are poisoning our children, poisoning our planet. If we don't act, who's going to?" Besides protesting the company's practice of making genetically-modifying seeds, protesters vowed to make their voices heard against the U.S. Senate after it rejected an amendment introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) that would have allowed states to require labels on foods made with modified ingredients. |
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Ian Traynor
The Guardian 2013-05-28 05:07:00
Europe's sanctions regime against Syria was plunged into uncertainty after Britain, backed by France, forced a lifting of the EU arms embargo on what it identifies as the moderate opposition to President Bashar al-Assad. Britain claimed victory in a long day of acrimonious negotiations, winning an easing of the arms embargo. The vast majority of EU states opposed the shift, but assented in order to preserve a semblance of unified policy. A meeting of EU foreign ministers descended into recrimination with a vast majority against lifting the arms embargo, but William Hague, the foreign secretary, blocked a compromise deal. Austria, the biggest opponent of the British aim, reacted bitterly, stating that the EU negotiations had collapsed and that the Europe-wide sanctions regime would collapse at midnight on Friday. Hague sounded satisfied, however, although others said 25 of 27 EU governments opposed the Anglo-French policy. | |
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Comment: Hawks, doves, whatever. All of these countries
have been funnelling weapons and mercenaries to Syria since the
conflict began. That is is how it has been sustained. It would have
ended as soon as it began if it weren't for Western dollars and weapons.
The EU giving way to the armaments industry is merely the conclusion of
a false debate to legitimise its 3-year-long proxy war against Syria.
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Dan Roberts
The Guardian 2013-05-28 04:55:00
Hawkish war veteran's meeting coincides with new French reports of chemical weapons use by regime forces Pressure on the White House to arm Syrian rebel groups is intensifying after a surprise visit by hawkish US senator John McCain and fresh reports of chemical weapons attacks. The Republican war veteran met rebel leaders inside Syria to discuss their calls for heavy weapons and a no-fly zone to help them topple President Bashar al-Assad and bring the bitter civil war to a conclusion. McCain's office confirmed to the Guardian that he had slipped into the country in recent days but declined to comment on the outcome of his talks with the rebel groups or whether it had hardened his views on arming them. The Arizona senator has been leading efforts in Congress in recent weeks to force Barack Obama to intervene in Syria following reports of alleged chemical weapons use by forces loyal to Assad. |
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Paul Cahalan and Jonathan Owen
The Independent 2013-05-26 00:00:00
Experts are trying to pre-empt terrorism by bombarding jihadist websites with alternative messages The major battle in the war against extremism is being fought over the internet by elite teams stationed behind keyboards and engaged in winning the hearts and minds of would-be terrorists. It is a sign of the increasing understanding that small-scale, unsophisticated attacks such as the one in Woolwich are a growing threat: the Government, police and other agencies are involved in a propaganda war to counter extremism. An Independent on Sunday investigation has revealed that more than 2,000 websites promoting terrorism have been taken offline since 2010 by the Metropolitan Police's counter-terrorism internet referral unit. Experts are now bombarding extremist websites to create "counter-narrative" messages from survivors of terrorism. Former radicals also infiltrate forums to spread doubt and challenge the extremist rhetoric. Last night, Rob Wainwright, director of Europol, Europe's crime intelligence agency, described the threat as a "rising concern", with an estimated 8,000 websites "serving terrorists and their supporters". The Home Office, which has a unit that specialises in detecting patterns among social media, is focusing on countering extremist rhetoric online before any would-be attacker is radicalised. | |
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Comment: Actually this has been going on for some time,
they are just using the recent attacks to justify their actions and
convince everyone it is in their "best interests".
