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Niall Bradley
Sott.net 2013-07-20 12:53:00
I don't mean to put a damper on the everyone's summer holidays, but the current heatwaves in the U.S. and Europe has me thinking back to numerous warnings issued during last summer's major drought and "record-breaking heatwave" in the U.S. Analysts at Rabobank, a Netherlands-based bank specialising in food and agri-business financing, were crunching the numbers and predicted at the time that food prices, specifically meat prices, would soar in 2013 as a result of the U.S. drought. Back in 2011, the New England Complex Systems Institute (NECSI), a research body of academics from Harvard and MIT, using data from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization's (FAO) Food Price Index, published a paper that correlated "outbreaks of unrest" in 2008 and 2011 with increases in food prices. They claimed to have identified the precise threshold for global food prices that leads to worldwide unrest: 210 points... | |
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Kristan T. Harris
Cudahy Now 2013-07-21 12:51:00
Say goodbye to your coins in your ash tray, the stuff in your trunk and anything else that might be left in your vehicle. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) will now access your vehicle using keys stored by valet attendants. Not all vehicles are checked however, only the ones in valet parking.The logic behind this is that it is conditioning to get you use to warrant-less searches. Violating your liberties to make sure there are no explosives in your car and make sure the local structure is safe. This violating procedure comes without any warning or provides any information. Airports already have a huge amount of theft do to baggage checks. Now a criminal can help themselves to any thing you may have kept in your vehicle. A corrupt or ambivalent person could mess up something with your car as an engine check is part of the 3 point check. Leave the hood of your car unlatched and cause an accident! This is a law suit waiting to happen. This is 100% conditioning for us to accept warrant-less check points. This is a complete melt down of our constitution and shows that we are getting ready for tyranny at a national scale. | |
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Investment Watch
20 Firetrucks, 4+ ambulance and police showed up2013-07-21 19:16:00 There is zero media coverage about this beside Stopmotions stream of the event and a few locals tweeting about it This is supposedly where JP Morgan keeps their gold. The very same gold that has been dwindling down at astonishing rates lately. JP Morgan warehouse 100 feet below CMP 1 on Wall Street. Tons of Fire Trucks and even Ambulances on the scene. |
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James O'Shea
IrishCentral.com 2013-07-21 15:52:00
An FBI agent gave Whitey Bulger 40 pounds of plastic explosives most of which was sent to the IRA a key witness in the Whitey Bulger trial has stated. Steve Flemmi is the prosecution key witness already serving life without parole who says he accompanies Bulger on most of his murder sprees, including the strangling of Flemini's own girlfriend, Debra Davies, because she knew the two men were FBI informers. On Friday Flemmi testifies that in the 1980s, FBI agent John Newton gave him and Bulger a case of C-4 explosives to send to the IRA. "It was a surprise when we got it," Flemmi old the court adding that he believed that Newton, who was a former Green Beret, got the plastic explosives while in military training. Newton had the explosives in his South Boston home and arranged for the two gangsters to come and pick it up. Newton has denied the accusation. Links to the IRA have surfaced in the trial. Bulger was very close to senior IRA figure Joe Cahill, meeting him frequently in Boston after he smuggled him across the border from Canada on a supporters bus when the Boston Bruins hockey team were playing a Canadian side. Bulger idolized Cahill according to Kevin Cullen and Shelley Murphy two Boston Globe writers who have written a definitive book on Bulger called "Whitey Bulger". | |
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Dr. David Halpin
Global Research 2003-07-17 00:00:00
A bearded man of avuncular appearance had started early in replying to e-mails on the 17th July 2003. He was in the office of his pretty cottage, with the scent of roses telling of an English summer. The little village of Southmoor was stirring. He was to send over 80 via one of five hard drives and mostly in reply. Some would be encrypted because he was writing to friends and colleagues who like him shared secrets in the field of "WMDs". And some would be human and ordinary as from a father of three daughters. He had delighted in seeing a new born foal and arranged to take his daughter Rachel down the village that Thursday evening to see young life together. Many of the e-mails in his inbox were from friends expressing sympathy for his having been put through the mangle of the state machine; his responses were hopeful. In one he spoke of arrangements having been made for his return to Iraq in 8 days; he was looking forward to that. This man from the Welsh Valleys graduated with his DSc in microbiology from Linacre College, Oxford in 1971. He joined the Civil Service in 1984 and was acting head of the Porton Down 'Defence' Microbiology Division for 10 years. These functions on Salisbury Plain widened (1) | |
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Malcom Moore, Daily Telegraph
The Vancouver Sun 2013-07-21 11:07:00
Whistleblower posted photos of luxury cars of officials, including several memebers of one prominent family
BEIJING - A Chinese whistleblower who spent his free time embarrassing Communist party officials by posting pictures of their luxury cars on the Internet has been blinded with acid and had two of his fingers hacked off. Li Jianxin, 47, is in hospital after being recently attacked. His car was rammed from behind and he was allegedly taken by three men to a remote industrial park in the southern city of Huizhou, where they doused him with acid and hacked at him with knives. A woman from a worker's dormitory nearby found Li lying on the ground in a pool of blood and his six-year-old son wailing in his car. Li had posted dozens of reports of corruption on a popular local Internet forum. | |
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The Doc
UPDATE: FDNY tweet confirms fire is in a commercial vault at JPMs old HQ of 15 Broad St.Silverdoctors.com 2013-07-21 00:00:00 A journalist on scene on Wall Street this evening has just sent us footage of a massive fleet of Firetrucks and ambulances in front of the JP Morgan Chase building, with fire-fighters stating they are responding to a COMMERCIAL VAULT FIRE IN THE BASEMENT! With JPM's gold inventory plunging 66% Friday to an all-time low of 46,000 ounces, and with reportedly over 502,000 ounces still standing against JPM for the JUNE gold contract, is the long anticipated force-majeure event in progress? |
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The Guardian
2013-07-21 08:19:00
Senator asks 'have we gone mad?' after US planes jettison four unarmed bombs in training exercise gone wrong. Two American fighter jets dropped four unarmed bombs into Australia's Great Barrier Reef Marine Park last week, when a training exercise went wrong, the US Navy said, angering environmentalists. The two AV-8B Harrier jets, launched from the aircraft carrier USS Bonhomme Richard, each jettisoned an inert practice bomb and an unarmed laser-guided explosive bomb into the World Heritage-listed marine park off the coast of Queensland state on Tuesday, the US 7th Fleet said in a statement on Saturday. The four bombs, weighing a total 1.8 metric tons (4,000 pounds), were dropped into more than 50 meters (164ft) of water, away from coral, to minimize possible damage to the reef, the statement said. None exploded. The jets, from the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit, had intended to drop the ordnances on the Townshend Island bombing range, but aborted the mission when controllers reported the area was not clear of hazards. The pilots conducted the emergency jettison because they were low on fuel and could not land with their bomb load, the Navy said. The emergency happened on the second day of the biennial joint training exercise Talisman Saber, which brings together 28,000 US and Australian military personnel over three weeks. The US Navy and Marine Corps were working with Australian authorities to investigate the incident, the Navy said. | |
