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RT
2013-07-11 17:31:00
The US government uses American tax dollars to pay major Internet companies and telecommunications giants like Verizon and AT&T for unprecedented access into millions of phone records and the ability to scour vast online databases. AT&T charges the government a $325 "activation fee" for each individual wiretap and a daily fee of $10 to maintain it. Verizon, on the other hand, charges government eavesdroppers $775 for the first month of monitoring an individual then $500 in each month that follows, Representative Edward Markey (D-MA) told the Associated Press. | |
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Aaron Blake and Ed O'Keefe
Members of the Congressional Black Caucus took to the House floor Thursday to decry the GOP's move to separate food stamps from the Farm Bill, with one of them invoking Mitt Romney's "47 percent" comment.Washington Post 2013-07-11 16:24:00 "Mitt Romney was right: You all do not care about the 47 percent,"
Rep. Corrine Brown (D-Fla.) said. "Shame on you." At one point, Republicans objected to Brown's direct attacks, which technically are not allowed on the House floor. "This is a sad day for the House of Representatives," she said. "Shame on the Republicans." | |
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Ed O'Keefe
Washington Post 2013-07-11 16:13:00
House Republicans successfully passed a Farm Bill Thursday by splitting apart funding for food stamps from federal agricultural policy, a move that infuriated the White House and congressional Democrats who spent most of the day trying to delay a final vote. Lawmakers voted 216 to 208 make changes to federal agricultural policy and conservation programs and end direct subsidy payments to farmers. But the measure says nothing about funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or food stamps, which historically constitutes about 80 percent of the funding in a Farm Bill. No House Democrat voted for the measure. Twelve Republicans also opposed it. House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) voted in favor of it, even though speakers traditionally don't vote. The vote made clear that Republicans intend to make significant reductions in food stamp money and handed Republican leaders a much-needed victory three weeks after conservative lawmakers and rural state Democrats revolted and blocked the original version of the bill that included food stamp money. | |
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Freya Petersen
businessinsider.com 2013-07-11 14:52:00
Chemical weapons were "clearly" used in Syria - but most likely by Syrian rebels, not the Syrian army, according to Moscow's ambassador to the United Nations. A team of Russian experts made the assessment after visited Khan al-Assal, near Aleppo, where Syria claimed rebels had used chemical weapons in a March attack, CNN wrote. The attack reportedly killed 26 people, including 16 regime troops. CNN quoted Russia's envoy, Vitaly Churkin, as saying: "The results of the analysis clearly indicate that the ordnance used in Khan al-Assal was not industrially manufactured and was filled with sarin [poison gas]." Rebels had accused Syria of using chemical weapons in another part of the country at the same time, CNN added. | |
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Reuters
2013-06-19 13:10:00
An executive with Monsanto Co and two other pioneers in agricultural biotechnology said their selection as winners of the $250,000 World Food Prize on Wednesday should encourage the wider use of genetically engineered crops. The Iowa foundation that administers the prize, created by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Norman Borlaug, said genetically modified crops offer higher yields and more resistance to pests, plant disease and harsh weather. It was the first time the award, often regarded as the equivalent of a Nobel Prize for agriculture, has gone to a creator of GM crops. While engineered varieties of crops like soybeans and corn are popular among U.S. farmers, they are not approved for cultivation in Europe. Some U.S. consumer groups also say genetically modified foods should be labeled, despite government assurances that the foods are safe. | |
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RT.com
2013-07-11 10:52:00
Despite having fewer resources and a fraction of the customers that broadband giants like Verizon and AT&T boast, one small internet service provider has resisted pressure from the NSA and refused to turn over customer data without a warrant. Xmission, an independent company based out of one office in Salt Lake City, Utah, has spent nearly two decades protecting its customers' privacy as the National Security Agency, Department of Justice, and prosecutors have ramped up pressure on internet service providers (ISPs). Owner Pete Ashdown told RT that every data collection request stops at his desk, since he is the sole proprietor of Xmission. At a larger company, a panel of stockholders would bow to government pressure, he added. "It's pretty basic for me. Most of their requests are not constitutional. They're not proper warrants so I turn them back," he said. | |
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UK Guardian
2013-07-11 02:29:00
