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A.M.
Sott.net 2013-07-03 12:35:00
This NSA-whistleblower-government-spying scandal is hard for many to digest. On one level, I am an idealist too. I would like to believe that a lone whistleblower can pull a fast one on the NSA/CIA/Mossad axis. But I know that it cannot be. People find it hugely difficult to accept that the world is now so unrelentingly corrupt that the true extent of this corruption cannot be exposed and overturned by any whistleblowing. Edward Snowden is either consciously playing his part in a deliberate intelligence psy-op to erect a smokescreen about what is really going on, or he has been unwittingly set up by his masters to do this. (The latter is the most likely). One cannot pull a fast one on these people. They know everything and can track everything, since decades ago, and only allow things to become public that they approve of. They plainly wanted the world to know about PRISM and all that stuff. It works like a kind of bloodletting, to make the public think they still have some say in the running of this thing we call life on Earth, when the exact opposite is the case. They create the leak, sit back and watch the outrage, then some government committee is set up to investigate. Then that committee (which is stuffed full of stooges to make sure it doesn't have teeth) takes a year to carry out its task - after which time most people have forgotten what the fuss was all about. Then the committee finds that certain irregularities have taken place which will be sorted out with some token legislation. Meanwhile, everything behind the scenes has carried on unhindered and, in fact, deepened. And very few notice or even care. Anyone who has taken the time to investigate all this will see that what I am saying is true. This isn't "conspiracy theory". It's just the way it is. You see, the people who run the world run both sides of the show. They run the bad guys (which everybody knows) but they also run the good guys who oppose them (which comparatively few realise). They told us a hundred years ago that this is how they would be running things. And that's how they work it today. For example, they own organisations like Amnesty International. That's why they never really stick their necks out for the real oppressions in the world, nor oppose the serial wars the USA engineers. To make out as if they champion literacy and women's rights (because that's trendy and acceptable to the masses) in a country which is being bombed back to the stone age (and yet say nothing whatsoever about that) is the ultimate smokescreen! |
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Ellen Brown
The Web of Debt Blog 2013-06-28 12:53:00
Former Peace Corps volunteer Will Ruddick and several residents of Bangladesh, Kenya, face a potential seven years in prison after developing a cost-effective way to alleviate poverty in Africa's poorest slums. Their solution: a complementary currency issued and backed by the local community. The Central Bank of Kenya has now initiated charges of forgery. Complementary currencies can help eradicate poverty. Proving that may be difficult in complex economies, due to the high number of factors influencing outcomes. But in an African slum with little of the national currency available, supplying residents with an alternative currency has a positive effect that is obvious, immediate and incontrovertible. This was demonstrated when Will Ruddick, an American physicist, economist and former Peace Corps volunteer, introduced a complementary currency into a Kenyan slum called Bangladesh, near the coastal city of Mombasa. Will's local development organization, Koru-Kenya, worked with over one hundred small business owners in Bangladesh, who agreed to give each other the equivalent of 400 shillings (about €3.5 or $4.60) in mutual credit in the form of business vouchers called Bangla-Pesa. Half of the vouchers would be available for spending on each others' products and services, and half would be spent into the community on public projects such as waste collection and health services. Allocation decisions were democratic and transparent, and the new currency was backed entirely by the community's own resources and insured by a system of group guarantors, not by the Kenyan government or a development agency. The project was launched on May 11, 2013. The immediate effect was an increase in sales of 22%. That meant increasing incomes and purchasing power by 22%. These exchanges were of goods and services that without the additional currency would have been thrown away or gone to waste, not because they were unmarketable but because potential customers did not have the money to buy them. Introducing Bangla-Pesa worked to move the economy forward at full capacity, connecting the community to its own resources when the only things lacking were those slips of paper called "money." A compelling video on the project is here. |
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Banoosh
2013-06-28 12:48:00
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Patrick Kingsley
Guardian 2013-06-27 12:22:00
Opposition plans large-scale demonstrations on Sunday, with some hoping army may step in to facilitate transition of power Egypt is holding its breath for mass demonstrations to mark the first anniversary of President Mohamed Morsi's election on Sunday, amid speculation the army might intervene in the event of large-scale civil unrest. Opposition activists claim an unverifiable 15 million Egyptians have signed a petition demanding Morsi's removal, and expect a significant proportion of that number to take to the streets on 30 June. There have already been outbreaks of fighting in two cities, where Morsi's still-sizeable support base has launched counter-protests. As a result, many opposition actors hope the army, who deployed armoured vehicles on Cairo's streets on Wednesday, will be forced to intervene and facilitate a transition of power. A senior military source told the Guardian on Thursday that the army did not want to intervene. But they stated that if Sunday's protests were as widespread and prolonged as those that drove Egypt's 2011 uprising, and if serious fighting broke out between Morsi's supporters and his opponents, then the army may regard the protests as a more legitimate representation of the people's will than the elections that brought Morsi to office a year ago - and would step in to facilitate a transition of power to a technocratic caretaker government. The eventual scale of the protests nevertheless remains uncertain, and could yet prove highly exaggerated. But some of Morsi's opponents are convinced 30 June will be as pivotal as the 2011 uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak. |
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Stephen Carroll
France 24 2013-07-03 11:56:00
France's Green Party (EELV) are "not far from quitting the government" it said Wednesday, in the wake of the abrupt sacking of Environment Minister Delphine Batho. French President François Hollande's Socialist government faces a fresh headache Wednesday, after it's Green Party (EELV ) junior coalition partner threatened to quit the government following the abrupt sacking of Environment Minister Delphine Batho.