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RIA Novosti
2013-07-21 07:40:00
At least 46 people were killed and over 150 wounded after a series of blasts that ripped through commercial streets of Baghdad on Saturday late night, Al Jazeera reported. All blasts were caused by explosive-laden cars that were timed to go off after the breaking of daily Ramadan fest, when many people were outside in the commercial streets relaxing in coffee shops or shopping. | |
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Emma Pullman and Martin Lukacs
The Star 2013-07-19 21:38:00
Oil spills at an oil sands operation in Cold Lake, Alberta have been going on for weeks with no end in sight, according to a government scientist. Oil spills at a major oil sands operation in Alberta have been ongoing for at least six weeks and have cast doubts on the safety of underground extraction methods, according to documents obtained by the Star and a government scientist who has been on site. Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. has been unable to stop an underground oil blowout that has killed numerous animals and contaminated a lake, forest, and muskeg at its operations in Cold Lake, Alta. The documents indicate that, since cleanup started in May, some 26,000 barrels of bitumen mixed with surface water have been removed, including more than 4,500 barrels of bitumen. | |
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Josh Voorhees
Source 2013-07-20 13:40:00
We're still waiting for the FBI to finish its internal investigation into exactly what happened in an Orlando apartment last month, when an FBI agent shot and killed Ibragim Todashev, a Chechan man who knew Boston bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev. Since the shooting, unnamed officials have painted a number of different pictures of the scene in the room in the moments before the agent opened fire. Among them, that Todashev was unarmed, that he was brandishing a knife, and that he was carrying a pipe or maybe a broomstick. For all the current uncertainty surrounding exactly what led the agent to shoot and kill Todashev, the bureau's next step appears almost a foregone conclusion: Based on recent history, the FBI's final report is all but certain to conclude that the shooting was justified. The New York Times with the agency's eye-raising track record: Depending on how you read those numbers - more than 150 shootings that wounded or killed a subject in the past 20 years, all justified; 284 deliberate shootings in all, 279 justified - that's either an extraordinary track record, or an unbelievable one. Regardless, it raises some obvious red flags about the fairness and validity of those internal reviews. Perhaps as troubling, as the Times explains, is that in most of those cases the FBI internal investigation was the only inquiry into the shooting, as it currently is in the Orlando incident. | |
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Mark H Gaffney
During a recent interview on Democracy Now, Noam Chomsky stated that he believes Osama bin Laden was probably behind the attacks of September 11, 2001.i The statement was curious because in earlier interviews Chomsky described the evidence against bin Laden as thin to nonexistent,ii which was accurate and, no doubt, explains why the US Department of Justice never indicted bin Laden for the 9/11 attacks.Information Clearing House 2013-07-19 09:12:00 Nor has any new evidence against bin Laden come to light; on the contrary. A compelling body of evidence now points in a very different direction, toward the unthinkable. Three years ago (in July 2010) I attempted to engage Professor Chomsky in a conversation about this new evidence. Chomsky, however, showed no interest in the subject. After responding in a way that can only be described as incomprehensible, Chomsky repeated what he had stated in an earlier email: that skeptics of the official story should pursue the usual pathways to advance their ideas. In other words, they should publish their work. |
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The Daily Mail, UK
Reports of explosion in Terminal 3 at busy airport in Chinese capital2013-07-20 08:12:00 Pictures posted online show man in wheelchair brandishing an object Believed to be a packet of gunpowder used to make firecrackers Another photo shows a wheelchair on its side in smoke-filled terminal State media says man was hospitalised and nobody else injured A man in a wheelchair set off a home-made bomb in the arrivals hall at Beijing Airport today. The man was initially suspected to to have died in the blast in Terminal 3 at around 6.24pm local time, but Chinese state media has now said he survived and was taken to hospital. A photograph emerged online in the wake of the explosion showing a man in a wheelchair brandishing something in the air, along with another showing an empty wheelchair on its side in the smoke-filled arrivals hall.
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Bill Bigelow
zinnedproject.org 2013-07-20 06:40:00
Howard Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States, one of the country's most widely read history books, died on January 27, 2010. Shortly after, then-Governor of Indiana Mitch Daniels got on his computer and fired off an email to the state's top education officials: "This terrible anti-American academic has finally passed away." But Gov. Daniels, now president of Purdue University, was not content merely to celebrate Howard Zinn's passing. He demanded that Zinn's work be hunted down in Indiana schools and suppressed: "The obits and commentaries mentioned his book 'A People's History of the United States' is the 'textbook of choice in high schools and colleges around the country.' It is a truly execrable, anti-factual piece of disinformation that misstates American history on every page. Can someone assure me that is not in use anywhere in Indiana? If it is, how do we get rid of it before more young people are force-fed a totally false version of our history?" | |
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Dave Dean
Vice.com 2013-07-18 00:00:00
In the early 1990s an affiliation of Cochrane, Kapuskasing and James Bay's OPP detectives were assigned to investigate one of the largest claims of sexual and physical abuse against children in Canadian history. The testimony they amassed by talking to hundreds of survivors of St. Anne's Residential School in Fort Albany Ontario was horrifying. Residential Schools were a form of genocide - and the OPP's special investigation into St. Anne's provided 7,000 pages of stories that wouldn't be out of place in memoirs of concentration camp survivors, or of individuals trapped in a country where ethnic cleansing is a government policy. The accounts of physical and sexual abuse are brutal and numerous - hetero and homosexual child rape, children being stropped and beaten with rudimentary whips, forced ingestion of noxious substances (rotten porridge that children would throw up, then subsequently be forced to eat), sexual fondling, and forced masturbation... the list goes on and on. But one of the most appalling and debasing examples of the indignity and the abuse suffered by children at St. Anne's is that of being strapped down and tortured in a homemade electric chair - sometimes as a form of punishment - but other times just as a form the amusement for the missionaries, who, while committing these acts, were supposedly the ones "civilizing" the "Indians". | |
Comment: This was not limited to St. Anne's in Ontario. It took place across Canada over several centuries.
