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Niall Bradley
Sott.net 2013-07-09 10:10:00
A week after the Egyptian Army deposed President Mohamed Morsi, supporters of the ousted leader were massacred yesterday allegedly during a sit-in protest at an "elite army base" in Cairo. So far over 50 have been reported dead, with hundreds injured. The Muslim Brotherhood is blaming the Egyptian army and police, but a military spokesman has said a "terrorist group" was responsible. "We have people hit in the head, we have bullets that exploded as they entered the body, cluttering organs and body parts" said Gehad Haddad, a spokesman for Muslim Brotherhood. Adamant that the role of police and army is to "safeguard the people's revolution", no matter their particular political affiliation, military spokesman Ahmed Ali said security forces acted "in self-defense against armed men attacking them from various locations, including rooftops." No one disputes that there were clashes between Morsi supporters - at least some of whom also appeared to be armed and intent on violence - and the security forces sent in to remove them, but it's unclear who the gunmen were: This bloodbath comes on the heels of arguably the largest mass demonstrations in modern history, and is almost certainly going to spiral out of control and plunge Egypt into chaos. |
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No new articles. |
| Puppet Masters |
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The Daily Star, Lebanon
2013-07-09 17:17:00
Beirut: Former Prime Minister Saad Hariri blamed Israel Tuesday for the "terrorist explosion" that rocked Beirut's southern suburbs and accused the country of trying to provoke Sunni-Shiite strife in Lebanon. "[The blast] requires the highest level of awareness and vigilance in the face of dangers that surround the country and the entire region, especially while facing attempts by the Israeli enemy to push [Lebanon] to strife by organizing terrorist attacks, as happened today," Hariri said in a statement. "After of terrible criminal scene that Beirut's southern suburbs witnessed, the Lebanese can only express indignation and condemnation of the crime that targeted one of the most populated neighborhoods," the statement said. A car bomb explosion ripped through the Beirut's southern suburb neighborhood of Bir al-Abed, a pro-Hezbollah area, wounded dozens of people. "As I strongly condemn the terrorist bombing that harmed innocent civilians, I ask God Almighty to bless the wounded with safety and health," Hariri said. Hariri said that the blast should shock Lebanese "to go back to the national consensus on keeping Lebanon away from external conflicts and to avoid slipping into wars that will only inflict further divisions in the country, place national stability at risk and expose Lebanon to the conspiracies of the Israeli enemy." |
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RT
2013-07-09 15:32:00
A new report has revealed that the rice supply in at least 30 countries may have already been contaminated with genetically modified strains from US exports, thereby threatening worldwide contamination. A new report by the GM Contamination Register has disclosed US Department of Agriculture findings from 2006 and 2007, which show that the department detected traces of unapproved GM rice in over 30 countries. At the time, all of the Bayer CropScience varieties discovered had not been approved for cultivation or consumption abroad, and only one of the three types had been approved for domestic cultivation. The USDA believes that the source of the contamination is field trials which occurred between the mid 1990s and early 2000s.The genetically modified LLRICE62, LLRice601 and LLRICE604 varieties are herbicide resistant. The trials were terminated in 2002 and none of these varieties ever made it onto the US market. But years later, traces of these strands were found worldwide. The USDA report said the agency was unable to conclude whether pollen from the trials escaped and contaminated other fields or mechanical mixing was to blame. |
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Matt Taibbi
Rolling Stone 2013-07-09 11:55:00
Hilarious corruption story hit the news wires this week. It's actually a two-part joke. Part one is that Thomson Reuters got slapped in the face by New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman for its absurd practice of selling early access to the results of the Survey of Consumer Confidence Survey it conducts each month in conjunction with the University of Michigan. It turns out that in recent times, if you paid them an extra subscription fee of a few thousand dollars a month, Thomson Reuters would allow you access to the Consumer Confidence data a full two seconds earlier than the rest of its subscribers - at 9:54:58 a.m., as opposed to 9:55:00 exactly. Thomson Reuters suspended the activity at the request of Schneiderman, who released a statement about this humorously brazen effort at the systematic sale of inside information. From the L.A. Times:
The two-second head start allows high-speed traders to plunge into the markets en masse and retreat all the way back again before most of the world sees this market-altering economic data. |
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RT
2013-07-09 15:02:00
Samples taken at the site where the chemical weapons were allegedly used indicate that it was rebels - not the Syrian army - behind the attack, Russia's UN envoy Vladimir Churkin has said. Russia has handed over the analyzed samples to the UN, he added. "I have just passed the analysis of samples taken at the site of the chemical attack to the UN Secretary General (Ban Ki-moon)," Churkin said on Tuesday. Evidence studied by Russian scientists indicates that a projectile carrying the deadly nerve agent sarin was most likely fired at Khan al-Assal by the rebels, Churkin pointed out. "It was determined that on March 19 the rebels fired an unguided missile Bashair-3 at the town of Khan al-Assal, which has been under government control. The results of the analysis clearly show that the shell used in Khan al-Assal was not factory made and that it contained sarin," he said. Churkin stressed that unlike other reports which have been handed to the UN, the samples were taken by Russian experts at the scene, without any third party involvement. |