"It's a bad budget," Batho complained to RTL radio on Tuesday. The 40-year-old, a member of the ruling Socialist Party, was immediately summoned by Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault and given her marching orders. She has been replaced by another Socialist, Philippe Martin. |
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Voice of Russia
2013-07-03 11:31:00
A former official with Swiss bank Reyl et Cie who claimed he knew of 15 French politicians and "big names" with undeclared bank accounts in Switzerland said Wednesday he had submitted the list to investigators. Pierre Condamin-Gerbier was a witness before a parliamentary commission investigating former budget minister Jerome Cahuzac, who resigned in disgrace in March over an undeclared foreign bank account said to contain around 600,000 euros ($770,000). Cahuzac is now facing charges of tax fraud. "The list and information were transmitted yesterday to French justice," Condamin-Gerbier, who worked at Reyl et Cie between 2006 and 2010, told the commission. |
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John Gregory
ABC Los Angeles 2013-07-03 11:10:00
Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi is reportedly under house arrest after the military ultimatum expired Wednesday, reports Al Hayat TV. Morsi's spokesman denied the report, according to ABC News, but word of the house arrest provoked cheers in Tahrir Square. This comes as Egypt's military moved to tighten its control on key institutions before their afternoon ultimatum expired. The military stationed officers in the newsroom of state television on the banks of the Nile River in central Cairo. Troops were deployed in news-production areas. Officers from the army's media department moved inside the newsroom and were monitoring output, though not yet interfering, staffers said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk about the arrangements. |
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Press TV
2013-06-27 10:20:00
A former member of al-Qaeda has said the leader of al-Nusra Front, the primary terrorist group in Syria fighting against the government of President Bashar al-Assad, is a CIA operative. "I personally believe that the leader of the Nusra Army who declared his support for Ayman al-Zawahiri, is a CIA operative in the al-Nusra," Sheikh Nabil Naiim, who led an al-Qaeda training camp in Egypt, made the revelation in a recent video testimony. Addressing the al-Qaeda-linked al-Nusra militants, Naiim said, "You are fighting the war in Syria on America's behalf." Naiim, who has renounced violence, also identified al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri as a U.S. double agent. | |
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Comment: Has begun shipping weapons?
Arms flowing to Syrian agitators from Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon World Tribune Thu, 28 Apr 2011 Syria Terrorists Admit France and US Are Supplying Weapons Russia Today Wed, 29 Feb 2012 |
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Fox 5 Atlanta
Suspected drunk drivers in some metro counties in Georgia are getting a rude surprise when they refuse a breathalyzer test.2013-07-03 10:09:00 Instead of taking no for an answer, officers now obtain a search warrant to forcibly draw blood and get evidence for the case. The key word: forcibly.
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Comment: Did you catch Mike Choroski, the man seen
screaming "what country is this" as officers hold him down and take his
blood without consent, saying "We all are American citizens and you guys
have me strapped to a table like I'm in Guantanamo f***ing Bay..."
That's exactly what the U.S. has become - Guantanamo Bay. No need for 'FEMA Camps', the prison infrastructure has been built up around you. What's that, this must surely be illegal? Nope. Georgia is one of numerous states that enforce 'no refusal' checkpoints where police can forcibly draw blood. In 2005, the Supreme Court ruled that it is not unconstitutional for the state to hold down Americans and forcefully withdraw blood. A January 2013 ruling affirmed that a warrant must be obtained for the process, although police could dispense with the warrant requirement in an 'emergency'. Given that everyday is an emergency in post-9/11 America, that means the police are legally entitled to do this, the FBI is legally entitled to engage in counter-terrorism (false-flag terror attacks), the NSA is allowed to spy on you, and the CIA is allowed to assassinate you. How do you like that for murdering millions of Mooslims to protect your freedoms at home? |
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Scott Noble
The CompanyVimeo 2013-05-21 00:00:00
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WWL.com
2013-07-02 00:00:00
A federal judge has appointed former FBI Director Louis Freeh to conduct an independent investigation of alleged misconduct by a lawyer who worked for the court-supervised administrator of BP's multibillion-dollar settlement along with a team of private attorneys. U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier issued an order Tuesday naming Freeh a "special master." Freeh is a private consultant and recently led a university-sanctioned investigation of the Pennsylvania State University sex abuse scandal. Claims administrator Patrick Juneau announced last month that his office is investigating allegations that an attorney on his staff received a portion of settlement proceeds for claims he had referred to a law firm before he started working on the settlement program. BP had called for an independent review of the allegations. Freeh served as FBI director from 1993 to 2001. |
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Philipp-Moritz Jenne And Carlos Valdez
Yahoo! Canada News 2013-07-03 00:00:00
Vienna - The plane carrying Bolivian President Evo Morales was rerouted to Austria after various European countries refused to let it cross their airspace because of suspicions that NSA leaker Edward Snowden was on board, Bolivian officials said Tuesday. Officials in both Austria and Bolivia said that Snowden was not on the plane, which was taking Morales home from a summit in Russia, where he had suggested that his government would be willing to consider granting asylum to the American. A furious Bolivian Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca said France and Portugal would have to explain why they cancelled authorization for the plane, claiming that the decision had put the president's life at risk. "We don't know who invented this lie" that Snowden was travelling with Morales, Choquehuanca said in La Paz. "We want to denounce to the international community this injustice with the plane of President Evo Morales." In a midnight press conference, Bolivian Vice-President Alvaro Garcia said that not only France and Portugal, but also Italy and Spain were denying the plane permission to fly through their airspace. He described Morales as being "kidnapped by imperialism" in Europe. "The ambassador for Spain in Austria has just informed us that there is no authorization to fly over Spanish territory and that at 9 a.m. Wednesday they would be in contact with us again," said Defence Minister Ruben Saavedra, adding that the Spanish government had put as a condition for passage the "revision of the presidential plane." |