Further reading: (Rev.) Kevin Annett, The Untold Story of the Genocide of Aboriginal Peoples by Church and State in Canada. Political Ponerology by Andrew Lobaczewski, for understanding the mindset of those who could and do commit these acts, as well as the governments or corporate organisations they operate in. | |
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Alan Berlow
The Atlantic 2003-07-19 22:20:00
As the legal counsel to Texas Governor George W. Bush, Alberto R. Gonzales - now the White House counsel, and widely regarded as a likely future Supreme Court nominee - prepared fifty-seven confidential death-penalty memoranda for Bush's review. Never before discussed publicly, the memoranda suggest that Gonzales repeatedly failed to apprise Bush of some of the most salient issues in the cases at hand On the morning of May 6, 1997, Governor George W. Bush signed his name to a confidential three-page memorandum from his legal counsel, Alberto R. Gonzales, and placed a bold black check mark next to a single word: DENY. It was the twenty-ninth time a death-row inmate's plea for clemency had been denied in the twenty-eight months since Bush had been sworn in. In this case Bush's signature led, shortly after 6:00 P.M. on the very same day, to the execution of Terry Washington, a mentally retarded thirty-three-year-old man with the communication skills of a seven-year-old. Washington's death was barely noted by the media, and the governor's office issued no statement about it. But the execution and the three-page memo that sealed Washington's fate - along with dozens of similar memoranda prepared for Bush - speak volumes about the way the clemency process was approached both by Bush and by Gonzales, the man most often mentioned as the President's choice for the next available seat on the Supreme Court. During Bush's six years as governor 150 men and two women were executed in Texas - a record unmatched by any other governor in modern American history. Each time a person was sentenced to death, Bush received from his legal counsel a document summarizing the facts of the case, usually on the morning of the day scheduled for the execution, and was then briefed on those facts by his counsel; based on this information Bush allowed the execution to proceed in all cases but one. The first fifty-seven of these summaries were prepared by Gonzales, a Harvard-educated lawyer who went on to become the Texas secretary of state and a justice on the Texas supreme court. He is now the White House counsel. | |
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| Society's Child |
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TheDenverChannel
2013-07-18 23:28:00
A small biotech company earned global acclaim when it announced it had produced the world's first scientifically proven hypoallergenic cat. But while it seemed like a godsend to feline fanatics with allergies, an ABC's The Lookout investigation explored allegations that company's cats are no more hypoallergenic than other cats. In 2006, Allerca: Lifestyle Pets , aimed to fill the niche for pet lovers plagued by allergies and touted what it billed as the world's first scientifically proven, hypoallergenic cat, ABC News reported. Despite price tags ranging from nearly $4,000 to $28,000, Allerca had year-long wait lists for its felines. However, experts and several customers contested the company's claims the cats were hypoallergenic and claims of Simon Brodie, the founder of Allerca. Other customers complained that they paid thousands for an Allerca cat that they never received. Scientists have concluded that the main reason cats can trigger allergic reactions is a protein found in their saliva and skin called Fel d1. Allerca's website acknowledged that fact but said its cats had a naturally-occurring mutation, adding that its kittens "do continue to express Fel d1, (the known allergen that is present in saliva, fur, dander etc.) but at a different molecular weight. In human exposure tests, and with further feedback from our clients ... this molecular weight does not trigger allergies in the same way that 'normal' Fel d1 does. | |
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Matt Hamilton
Los Angeles Times 2013-07-17 19:40:00
Moises Meraz-Espinoza walked into the Huntington Park Police Department two years ago to report a crime: He had killed his mother. Officers went to the Maywood apartment that the then-18-year-old factory worker shared with his mother, Amelia Espinoza, 42, and found a gruesome scene. A trail of blood led to the bathroom, where plastic covered the walls and floor. There, they found an electrical circular saw with pieces of bone, blood and flesh stuck to the blade. Nearby, in a freezer, police found skin and muscles stored in plastic bags. The woman's skull, with all her teeth plucked out, her eyes removed and two upside-down crosses carved into the bone, was stashed in a backpack. Prosecutors say that Meraz-Espinoza strangled his mother and then skinned, filleted and dismembered her body as part of a satanic ritual. A Norwalk jury convicted him of first-degree murder in June. On Wednesday, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Thomas I. McKnew Jr. sentenced Meraz-Espinoza to 25 years to life in prison, saying that the slaying "certainly ranks up there at the top" of "the most disgusting, hideous and vulgar" cases he has seen during his 50 years in the legal profession. "I don't know what I can say to turn your life around, but you'll have a lot of time to think about it," McKnew said. | |
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David Batty
The Guardian 2013-07-20 08:41:00
Italian court sentences cruise liner employees for manslaughter and negligence over sinking of cruise liner off Giglio. An Italian court has convicted five people of manslaughter and negligence over the shipwreck of the Costa Concordia cruise liner that left 32 people dead. The court in the Tuscan town of Grosseto accepted plea bargains for the Costa Cruises employees on Saturday, handing the harshest sentence to the company's crisis co-ordinator, Roberto Ferranini, who will serve two years and 10 months in jail. The ship's hotel director was sentenced to two years and six months while two bridge officers and a helmsman got sentences ranging from 20 to 23 months. None are likely to go to jail as sentences under two years are suspended, and the longer sentences may be appealed or replaced with community service, judicial sources said. | |
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Ken Millstone
MSN News 2013-07-21 08:26:00
An unspecified emergency forced an American Airlines jet headed to Chicago from England to turn back and land in Ireland. All passengers are safe. An American Airlines flight bound for Chicago made an emergency landing in Shannon, Ireland, Friday after departing from Manchester, England. The Boeing 767 carrying 212 passengers experienced an unspecified emergency and landed safely. All 212 passengers have safely exited the plane. | |
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Jay Rayner
The Guardian 2013-07-21 07:58:00
Philip Clarke admits prices will rise as poll finds UK shoppers would pay more to back farmers Major food price rises are all but inevitable, the chief executive of Britain's biggest supermarket chain has admitted. Speaking exclusively to the Observer, Philip Clarke of Tesco, which was heavily implicated in the horsemeat scandal, said that rising global demand means the historic low prices to which British consumers have become used are now unsustainable. "Over the long run I think food prices and the proportion of income spent on food may well be going up," he said. "Because of growing demand it is going to change. It is the basic law of supply and demand." The admission comes as a new poll, commissioned by the Prince's Countryside Fund to mark National Countryside Week beginning tomorrow, reveals that a majority of British consumers would be prepared to pay more for food if they knew the extra was going to farmers rather than to supermarket shareholders. The YouGov poll also indicates that more than 80% of consumers think it is important to buy British produce where possible as a way of showing support for the nation's farmers. | |
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Jim Russell
About 5,700 customers in Ware and Hardwick lost power temporarily Saturday, after a control panel running a powerful circuit breaker at a substation failed, according to National Grid spokesman David Graves.Source 2013-07-20 07:32:00 The outage occurred at 11:20 a.m. Saturday, affecting 5,700 customers, Graves said in a telephone interview. Crews restored power to 4,200 residents by 1:20 p.m. and the rest by 2:30 p.m., he said. Baystate Mary Lane Hospital was one of the customers, but was protected by a generator. |
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Source
2013-07-21 06:55:00
Three people, including two British nationals, died after a private helicopter crash landed in the Murmansk Region in north Russia, the Emergencies Ministry reported on Sunday. Russia's aviation watchdog Rosaviatsia previously reported a Eurocopter-120 helicopter crashed during takeoff, falling on its side and killing three people on the ground. "As a result [of the accident], three people were killed, including two British citizens," the Emergencies Ministry said in a statement. The helicopter crashed 45 km (28 miles) from the settlement of Tumanny on the Kola Peninsula, the ministry said. | |
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RIA Novosti
2013-07-21 06:42:00
A court in the United States charged a woman from New York with fraudulently collecting nearly half a million dollars after she claimed to be a victim of the Boston marathon bombing, Boston.com reported. Audrea Gause, 26, collected $480,000 from One Fund Boston, the fund established to help bombing victims with a budget of over $64 million, after she claimed that she suffered a traumatic brain injury as a result of the terrorist attack. Police arrested her later after investigators established that she was not in Boston at the time of the tragic events and provided a false document verifying that she was admitted to a hospital in Boston. | |
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Gethin Chamberlain
The Guardian, UK 2013-07-20 16:37:00
When the trafficker came knocking on the door of Elaina Kujar's hut on a tea plantation at the north-eastern end of Assam, she had just got back from school. Elaina was 14 and wanted to be a nurse. Instead, she was about to lose four years of her life as a child slave. She sits on a low chair inside the hut, playing with her long dark hair as she recalls how her owner would sit next to her watching porn in the living room of his Delhi house, while she waited to sleep on the floor. "Then he raped me," she says, looking down at her hands, then out of the door. Outside, the monsoon rain is falling on the tin roof and against the mud-rendered bamboo strip walls, on which her parents have pinned a church calendar bearing the slogan The Lord is Good to All. Elaina was in that Delhi house for one reason: her parents, who picked the world-famous Assam tea on an estate in Lakhimpur district, were paid so little they could not afford to keep her. There are thousands like her, taken to Delhi from the tea plantations in the north-east Indian state by a trafficker, sold to an agent for as little as £45, sold on again to an employer for up to £650, then kept as slaves, raped, abused. It is a 21st-century slave trade. There are thought to be 100,000 girls as young as 12 under lock and key in Delhi alone: others are sold on to the Middle East and some are even thought to have reached the UK. Every tea plantation pays the same wages. Every leaf of every box of Assam tea sold by Tetley and Lipton and Twinings and the supermarket own brands - Asda, Waitrose, Tesco, Sainsbury's and the rest - is picked by workers who earn a basic 12p an hour. | |
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Ali Abunimah
The Eletronic Intifada 2013-07-19 14:23:00
Israeli soldiers had a "fun" time making what they called "Rachel Corrie pancakes." Photos of the event were posted on the Facebook page of the "Heritage House," a settlement in occupied East Jerusalem that houses so-called "lone soldiers," men recruited from overseas to join the Israeli occupation forces.