Former ambassador likens practice to 'selling of public office' as figures show average amount of cash raised is $1.8m per post Barack Obama has rewarded some of his most active campaign donors with plum jobs in foreign embassies, with the average amount raised by recent or imminent appointees soaring to $1.8m per post, according to a Guardian analysis. The practice is hardly a new feature of US politics, but career diplomats in Washington are increasingly alarmed at how it has grown. One former ambassador described it as the selling of public office. On Tuesday, Obama's chief money-raiser Matthew Barzun became the latest major donor to be nominated as an ambassador, when the White House put him forward as the next representative to the Court of St James's [British ambassador], a sought-after posting whose plush residence comes with a garden second only in size to that of Buckingham Palace. As campaign finance chairman, Barzun helped raise $700m to fund President Obama's 2012 re-election campaign. More than $2.3m of this was raised personally by Barzun, pictured, according to party records leaked to the New York Times, even though he had only just finished a posting as ambassador to Sweden after contributing to Obama's first campaign. | |
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ABC News
2013-07-10 22:48:00
On Tuesday, Berlin-based watchdog Transparency International released its Global Corruption Barometer 2013, a worldwide survey of 114,000 people that analyzes bribery and corruption in 107 countries. The report found that corruption and bribery are prevalent across both developed and underdeveloped nations: More than 50 percent of respondents in the world said corruption had worsened in recent years, and 27 percent admitted to paying bribes in order to access public services and institutions. Few respondents see an easy way out of this growing problem. The majority of people don't believe in their government's capabilities to fight corruption. Nearly 88 percent think that their leaders are doing a poor job at it, and most blame public institutions as the main corruption sources. Here are five of the world's most corrupt institutions, according to the survey: | |
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Radley Balko
Salon 2013-07-10 21:41:00
Excerpted from "Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces" Sal Culosi is dead because he bet on a football game - but it wasn't a bookie or a loan shark who killed him. His local government killed him, ostensibly to protect him from his gambling habit. Several months earlier at a local bar, Fairfax County, Virginia, detective David Baucum overheard the thirty-eight-year-old optometrist and some friends wagering on a college football game. "To Sal, betting a few bills on the Redskins was a stress reliever, done among friends," a friend of Culosi's told me shortly after his death. "None of us single, successful professionals ever thought that betting fifty bucks or so on the Virginia - Virginia Tech football game was a crime worthy of investigation." Baucum apparently did. After overhearing the men wagering, Baucum befriended Culosi as a cover to begin investigating him. During the next several months, he talked Culosi into raising the stakes of what Culosi thought were just more fun wagers between friends to make watching sports more interesting. Eventually Culosi and Baucum bet more than $2,000 in a single day. Under Virginia law, that was enough for police to charge Culosi with running a gambling operation. And that's when they brought in the SWAT team. | |
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RT
2013-07-10 18:22:00
President Barack Obama has asked that federal agencies launch an unprecedented campaign requiring government workers to monitor the behavior of their colleagues and report potential leakers under the threat of prosecution. McClatchy reporters Jonathan Landay and Marisa Taylor wrote Tuesday that the "Insider Threat" program mandated by Pres. Obama utilizes methods that, while meant to identify security threats from within, actually provoke co-workers to spy on one another. The program is unprecedented in scope and hopes to prevent future instances where government secrets are spilled. According to a new report, however, the Insider Threat initiative and the techniques utilized by the agencies involved are not proven to work. Insider Threat was authorized in October 2011 after Army Private first class Bradley Manning sent classified intelligence to the website WikiLeaks, an action that government prosecutors argued in court this week aided al-Qaeda by indirectly providing them with secret documents. Through the program, employees are asked to monitor the behavior of their peers, and could face hefty penalties if they fail to alert higher-ups of a potential breach. | |
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| Society's Child |
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Jonathan Paige
The Independent 2013-07-09 16:50:00
Research shows public opinion often deviates from facts on key social issues including crime, benefit fraud and immigration A new survey for the Royal Statistical Society and King's College London shows public opinion is repeatedly off the mark on issues including crime, benefit fraud and immigration. The research, carried out by Ipsos Mori from a phone survey of 1,015 people aged 16 to 75, lists ten misconceptions held by the British public. Among the biggest misconceptions are: - Benefit fraud: the public think that £24 of every £100 of benefits is fraudulently claimed. Official estimates are that just 70 pence in every £100 is fraudulent - so the public conception is out by a factor of 34. | |
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The Guardian
2013-07-10 16:29:00
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The Telegraph, UK
A Brazilian student has sold her virginity in an online auction for $780,000 as part of a documentary organised by an Australian filmmaker, according to reports. 2013-07-11 15:03:00