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Pepe Escobar
The working title of the Edward Snowden movie is still The Spy Who Remains in the Cold. Here's where we stand:
Into this script comes roaring the coup-that-is-not-a-coup sub-plot in
Egypt. Cynics' eyebrows will be raised that just as the Barack Obama
administration was going mental over the National Security Agency (NSA)
spy scandal a revo-coup-o-lution explodes in Egypt. New revelations
about the extent of the NSA-centric Orwellian Panopticon keep on coming,
but they have been totally downgraded by US corporate media; it's all
Egypt all the time. After all, the Pentagon - to which the NSA is
attached - owns the Egyptian military, something that even the New York
Times had to acknowledge. [1]Asia Times Online 2013-07-09 14:33:00 Yet they don't own Snowden. This has nothing to do with "terra". Meanwhile, the US intelligence gambit of intercepting a non-adversarial presidential plane spectacularly backfired in true Mad magazine Spy vs Spy fashion. Obama had said he would not "scramble fighter jets" to catch Snowden; of course not, just ground them. |
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Martin Chulov and Patrick Kingsley
Guardian 2013-07-04 09:45:00
Ousted Muslim Brotherhood mobilises for day of protest as hundreds of party's members are seized Egypt is braced for further dramatic events on Friday as the vanquished Muslim Brotherhood called for a "day of rejection" following a widespread crackdown on its leadership by the country's new interim president, Adli Mansour. Supporters of the ousted president Mohamed Morsi, still reeling from the military coup that removed their leader from power, are expected to take to the streets after Friday prayers following a series of raids and arrests that decimated the Muslim Brotherhood's senior ranks and consolidated the miltary's hold on the country. In a stark sign of Egypt's new political reality, the group's supreme leader, Mohamed al-Badie, who was untouchable under Morsi's rule, was one of those arrested. |
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Sharyl Attkisson
CBS News 2013-07-05 09:22:00
Marine Corps Col. George Bristol was in a key position in the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) chain of command the night of the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. As such, he's high on the list of people that some Republican members of Congress want to interview. But they don't know where he is and the Pentagon isn't telling. Pentagon spokesman Major Robert Firman told CBS News that the Department of Defense "cannot compel retired members to testify before Congress." "They say he's retired and they can't reach out to him," Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, told CBS News. "That's hogwash." Bristol, a martial arts master, was commander of Joint Special Operations Task Force-Trans Sahara based in Stuttgart, Germany until he retired last March. In an article in Stars and Stripes, Bristol is quoted at his retirement ceremony as telling his troops that "an evil" has descended on Africa, referring to Islamic militant groups. "It is on us to stomp it out." |
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Martin Chulov and Patrick Kingsley
Guardian 2013-07-05 09:17:00
Move is prompted by armed attack on al-Arish airport, despite relative calm in rest of country Egypt's army has declared a state of emergency in the Suez and South Sinai regions after an armed attack on al-Arish airport, despite relative calm elsewhere in the country on the first weekend since the ousting of Mohammed Morsi as president. In Cairo, where Morsi's main support base had announced a "day of rejection" to coincide with Friday prayers, leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood have continued to urge peaceful demonstrations to demand that the vanquished leader be returned to office. Only two of the 20 members of the Muslim Brotherhood Guidance Council attended the largest of twin pro-Morsi rallies in the capital. Most other senior leaders of the group have been detained by the military, or have been in hiding since the momentous events of Wednesday night. The attack in al-Arish, around 40 miles (60km) south of the Gaza border, was sustained and intense, security officials said. One person was killed and several others wounded. The attackers are not yet known, and the Sinai has in recent months become an increasingly important theatre for jihadist groups. |
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Whiteout Press
2013-07-07 22:36:00
Washington. In case readers missed it with all the coverage of the Trayvon Martin murder trial and the Supreme Court's rulings on gay marriage and the Voting Rights Act, the US Supreme Court also made a ruling on lawsuits against drug companies for fraud, mislabeling, side effects and accidental death. From now on, 80 percent of all drugs are exempt from legal liability. In a 5-4 vote, the US Supreme Court struck down a lower court's ruling and award for the victim of a pharmaceutical drug's adverse reaction. According to the victim and the state courts, the drug caused a flesh-eating side effect that left the patient permanently disfigured over most of her body. The adverse reaction was hidden by the drug maker and later forced to be included on all warning labels. But the highest court in the land ruled that the victim had no legal grounds to sue the corporation because its drugs are exempt from lawsuits. |
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| Society's Child |
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Shannon Argueta
Addicting Info 2013-07-08 15:11:00