Above the photos of young men, some in Israeli army fatigues or apparently carrying guns, is the caption "Afternoon of 'rachel corrie' Pancakes and fun!" Rachel Corrie is the young American woman murdered by an Israeli soldier who crushed her to death with a bulldozer as she tried to prevent the demolition of a Palestinian family home in the occupied Gaza Strip on 16 March 2003. The depraved joke that these men were presumably making is a play on the English idiom "flat as a pancake." Their celebration and joking about Rachel Corrie's death is utterly vile and reflects the culture of dehumanization inculcated into Israeli soldiers. | ||
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Daniel Politi
The Slate 2013-07-20 13:30:00
A Norwegian woman was sentenced to 16 months in jail in Dubai after she reported she was raped. The charge? Having sex outside of marriage, drinking alcohol and perjury, reports the BBC. Marte Deborah Dalelv, a 24-year-old interior designer who has lived in Qatar since 2011 was on a business trip to Dubai in March when she claims a co-worker sexually assaulted her. She reportedly ran to the hotel lobby and asked the staff to call the police. They asked her if she was sure she wanted to involve the police. "Of course I want to call the police," she said, according to her account to the Associated Press. "That is the natural reaction where I am from." | |
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CBS News
2013-07-20 10:03:00
Veteran White House journalist Helen Thomas died early Saturday morning in Washington, D.C., CBS News confirms. She was 92 years old. A cousin of Thomas' confirmed her passing to CBS News White House correspondent Peter Maer. There are tentative plans for a funeral in her hometown of Detroit. Friends and relatives are also discussing a Washington remembrance at a future date. During a long career in Washington, Thomas covered every president since Dwight Eisenhower. She worked for 57 years for United Press International, where she eventually became White House bureau manager. Between 2000 and 2010, she was a columnist for Hearst Newspapers. An indefatigable presence in the White House briefing room, Thomas became a pioneer for female journalists. She was the first female member of the Gridiron Club and the first female president of the White House Correspondents' Association. As news of her death spread on Saturday, several prominent female journalists took to Twitter to hail Thomas as a groundbreaking figure. Despite her long career, Thomas became embroiled in controversy in 2010 when she was asked about her views on the State of Israel. An Arab American who was raised as a Christian, Thomas suggested Israel was "occupying" Palestine and that Israelis should "get the hell out." | |
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Lizzy Davies
The Guardian 2013-07-14 08:33:00
Roberto Calderoli is condemned after speech in which he also said Cécile Kyenge should work as minister 'in her country'. The Italian prime minister, Enrico Letta, has condemned as unacceptable comments made by a senior rightwing senator in which he suggested the country's first black government minister had "the features of an orangutan". Cécile Kyenge, an eye surgeon who was born in the Democratic Republic of the Congo but has Italian citizenship, has faced repeated racial slurs and threats since being appointed minister for integration by Letta in April. She was once again on the receiving end of grossly offensive comments on Saturday when Roberto Calderoli, a former minister under Silvio Berlusconi and senate vice-president of the Northern League, told a rally in the northern town of Treviglio that Kyenge would be better off working as a minister "in her country". According to the Corriere della Sera, which reported the event, he added: "I love animals - bears and wolves, as is known - but when I see the pictures of Kyenge I cannot but think of the features of an orangutan, even if I'm not saying she is one." The remark provoked horror from the rest of the Italian political class, especially in Kyenge's centre-left Democratic party. In a statement, Letta said the remarks were unacceptable. "Full solidarity and support to Cécile," he added. Asked about the comments, Kyenge said it was not up to her to call on Calderoli to resign, but hoped all politicians would "reflect on their use of communication". "I do not take Calderoli's words as a personal insult but they sadden me because of the image they give of Italy," she told the Ansa news agency. | |
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Lizzy Davies
The Guardian 2013-06-25 08:08:00
Former Italian prime minister given seven-year jail term and banned from public office for life at Milan court. After more than 26 months, 50 court hearings and countless breathless column inches from journalists worldwide, it took just four minutes for the sentence that Silvio Berlusconi had feared to be delivered. At 5.19pm, before a fascist-era sculpture showing two men struck down by a towering figure, the judges swept into the courtroom and pronounced their damning verdict for Italy's longest-serving postwar prime minister. By 5.23pm, it was all over. At the culmination of a trial that helped strike the final nail in the coffin of the playboy politician's international reputation, the judges found Berlusconi guilty both of paying for sex with the underage prostitute nicknamed Ruby Heartstealer and abusing his office to cover it up. They even went beyond the prosecutors' sentencing requests, ordering him to serve seven - rather than six - years in prison and face a lifetime ban on holding public office. Perhaps fittingly for a case that cast a spotlight on the murky nexus of sex and power that prosecutors argued was at the heart of his premiership - in which young women were procured, they said, "for the personal sexual satisfaction" of the billionaire septuagenarian - all three judges were female. | |
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Global Times
2013-07-20 06:28:00
The consumer prices of food and non-alcoholic drinks in the Czech Republic grew by 6.9 percent in 2012, which was the fastest growth among all European Union (EU) members, a report said on Friday. According to the report compiled by the Institute of Agricultural Economics and Information (UZEI), the growth was driven mainly by a growth of value added tax (VAT) rate on food from 10 to 14 percent, a 7 percent rise in prices of imported food, and a growth in commodity and energy prices. Prices of food and non-alcoholic drinks in the Czech increased more than 2.5 times compared with the average growth in the entire EU. "Beside a higher VAT and higher prices of agricultural commodities, food prices were also affected by a growth in imports of food from abroad, a growth in energy prices, inflation and then by retailers' higher margins above all on higher-quality food," said Food Chamber spokeswoman Jarmila Stolcova. | |
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| Secret History |
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David Dickinson
Universe Today 2013-07-19 19:22:00
July 20th is a red letter date in space history. Apollo 11, the first crewed landing on the Moon, took place on this day in 1969. Viking 1 also made the first successful landing on Mars, seven years later to the day in 1976. A remarkable astronomical event also occurred over the northeastern United States 153 years ago today on the night of July 20th, known as the Great Meteor Procession of 1860. And with it came a mystery of poetry, art and astronomy that was only recently solved in 2010. A meteor procession occurs when an incoming meteor breaks up upon reentry into our atmosphere at an oblique angle. The result can be a spectacular display, leaving a brilliant glowing train in its wake. Unlike early morning meteors that are more frequent and run into the Earth head-on as it plows along in its orbit, evening meteors are rarer and have to approach the Earth from behind. In contrast, these often leave slow and stately trains as they move across the evening sky, struggling to keep up with the Earth. | |
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Kayode Falade
National Mirror, Nigeria 2013-07-19 18:49:00
Nok village is located in Kaduna State. It is about 160 kilometres northeast of Baro. The Nok civilisation was discovered in 1943 due to tin mining that was happening in the area and earned its name due to the Nok civilisation that used to inhabit the area from around 500 BC. Mysteriously the people of the village vanished in about 200 AD. These people were known for their extremely advanced social system and were the earliest producers of life-sized Terracotta in the Sub-Sahara. Hugely historical, archaeologists have found human skeletons, stone tools and rock paintings around this area, not to mention the main act. The inhabitants of what is now called Nok Village, were known to make some of the oldest and culturally intriguing sculptures found in Africa. This led to discoveries that the ancient culture of Nok has been around for some 2500 years. When strolling through the village your senses will be delighted to rediscover an amazing group of people culturally and socially. Not much is known about the purposes of these popular sculptures but some theories have suggested they were used as charms to prevent crop failure, illness and infertility. | |