Catarina Migliorini, 20, was the subject of 15 bids, with a Japanese man named only as Natsu winning on Wednesday night, Australian media reported. They said Miss Migliorini would be "delivered" to her buyer on board a plane to Australia and that she would be interviewed before and after losing her virginity at a secret location. Filmmaker Jason Sisely, who reportedly began his project in 2009 and caused outrage when he put posters up in Sydney and Melbourne saying "Virgins Wanted", said Miss Migliorini was ecstatic and had not expected such a high level of interest. "The auction closed last night and Catarina is extremely excited. She was speaking to her family in Brazil online and they were extremely happy for her," he told Australian online news site Ninemsn. "But I guess they didn't expect her to do something like this." | |
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huffingtonpost.co.uk
2013-07-10 14:26:00
Chilling footage has emerged of the moment a photographer apparently recorded his own death. Ahmed Samir Assem was filming protests outside the offices of the Egyptian Army in Cairo when the gunman he was recording turned to face him. The exact circumstances of the 26-year-old's death have not been verified, but friends and colleagues have claimed the grainy footage shows him being killed. "At around 6am, a man came into the media centre with a camera covered in blood and told us that one of our colleagues had been injured," Ahmed Abu Zeid, of Assem's newspaper, Al-Horia Wa Al-Adala, told the Daily Telegraph. "Around an hour later, I received news that Ahmed had been shot by a sniper in the forehead while filming or taking pictures on top of the buildings around the incident. "Ahmed's camera was the only one which filmed the entire incident from the first moment." The Muslim Brotherhood has reportedly been using the footage to show army snipers firing on innocent people. Assem had been filming protests by Muslim brotherhood supporters outside the offices of the Egyptian Army, where ousted President Mohamed Morsi was reportedly being held. At least 51 people were reportedly killed
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youtube.com
2013-07-11 13:44:00
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The Guardian
2013-07-11 13:14:00
Irish politicians will spend a second day debating divisive laws that will legislate for the first time for abortion in limited circumstances. A vote on the landmark laws, which enshrine a woman's right to a termination if her life is at risk, including from suicide, had been expected to pass at about 5am on Thursday morning. But as discussions rumbled into dawn with no sign of an end, the Dáil was adjourned with plans for the debate to resume late this afternoon. The laws will be supported by the vast majority of the country's politicians, but a junior minister who has shown signs of joining a small backbench revolt is likely to lose her job. Despite the widely anticipated rebellion by Lucinda Creighton, the minister for European affairs, the laws are likely to pass comfortably. The Protection of Life During Pregnancy Bill 2013 was drawn up following the death of Savita Halappanavar, an Indian dentist who died in an Irish hospital in October last year after being denied an abortion as she miscarried 17 weeks into her pregnancy. | |
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Larisa Brown
There are nearly 5million CCTV cameras in the country, new research findsThe Daily Mail, UK 2013-07-11 12:59:00 More in 'sensitive locations' such as car homes, hospitals and schools Campaigners criticised the growth of the 'surveillance state'
Schoolchildren, the elderly and the infirm are being watched by an astonishing 750,000 spy cameras across Britain, a survey revealed yesterday. There are nearly 5million CCTV cameras in the country, researchers found - the equivalent of one for every 12 people. Surveillance was particularly high in 'sensitive locations' such as care homes, hospitals and schools. Campaigners last night criticised the growth of the 'surveillance state', lambasting the Government for embarking upon a journey similar to George Orwell's vision in his novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four. The British Security Industry Authority (BSIA) estimated there were 4.9million closed-circuit television cameras in the country, but said the figure could be as high as 5.9million. Previous estimates ranged from 1.5million to 4million. Nick Pickles, director of the privacy campaign Big Brother Watch, criticised the findings. He said: 'This report is another stark reminder of how out of control our surveillance culture has become. | |
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Tom McIlroy
Canberra Times 2013-07-11 14:12:00
A 30-year-old man is expected to face the ACT Magistrates Court after a car crashed into the main gates of Canberra's United States Embassy on Wednesday night. The Australian Federal Police bomb response unit attended the Yarralumla complex after ACT Policing, Fire and Rescue and Ambulance crews were called about 6pm. Investigators said it was too early to tell what circumstances had led to the accident and five-hour police operation, but neither the vehicle or the embassy security gates were extensively damaged. | |
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| Science & Technology |
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Becky Oskin
Two new studies of earthquakes near injection wells have seismologists using words rarely heard these days in earthquake science: prediction and warning. The research has also renewed calls for better seismic monitoring and reporting in regions experiencing man-made earthquakes.LiveScience via Yahoo News 2013-07-11 16:56:00 "Shale gas operations have completely changed our energy policy and people are injecting in places they've never injected before. If we're going to do this safely, we need to address the environmental issues, including protecting water supplies and earthquake risk," said Cliff Frohlich, a seismologist at the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics who was not involved in the new studies.The two reports appear in today's (July 11) issue of the journal Science.