A horrifying picture of modern-day eugenics is emerging in California, the state that was once known as the country's most prolific sterilizer, with as many 20,000 people losing their ability to procreate between 1909 to 1964. They were so well-known for their practice of preventing the 'inferior' from breeding that historians say Nazi Germany contacted the state's eugenics leaders in the 1930s. You know they must have been doing something terribly, terribly wrong if Hitler was seeking their advice. That shameful past is coming back to haunt the state as a new report emerges that almost 150 female prison inmates were sterilized between 2006 and 2010 without state approval. The report released by The Center for Investigative Reporting claims that at least 148 women received tubal ligations during that time frame. Records show that between 1997 and 2010 the state paid $147,460 to doctors to perform the surgery on inmates. |
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RT
2013-07-05 14:54:00
Two Houston women have filed a lawsuit against the Texas Department of Public Safety claiming they were subjected to a humiliating roadside body cavity search that left them violated and traumatized. "I was embarrassed, in a bikini, on the side of the freeway. And it hurts so bad to even go through something like that," 27-year-old Brandy Hamilton told KTRK News. Hamilton and 26-year-old Alexandria Randle were driving home to Houston after spending last year's Memorial Day at a nearby beach with family and friends when Texas Trooper Nathaniel Turner pulled them over for speeding on the side of Highway 288 and ordered them to exit their vehicle. The women were still wearing their bathing suits and were not permitted to put clothes on or cover up before exiting the car. The trooper claimed to smell marijuana in the car and called a female trooper to search the women's body parts for drugs, despite numerous pleas from the ladies. "The male officer, his words verbatim were, 'We're gonna get familiar with your womanly parts," Hamilton told KXAN. |
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Anthony Gucciardi
After labeling NSA leaker Edward Snowden a traitor and a terrorist, the
Fox News Watch panel exploded with laughter at the very notion that the
government should fear the people.Story Leak 2013-07-09 04:13:00
Right after one panelist devilishly referenced the concept that the government should fear the people as a joke, even referencing the concept as tracing back to Thomas Jefferson, the crew couldn't stop from laughing at the very idea that the people are meant to keep the government in check. And of course it is an idea that is fundamental to not only upholding the Constitution itself (the fabric of our nation), but to keep the continuous threat of absolute corruption and tyranny in check. |
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RT.com
2013-07-09 14:25:00
Around 30,000 inmates held in prisons across California have taken the first steps towards engaging in what could become the largest hunger strike in state history. Prisoners at 11 state facilities began refusing meals early Monday, after months of plotting a demonstration which they hope will bring change to a number of longstanding grievances against the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation - particularly the practice of indefinitely housing some detainees in total isolation. In a letter obtained by the LA Times, protesters reportedly demanded that the state retire its current solitary confinement policies and allow inmates accused of prison gang involvement to spend a maximum of only five years in isolation. Currently there is no limit on how long inmates thought to be connected to internal gangs can spend in Segregated Housing Units (SHUs). According to the LA Times, 4,527 inmates at four state prisons are now living in such units - including 1,180 at Pelican Bay State Prison in northern California, where the demonstration was hatched. "The principal prisoner representatives from the PBSP SHU Short Corridor Collective Human Rights Movement do hereby present public notice that our nonviolent peaceful protest of our subjection to decades of indefinite state-sanctioned torture, via long term solitary confinement will resume today...consisting of a hunger strike/work stoppage of indefinite duration until CDCR signs a legally binding agreement meeting our demands, the heart of which mandates an end to long-term solitary confinement (as well as additional major reforms)," reads the letter, which is posted on Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity website. |
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Dan Nosowitz
PopSci 2013-07-09 13:30:00
No need to fear, though: it's an experiment to see exactly how gases are dispersed through the hundreds of miles of New York City subway tunnels. Starting today, New York City authorities will be releasing perfluorocarbon gas into several subway stops, some above and some below ground. Sounds scary, but isn't: perfluorocarbon is a harmless gas, odorless and colorless, and it's being used in the largest airflow experiment ever undertaken. Perfluorocarbon tracers, or PFTs, are used because they're artificial and do not occur in nature, so a very small amount can be detected fairly easily. The work of detection will be done by a large team from three national labs: the Brookhaven, Argonne, and Los Alamos National Laboratories. About 100 interns in addition to professionals from the labs will be constructing and monitoring small black-and-grey boxes in dozens of locations all around the city, all dedicated to checking the air for these tracers. Those locations aren't merely in the subway; the thing about New York's extensive, massively complex subway system is that it's the quickest way for airborne contaminants to race through (nearly) all portions of the five boroughs. So these testing boxes will be installed on subway platforms, sure, but also on telephone poles above ground. |
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Nick Sambides Jr.