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| Science & Technology |
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Daniel Johnson
The Telegraph UK 2013-07-22 12:13:00
An analysis of data returned by the Curiosity rover, which landed on the planet a year ago, suggests there was a major upheaval which could have been caused by volcanic eruptions or a massive collision which stripped away the atmosphere. The rover has returned its first measurements of the makeup of gases, including argon, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide, in the Martian atmosphere. The results, published in two parallel studies in the journal Science, allow scientists to better understand how the Martian climate changed, and understand whether it ever had the right conditions for life. Dr Chris Webster at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, lead author on one of the studies, said the data enabled direct comparisons with the Earth's climate. "As Mars became a planet and its magma solidified, catastrophic outgassing occurred while volatiles were delivered by impact of comets and other small bodies", Dr Webster said. "Our Curiosity measurements are - for the first time - accurate enough to make direct comparisons with measurements done on Earth on meteorites using sophisticated large instrumentation that gives high accuracy results." | |
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Elizabeth Pennisi
ScienceNow 2013-07-21 13:30:00
Behind every great man, the saying goes, there's a great woman. And behind every sperm, there may be an X chromosome gene. In humans, the Y chromosome makes men, men, or so researchers have thought: It contains genes that are responsible for sex determination, male development, and male fertility. But now a team has discovered that X - "the female chromosome" - could also play a significant role in maleness. It contains scores of genes that are active only in tissue destined to become sperm. The finding shakes up our ideas about how sex chromosomes influence gender and also suggests that at least some parts of the X chromosome are playing an unexpectedly dynamic role in evolution. Each mammal has a pair of sex chromosomes. Females have two copies of the X chromosome, and males have one, along with a Y chromosome. The body needs only one active copy of the X chromosome, so in females, the second copy is disabled. Almost 50 years ago, a geneticist named Susumu Ohno proposed that this shutdown slowed the evolution of the X chromosome, and he predicted that its genes would be very similar across most mammals. David Page, a geneticist at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts, wanted to check if that was true between mice and humans, which are separated by 80 million years of evolution. Although the genomes of both species had already been decoded, there were gaps and mistakes in the DNA sequence of the human X chromosome that first needed to be filled in or fixed. Using a special sequencing technique that it developed, Page's research team determined the order of the DNA bases in those gaps - many contained multiple duplicated regions of DNA that were impossible to decipher with the technology available when the X chromosome was first sequenced. Then the researchers compared the genes in the mouse and human versions of the chromosome. | |
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Kerry Sheridan
Warfare was uncommon among hunter-gatherers, and killings among nomadic groups were often due to competition for women or interpersonal disputes, researchers in Finland said Thursday.newsdaily.com 2013-07-18 07:46:00 Their study in the US journal Science suggests that the origins of war were not -- as some have argued -- rooted in roving hunter-gather groups but rather in cultures that held land and livestock and knew how to farm for food. For clues on what life was like before colonial powers, missionaries and traders entered the scene, anthropologists examined a subset of records from a well-known database that contains information on 186 cultures around the world. Douglas Fry and Patrik Soderberg of Abo Akademi University in Vasa, Finland, chose to examine only the earliest existing records on those that had no horses and no permanent settlements, leaving them with 21 mobile foraging societies for analysis. "To be purists, we took only the oldest high-quality sources for each culture," Fry told the journal Science, adding that these studies would best showcase the people's traditional ways. The groups included the Montagnais people of Canada, the Andamanese people of India, the Botocudos of Brazil, and the !Kung people who live in isolated areas of Botswana, Angola and Namibia. |
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| Earth Changes |
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strangesounds.org
36,000 bees found dead in Niestetal (Germany) - HNA2013-07-22 14:05:00 Fipronil is held responsible for the mass death of honeybees. Mysterious Carp dead in Holter Reservoir (Montana) - KRTV
Hundreds of dead carp are floating in the popular reservoir on the Missouri River between Helena and Great Falls. Bruce Rich, the fisheries bureau chief for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, said they're investigating the reason behind the dead carp, but at this point he can only speculate on the cause of their demise. | |
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The Frontier Post, Pakistan
Sargodha (INP): Mysterious disease continues to killing cattle heads in different areas of Sargodha district. Highly perturbed over the death of their precious animals which are main source of their earnings, farmers have protested against the livestock department negligence.2013-07-22 13:52:00 According to details, three buffaloes worth more than seven lac rupees died of mysterious disease in Chak 32 of Southern Sargodha on Saturday. It should be mentioned that the disease which could not be detected by cattle owners and veterinary experts also has so far left dozens of cattle dead in various areas of the district. The cattle rearing people have started moving to other villages due to fear of the disease affecting their animals. The farmers have expressed grave concern over the criminal negligence of the livestock department officials in taking steps to control the spread of disease and treatment of affected animals. They demanded the authorities concerned for taking notice and financial assistance of the farmers who suffered losses due to deaths of cattle. |
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The Extinction Protocol
2013-07-22 12:08:00
Two powerful earthquakes have struck China's north-west Gansu province, killing at least 75 people and leaving more than 400 others injured. The first earthquake near Dingxi city had a magnitude of5.9 and was shallow, with a depth of just 9.8 km (6 miles), the US Geological Survey said. Just over an hour later, a magnitude 5.6 quake hit the same area, it added. In 2008, an earthquake in Sichuan province left up to 90,000 people dead and millions homeless. A factory worker in Minxian county told AFP that he felt "violent shaking" and "ran to the yard of the [factory] plant immediately. Our factory is only one floor. When I came to the yard, I saw an 18-storey building, the tallest in our county, shaking ferociously, especially the 18th floor," he said. The area has been hit by 371 aftershocks, according to the Earthquake Administration of Gansu province. Tremors were felt in the provincial capital, Lanzhou, and as far away as Xian, 400km (250 miles) to the east. At least 5,600 houses in the province's Zhangxian County are seriously damaged and 380 have collapsed, while some areas suffered from power cuts or mobile communications being disrupted, the earthquake administration added. "Many have been injured by collapsed houses," a doctor based in Minxian County was quoted by Reuters news agency as saying. "Many villagers have gone to local hospitals along the roads." The earthquake has caused a direct economic loss of 198 million Yuan ($32m; £21m), the Dingxi government said on its micro-blog. The closer to the surface an earthquake strikes, the more damage it can cause, our correspondent adds. The earthquake reportedly triggered a series of mudslides and landslides, making it difficult for rescuers to access some areas hit by the quake. The Gansu military police have deployed 500 soldiers, including 120 specialist rescuers, while 500 emergency tents and 2,000 quilts are also being transported to affected areas, Xinhua added. Officials from the civil affairs, transportation and earthquake departments were also visiting local towns to assess the damage, a statement on the Dingxi party website said. - BBC | |