CIA media infiltration is real: From Operation Mockingbird to Pentagon social media trolls "Infocrafting" or Propaganda Online? USA Today journalists targeted by Pentagon sockpuppets |
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David Edwards
Tea party-backed Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) on Sunday warned President Barack
Obama that he was in danger of "losing the moral authority to lead this
nation" because the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) unfairly scrutinized
the tax-exempt status of conservative groups.The Raw Story 2013-05-26 10:33:00 "I don't know if people were targeted for conservative religious values or just conservative political values, and sometimes there's an overlap," Paul told ABC's Martha Raddatz, adding that the IRS scandal, last year's terrorist attacks in Benghazi and the news that some journalists were investigated for national security leaks were all taking away from "the president's moral authority to lead the nation." "Nobody questions his legal authority," the Kentucky Republican explained. "But I think he's really losing the moral authority to lead this nation. And he really needs to put a stop to this." "If no one is fired over this, I really think it's going to be trouble for him trying lead in the next four years," Paul added. The president announced earlier this month, that Treasury Secretary Jack Lew had asked for and received a letter of resignation from Steven Miller, the IRS acting commissioner. |
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Comment: This is just the tip of the iceberg - Obama lost what little "moral authority" he had ages ago!
Memorial Day THIS Obama speech: 'Stop me before I kill again' Bradley Manning: A tale of liberty lost in America |
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| Society's Child |
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France 24
2013-05-28 17:03:00
Germany's railway operator plans to deploy mini drones to catch vandals who deface its trains with graffiti, with the aerial vehicles shooting thermal images of its train depots at night. Deutsche Bahn plans to soon start testing the vehicles which have four helicopter-style rotors and can shoot high-resolution pictures. "We are going to use this technology in problem areas, where taggers are most active," a spokesman who asked not to be named told AFP. |
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My Fox DC
A Prince William County man says he was suspected by Walmart security of
possibly kidnapping his three young daughters -- all because they
aren't the same race.2013-05-18 16:54:00
Joseph, who doesn't want his family's last name revealed, and his wife Keana are an interracial couple. They have been married for nearly 10 years and have three daughters: a 4-year-old and 2-year-old twins. On Thursday evening, Joseph took all three girls to the Walmart in Potomac Mills in Woodbridge to cash a check. He says they weren't there long, but spent a few extra minutes in the parking lot while he buckled the girls in and then made a phone call. Joseph says he then went to up his wife, Keana, and as they were arriving home, they were shocked to find a Prince William County police officer waiting for them. "He asks us very sincerely, 'Hey, I was sent here by Walmart security. I just need to make sure that the children that you have are your own,'" Joseph says. |
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Justin Fenton and Justin George
A CSX freight train derailed Tuesday afternoon in the Rosedale area,
damaging nearby buildings, shutting down US Route 40 and causing a loud
explosion that could be felt several miles away.Authorities in Baltimore
County said the 15-car train struck a commercial truck near the 7500
block of Lake Drive, veering off the tracks near an industrial park.
Initial reports were that no one was hurt, but County Executive Kevin
Kamenetz later said the driver of the trailer was extricated and taken
to Maryland Shock Trauma center in serious but stable condition.The
National Transportation Safety Board announced at around 4 p.m. that it
was sending a "go-team" that includes rail and hazmat investigators.The Baltimore Sun 2013-05-28 16:19:00
Baltimore County spokeswoman Elise Armacost said the train was carrying unknown chemicals but said the smoke did not include toxic inhalants. Still, a 20-block area around the accident was evacuated. "The evacuation would be much more significant if there were toxic chemicals," said Baltimore County Fire Chief John J. Hohman. He said he expected the fire to burn into the night, and firefighters were huddling with CSX officials about how best to attack the blaze. Only two people were aboard the train, and they were uninjured, Armacost said. MTA spokesman Terry Owens said the agency did not expect any disruption of service on the Penn Line between Baltimore and Perryville, which operates on Amtrak's Northeast Corridor. Minor delays were possible on the CSX-owned Camden Line between Washington and Baltimore's Camden Station, as CSX shuffles previously scheduled freight trains. |
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William M. Welch
usatoday.com 2013-05-28 11:35:00
Authorities say Marine from Camp Lejeune was killed and a sheriff wounded after a central Texas gunbattle with police ended a shooting spree that left one other person dead and five injured. The suspected gunman was identified as Esteban J. Smith, 23, who was stationed at the Marine Corps base in North Carolina, the Texas Department of Public Safety said in a statement Monday. He was declared dead following a shootout with authorities in Concho County, the department said. Master Sgt. Jonathan Cress at Camp Lejeune, said Monday that the Marine was wanted for questioning in a homicide in nearby Jacksonville, N.C. Concho County Sheriff Richard Doane was being treated for non-life threatening injuries at Shannon Medical Center in San Angelo, Texas, Department of Public Safety spokesman Tom Vinger said in a written statement. The events began around 4:30 a.m. Sunday when shots were fired on a vehicle in the Eden area, leaving a woman injured and hospitalized in San Angelo, the department said. She was reported to have suffered non-life threatening injuries. A short time later, two people were wounded when they were fired upon as they sat in their vehicle at a convenience store in Brady, in McCulloch County. They were treated and released. |
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NJ.com
Chinese firefighters have rescued a newborn boy from a sewer pipe below a
squat toilet, sawing out an L-shaped section and then delicately
dismantling it to free the cocooned baby, who greeted the rescuers with
cries.2013-05-28 09:37:00 A tenant heard the baby's sounds in the public restroom of a residential building in Zhejiang province in eastern China on Saturday and notified authorities, according to the state-run news site Zhejiang News. A video of the two-hour rescue that followed was broadcast widely on Chinese news programs and websites late Monday and Tuesday.