Bangor Daily News 2013-07-04 09:41:00
An accident cast horror on Bangor's Independence Day celebrations when an antique firetruck crushed to death the rider of an antique John Deere tractor during the Fourth of July parade, police said. Firetruck riders told police that a mechanical failure caused the truck to go out of control in front of a large crowd of parade-watchers and slam into the rear of the tractor as both turned onto a downhill stretch of Water Street at 12:40 p.m. Thursday, police said. The firetruck "stalled and started to roll" as it turned onto Water Street from Main Street. That might have caused the truck's braking system to fail, speculated Tammy Haskell, who said she was standing at Main and Water streets when the accident occurred. "It rear-ended the tractor and the [tractor] driver was not expecting it," Haskell added. "I saw the driver flying through the air. The tractor rolled onto him and [then] the truck" hit him. "I saw the tractor tip over by the truck and somebody was underneath it," said witness John Bunker, 27, of Bangor. "I heard people screaming, people saying to stop the truck. Then I heard over a loudspeaker somebody saying to clear the area." |
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CBS Baltimore
2013-07-04 09:37:00
Tragedy at the Annapolis Fourth of July parade. A young boy is dead after an accident involving one of the parade floats. Monique Griego has the very latest. Police say a 7-year-old boy was riding in a vehicle in the parade when he somehow fell off. It's still not clear whether he died because of the fall or whether he was struck and killed by another vehicle. |
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Sophia Rosenbaum and M. Alex Johnson
NBC News 2013-07-04 09:33:00
An Oklahoma Fourth of July parade turned tragic Thursday morning when a father accidentally ran over and killed his 8-year-old son, who had been on a parade float, police said. Thousands of people had gathered on the streets of Edmond, Okla., to watch the 40th annual Fourth of July parade, which is part of the weeklong LibertyFest celebration. Just before 11 a.m. (noon ET), the little boy "either jumped or fell off" of a flat-bed trailer that his father was driving for a local martial arts group, AKA Karate, according to Jenny Monroe, a spokeswoman for the Edmond Police. The young boy was one of about 20 children on the float. |
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Jennifer Carr and Jerrita Patterson
WTVR 2013-07-05 09:29:00
"A large crowd had been gathering over by the reservoir to watch fireworks and a young boy, seven years old, was walking through the parking lot with his dad. He was a few step behind his dad and he [the boy] fell to the ground," Chesterfield Police Capt. Brad Badgerow said. "Initially they thought he was just passed out. They saw some blood. They thought he may have hit his head." But when the child was taken to the hospital, doctors made a startling discovery. "When medical personnel were treating him, they found what they believe to be a bullet wound in the top of his head," Badgerow said. |
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Kathy Adams
The Virginian-Pilot 2013-07-05 09:26:00
A social media post has fueled a squabble between two local attorneys, leading to a defamation lawsuit and contributing to a crackdown on electronics use in the city's General District Court. At issue is whether a Facebook post of a photo taken inside a courtroom this year was a harmless joke or a damaging misrepresentation, according to the lawsuit and response, filed in Circuit Court this spring. The case also highlights the issues that courts must weigh in deciding whether to allow cellphones and other electronics inside and what limits to put on their use. The lawsuit centers on the post, included in the court file, which shows defense attorney Jason Swango at the bench in General District Court, flanked by a police officer, a bailiff and his client in a city jail jumpsuit. |
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David Stein
Food Network superstar Paula Deen is the latest celebrity to embark on
an "apology tour," spending the past ten days releasing apology videos
and making weepy teary appearances on TV shows begging for mercy for
having used racial epithets in the presence of her employees, one of
whom is currently suing her. I don't know the details of the case, and I
don't want to know. The lawsuit will be decided by a court, not by me
(and not by you). But I do want to say that I'm sick to death of people
being forced to publicly apologize.Republican Party Animals 2013-06-24 09:08:00 Perhaps it's because I was one of those people.