Links between injection and earthquakes In the Midwest, researchers discovered a warning signal that moderate-sized earthquakes may strike near injection wells, where mining companies dispose of waste fluids. At three sites in Oklahoma, Colorado and Texas, passing seismic waves from faraway earthquakes - the recent massive temblors in Japan, Sumatra and Chile - triggered swarms of small earthquakes. The seismic activity continued until magnitude-4 and magnitude-5 earthquakes struck, such as the large earthquakes near Prague, Okla., in November 2011. | |
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Steven K. Paulson
Tampa Bay Press 2013-07-11 16:46:00
Pork prices may be on the rise in the next few months because of a new virus that has migrated to the U.S, killing piglets in 15 states at an alarming rate in facilities where it has been reported. Dr. Nick Striegel (STREE'-gel), assistant state veterinarian for the Colorado Department of Agriculture, said Wednesday the Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea Virus, also known as PED, was thought to exist only in Europe and China, but Colorado and 14 other states began reporting the virus in April, and officials confirmed its presence in May. The virus causes severe diarrhea, vomiting and severe dehydration in pigs, and can be fatal. "It has been devastating for those producers where it has been diagnosed. It affects nursing pigs, and in some places, there has been 100 percent mortality," he said. Striegel said the disease is not harmful to humans, and there is no evidence it affects pork products. Comment: ...and when it mutates? | |
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Jesse Emspak
Discovery News 2013-07-11 12:25:00
Scenes from The Minority Report have become a reality at a small college in South Carolina. Administrators there are testing out the use of iris scanners to control access to certain buildings. Winthrop University in Rock Hill, S.C., has been evaluating the scanners for four months. Students and faculty have the iris in their eyes scanned by looking into a mirror that has a camera behind it. (Iris scanning differs from retinal scanning, primarily because it looks at the outside of the eye in infrared light, rather than the back of the eyeball.) The camera is connected to a computer and special software records 250 data points on the eye, measuring the shape of the eye in three dimensions. Once the information is saved in a database, the person needs no other form of identification to gain access to a building, just an eye. To do so, the person stands in front of device outside the door and looks into a mirror-like screen. A voice prompt her where to position her eye and a scanner analyzes the same data points collected. If those data points match the ones on file, the person gains access. Using data points, rather than an image of the eye, adds layers of security that cannot be reconstructed. | |
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Megan Gannon
LIveScience 2013-07-11 10:48:00
In October 2010, the body of a young short-beaked common dolphin was found stranded on a beach in San Diego, Calif. The sickly female had lesions in its airway, and a necropsy showed that it died of so-called tracheal bronchitis, likely due to an infection. Now, further investigation has revealed the dolphin's malaise was caused by a virus that scientists had never seen before, according to a new study. The pathogen, which researchers propose should be named Dolphin polyomavirus 1, or DPyV-1, is still quite mysterious. Scientists say they don't know where it came from, how common it might be, or what threat it poses to wildlife. "We don't even know if this is even a dolphin virus. It could also represent a spillover event from another species," Simon Anthony, a researcher who studies wildlife pathogens at Columbia University, said in a statement. "It's no immediate cause for alarm, but it's an important data point in understanding this family of viruses and the diseases they cause." Genetic analysis showed that the polyomavirus found in the San Diego dolphin was distinct from other known polyomaviruses (a widespread family of small DNA viruses that can sometimes cause infections and tumors in various animals). The pathogen appeared to be most closely related to the California sea lion polyomavirus, the researchers reported online on July 10 in the journal PLOS ONE. "It's possible that many dolphins carry this virus or other polyomaviruses without significant problems," said Judy St. Leger, the director of pathology at SeaWorld in San Diego, who performed the initial animal autopsy (or necropsy) on the stranded dolphin. "Or perhaps it's like the common cold, where they get sick for a short while and recover," St. Leger added in a statement. | |
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A. James
The Guardian Express 2013-07-11 12:09:00
NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX), a $169 million spacecraft has discovered what many scientists surmised; the sun has a comet-like tail. The less than 20 foot square craft, displayed the tail which couldn't be seen before because it doesn't shine, nor does it reflect light. Is the sun a comet? No, it is a star. Both stars and comets have tails, which can usually be seen through a telescope. Our sun was not that easy. "By examining the neutral atoms, IBEX made the first observations of the heliotail. Many models have suggested the heliotail might be like this or like that, but we've had no observations. We always drew pictures where the tail of the heliosphere just disappears off the page, since we couldn't even speculate about what it really looked like," said David McComas, lead author on the research and principal investigator for IBEX at Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas. | |
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Charles Poladian
International Business Times 2013-07-08 06:05:00
A Stradivarius is among the most coveted items in the world, considered to be the best-stringed instrument ever created. The violins, violas and cellos produced by the Stradivari family during the 17th and 18th centuries are prized for their remarkable sound and incredible craftsmanship, and a new study explores the possible techniques used by Antonio Stradivari. A Stradivarius in pristine condition can fetch millions of dollars. In 2011, a Stradivarius violin made in 1721, named Lady Blunt after Lord Byron's granddaughter, Lady Ann Blunt, was sold at a charity auction for $15.9 million. The money collected during the auction went to Japanese earthquake relief funds. Approximately 600 string instruments made by Stradivari are still known to exist, according to the Wall Street Journal, and a new study using several diagnostic techniques examined a Stradivarius to unlock the mystery of what techniques and materials were used to create the world's best violins. | |