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BBC News
2013-07-21 22:56:00
A powerful earthquake has hit China's north-west Gansu province, killing at least 11 people and seriously injuring at least 81 more, officials say. The earthquake near Dingxi city had a magnitude of 5.98 and was shallow with a depth of just 9.8 km (6 miles), according to the US Geological Survey. Dingxi local authorities say several houses have collapsed in the quake. In 2008, an earthquake in Sichuan province left up to 90,000 people dead and millions homeless. Officials from the civil affairs, transportation and earthquake departments are visiting local towns to assess the damage, a statement on the Dingxi party website said. Crews of fire fighters and rescue dogs have already arrived at the scene, the BBC's Celia Hatton in Beijing reports. The closer to the surface an earthquake strikes, the more damage it can cause, our correspondent adds. "You could see the chandeliers wobble and the windows vibrating and making noise, but there aren't any cracks in the walls," AFP quoted a clerk at Wuyang Hotel, about 40 km (25 miles) from the epicentre, as saying. "Shop assistants all poured out onto the streets when the shaking began," the clerk said. | |
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US Geological Survey
2013-07-21 13:30:00
Event Time 2013-07-21 05:09:31 UTC 2013-07-21 17:09:31 UTC+12:00 at epicenter Location 41.713°S 174.443°E depth=14.0km (8.7mi) Nearby Cities 46km (29mi) ESE of Blenheim, New Zealand 53km (33mi) SSW of Karori, New Zealand 54km (34mi) SSW of Wellington, New Zealand 67km (42mi) SW of Lower Hutt, New Zealand 72km (45mi) SSW of Porirua, New Zealand | |
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Marc Morano
Climate Depot 2013-07-19 04:45:00
Climate Depot Round Up of July 18, 2013 Senate Environment & Public Works Committee Global Warming Hearing: Analysis: 'Senate global warming hearing backfires on Democrats' - 'Skeptics & Roger Pielke Jr. totally dismantled warmism (scientifically, economically, rhetorically) at today's Senate hearing' (via JunkScience.com) 'Sen. Boxer's own experts contradict Obama on climate change' - During yesterday's Environment and Public Works hearings, Sen. David Vitter asked a panel of experts, including experts selected by Boxer, For several seconds, nobody said a word. Sitting just a few rows behind the expert witnesses, I thought I might have heard a few crickets chirping, but I couldn't tell for sure. We'll give Obama the benefit of the doubt and count the crickets in the "maybe" camp. After several seconds of deafening silence, global warming activist Heidi Cullen, who formerly served as a meteorologist for the Weather Channel, attempted to change the subject. Cullen said our focus should be on longer time periods rather than the 10-year period mentioned by Obama. When pressed, however, she contradicted Obama's central assertion and said warming has slowed, not accelerated. Several minutes later, Sen. Jeff Sessions returned to the topic and sought additional clarity. Sessions recited Obama's quote claiming accelerating global warming during the past 10 years and asked, Again, a prolonged and deafening silence ensued. Neither Cullen nor any of the other experts on the panel spoke a word, not even in an attempt to change the subject. | |
Comment: While it's good to see the Warmists get their comeuppance, the controlled opposition trying to convince us that everything is just peachy with the climate is itself completely oblivious to the Earth Changes our planet is going through.
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CTV
There was significant damage in the wake of a storm that blew through Lethbridge in southern Alberta on Wednesday night.2013-07-21 06:47:00
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Comment: This is the second time in one month that Lethbridge has been hit with a severe weather emergency!
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The Sydney Morning Herald
2013-07-21 06:28:00
A large 6.5 earthquake has hit central New Zealand, sending people diving for cover in the capital of Wellington. The quake was felt widely across the country. Geonet said it was centred in the Cook Strait, 20 kilometres east of Seddon at a depth of 17 kilometres. It struck at 5.09 pm (3.09pm AEST). It is the latest in a sequence of major earthquakes that have been hitting Wellington and wider areas around central New Zealand since Thursday. | |
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Alexandre Aguiar
"Our team had never seen so incisive cold weather to our region, nor the cold waves more intense in recent years."iceagenow.info 2013-07-20 05:33:00 NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmosphere) describes the cold wave that will reach the Southern Cone of America and Rio Grande do Sul as "extraordinary." MetSul Meteorology analysis says that the wave will bring polar temperature to atypical locations as far north as northern Bolivia and southern Peru as well as the Midwest of Brazil, Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais. According to NOAA, the flow of moisture from the sea will bring snow to coastal areas of Patagonia to southern Brazil, including the province of Buenos Aires and also in Uruguay. The report adds that heavy snow will hit much of Patagonia, reaching Viedma and Bahia Blanca with accumulated 10-15 centimeters. Should snowing, says NOAA, mostly in the province of Buenos Aires. In the area of ​​the River Plate and the southeastern Uruguay can be expected bumps of snow and snow mixed with rain (water nieve). |
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James Waterman
The cool weather that struck northeast British Columbia last week likely didn't please most Peace Region residents who saw July snow around Wonowon and Pink Mountain on Thursday, but fire crews managing wildfires in the northeast corner of the province were certainly happy with the low temperatures and precipitation.alaskahighwaynews.ca 2013-07-17 05:23:00 An information bulletin issued by the Prince George Fire Centre on Friday, July 12 stated the inclement weather had allowed the Wildfire Management Branch of the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations (FLNRO) to wrap up their response to several of the wildfires in the region, reducing the number of active fires in the Prince George Fire Centre to just four. Last week saw 16 new, small wildfires in the region, but the Fire Centre noted they didn't pose any risk to structures. Just one of those fires was the result of human activities. "We have had 123 fires and burned 2,136 hectares so far this year," said Dustin Eno, a fire information officer with the Prince George Fire Centre. The majority of that activity has been in the Fort Nelson Zone. "Last year at this time we had had 137 fires and burned 7,467 hectares," he added. |
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Jeffrey Folks
American Thinker 2013-07-18 04:34:00
Presumably, even among the ill-informed ideologues at the White House, there are a few who have heard of sunspots. There may even be one who knows, as most informed persons do, of the correlation between sunspot activity and the earth's climate. But apparently no one has bothered to inform the president. When sunspot activity is high, as it was during the 1990s and early 2000s, temperatures tend to be high as well. When it is low, as it is now, temperatures fall. And because sunspot activity occurs in decades-long cycles, the unusually cold winter and spring of 2012 may be just the beginning. As a Barron's article recently noted, current sunspot activity is now the least it has been in a century. What this means is that the era of global cooling has begun. In the northern hemisphere, three out of the four last winters and springs have been unusually cold. This spring was so cold in East Asia that China was forced to import millions of tons of grain and soybeans from the U.S. and other suppliers. | |
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CBC News
High winds blamed for death of a 21-year-old woman at Boucherville, Que., swimming pool.2013-07-19 16:59:00 High winds caused by storms that swept through parts of southern Ontario and Quebec are being blamed for the death of 21-year-old woman and the loss of power to hundreds of thousands of people in both provinces.