Two months ago, I was "outed" as having spent five years, from 1990 through 1995, making various claims, on shows like 60 Minutes, The Phil Donahue Show, 48 Hours, and Montel Williams, regarding the Auschwitz camp and its role and function during the Holocaust. What I said was controversial, but my views were based on what I perceived to be the facts. I never uttered a single word that was in any way hateful or pro-Nazi, because I am the exact opposite of those things. After a large monetary bounty was put on my head by a violent extremist group, I changed my name, and spent the last eighteen years as David Stein. I built a very successful GOP event-organizing operation, and my political writing was carried by every major conservative site on the 'net, from FrontPageMag to Commentary and The Weekly Standard, from the Breitbart sites to The Daily Caller and HotAir, from The Blaze to The Washington Times and OReilly.com, and on shows including Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, and the Larry Elder Show (where I had become an occasional guest...he and I were even working on a documentary film together). |
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Tom Phillips
Irish Independent 2013-07-08 23:26:00
Chinese police have reportedly seized 20 tonnes of out-of-date meat from a Vietnamese smuggling gang, including chicken feet that were 46 years past their sell-by-date. During a raid conducted in May but only reported this week, police in Guangxi said they smashed an underground network that had been swamping the Chinese food market with substandard chicken feet, tripe and throat. Among their stomach-churning discoveries were chicken feet that date back to 1967, a time when China was still ruled by Chairman Mao. Li Jianmin, a local security chief, told the state news agency Xinhua that after smuggling the decades-old feet into China, the expired meat was treated with chemicals, including hydrogen peroxide, "to kill bacteria, prolong the expiry date" and make the feet "look white and big". |
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Agence France-Presse
2013-07-08 23:10:00
Beijing - The son of a Chinese general has been charged with rape, state media said, in a case that has sparked public anger over the seemingly privileged lives of elite youths. Li Tianyi, 17, "is among five suspects who allegedly gang-raped a woman in a hotel" in February, the Xinhua state news agency said, citing a Beijing district public prosecutor. The boy's father Li Shuangjiang holds the rank of general as dean of the music department for the Chinese army's Academy of Arts, and is known for singing patriotic songs. The public prosecutor's office only provided the surname of the suspect but confirmed "the case is the same gang rape case", Xinhua said. Li Tianyi triggered public controversy in 2011 after he and another teenager, both driving expensive cars, attacked a couple who reportedly blocked their passage, while the victims' child looked on. |
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Kim Zetter
Wired.com 2013-07-08 18:36:00
Several models of Emergency Alert System decoders, used to break into TV and radio broadcasts to announce public safety warnings, have vulnerabilities that would allow hackers to hijack them and deliver fake messages to the public, according to an announcement by a security firm on Monday. The vulnerabilities included a private root SSH key that was distributed in publicly available firmware images that would have allowed an attacker with SSH access to a device to log in with root privileges and issue fake alerts or disable the system. IOActive principal research scientist Mike Davis uncovered the vulnerabilities in the application servers of two digital alerting systems known as DASDEC-I and DASDEC-II. The servers are responsible for receiving and authenticating emergency alert messages. |
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Adriane Quinlan
NOLA.com/The Times-Picayune 2013-07-08 21:02:00
When Asiana Airlines Flight 214 crashed on landing at San Francisco International Airport, Todd Thrush was shocked. The Destrehan resident, a retired airline pilot who estimates he has flown into San Francisco 400 times, considers that airport one of the easiest in the United States for landing, with a runway posed against the bay so that pilots arriving from the east can enjoy a long, leisurely approach. Besides, the weather at the time of Saturday's crash was so ideal that even the wind had calmed. After the crash landing, smoke from the ensuing fire lingered over the plane, instead of blowing out across the water. On top of that, the aircraft model at issue, the Boeing 777, had experienced only two accidents, neither responsible for a death, since it went into service in 1994. And the part that had caused the most recent crash before Sunday's, an engine prone to icing, had been modified. The National Transportation Safety Board noted that the San Francisco plane did not seem to experience a mechanical failure. "The engines indicate that both engines were producing power," Chairman Deborah Hersman said. So what had gone wrong on this flight, which ended with the deaths of two 16-year-old passengers and the hospitalization of 182 others? Why did the plane, which originated in Shanghai and flew into San Francisco on a routine 10-hour leg from Seoul, Korea, end in a fiery snarl? With the safety board set to further review the data recorders that detail the final 30 minutes of the flight, Thrush and other New Orleans area pilots, monitoring the news from afar, began to wonder whether the fault might not lie with the pilots. |