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Howard Zinn
The Progressive 2005-05-24 12:13:00
Another Memorial Day. Another war. Yes, let's honor those who died in the nation's many wars. But if we do not want to keep adding to the soldiers' graves, let's also ask why they died. We know our political leaders will speak solemnly to the nation while the flags are unfurled and the bugles blow, and they will say, as they always do, "They gave their lives for their country." And that is supposed to satisfy the families of the dead, supposed to satisfy all of us whose children and grandchildren may be called upon to serve in future wars. |
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Marisa Taylor
McClatchy Washington Bureau 2013-05-20 22:42:00
Washington - Police departments and federal agencies across the country are using a type of polygraph despite evidence of a technical problem that could label truthful people as liars or the guilty as innocent, McClatchy has found. As a result, innocent people might have been labeled criminal suspects, faced greater scrutiny while on probation or lost out on jobs. Or, just as alarming, spies and criminals may have escaped detection. The technical glitch produced errors in the computerized measurements of sweat in one of the most popular polygraphs, the LX4000. Although polygraphers first noticed the problem a decade ago, many government agencies hadn't known about the risk of inaccurate measurements until McClatchy recently raised questions about it. The manufacturer, Lafayette Instrument Co. Inc., described the phenomenon as "occasional" and "minor," but it couldn't say exactly how often it occurs. Even after one federal agency became concerned and stopped using the measurement and a veteran polygrapher at another witnessed it repeatedly change test results, the extent and the source of the problem weren't independently studied nor openly debated. In the meantime, tens of thousands of Americans were polygraphed on the LX4000. The controversy casts new doubt on the reliability and usefulness of polygraphs, which are popularly known as lie detectors and whose tests are banned for use as evidence by most U.S. courts. Scientists have long questioned whether polygraphers can accurately identify liars by interpreting measurements of blood pressure, sweat activity and respiration. But polygraphers themselves say they rely on the measurements to be accurate for their daily, high-stakes decisions about people's lives. |
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| Secret History |
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Joseph Castro
LiveScience 2013-05-28 07:24:00
A 2- to 3-year-old child from a Romano-Christian-period cemetery in Dakhleh Oasis, Egypt, shows evidence of physical child abuse, archaeologists have found. The child, who lived around 2,000 years ago, represents the earliest documented case of child abuse in the archaeological record, and the first case ever found in Egypt, researchers say. The Dakhleh Oasis is one of seven oases in Egypt's Western Desert. The site has seen continuous human occupation since the Neolithic period, making it the focus of several archaeological investigations, said lead researcher Sandra Wheeler, a bioarchaeologist at the University of Central Florida. Moreover, the cemeteries in the oasis allow scientists to take a unique look at the beginnings of Christianity in Egypt. In particular, the so-called Kellis 2 cemetery, which is located in the Dakhleh Oasis town of Kellis (southwest of Cairo), reflects Christian mortuary practices. For example, "instead of having children in different places, everyone is put in one place, which is an unusual practice at this time," Wheeler told LiveScience. Dating methods using radioactive carbon from skeletons suggest the cemetery was used between A.D. 50 and A.D. 450. When the researchers came across the abused toddler - labeled "Burial 519" - in Kellis 2, nothing seemed out of the ordinary at first. But when Wheeler's colleague Tosha Duprasbegan brushing the sand away, she noticed prominent fractures on the child's arms. "She thought, 'Whoa, this was weird,' and then she found another fracture on the collarbone," Wheeler said. "We have some other kids that show evidence of skeletal trauma, but this is the only one that had these really extreme fracture patterns." |
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| Science & Technology |
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BBC
2013-05-28 17:06:00
Plants that were frozen during the "Little Ice Age" centuries ago have been observed sprouting new growth, scientists say. Samples of 400-year-old plants known as bryophytes have flourished under laboratory conditions. Researchers say this back-from-the-dead trick has implications for how ecosystems recover from the planet's cyclic long periods of ice coverage. The findings appear in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. They come from a group from the University of Alberta, who were exploring an area around the Teardrop Glacier, high in the Canadian Arctic. The glaciers in the region have been receding at rates that have sharply accelerated since 2004, at about 3-4m per year. |