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| Earth Changes |
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NBC
Shane Dunstan shot video of an apparent tornado in the Mansfield/Storrs area on Wednesday afternoon.2013-07-11 16:57:00
This was the fourth tornado to hit Connecticut since last Monday. The storm touched down in the area of East Street in Andover around 5:19 p.m., and caused damage for 11.2 miles, before diminishing around 5:51 p.m. Winds of 90 miles per hour traveled north and east, into Coventry and the tornado ended near Clover Hill Road in Mansfield, according to the National Weather Service. | |
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The Guardian
2013-07-11 13:27:00
A mudslide in Colorado sweeps away a car on Wednesday after heavy rainfall caused flooding. The car is believed to have been empty at the time. The flooding shut down four miles of a motorway for nearly three hours. More than 100 people were evacuated from the area but there have been no reports of injuries Source: ITN | |
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The Extinction Protocol
Mexico's Popocatépetl volcano is keeping up its recent activity, emitting 39 exhalations of "low to moderate magnitude" over the last 24 hours, according to El Universal. Ash, gases and steam expelled out of the volcano's crater this morning reached well over a mile in the air, said Mexico's National Disaster Prevention Center (Cenapred) in a statement. The lava dome on "El Popo" - the mound of viscous magma which, being extruded from the crater's vent, dries and piles up not far from it - continued to swell. Overnight, glowing fragments expelled from the inside of the volcano could be seen on its slopes. El Universal wrote that one of the most significant emission of ash, steam and gas occurred today at 7:00 this morning. The volcano also registered tremors of "high and low frequency" as well as medium-sized micro-tremors occurring as a result of the movement of magma over the course of several hours.2013-07-11 12:07:00
"El Popo," one of several nicknames by which the Popocatépetl volcano is known by nearby residents, is located in Puebla state, about 43 miles southeast of Mexico City. With roughly 25 million people living in the region around the volcano, the Mexican Government is keeping an eye on this one. Ash from recent fits of activity in the past few weeks have reached as far as Milpa Alta, one of the southernmost boroughs of the capital. - Latin Times | |
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Kathleen Raven
Scientific American 2013-07-04 06:21:00
The holy grail of energy storage may lie in chemical bonds, but a process for making this happen remains unknown. All of the Nobel Laureates who weighed in Wednesday on a chemical energy conversion panel agreed on this much. "Replacement of liquid fossil fuels is still in far reach," said moderator Wolfgang Lubitz, director of the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Energy and Conversion. From there, the men focused on the major questions relating to solar power, endothermic reactions, rare metals, the ever-controversial nuclear energy and another ice age. Solar energy Gerhard Ertl (Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 2007) told the audience that nuclear fusion stood as the en vogue future energy source when he was studying in graduate school. "We are still waiting for solutions," he said. In a similar way, solar energy holds great promise, but the storage problem remains unsolved. Hartmut Michel (Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 1988), the photosynthesis expert of the group, reminded that even nature struggled to get the most out of photosynthesis. "In photosynthesis, only 40 percent of the sunlight -- energy-wise -- is absorbed by the plants," he said. Therefore, the chemists onstage at the 63rd Lindau Nobel Laureate meeting exhorted young researchers to search for a brand-new catalytic conversion process that could solve the sunshine enigma. | |
Comment: No need for hints when Nature itself spells it out quite clearly:
Global Cooling: Sudden European temperature plunge over the last decade... Are we on the brink of a Little Ice Age? Ice Age Cometh: Russian Academy of Sciences experts warn of imminent cold period: "Global warming is a marketing trick" Scientist predicts Earth is heading for another Ice Age - next year! Has Atlanta ever seen so much rain? Southern Ontario under flood watch as storms bring month's worth of rain in a day 'Cursed spring' of relentless rain: Italy just went through its wettest spring in at least 150 years Ice Age Cometh! Parts of UK hit by several inches of snow and 'one month' of rain during mid-May storm The Ice Age is upon us, including the very real threat from space, but Nobel Laureates are busy with "mental masturbation" instead of using their supposedly brilliant minds and "high status" to do real science for a change, including exposing the Psychopaths in Power. | |
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The Extinction Protocol
The typhoon, packing gusts of up to 227 kilometers (140 miles) per hour, was 960 kilometers east of the island's southernmost tip as of 0300 GMT, Taiwan's Central Weather Bureau said. Soulik is moving west-northwest towards Taiwan at about 22 kilometers per hour and could narrowly skip or make landfall in the north of the island sometime between late Friday and Saturday morning, the bureau said. "The public must heighten their vigilance as the typhoon will certainly bring strong winds and heavy rains," a weather forecaster told AFP. Authorities on Thursday evacuated 2,300 tourists from Green Island, off the southeastern city of Taitung, and issued a warning to ships sailing north and east off Taiwan to take special precaution. The Hong Kong Observatory has classified Soulik as a "super typhoon" on its website, while Taiwan's weather bureau listed it as a "strong typhoon."2013-07-11 08:23:00