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| Secret History |
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Dov Smith
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem 2013-07-09 11:26:00
Sphinx fragment of pyramid-building pharaoh unearthed by Hebrew University team. As modern Egypt searches for a new leader, Israeli archaeologists have found evidence of an ancient Egyptian leader in northern Israel. At a site in Tel Hazor National Park, north of the Sea of Galilee, archeologists from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have unearthed part of a unique Sphinx belonging to one of the ancient pyramid-building pharaohs. The Hazor Excavations are headed by Prof. Amnon Ben-Tor, the Yigael Yadin Professor in the Archaeology of Eretz Israel at the Hebrew University's Institute of Archaeology, and Dr. Sharon Zuckerman, a lecturer at the Hebrew University's Institute of Archaeology. Working with a team from the Institute of Archaeology, they discovered part of a Sphinx brought over from Egypt, with a hieroglyphic inscription between its front legs. The inscription bears the name of the Egyptian king Mycerinus, who ruled in the third millennium BCE, more than 4,000 years ago. The king was one of the builders of the famous Giza pyramids. |
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Danny Kringiel
Spiegel International 2013-07-05 18:36:00
Over 20 years ago, a landscaper in eastern Germany discovered a formation of trees in a forest in the shape of a swastika. Since then, a number of other forest swastikas have been found in Germany and beyond, but the mystery of their origins persist. Blame it on the larches. Brandenburg native Günter Reschke was the first one to notice their unique formation, according to a 2002 article in the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper. To be more precise, however, it was the new intern at Reschke's landscaping company, Ökoland Dederow, who discovered the trees in 1992 as he was completing a typically thankless intern task: searching aerial photographs for irrigation lines. Instead, he found a small group of 140 larches standing in the middle of dense forest, surrounded by hundreds of other trees. But there was a crucial difference: all the others were pine trees. The larches, unlike the pines, changed color in the fall, first to yellow, then brown. And when they were seen from a certain height, it wasn't difficult to recognize the pattern they formed. It was quite striking, in fact. As he was dutifully accomplishing the task he had been given, the intern suddenly stopped and stared, dumbfounded, at the picture in his hand. It was an aerial view of Kutzerower Heath at Zernikow -- photo number 106/88. He showed it to Reschke: "Do you see what this is?" But the 60-by-60 meter (200-by-200 foot) design that stood out sharply from the forest was obvious to all: a swastika. Reschke is actually a fan of his native Uckermark region of northeastern Germany, extolling its gently rolling hills, lakes and woods, as the "Tuscany of the north." But what the two men discovered in 1992 in that aerial photograph thrust this natural idyll into the center of a scandal. |
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| Science & Technology |
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Jesse Emspak
Discovery News 2013-07-09 15:40:00
The latest details from the investigations into the crash of Asiana flight 214 in San Francisco indicate that the jet was flying dangerously slow before it hit the ground. While the NTSB sorts out whether this was pilot error or not, DNews wondered, Would an autonomous piece of computer hardware and software have done better? The short answer is probably, but that doesn't mean we should hand over control to computers altogether. Although the technology giving jets the ability to land themselves has been around for decades, it's been limited to the military. "When I was flying the F/A-18 Hornet, the level of automation made me step back and reevaluate my life," Missy Cummings, associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics and engineering systems director of the Humans and Automation Laboratory at MIT told DNews. "The plane landed itself better on the carrier than I ever could." She was convinced that the days of human pilots were numbered. It hasn't happened because the technology has not moved into commercial airliners. Contrary to popular assumption, the autopilot systems on passenger jets do not handle take off, fly the plane completely and control the landing. In fact, these systems are designed to carry out orders, such as "maintain this heading" or "stay on this glide path." |
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RedOrbit
2013-07-09 14:43:00