A 21-year-old woman died after she was struck by a falling tree branch at pool in Boucherville, Que., on Montreal's south shore. Two other people were hurt - a 6-year-old boy and a 40-year-old woman. By midnight, about 400,000 customers in Quebec were still without power in the wake of severe storms that passed through the province. High winds and falling tree branches are to blame for the outages, Louis Olivier Batty, a spokesperson with Hydro-Québec, said earlier Friday. | |
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Sam Cook
The Bemidji Pioneer 2013-07-17 15:20:00
Duluth -- Talk about tough luck. A bald eagle was found dead along the St. Louis River on Monday evening, ensnared in fishing line. That was its second unfortunate experience this year. The bird was one of the two eagles that were found with their talons entangled May 12 when they crashed to the tarmac at the Duluth International Airport. Mike Schrage, wildlife biologist for the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, said one of the band's conservation officers found the dead eagle Monday evening just south of the U.S. Highway 2 bridge over the St. Louis River near Brookston. "Judging from the condition of the carcass, it had been dead for two or three days," Schrage said. When Schrage received the bird, it was wearing a band on one leg. Schrage called the band number in to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Bird Banding Laboratory at Patuxent, Md. He confirmed the bird was one of the two that had been found at the airport in Duluth on May 12. The bird involved in the fishing-line incident had been treated at the Raptor Center in St. Paul, banded and released June 12 at the Carpenter Nature Center in Hastings, Minn. "It made a beeline back to where it had come from," Schrage said. | |
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Niu Shuping & Naveen Thukral
Reuters 2013-07-16 11:41:00
China's wheat crop has suffered more severely than previously thought from frost in the growing period and rain during the harvest, and import demand to compensate for the damage could see the country eclipse Egypt as the world's top buyer. Interviews with farmers and new estimates from analysts have revealed weather damage in China's northern grain belt could have made as much as 20 million metric tons (22.05 million tons) of the wheat crop, or 16 percent, unfit for human consumption. That would be double the volume previously reported as damaged. Higher imports, which have already been revised upwards on initial damage reports, will further shrink global supplies and support prices, fuelling new worries over global food security. The U.S. Department of Agriculture on Thursday raised its forecast for China's imports in 2013/14 to 8.5 million metric tons from 3.2 million metric tons in the previous year, prompting U.S. wheat prices to rally to more than two-week highs. | |
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Daniel Johnson, Rosa Silverman, and George Ryan
With wildfires spreading across the country and even some roads melting, the death toll from Britain's heatwave continues to rise. Source 2013-07-19 09:39:00
A 15-year-old boy is thought to have drowned in a river in the latest heatwave water death. The teenager was airlifted to hospital after the incident in Roe Valley Country Park near Limavady, Northern Ireland, yesterday afternoon, but died in hospital. It takes the death toll of water-related deaths to 14 since Britain's longest heatwave for seven years began. According to Public Health England, 650 people died in the hot weather from July 6 to July 14, with more deaths likely to have added to that tally in recent days. | |
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| Fire in the Sky |
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| Health & Wellness |
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Laudan Aron
slate.com 2013-07-21 17:16:00
In the wake of a startling report highlighting the United States' poor health compared with other wealthy nations, the report's director searches for answers. Americans die younger and experience more injury and illness than people in other rich nations, despite spending almost twice as much per person on health care. That was the startling conclusion of a major report released earlier this year by the U.S. National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine. It received widespread attention. The New York Times concluded: "It is now shockingly clear that poor health is a much broader and deeper problem than past studies have suggested."What it revealed was the extent of the United States' large and growing "health disadvantage," which shows up as higher rates of disease and injury from birth to age 75 for men and women, rich and poor, across all races and ethnicities. The comparison countries - Australia, Austria, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom - generally do much better, although the United Kingdom isn't far behind the United States. | |
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Sayer Ji
Greenmedinfo.com 2013-07-22 16:51:00
If Monsanto's Roundup herbicide were actually 'safer than table salt' as they once advertised, the consumption of GM food wouldn't be nearly as controversial. The truth, however, is that virtually all GM food today contains residues of this toxic chemical, which disproves that GM and non-GM foods are 'substantially equivalent," which is the primary doctrinal justification behind why GM foods are not properly safety tested and millions in this country eating them are living and breathing guinea pigs. There was a time when Monsanto claimed their patented herbicide Roundup was "safer than table salt" and "practically nontoxic," and aggressively marketed this message until 1996, when they were ordered by Dennis C. Vacco, the Attorney General of New York, to pull the ads.[1] Fast forward 15 years, after millions of farmers around the world bought into the false advertising and who, as a result, are now driving the production and use of several hundred million pounds of the chemical annually, Roundup herbicide is beginning to look eerily like Monsanto's Agent Orange 2.0. Indeed, within the scientific community and educated public alike, there is a growing awareness that Roundup herbicide, and its primary ingredient glyphosate, is actually a broad spectrum biocide, in the etymological sense of the word: "bio" (life) and "cide" (kill) - that is, it broadly, without discrimination kills living things, not just plants. Moreover, it does not rapidly biodegrade as widely claimed, and exceedingly small amounts of this chemical - in concentration ranges found in recently sampled rain, air, groundwater, and human urine samples - have DNA-damaging and cancer cell proliferation stimulating effects. | |
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Barbara Miller
It has long been regarded as a potentially troublesome, redundant organ, but American researchers say they have discovered the true function of the appendix.Political Blind Spot 2013-07-22 00:00:00
The researchers say it acts as a safe house for good bacteria, which can be used to effectively reboot the gut following a bout of dysentery or cholera. The conventional wisdom is that the small pouch protruding from the first part of the large intestine is redundant and many people have their appendix removed and appear none the worse for it. Scientists from the Duke University Medical Centre in North Carolina say following a severe bout of cholera or dysentery, which can purge the gut of bacteria essential for digestion, the reserve good bacteria emerge from the appendix to take up the role. | |
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Jennifer Kaplan
eatdrinkbetter.com 2013-07-16 13:13:00
I was thrilled to learn that in March of this year that the Organic Consumers Association has launched a nationwide campaign to "expose and eliminate the misleading practice of 'natural' labeling and marketing. Bogus 'Natural' Products The Organic Consumers Association, North America's leading watchdog over organic and fair trade standards, has launched a new nationwide campaign. The Organic Retail and Consumer Alliance (ORCA) was created to combat the problem of the meaningless 'natural' product label. The term 'natural' is the single most commonly used greenwash tactic (the Sin of Vagueness). NaturalNews.com points out that the term 'natural' can mean just about anything; it has no nutritional meaning and isn't truly regulated by the FDA. A wide assortment of products, ranging from Skinnygirl Cocktails to Frito Lay's SunChips to Wesson Oil, have been guilty of this marketing ploy. | |
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Dr. Michael Tick
Livingreenmag.com 2013-07-16 12:53:00
By now, you've probably seen buzzwords like "all natural," "hypoallergenic" and "patented" hundreds of times. But have you ever stopped to ask what they mean? Beauty companies love terms like these because they suggest concrete benefits that don't have to be backed up by science. In fact, as long as they don't claim to change the body's structure or function, companies don't need FDA approval to market new products to the public and are not required to provide any research to prove their claims. These days, one almost needs a degree in chemistry to understand some of the catch phrases on skin care products. Gone are the days when simple statements such as "oil free" would suffice. Perhaps the most common phrase is clinical formula. But this has no real meaning. It does not necessarily indicate that the formula was produced in a medical clinic, as the manufacturers would have people believe. Clinically tested could very well indicate that the product was tested, but what was it tested for? What were the results? Essentially, this marketing claim is meaningless. | |
Comment: Read more about The Chemicals In Your Cosmetics:
The High Price of Beauty New Study Finds Major Toxins in Many Cosmetics The Ugly Side of Beauty, Some Cosmetics Can Be Toxic Pretty Ugly: Cosmetics Ingredients Linked to Breast Cancer? Heavy Metals Found in Many Cosmetics: Not Listed on Labels The Danger of Toxic Consumer Products, Fragrances Revealed... the 515 Chemicals Women Put on their Bodies Every Day Consumer group analyzes beauty products containing endocrine disrupters | |
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HHV-6 Foundation
2013-07-08 07:01:00
Michael VanElzakker, a researcher affiliated with the Tufts University PTSD neuroimaging laboratory as well as the Massachusetts General Hospital Psychiatric Neuroscience division, has published a novel hypothesis on the possible etiology of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS). In the paper, published in Medical Hypotheses, VanElzakker suggests that CFS may be the result of a pathological infection of the vagus nerve. Although VanElzakker proposes that any neutoropic virus or bacteria could trigger CFS, HHV-6 is at the top of his list. For years, CFS researchers have been looking in plasma and blood cells for a pathogenic agent that causes the myriad of symptoms experienced by patients with the condition. However, according to VanElzakker, they may have been looking in the wrong place (plasma) and need to search instead in the tissues of the peripheral and central nervous system. During infection, the sensory vagus nerve sends a signal to the brain to initiate "sickness behavior," an involuntary response characterized by fatigue, fever, myalgia, depression, and other symptoms that are often observed in patients with CFS. However, VanElzakker proposes that when sensory vagal ganglia or paraganglia are themselves infected with any virus or bacteria, these symptoms would be exaggerated. He notes that many of the symptoms of sickness behavior (such as fatigue, sleep changes, myalgia, cognitive impairment, depression and zinc depletion) are also mediated by proinflammatory cytokines and observed in CFS. | |
Comment: Antiviral drugs are extremely toxic and full of side effects. There is nothing like stimulating and healing your vagus nerve naturally. For more information see our Éiriú Eolas program. Furthermore, if you want to learn how to deal with problematic viruses, see On viral 'junk' DNA, a DNA-enhancing Ketogenic diet, and cometary kicks.