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Matthew Coutts
Yahoo News - Daily Brew 2013-07-02 00:00:00
The arrest of two people on Canada Day helped avoid a terrorist attack that would have seen the B.C. legislature targeted by an explosive device, RCMP said on Tuesday. John Stewart Nuttall and Amanda Korody have been charged with the knowing facilitation of a terrorist act, possession of an explosive device and conspiring to commit an indictable offence in connection to an alleged attack planned on the provincial legislature. The charges were part of a "national security investigation" dubbed Project Souvenir, launched in February based on information received from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. Officials with the RCMP described the two suspects as "self-radicalized" terrorists who were willing and ready to cause mass causalities on the public. | |
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Comment: Two Canadians inspired by al Qaeda ideology? Are they serious?
Pressure cooker bombs like those allegedly used at the Boston Bombings? Timed to happen on the Canadians' equivalent to Patriots' Day? Foiled thanks to an intel operation that had been monitoring the suspects for months? If, like us, you're already smelling bullshit, that's because it is... Strategy of Tension - Boston Marathon bombing |
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Bridget Johnson
PJ Tatler 2013-07-01 06:44:00
The White House has had no comment since what's being called the largest protest in human history demanded the end of Mohamed Morsi's regime. Estimates for the Sunday "Tamarod" protests across Egypt reach as high as 17 million. Sixteen were killed and 781 were injured, according to the country's health ministry, in clashes; the Muslim Brotherhood unleashed its armed squad of supporters into the opposition crowd to sexually assault people, multiple reports said. Many protesters held signs decrying President Obama and U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson as supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood government. Protesters stormed the Muslim Brotherhood headquarters and set parts of it on fire. By this morning, four cabinet ministers are reported to have stepped down "in solidarity with the people's demand to overthrow the regime," according to the BBC. |
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| Society's Child |
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Voice of Russia
2013-07-02 11:01:00
Unprecedented social turmoil continues in Brazil. Truck drivers have started three days of nationwide protests demanding lower fuel prices and exemption from road tolls. MUBC, the most influential truckers union in Brazil, started a 72-hour strike on Monday. A spokeswoman for the MUBC trucking union headquarters in Rio de Janeiro said drivers were off the job in at least five states: Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais, Espíritu Santo and Mato Grosso. The trucking union's demands include a subsidy for diesel fuel, exemption on highway toll payments for drivers and the creation of a new federal government department of cargo transportation. Truckers protesting on the Anchieta highway that links Sao Paulo to Brazil's main Santos port triggered a 2-kilometer (1.4-mile) traffic jam, according to the highway operator Ecovias. Some other federal highways were blocked as well. |
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Michael Allen
Opposing Views 2013-07-03 03:20:00
Laura Whitehurst, 28, was arrested on Monday night for allegedly having sex with a 16-year-old student, who reportedly fathered her baby. The teacher was questioned at her home in Redlands, California and then charged with unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor, noted PE.com. She was released after posting a $25,000 bail. Whitehurst teaches 10th-grade English at Citrus Valley High School in Redlands, but is now on administrative leave. According to the Redlands Police Department, her lover was 16 years old during their year-long relationship, which allegedly started last summer. The alleged victim is now 17 and recently graduated high school. |
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Fox News
2013-07-03 00:00:00
A man was arrested Tuesday and accused of making a false claim for over $2 million to a fund set up to aid victims of April's Boston Marathon bombings using his dead aunt's name. MyFoxBoston.com reported that 22-year-old Branden Mattier was arrested outside his home in Boston's South End by a Massachusetts state trooper who had presented him with a simulated check for $2.195 million from One Fund Boston. He was charged with attempted larceny over $250 and identity theft. The office of Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley said that Mattier claimed that his deceased aunt, Onevia Bradley, suffered a double amputation in the April 15 bombings. Mattier allegedly sent an e-mail to The One Fund asking if his aunt could make a claim as a double amputee if the amputation was expected to be performed in the future. The One Fund later received a claim form from Mattier, along with a letter allegedly from the chief of trauma services at Boston Medical Center affirming Bradley as a double amputee. However, hospital officials said Bradley never received treatment in connection with the bombings and the investigation revealed that Bradley had actually died more than a decade earlier. Click for the full story from MyFoxBoston.com |
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CBS News
2013-07-02 00:00:00 Two northern New Jersey men are reportedly using footage from a surveillance camera to help support their allegations of police brutality in 2011. Alexis Aponte and Miguel Rivera claim that Paterson police used undue force against them when they were arrested, according to CBS New York. The video appears to show Aponte being kicked by Paterson officers and then dragged down the street during a 2011 arrest. A federal lawsuit filed Friday in Newark claims Aponte, of Paterson, and Rivera, of Prospect Park, were beaten while on the ground handcuffed. Aponte was a passenger in a truck driven by Rivera when police stopped them. Their attorney, Darren Del Sardo, says the video was from a camera outside the Rivera family's home. It mostly captured what happened on the passenger side. The lawsuit names Paterson police and specific officers. |