On the Chinese mainland, meteorological authorities maintained an orange alert - the second-highest level - for Soulik on Thursday, Beijing's official Xinhua news agency reported. After hitting or passing Taiwan on Saturday Soulik is expected to head towards the coastal provinces of Zhejiang and Fujian, bringing "extremely strong" winds, it cited the National Meteorological Center as saying. In August 2009 Typhoon Morakot killed about 600 people in Taiwan, most of them buried in huge landslides in the south, in one of the worst natural disasters to lash the island in recent years. -Physics | |
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The Extinction Protocol
Flooding in western China, the worst in 50 years for some areas, triggered a landslide Wednesday that buried about 30 people, trapped hundreds in a highway tunnel and destroyed a high-profile memorial to a devastating 2008 earthquake. Meanwhile, to the northeast, at least 12 workers were killed when a violent rainstorm caused the collapse of an unfinished coal mine workshop they were building, said a statement from the city government of Jinzhong, where the accident occurred. The accident Tuesday night came amid heavy rain and high winds across a swath of northern China, including the capital, Beijing. There was no immediate word on the chances of survival for the 30 or so people buried in the landslide in the city of Dujiangyan in Sichuan province, but rescue workers with search dogs rushed to the area, the official Xinhua News Agency said. State-run China Central Television said hundreds of people were trapped in a highway tunnel between Dujiangyan and Wenchuan - the epicenter of the earthquake five years ago that left 90,000 people dead or missing.2013-07-11 08:31:00
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The Extinction Protocol
In last few years, Himachal Pradesh (HP) is witnessing increased frequency of earthquakes up to 5 magnitude on the Richter scale, which has led to the fear of bigger quakes hitting the state in future. While experts are claiming low intensity quakes release seismic energy to avoid bigger earthquakes, unplanned constructions, even on steep hills, has led to fear of widespread destruction if a high magnitude earthquake hits the state. In the past 90 years, 250 quakes of magnitude 4 and more than 60 with a reading of 5 on the Richter scale have rocked HP and adjoining states of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) and Uttarakhand. On Tuesday, a low intensity earthquake of magnitude 5 had hit Kullu, Chamba and Lahaul-Spiti districts and its epicenter was between J&K and HP.2013-07-11 08:28:00
Last month, between June 4 and 6, four low intensity earthquakes had hit the state and epicenter of all the quakes was between Chamba and Lahaul-Spiti. The areas falling in districts Chamba, Kangra, Mandi, Kullu, Hamirpur and Bilaspur are very sensitive as they fall in the very high damage risk seismic zone (Zone V), whereas the rest of the areas falls in high damage risk zone (Zone IV). According to D D Sharma of Himachal Pradesh University, frequent occurrences of low intensity earthquakes are good because they help in releasing the seismic energy and does not allow accumulation of energy, which later results in earthquakes of bigger magnitude and intensity. "It is said that a big earthquake revisits after a gap of 50 years and in Kangra district for last 110 years no major earthquake has occurred. | |
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The Extinction Protocol
Floods that caused billions of dollars in losses were the world's most expensive natural disasters so far this year, with central Europe being hit hardest, re-insurers Munich Re said on Tuesday. Altogether, natural catastrophes - also including earthquakes, tornadoes and heat waves - caused $45 billion in losses in the first half of 2013, well below the 10-year average of $85 billion. Insured losses worldwide totaled about $13 billion, said Munich Re. Inland flooding that affected parts of Europe, Asia, Canada and Australia caused about 47 percent of overall global losses and 45 percent of insured losses, said the leading reinsurance company based in Munich, Germany. The deadliest disaster out of 460 recorded "natural hazard events" worldwide was a series of flash floods in northern India and Nepal that killed more than 1,000 people in June after early and exceptionally heavy monsoon rains.2013-07-11 08:25:00
By far the most expensive natural disaster was the river flooding that hit southern and eastern Germany and neighboring countries in May and June, causing more than $16 billion in damage, most of it in Germany. "The frequency of flood events in Germany and central Europe has increased by a factor of two since 1980," said Munich Re board member Torsten Jeworrek. In some places, 400 liters of rain per square meter fell within a few days. With the ground already saturated from the rainiest spring in half a century, this led to rapid swelling of the Danube and Elbe river systems. Peter Hoeppe, head of Munich Re's Geo Risks Research unit, said in a statement that "it is evident that days with weather conditions that lead to such flooding are becoming more frequent." | |
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redorbit.com
2013-07-11 07:32:00
Significant reductions in mercury emissions will be necessary just to stabilize current levels of the toxic element in the environment, according to new research from a team led by Harvard University. Surface reservoirs, such as soil, air and water, hold an enormous amount of mercury from past pollution going back thousands of years. Scientists believe it will continue to persist in the ocean and accumulate in fish for decades to centuries. "It's easier said than done, but we're advocating for aggressive reductions, and sooner rather than later," says Helen Amos, a PhD candidate in Earth and Planetary Sciences at the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. The findings of this study were published in a recent issue of Global Biogeochemical Cycles. Amos worked with a team of researchers from the the Atmospheric Chemistry Modeling Group at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) to collect historical data concerning mercury emissions as far back as 2,000 BC. The team has also been building environmental models of mercury cycling that captures the interactions between the atmosphere, oceans and land. Most of the mercury emitted to the environment ends up in the ocean within a few decades, the model reveals. The mercury remains in the ocean from centuries to millennia. Currently, emissions of mercury are mainly from coal-fired power plants and artisanal gold mining. The mercury is thrown into the air, rained down into lakes, absorbed by the soil and carried by rivers, eventually finding its way to the sea. Once there, aquatic microbes convert it to methylmercury, the organic compound that accumulates in fish, finds its way to our dinner plates, and has been associated with neurological and cardiovascular damage. | |