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Jim Edwards
Business insider/Yahoo Finance 2013-05-26 15:54:00
British police are arresting people in the middle of the night if they have made racist or anti-Muslim comments on Twitter following the murder of a soldier by two Muslims in Woolwich, London. Three men have so far been taken into custody for using Twitter and Facebook to criticize Muslims. In the Woolwich attack, Lee Rigby, a drummer in the Royal Regiment of Fusliers, was run down in a car and then hacked and stabbed to death by two men with knives and a cleaver. They told a man video recording the scene that it was vengeance for the killings of Muslims by the British Army. One man has been charged with "malicious communications" on Facebook, the Daily Mail reports. Two others have been arrested under the Public Order Act on suspicion of inciting racial or religious hatred. The police are now arresting people based on mere speech in social media, a detective said in a statement to the press: The men were arrested under the Public Order Act on suspicion of inciting racial or religious hatred. Our inquiries into these comments continue. |
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Shannon Hall
Universe Today 2013-05-28 13:47:00
What if we could journey to the outer edge of the Solar System - beyond the familiar rocky planets and the gas giants, past the orbits of asteroids and comets - one thousand times further still - to the spherical shell of icy particles that enshrouds the Solar System. This shell, more commonly known as the Oort cloud, is believed to be a remnant of the early Solar System. Imagine what astronomers could learn about the early Solar System by sending a probe to the Oort cloud! Unfortunately 1-2 light years is more than a little beyond our reach. But we're not entirely out of luck. 2010 WG9 - a trans-Neptunian object - is actually an Oort Cloud object in disguise. It has been kicked out of its orbit, and is heading closer towards us so we can get an unprecedented look. But it gets even better! 2010 WG9 won't get close to the Sun, meaning that its icy surface will remain well-preserved. Dr. David Rabinowitz, lead author of a paper about the ongoing observations of this object told Universe Today, "This is one of the Holy Grails of Planetary Science - to observe an unaltered planetesimal left over from the time of Solar System formation." |
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| Earth Changes |
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Press TV
Seven people have died in a landslide on a road in Mexico's central
state of Hidalgo, the federal police say. The deadly incident took place
on Sunday, burying a number of cars under mud and trees. Local
residents of the nearby town of Tepeji del Rio warned officials that
they had noticed the land above the road appeared to be unstable.2013-05-28 16:55:00
Hidalgo governor Jose Francisco Olvera said that the deaths could have been prevented, although assessing the state of the hill when the warning was made would have been difficult because of heavy rainfall. Tepeji del Rio residents say a hailstorm on May 26 also caused at least 22 cars to be dragged into a canyon. Officials say the hailstorm in Tepeji del Rio caused the deadly landslide late Sunday. |
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Ed Payne and AnneClaire Stapleton
CNN 2013-05-28 16:52:00
Crews in Southern California struggled to get the upper hand on a fast-moving wildfire in Santa Barbara County early Tuesday. Known as the White Fire, the blaze had already charred some 1,000 acres after getting its start Monday afternoon, U.S. Forest Service spokesman Andrew Madsen said. The flames were 5% contained. The Forest Service expects to have 700 personnel in place Tuesday morning. |
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Michael Fitzgerald
Dalton Daily Citizen 2013-05-27 16:46:00
It's a bleak scenario. 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. 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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Sam Nelson