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Pat Hagan
Mail Online 2013-07-19 06:49:00
Women who take statins for more than a decade face double the risk of contracting the most common type of breast cancer. Alarming findings raise new concerns over the long-term safety of a widely prescribed medicine in the UK. Previous studies have suggested the cholesterol-lowering drugs, used by an estimated eight million men and women, can reduce the risk of certain cancers - including the breast form of the disease. However, most research looked at patients who had only been on them for five years or less. The latest findings identified invasive ductal carcinoma (IDC) which starts in the ducts of the breast before spreading inwards. It accounts for around seven out of ten breast cancer cases. The experts at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre in Seattle, US, also found the chances of getting invasive lobular carcinoma, which accounts for ten to 15 per cent of breast cancers, went up almost 2.5 times in some women on statins long-term. Around 48,000 women in Britain are diagnosed with breast cancer each year, equal to around 130 a day. A woman has a one in nine chance of developing the disease at some point in her life. The reasons why the anti-cholesterol pills might stimulate cancer growth are unclear. The researchers said one explanation may be that statins affect hormone regulation in the body, especially as the study found women on the drugs were significantly more likely to suffer cancers driven by the hormone oestrogen. | |
Comment: The target of statin therapy - cholesterol - just happens to be vital to all membranes for their proper functioning and structure. We are making highly unstable and dysfunctional cell membranes with statin drugs and our restriction of animal fats, which then has a toll on our cell membrane's function. The past decade of research has exposed the importance of cholesterol rich membranes with fundamental implications for our brains, hormones and immune system.
Statins many potential side effects range from depression, confusion, memory problems, inability to concentrate, liver damage, increased risk of cancer, fatigue, impotence, kidney failure, rhabdomyolisis (destruction of muscle cells), shortness of breath, it hinders our bodies ability to fight microbes and so forth. Cholesterol levels that are below 150 mg/dL increase your risk for cancer, hormonal imbalances, depression, sexual dysfunction, memory loss, Parkinson's disease, stroke, suicide, and violent behavior. For more information see:
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Sarah Butler
The Guardian 2013-07-21 10:35:00
Price rise comes amid fears of bottled water shortages as thirsty Britons try to cope with temperatures soaring above 30C
Tesco has put up the price of its most affordable water and fizzy drinks amid a surge in sales as thirsty shoppers try to cool down during the hot spell. The UK's biggest supermarket raised the price of its two-litre bottles of Everyday Value water and cola by 41% to 24p last week, putting it well ahead of rivals Asda, Sainsbury's and Morrisons. "This is not a very smart move," said Neil Saunders, managing director of retail consultancy Conlumino. "I find it quite surprising that Tesco has moved its price when its competitors haven't. They will not only get angry customers, if they notice, but this makes Tesco less competitive when there is a price war on in grocery." The price rise came amid fears of bottled water shortages, with sales in overdrive as the nation tries to cope with temperatures soaring above 30C in parts of the country. | |
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Lema Samandar
Authorities are calling for more horses to be vaccinated against the deadly Hendra virus, with the first dog in NSW to be infected put down.The Sydney Morning Herald 2013-07-21 07:01:00 The incident follows the Hendra death of a horse from the same property on the mid-north coast near Macksville on July 4. NSW Chief Veterinary Officer Ian Roth said there have never been other species aside from humans and horses that had been affected by Hendra in the state. ''It's the first dog in NSW,'' Dr Roth said. |
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Jo Willey
A simple daily dose of the "sunshine vitamin" could be the key to keeping fit and active in old age. The Daily Express, UK 2013-07-18 07:54:00
Scientists have found that older people who are deficient in the vital vitamin D are more likely to struggle with everyday tasks. And the study found that as many as 90 per cent of older people are vitamin D deficient. Now experts say that taking a simple pill could boost levels and help people keep mobile, active and independent. Vitamin D is a hormone produced in the skin using energy from sunlight and is essential for good bone health. Deficiency is a significant public health problem with diagnosed cases on the rise. Alongside poor bone health, muscle fatigue is a common symptom in vitamin D deficient patients. Scientists recommend getting out in the sun regularly as about 90 per cent of our vitamin D intake comes from sunlight. | |
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Beyond Pesticides
2013-07-15 17:56:00
New research concludes that exposure to a combination of both arsenic and estrogen, at levels the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) considers "safe" for humans, can cause cancer in prostate cells. Texas Tech University researchers revealed that humans exposed to a combination of both toxicants were almost twice as likely to develop cancerous cells in their prostate. The study is published in the peer-reviewed journal The Prostate. While it is established that both arsenic and estrogen can cause cancer, the research raises concerns about the dangers of chemicals in combination, and the efficacy of regulations that are established by testing one chemical at a time. Kamaleshwar Singh, PhD, is an assistant professor at The Institute of Environmental and Human Health at Texas Tech. "The majority of cancers are caused by environmental influences," Dr. Singh remarked to Texas Tech Today, | |
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| Science of the Spirit |
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The Times Of India
University students, who engage in casual sex - having intercourse with someone whom you have known for less than a week -suffer from higher levels of general anxiety, social anxiety and depression, researchers have claimed.2013-07-18 07:30:00 3,900 straight students in the age group of 18 and 25 from 30 different US colleges were questioned about their sex lives and mental well-being. The researchers found that people who recently engaged in casual sex seemed to have low levels of self-esteem, happiness and life-satisfaction than others who didn't hook-up with a relative stranger in last 1 month, the New York Daily News reported. |
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Stephen Porges, PhD
Youtube 2012-08-27 19:11:00
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| High Strangeness |
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slystg
The Citizen Hearing on Disclosure set out to accomplish what the U. S. Congress had failed to do for forty-five years - seek out the facts surrounding the most important issue of this or any other time - evidence pointing toward an extraterrestrial presence engaging the human race.YouTube 2013-05-08 06:59:00 Forty researchers along with military/agency/political persons of high rank and station came to the National Press Club in Washington, DC to testify to six former members of the United States Congress. The main ballroom of the National Press Club was configured to resemble a Senate hearing room. There were press areas, an audience area, witness tables and committee tables. To the extent possible the protocols for congressional hearings were followed. Committee members received written statements from witnesses, heard oral statements and ask whatever questions they wished about the subject matter at hand. Here's Rich Dolan's speech at this event:
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David Aaron Moore
Creative Loafing, Charlotte 2013-07-19 10:41:00
With all of the intense weather we've been experiencing the past few weeks, my grandmother told me about something called "ball lightning" that she remembered hitting a farm not far from where she grew up. Have you ever heard about this story? - Rebecca Pierce, Charlotte, N.C. A story in The Gastonia Daily Gazette in 1937 claimed that a "ball of lightning" reportedly crashed into the barn of P.N. Slaten's farm on the southwest side of Charlotte on June 18. "All of those in the barn and several cows were knocked down by the bolt, which they said resembled a ball of fire rolling around on the concrete floor." An individual listed as Lloyd Edwards was treated at a local hospital for burns. Nothing more is reported, but two questions arise: What exactly is "ball lightning" and does it actually exist? | |
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| Don't Panic! Lighten Up! |
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