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Lindsey Eaton
MyFox 8 2013-07-01 00:00:00
A massive fight in downtown Greensboro Saturday night has some city leaders taking a hard look at bringing back the teen curfew. Nearly 400 people were involved in the several fights that happened along Elm Street. Greensboro police arrested 11 people ranging in age from 16 to 20-years-old. Officers had to use pepper spray and a stun gun to try to get the crowd under control. Greensboro Police Department had to call UNCG Police and Guilford County for extra help. Some officers minor injuries following the fights. As soon as one fight stopped another started. The security cameras outside of Syn and Sky nightclub caught many of the brawls. The footage shows two groups of teens walking toward each other on Elm Street and several people running away into the streets. |
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The Smoking Gun
2013-07-02 00:00:00
Cops: Young Floridian displayed illicit image to several classmates A 15-year-old Florida girl was arrested yesterday on a child pornography charge for allegedly showing several classmates a photo on her iPhone depicting "two juveniles engaged in oral sex," police report. The girl admitted to "taking the pornographic photo," according to a complaint affidavit filed by the Pasco County Sheriff's Office. The document, sworn by a detective, does not identify the juveniles in the photo, though a sheriff's spokesperson said that the teen herself is one of the minors depicted. On May 21, the iPhone was seized from the girl "during class" by an employee of Wiregrass Ranch High School in Wesley Chapel who "observed a picture of two juveniles engaged in oral sex." In subsequent interviews, "five witnesses" told a deputy that they "had been shown the child pornography by the defendant." The girl later reportedly copped to taking the photo and possessing it on her white iPhone. |
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Danica Coto
San Juan - The remains of at least 40 people are missing from a cemetery
in the sleepy mountain town of Gurabo, where officials are trying to
solve a mystery that has frightened neighbors and left families
distraught.Associated Press 2013-07-02 22:23:00 The apparent thefts occurred at the town's oldest cemetery, which was built in 1912 and features rows of white mausoleums located on the outskirts of Gurabo. "I have spent nine years with the municipality," Public Works Director Jose Roman told The Associated Press on Tuesday. "I have never, never, ever had something like this happen to me." No one has been able to explain the disappearances, although many residents believe the bones are being stolen for Santeria rituals, practiced by those who follow the Caribbean-based religion that blends Roman Catholicism and the African Yoruba faith. Roman acknowledged that possibility, as well as a hypothesis that thieves are snatching boxes made of steel that hold the bones to sell them on the black market. However, he said no bones have been left behind. Government officials made the discovery last month when they tried to exhume several remains to move them to another cemetery, only to find they were gone. |
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Comment: Puerto Rico is heavily polluted with DU
residue from years of being used as a bombing range for the USAF.
Perhaps the disappearance of corpses is related to DU analysis in the
population...a retrospective baseline snapshot. Perhaps it's to destroy
evidence the mil complex wants to disappear.
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Joan Walsh
Salon 2013-07-02 22:08:00
Next time you're watching a college graduation, as you look out over the sea of caps and gowns, make sure you notice the ball and chain most graduates are wearing as they march onstage to receive their diplomas. That's student loan debt, which at over $1 trillion tops credit card debt in the U.S. today. The average burden is $28,000, but add in their credit cards and they're graduating with an average of $35,000 in debt. It's no wonder that people who've paid off their student loan debt are 36 percent more likely to own homes than those who haven't, according to new research by the One Wisconsin Now Institute and Progress Now. What kind of society sends its young people from higher education into adulthood this way? I'm aware I'm only talking about those lucky enough to go to college, when roughly one-third of high school graduates don't - but if this is the way we treat our relatively lucky kids, the rest of them don't have a prayer. For many, the school to prison pipeline functions much more efficiently than the school to college one; California is one of at least 10 states that now spends more on prison than higher education. According to the Federal Reserve Bank, two-thirds of college graduates leave with some debt, and 37 million Americans are repaying a student loan right now. Unbelievably, interest rates on federally subsidized loans are doubling today, from 3.4 to 6.8 percent. As Congress bickers over alternatives, even Democrats are backing "market-based" plans that aren't as bad as GOP ideas, but aren't good either. I hope they can find a way to lower interest rates, but the real scandal isn't the rate hike. The real scandal is that we take for granted that young people must go into debt - at whatever interest rate - to pay for college. Of course, the truly lucky kids - those blessed wealthy members of the Lucky Sperm Club - sail through higher education without debt. But today, even upper-middle-class kids are having to take out loans, as the average annual cost of a four-year public university soars above $22,000, while private schools are over $50,000. Who the hell thinks this is a good idea? * * * |
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Brian Tashman
Also to blame were abortion, a same-sex kiss, and exposed breasts.Right Wing Watch 2013-07-02 20:28:00 Last week on Generations Radio, Colorado pastors Kevin Swanson and Dave Buehner addressed the forest fires hitting their state. They wondered why God was punishing Colorado with the fires, and specifically targeting the heavily conservative city of Colorado Springs. The two ultimately determined that the forest fires were linked to the state's liberal abortion laws and the recent success of civil union legislation. Swanson added that a Denver Post photograph of State House Majority Leader Mark Ferrandino kissing his partner also played a role in inviting God's wrath.