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Lawrence LeBlond
redorbit.com 2013-07-08 05:35:00
Because of an unusually cold spring and an insect shortage this summer, conservationists are concerned bat numbers could continue to suffer this year. Based on the latest figures from Britain's National Bat Monitoring Programme (NBMP), the annual bat breeding season got off to a slow start due to unseasonable weather earlier this year. Dr. Kate Barlow, Head of Monitoring at the Bat Conservation Trust, said, "After 2 years of long, wet, winters and a particularly late and cold start to summer this year, the outlook isn't too promising for our bats. The most recent results from the National Bat Monitoring Programme showed that there were fewer bats were counted in 2012 than in 2011 for most species monitored." Dr. Barlow added that 2013 saw the coldest March in 50 years and summer got off to such a late start many of the species are struggling. "This year Britain's bats need all the help they get," she said. Further adding to the bat recovery struggle is the fact that winged insect numbers are also down. So on top of a cold spring and delayed summer, several species may face shortages in food supply, especially those that rely on moths, according to a National Trust report released last month. | |
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| Fire in the Sky |
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| Health & Wellness |
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Rebecca Savastio
Guardian Express 2013-06-20 16:33:00
Researchers Find Main Source of Pain in Blood Vessels Researchers have found the main source of pain in Fibromyalgia patients, and contrary to what many believe, it does not stem from the brain. The findings mark the end of a decades-old mystery about the disease, which many doctors believed was conjured in patients' imaginations. The mystery of Fibromyalgia has left millions of sufferers searching for hope in pain medications. Up until recently, many physicians thought that the disease was "imaginary" or psychological, but scientists have now revealed that the main source of pain stems from a most unlikely place- excess blood vessels in the hand. | |
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Catherine Pearson
huffingtonpost.com 2013-06-18 07:50:00
Living in an area with high levels of air pollution may increase a woman's chances of having a child with autism, according to the first national study to date that investigates the possible link. "Women who were exposed to the highest levels of diesel or mercury in the air were twice as likely to have a child with autism than women who lived in the cleanest parts of the sample," study author Andrea Roberts, a research associate with the Harvard School of Public Health, told The Huffington Post. Earlier studies have established a potential connection between air pollution and autism risk, but have concentrated on a few individual states. The latest study, published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives on Tuesday, draws on a large sample of women across the whole country. Researchers crossed U.S. Environmental Protection Agency data on the level of air pollutants from year to year with data from the Nurses' Health Study, one of the longest running investigations of women's health in the U.S. They looked for associations between levels of pollutants in the time and place that a woman was pregnant and whether that woman went on to have a child with a diagnosed autism spectrum disorder. The researchers split up the locations into fifths, and women who lived in the most polluted sections -- those with the highest levels of diesel particulates or mercury in the air -- were twice as likely to have a child with autism compared to those in the cleanest sections. Other types of air pollution, including lead, manganese and other hard metals, were also linked to a greater risk of autism, although the risk was not quite as high. "All of the chemicals studied are known neurotoxins," Roberts said. "They are also known to pass from mother to baby while a woman is pregnant. It's very plausible that the 'stuff' the mother is taking in through the air is affecting her baby's brain development." | |
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Glen Asher
Oye! Times 2013-07-10 22:55:00
A study, Pre-Polluted by Canada's Environmental Defence examines the contaminants that are found in the blood of newborns in two of Canada's largest urban centres. Let's first put our chemical world into perspective. At this point in time, there are 84,000 chemicals in use in North America. Around the globe, an estimated 143,000 chemicals are in use. In Canada, only 200 of these chemicals have been reviewed for their impact on human health and the United States EPA has reviewed only 200 chemicals since 1976. Scientists tested the umbilical cord blood from three newborns whose mothers live in the Greater Toronto/Hamilton areas and found a rather surprising cocktail of contaminants. While the actual sample size is very small, the results mimic those found in larger studies undertaken in various nations. The chemicals that were screened for in this study include the following groups: | |
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| Science of the Spirit |
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John Tierney
The New York Times 2013-07-08 21:01:00