Rain over the weekend and this week will drag out late season plantings of corn and soybeans in the United States that are already at a historically slow pace, an agricultural meteorologist said on Tuesday.Reuters 2013-05-28 16:00:00 John Dee, meteorologist for Global Weather Monitoring said from 1.0 to 3.0 inches or more of rain fell over the weekend in the central Midwest and 0.5 inch to 1.5 inches is expected at midweek in the northern Midwest. "The only planting that will take place will be in the southern two-thirds of Illinois, Indiana and Ohio the next couple of days," he said. "If it were all planted this would be perfect, there was pretty good planting progress last week but not like the week before." Farmers have been scrambling to plant corn and soybeans through mid and late May in an attempt to catch up from weather delays in April and early May. In its weekly crop progress report released on May 20, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said corn planting was 71 percent complete, up from 28 percent a week ago but still behind the 79 percent five-year average seeding pace. USDA has projected U.S. 2013 corn plantings at 97.3 million acres, the largest land area devoted to its production since the 1930s. Soybean planting progress rose to 24 percent from 6 percent a week earlier, USDA said. USDA will release updated planting data in its weekly crop progress report late on Tuesday. |
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youtube.com
2013-05-17 15:29:00
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CBS New York
2013-05-25 13:18:00
Business Owners On Jersey Shore, Coney Island Curse Mother Nature Memorial Day weekend it may be, but it might as well be mid-March for New Yorkers who stepped outside Saturday. The Jersey Shore has technically reopened for the start of the season for the first time since Superstorm Sandy, but not too many people were heading to the shore on Saturday, 1010 WINS' John Montone reported. Gale force winds were blowing in from the west and chopping up the bay, Montone reported. |
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Aljazeera
Flooding has forced hundreds of people to evacuate from their homes in eastern Norway.2013-05-24 09:34:00 The weather has been unsettled across the region over recent weeks, and in just the last couple of days the rain has turned very heavy. Lillehammer reported 64mm of rain on Wednesday, which is more than is expected in the entire month. Melting snow has also added to the problems. On 18 and 19 May, the temperatures in Lillehammer soared to 29C. In the surrounding mountains, this sudden rise in temperature caused the snow to suddenly melt.
As the water poured down the mountainside, some of the rivers burst their banks. One of the worst hit towns was Kvam, which is situated along the Gudbrandsdalslagen River. Diggers were being used to try and alter the path of the flood water, but work had to be abandoned because the conditions became too hazardous. 250 people had to be evacuated from the town. |
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P Gosselin
The recent weather in Germany indicates everything but global warming
and widespread drought, which climate experts have been telling us would
be the case unless we stopped burning fossil fuels fast.NoTricksZone 2013-05-27 19:06:00
Today the online Augsburger Allgemeine reports that the statistics for the 2013 German meteorological spring (March-April-May) have been 95% tabulated and show that this year's German spring is the "coldest in in decades". The Chiemgau24 news site reports that it is the coldest spring in 40 years. This past weekend, snow even fell in parts of Germany at elevations down to 600 meters. No reasons are cited as to why the spring 2013 is so cold. The Arctic is covered with ice and so it can't be an exposed Arctic sea disrupting atmospheric patterns. |
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Michael Snyder
Economic Collapse Blog 2013-05-23 00:00:00
What is life going to look like as our precious water resources become increasingly strained and the western half of the United States becomes bone dry? Scientists tell us that the 20th century was the wettest century in the western half of the country in 1000 years, and now things appear to be reverting to their normal historical patterns. But we have built teeming cities in the desert such as Phoenix and Las Vegas that support millions of people. Cities all over the Southwest continue to grow even as the Colorado River, Lake Mead and the High Plains Aquifer system run dry. So what are we going to do when there isn't enough water to irrigate our crops or run through our water systems? Already we are seeing some ominous signs that Dust Bowl conditions are starting to return to the region. In the past couple of years we have seen giant dust storms known as "haboobs" roll through Phoenix, and 6 of the 10 worst years for wildfires ever recorded in the United States have all come since the year 2000. In fact, according to the Los Angeles Times, "the average number of fires larger than 1,000 acres in a year has nearly quadrupled in Arizona and Idaho and has doubled in every other Western state" since the 1970s. But scientists are warning that they expect the western United States to become much drier than it is now. What will the western half of the country look like once that happens? |
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