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Lindsay Jolivet
Yahoo! Canada News - Daily Buzz 2013-07-02 19:03:00
A video of police arresting a man in Hawthorne, Calif., appears to show them shooting his dog, Max, dead at the scene. Police arrested Leon Rosby, 52, after he tried to film a police raid with his cell phone, according to CBS. Police said his loud music and his behaviour was obstructing the officers' response to an armed robbery call. But Rosby wasn't the only person filming nearby, because a video of his arrest posted online on June 30 shows the entire scene unfolding. Footage shows Rosby standing on the street with his dog, a Rottweiler, near several police cruisers. Two officers approach him as he puts his dog into a car. They handcuff him, the dog jumps out and runs toward them and the officer shoots the animal several times as bystanders scream. The video received many responses on Reddit before the website disabled comments because users were "witch-hunting" and posting personal information. The police issued a statement confirming the officer had killed the dog after it ran toward him aggressively, according to CBS. The video has more than 746,000 views on YouTube. Please be warned: the content is graphic. |
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| Secret History |
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Tia Ghose
LiveScience 2013-07-03 16:00:00
Ancient people who lived in in Northern America about 5,000 years ago have living descendants today, new research suggests. Researchers reached that conclusion after comparing DNA from both fossil remains found on the northern coast of British Columbia, Canada, and from living people who belong to several First Nations tribes in the area. The new results, published today (July 3) in the journal PLOS ONE, are consistent with nearby archaeological evidence suggesting a fairly continuous occupation of the region for the last 5,000 years. "We're finding links that tie maternal lineages from as far back as the mid-Holocene 5,000 years ago to living descendants living today in Native American communities," said study co-author Ripan Malhi, a molecular anthropologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. |
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| Science & Technology |
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Mitch Leslie
ScienceNow 2013-07-03 14:35:00
Cholera kills thousands of people a year, but a new study suggests that the human body is fighting back. Researchers have found evidence that the genomes of people in Bangladesh - where the disease is prevalent - have developed ways to combat the disease, a dramatic case of human evolution happening in modern times. Cholera has hitchhiked around the globe, even entering Haiti with UN peacekeepers in 2010, but the disease's heartland is the Ganges River Delta of India and Bangladesh. It has been killing people there for more than a thousand years. By the time they are 15 years old, half of the children in Bangladesh have been infected with the cholera-causing bacterium, which spreads in contaminated water and food. The microbe can cause torrential diarrhea, and, without treatment, "it can kill you in a matter of hours," says Elinor Karlsson, a computational geneticist at Harvard and co-author of the new study. The fact that cholera has been around so long, and that it kills children - thus altering the gene pool of a population - led the researchers to suspect that it was exerting evolutionary pressure on the people in the region, as malaria has been shown to do in Africa. Another hint that the microbe drives human evolution, notes Regina LaRocque, a study co-author and infectious disease specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, is that many people suffer mild symptoms or don't get sick at all, suggesting that they have adaptations to counter the bacterium. To tease out the disease's evolutionary impact, Karlsson, LaRocque, and their colleagues, including scientists from the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research in Bangladesh, used a new statistical technique that pinpoints sections of the genome that are under the influence of natural selection. The researchers analyzed DNA from 36 Bangladeshi families and compared it to the genomes of people from northwestern Europe, West Africa, and eastern Asia. Natural selection has left its mark on 305 regions in the genome of the subjects from Bangladesh, the team reveals online today in Science Translational Medicine. |
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Damian Carrington
The Guardian, UK 2013-07-03 15:29:00
Whales flee from the loud military sonar used by navies to hunt submarines, new research has proven for the first time. The studies provide a missing link in the puzzle that has connected naval exercises around the world to unusual mass strandings of whales and dolphins. Beaked whales, the most common casualty of the strandings, were shown to be highly sensitive to sonar. But the research also revealed unexpectedly that blue whales, the largest animals on Earth and whose population has plummeted by 95% in the last century, also abandoned feeding and swam rapidly away from sonar noise. The strong response observed in the beaked whales occurred at noise levels well below those allowed for US navy exercises. "This result has to be taken into consideration by regulators and those planning naval exercises," said Stacy DeRuiter, at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, who led one of the teams. "For whales and dolphins, listening is as important as seeing is for humans - they communicate, locate food, and navigate using sound," said Sarah Dolman, at charity Whale and Dolphin Conservation. "Noise pollution threatens vulnerable populations, driving them away from areas important to their survival, and at worst injuring or even causing the deaths of some whales and dolphins." Dolman said there were no accepted international standards regarding noise pollution and there was an urgent need to re-evaluate the environmental impacts of military activities. |