Not long after moving to the University of Southampton, Constantine Sedikides had lunch with a colleague in the psychology department and described some unusual symptoms he'd been feeling. A few times a week, he was suddenly hit with nostalgia for his previous home at the University of North Carolina: memories of old friends, Tar Heel basketball games, fried okra, the sweet smells of autumn in Chapel Hill. His colleague, a clinical psychologist, made an immediate diagnosis. He must be depressed. Why else live in the past? Nostalgia had been considered a disorder ever since the term was coined by a 17th-century Swiss physician who attributed soldiers' mental and physical maladies to their longing to return home - nostos in Greek, and the accompanying pain, algos. But Dr. Sedikides didn't want to return to any home - not to Chapel Hill, not to his native Greece - and he insisted to his lunch companion that he wasn't in pain. "I told him I did live my life forward, but sometimes I couldn't help thinking about the past, and it was rewarding," he says. "Nostalgia made me feel that my life had roots and continuity. It made me feel good about myself and my relationships. It provided a texture to my life and gave me strength to move forward." The colleague remained skeptical, but ultimately Dr. Sedikides prevailed. That lunch in 1999 inspired him to pioneer a field that today includes dozens of researchers around the world using tools developed at his social-psychology laboratory, including a questionnaire called the Southampton Nostalgia Scale. After a decade of study, nostalgia isn't what it used to be - it's looking a lot better. | |
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| High Strangeness |
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Amanda Shore
Paul Robertson, a former employee of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), speaks in a two-hour Animal Planet special about his experiences with his research team while they were investigating mass whale beachings around the world. This television program, "Mermaids: The Body Found," took about five years to complete and gives compelling evidence that suggests that mermaids could be real.Guardian Express 2013-07-08 00:00:00 In this program, a sound clip that has been called "the bloop" is played as the first piece of evidence that there is an unknown or new species in the water. Robertson and his team were investigating the mass whale beachings in 2007. When they examined the tissue samples that they took from the whales, they discovered evidence of a SONAR weapon. They believed that this weapon caused the whales to become disoriented. The whales tried to escape the blasts of sound and ended up in waters that were too shallow to support their massive sizes, so they ended up beached. To try and prove this theory, they pulled up one of their buoys that was recording SONAR activity. It was in this recording that the bloop was discovered. They recognized the sound of another animal mixed in with the sounds of the whales and dolphins. After more closely inspecting it, they discovered that the unknown creature was communicating with them, possibly warning each other to get away. |
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Geoffrey Macnab
Independent.ie 2013-06-13 05:46:00
We may know him for spoon bending antics and for his lengthy friendship with pop star Michael Jackson but showbiz psychic Uri Geller has seemingly had a lengthy second career as a secret agent for Mossad and the CIA, albeit one that was more Austin Powers than James Bond. Geller was at the Sheffield Doc Fest this week for the premiere of Vikram Jayanti's The Secret Life Of Uri Geller - Psychic Spy?, a new film that offers compelling evidence of his involvement in the shadowy world of espionage. "Uri has a controversial reputation. A lot of people think he is a fraud, a lot of people think he is a trickster and makes things up but at the same time he has a huge following and a history of doing things that nobody can explain," Jayanti says of his Zelig-like subject. Speaking to The Independent, Geller acknowledged alarm when he first saw Jayanti's documentary. "I was worried and I am still concerned," Geller said of the way the documentary outs him as a spy. "I didn't realise that Vikram was going to do such a thorough job of tying all the loose ends...making that the little hints I dropped throughout my career were real." When he signed up for the doc, the psychic didn't realise quite how diligently Jayanti would track down his old spy masters. Nonetheless, he is happy that the doc is showing "a serious side" to him. "Some countries think I am a freak, bizarre, an eccentric," he sighs. | |
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Alice Tessier
New Milford - What was that in the night sky last Saturday? - that's what residents in the Northville section of town and their houseguests want to know.Litchfield County Times 2013-07-10 20:57:00 Angela and Robert Janonis of 514 Litchfield Road, along with relative Philip Postiglione of Long Island, N.Y., and their other guests were sitting out front in the driveway at 10 p.m. watching some fireworks go off when their air space was "invaded." "Eight eye witnesses saw a caravan of unidentifiable flying vehicles in the Northville corridor of Litchfield County over Route 202," they wrote in an e-mail to The Litchfield County Times. "The vessels that approached above the trees were flying in a one up one down, perfectly synchronized formation with a bright, iridescent, glowing orange ring at each angle with brown tentacles illuminating from each ring. This unidentifiable fleet of ships silently came out of the north from the Marbledale area of Route 202 (Litchfield Road) and exited going east in New Milford toward Washington. Only minutes later, another caravan of six orange lights appeared just above the trees. It was huge, there was one group of three in a triangular formation, and they hovered only momentarily tilted in flight showing off the beauty in the triangular shape, then continued to move and went as fast as they came. "Our group of eight, spooked eye witnesses is baffled, not just sure how to explain the incident, and would like to know if anyone in the Marbledale, New Milford, New Preston or Washington area also reported the sighting," they said. Mr. Janonis, in an interview Wednesday, said they were facing north and the objects "came from the left, the west," and then went toward the east. "There was no noise. It was absolutely silent," he said, noting that the unidentifiable flying objects did not pass over Clamps food stand on Litchfield Road nor directly over Marbledale, "given the angle of inclination. It was a clear, starlit night, and there was no telling how high in the sky they were. The second one appeared to be bigger and closer than the rest of them." His wife said, "When we saw them, they were just above the trees. There was really no sense of depth." She said there was maybe a two-minute gap between the arrivals, "just long enough for us to say 'What did we just see?'" |
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| Don't Panic! Lighten Up! |
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