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Tanya Lewis
LIveScience 2013-07-03 12:00:00
The most comprehensive catalog of great-ape genome diversity to date offers insight into primate evolution, revealing chimpanzees have a much more complex genetic history than humans. In a new study, researchers sequenced a total of 79 great apes, including chimpanzees, bonobos, eastern and western gorillas, orangutans and humans, as well as seven ape subspecies. The animals were wild- and captive-born individuals from populations in Africa and Southeast Asia. Much attention has been focused on studying the diversity among human genomes, said study researcher Tomas Marques-Bonet, a geneticist at the Institut de Biologia Evolutiva in Spain. "If we want to understand the genetic diversity of humans, we need to measure the genetic diversity of our nearest relatives," Marques-Bonet said. As part of the study, Marques-Bonet and his colleagues were looking for genetic markers corresponding to changes in a single letter in the genetic code that define a subspecies. The researchers identified millions of such markers, which are important for conservation efforts. For instance, these markers allow people who manage wild-ape populations to identify different kinds of ape. Most of these animals are captured from illegal trade, so scientists don't know how they're related, Marques-Bonet told LiveScience. Surprisingly, Marques-Bonet said, the genetic history of chimpanzees turned out to be much more complex than that of humans. Compared with chimps, "it looks like our [humans'] history has been really simple," Marques-Bonet said. Human populations encountered a bottleneck when they left Africa, and have since expanded to colonize the whole planet. By contrast, chimpanzee populations have undergone at least two to three bottlenecks and expansions, Marques-Bonet said. |
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Scott Sutherland
Yahoo! Canada News - Geekquinox 2013-07-02 00:00:00
The idea of transplanting the human head has (so far) been left in the (fictitious) realm of the rich and crazy - see the incredibly strange 1971 horror movie The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant or its apparent 'followup' the year after The Thing with Two Heads or The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror II in 1991 - but now an Italian neuroscientist believes that it may actually be possible. There have been stories over the years of scientists transplanting the heads of dogs and monkeys - btw, that's between two dogs (by Vladimir Demikhov in the 1950s) and between two monkeys (by R.J. White in the 1970s), not between a dog and a monkey - with a fair amount of hype, but apparently, according to Steven Novella, from his Neurologica Blog, those weren't true transplants. For it to be a true transplant, the head has to be able to control its new body, and in those cases, it was simply that the body supplied blood to the head. In order to have control over the new body, there has to be a successful connection of the spinal cord. Without that, it's no dice. Now, in the fictitious examples I mentioned above, Manuel Cass (the 'maniacal killer' from The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant) was an actual transplant, as he had some control over the body, but for Dr. Maxwell Kirshner in The Thing with Two Heads and Mr. Burns in Treehouse of Horror II, they were just grafted on. However, although I've been using examples from horror movies and cartoons, there actually is some real promise for this idea, apparently. |
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Francie Diep
PopSci 2013-07-02 17:00:00
Since the Canadian company D-Wave began selling so-called quantum processors, experts have debated whether they're truly quantum. Now, according to an analysis by academic physicists they really do show quantum effects, making them the world's first commercial quantum processors. In general, it's been difficult to confirm how D-Wave machines work because quantum states are so sensitive, measuring them may perturb them. Besides this new test, performed at the University of Southern California, a few different recent tests have gathered evidence that D-Wave processors work as advertised. Quantum processors have quantum bits instead of the usual binary bits that traditional processors have. You know normal bits store information by taking on one of two states, often named "0" and "1." Quantum bits, also called qubits, have another capability. They are able to take on both the 0 and 1 states at the same time. |
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EarthSky Org
2013-07-02 19:08:00
A new study provides the first conclusive proof of the existence of a space wind first proposed theoretically over 20 years ago. By analyzing data from the European Space Agency's Cluster spacecraft, researcher Iannis Dandouras detected this plasmaspheric wind, so-called because it contributes to the loss of material from the plasmasphere, a donut-shaped region extending above the Earth's atmosphere. The results are published today in Annales Geophysicae, a journal of the European Geosciences Union (EGU). "After long scrutiny of the data, there it was, a slow but steady wind, releasing about 1 kg of plasma every second into the outer magnetosphere: this corresponds to almost 90 tonnes every day. It was definitely one of the nicest surprises I've ever had!" said Dandouras of the Research Institute in Astrophysics and Planetology in Toulouse, France. |
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Laura Poppick
LiveScience 2013-07-02 18:01:00
Plenty of myths and fables have tried to explain the loony effects the moon seems to have on animals, but far fewer scientific reports have formally addressed the issue. Now, in a comprehensive review, scientists have found the indirect, and sometimes direct, ways the lunar cycle drives animal behaviors. The review also suggests light pollution, which can block out some of the moon's glow, may disrupt natural patterns associated with Earth's only satellite. Those who believe in true lunacy - the craziness stirred in animals by the lunar cycle - will be disappointed to learn that many animals simply adjust their behaviors in response to changes in light levels and tides, rather than to anything supernatural. Still, other behaviors do follow more mysterious circadian clocks controlled by the lunar cycle, the team reports today (July 2) in the journal the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. "The moon may act as a synchronizing cue between individuals, as a cue for other environmental parameters - spring tides, food availability - or simply allow animals to use vision," said Noga Kronfeld-Schor, a biologist at Tel Aviv University and co-author on the report. "The behaviors it affects are wide and diverse, ranging from long-term processes such as timing reproduction and migration to direct response to light levels." |
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| Earth Changes |
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Brandon Hurley
Dickinson County News 2013-06-26 07:54:00
Local DNR officials say an overabundance of white bass may have caused a recent die-off at Silver Lake near Lake Park in recent weeks. Silver Lake had a large population of 12- to 14-inch bass, according to fisheries biologist Mike Hawkins. When fish or wildlife populations become overpopulated, the transmission of diseases becomes more frequent. Hawkins said he received three calls from concerned homeowners who saw a large number of dead fish on the shore. "We associate it with a very large class that is all five years old," Hawkins said. "We didn't anticipate the kill but it's not a huge surprise that a huge class like this could succumb to a bacterial infection. Most likely it's something that will run it's course in the population and will affect mostly those age 5 fish. It did get a lot of attention but they looked to all be the same size and same fish. You can quickly start to put the pieces of the puzzle together on a number of fish kills, whether it's natural or caused by a pollutant." The disease affecting the fish is not transmissible to humans and residents are not in any danger. |
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Joanne Marie Hoopes
clickondetroit.com 2013-06-25 07:37:00
Dozens of birds found dead, dying or injured on Oakland Park Court Highland Park, Mich - Residents say dozens and dozens of seagulls were found dead, dying or injured in a Highland Park neighborhood on Tuesday. The birds were found in the area of 12200 Oakland Park Court. Witnesses say the bodies of dead birds were everywhere. Sick and injured birds roamed the street as cars drove over the dead and dying. "We are unsure what happened to the birds at this point," said Kristin Simon a cruelty investigator with PETA. Simon says the Michigan Humane Society and many concerned residents were in the area collecting injured birds. It is not yet known what or who caused the death of the birds. |
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CBC News
2013-07-03 00:00:00
Minor injuries at Our Lady Queen of Peace Ranch Twenty-one children were taken to hospital after a thunderstorm ripped through a camp in northeast Edmonton Tuesday night. The storm swept through Our Lady Queen of Peace Ranch at around 9:30 p.m., knocking over tents. "There's been some scrapes and bruises, cuts and abrasions, that sort of thing for injuries," said District Fire Chief Darrell Dublanko. "There hasn't been any significant injuries, life-threatening or anything like that." The camp is in a valley and the storm whipped through in a matter of several minutes, Dublanko said. About 200 children were at the camp at the time. All have been accounted for and have been moved inside the main building. "They're happy and have their sleeping bags inside now, instead of in the tents," Dublanko said. According to the website, the camp gives children who face physical, mental, financial or emotional challenges a chance to experience the outdoors. |
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Scott Sutherland
Yahoo! Canada News - Geekquinox 2013-07-02 00:00:00
Hazy, smoggy conditions settled down over southern Ontario and southern Quebec Tuesday, caused by forest fires burning in northern Quebec. A smog warning is in effect for most of southwestern Quebec - from Gatineau to Montreal to Drummondville - and a smog advisory has already been effect for eastern Ontario, which was expanded all the way through Toronto and Hamilton. Typically, smog warnings and advisories are caused by stagnant weather conditions causing industrial and car pollution to build up and 'cook' into ozone, fine particulate matter and a mix of other pollutants. However, according to CBC News, this current advisory is mostly due to smoke that is blowing into the warning areas from an extensive forest fire near James Bay, which has consumed around 250,000 hectares of land so far.
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Spaceweather
The "noctilucent daisy"
continues to expand and intensify as summer unfolds. Observers in
central-to-northern Europe are reporting vivid, nightly displays of
NLCs. Just hours ago, Alan Tough photographed these over Lossiemouth,
Moray, Scotland:2013-07-02 19:00:00
"This was another spectacular display of noctilucent clouds," says Tough. "I arrived in Lossiemouth in time to see the Moon rising and managed to capture its glitter path on the River Lossie." 2013 is shaping up to be a good year for NLCs. The clouds surprised researchers by appearing early this year, and many bright displays have already been recorded. Once confined to the Arctic, NLCs have been sighted in recent years as far south as Utah, Colorado, and Nebraska. They might spread even farther south in 2013. Observing tips: Look west 30 to 60 minutes after sunset when the sun has dipped 6o to 16o below the horizon. If you see luminous blue-white tendrils spreading across the sky, you've probably spotted a noctilucent cloud. |
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The Local
Floods are ravaging huge swathes of Germany, plunging towns
underwater and causing billions of euros in damage. Yet the country is
no stranger to meteorological madness, and as this week's Local List
reveals more unusual weather phenomena.2013-06-12 17:04:00 Whether scorching hot or unfathomably freezing, Germany has seen a lot of strange weather in its time. We've dug through the archives and brought you the coldest of the cold and the hottest of the hot - which some readers might remember as being the summer of 2003. Yet in 1816, summer never came. Crops died and poverty swept over much of the world after a volcanic eruption in Indonesia through the world's weather system off-kilter. With summer slowly creeping in we shouldn't have to worry about that this year though, but there are always a chance of tennis-ball sized hailstones or even tornadoes, to worry about. And let's not even think about the military simulating terror attacks by changing the weather. |
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| Fire in the Sky |
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apolo11.com
A fireball crossed the night sky on the night of Tuesday and was seen by
many observers in the southeast region. The fireball had reddish color
and may have been caused by reentry remains of a Chinese rocket type
Long March.2013-06-18 11:14:00 According to some observers who wrote for Apolo11, the fireball crossed the sky slowly towards southeast and appeared to have a small tail like a comet. "The 23h40, an object crossed the sky Araçatuba-SP. From the moment we saw it, was near the zenith going towards the southeast and was up near the horizon, behind houses, which could no longer see," said the observer Diego Adelson, who witnessed the passage. According to Adelson, the object had reddish glow and brighter than the planet Venus. "You could see a small trail behind," he said.
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Comment: How interesting that the recent surge in
protests in Brazil peaked around this time... and that this comet
fragment, completely undetected by authorities, was seen from Sao Paulo
and other cities where the mass demonstrations are taking place...
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| Health & Wellness |
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Rachael Rettner
LiveScience 2013-07-03 16:00:00
A woman in Germany developed what looked like frostbite on her nose, ears and legs, even though she had not been exposed to extremely cold temperatures, according to a new report of her case. Her skin developed black regions, made up of damaged skin tissue, which appeared over several days. The heating system in her house had failed for a few days, and outside temperatures dropped to 50 degrees Fahrenheit (10 degrees Celsius), the report said. Doctors diagnosed the woman with a type of autoimmune disease that is triggered by cold temperatures. The woman had high levels of antibodies called "cold agglutinins" in her body. Most people have low levels of cold agglutinins, which help the body respond to infection. |
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| Science of the Spirit |
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Tanya Lewis
LIveScience 2013-07-03 10:21:00
Like computers, human brains may be vulnerable to hackers. Technology is already allowing scientists to read people's thoughts and even plant new ones in the brain. The latest episode of the Science Channel's Through the Wormhole, hosted by Morgan Freeman, explores the potential - and dangers - of hacking the mind. The episode premieres tonight (July 3) at 10 p.m. ET. "We live a world of data," Freeman says in the show. "One day soon, our innermost thoughts may no longer be our own." Mind reading Reading people's minds doesn't always require technology. New York psychologist Marc Salem can decipher a person's thoughts using the tiny physical cues in a person's body language. "A scratch of the nose can mean you're lying, or it can mean that your nose itches," Salem told LiveScience. When he's trying to read someone's mind, he looks for what he calls a "packet of signals" that tells him what a gesture means. The show follows Salem as he guesses the cards of professional poker players - a seemingly impossible feat. To do it, Salem relies on context. "I'm able to pick up their nonverbal inflections and cues," he said. "The more I have a context for them, the more I can pick them up." Of course, technology can give scientists even more direct access to the human brain. Inventor and neurotechnologist Philip Low is developing a portable brain monitor called iBrain that can detect the brain's electrical activity from the surface of the scalp, Freeman explains. People with Lou Gehrig's disease (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) or other forms of paralysis still have healthy brain activity. Using the iBrain, they could use thoughts to control a virtual hand on a computer screen. |
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| High Strangeness |
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No new articles. |
| Don't Panic! Lighten Up! |
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Mark Molloy
Metro.co.uk 2013-07-02 11:10:00
Commuters in Tokyo had to deal with some slippery conditions on the way to the office his week after being confronted with this soapy street mess. At first glance, it appears the Japanese capital has been hit by unseasonal snowy weather, but a closer look reveals an entirely different story. The fluffy white bubbles invaded a street in the district of Ginza after a madcap office employee decided to pour 40 litres of soap powder down the sink. |
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ABC 27
2013-07-01 11:01:00
A road sign in Lancaster County is attracting a lot of attention and getting quite a few laughs. It's a green sign that PennDOT placed on Route 222 south, notifying drivers that they are approaching Ephrata. Problem is, the town is spelled "Epharta." "Yeah, a lot of people are talking about it," said Ephrata resident Mary Luter. "I see it all over Facebook and I think it's kind of funny that they misspelled the word since Ephrata's been here for so long." PennDOT spokesman Mike Crochunis told us that the agency printed six Ephrata signs and only one of them came out Epharta. Very odd. The department is going to fix it, but not by replacing the whole sign which would cost about $2,100. "We're going to cut out a section of the two letters that are juxtaposed and put a plate in there," Crochunis said. "It will be aluminum, match up with the sign." That will still cost several hundred dollars. PennDOT expects the sign to be corrected in a couple of weeks. Source: WHTM |