A new device that trains the brain to convert sounds into images could someday be used as a non-invasive treatment for blind and partially sighted people, according to researchers at the University of Bath. Sensory substitution devices (SSDs) aim to compensate for the loss of a sensory modality, typically vision, by converting information from the lost modality into stimuli in a remaining modality. The device in the current study, dubbed "The vOICe," is a visual-to-auditory SSD that encodes images taken by a camera worn by the user into "soundscapes," allowing experienced users to extract information about their surroundings to construct an image in their mind. The researchers, led by Dr. Michael Proulx from the University's Department of Psychology, examined how blindfolded sighted participants responded to an eye test using the device. The participants were asked to perform a standard eye chart test known as the Snellen Tumbling E test, which asked participants to view the letter E turned in four different directions and in various sizes. Normal, best-corrected visual acuity is considered 20/20, calculated in terms of the distance (in feet) and the size of the E on the eye chart. |
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Emma Innes
A meteor hitting the Earth 12,800 years ago released toxic gases
into the air and blocked out the sun causing temperatures to plummet and
plants to dieThe Daily Mail, UK 2013-05-21 12:40:00 Some species managed to adapt but the woolly mammoth died out A giant meteor was probably responsible for wiping out the woolly mammoth, scientists believe. It has long been thought that hunting was the cause of the creatures' extinction, but researchers have now revised their opinion. They believe a huge meteor smashing through the Earth's atmosphere broke up into ten million tonnes of fiery fragments, scattering over four continents. These fragments are thought to have released toxic gas which poisoned the air and blacked out the sun, causing temperatures to plummet, plants to die and landscapes to alter forever.
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Victoria Woollaston
Female woolly mammoth was found frozen in a Siberian ice tomb in MayThe Daily Mail, UK 2013-07-09 10:56:00 The creature will be on display in Tokyo until September Scientists think she got stuck in a swamp and died over 39,000 years ago Blood sample found at the scene could be used to clone the beast A female woolly mammoth, which was found frozen in Russia in May, has gone on display in an exhibition hall in Tokyo. The 39,000-year-old mammoth will be on display at the hall in Yokohama in the south of the Japanese city from 13 July until September 16. Visitors and tourists will be able to come and view the extinct creature that was discovered in an ice tomb in the New Siberian Islands, or Novosibirsk Islands, earlier this year. Scroll down for video
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Comment: Despite the 35,000 years ago date mentioned above a better fit would be about 12,500 years ago.
See - Cosmic blast may have killed off megafauna Meteor impact extinction linked and Forget About Global Warming: We're One Step From Extinction! |
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| Earth Changes |
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Huffington Post
2013-07-09 15:48:00
Three people were pulled from a raging river but six others remained missing following a bridge collapse Tuesday in mountainous western China amid heavy flooding that has forced thousands to evacuate their homes. The official Xinhua News Agency said one sedan, three minivans and one SUV fell into the torrent when the more than 40-year-old Qinglian bridge broke apart just before noon in the city of Jiangyou in the western province of Sichuan. |
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Ken Ritter
Fire crews worked Tuesday to stop two large Nevada wildfires advancing
through rugged mountain areas, including one that billowed smoke visible
from downtown Las Vegas and another southwest of Reno, while
administrators added resources and began looking to the weather to help
contain flames.Miami Herald 2013-07-09 14:46:00 Fifty firefighters were added to the lines on the Carpenter 1 Fire on Mount Charleston northwest of Las Vegas, bringing to more than 800 the number of personnel battling a blaze identified as the top priority in the West, U.S. Forest Service spokesman Jay Nichols said.
"We've got a fire running from 11,000 feet to about 5,000 feet," Nichols said of the elevation of the blaze sparked by lightning July 1 and still just 15 percent contained eight days later. He said some of the increase in the fire size was due to backfires set to burn forest fuel and protect homes. The fire area of almost 31 square miles was nearly the size of Manhattan. It charred pinion, juniper and bristlecone pine forest in steep territory and crept to within about a mile about 400 homes in mountain hamlets. More than 500 residents and another 98 teenagers at a youth correctional camp remained evacuated since the weekend. State highways into the area are closed. |
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Rebecka Schumann
International Business Times 2013-07-09 14:36:00
What appears to be a giant white strip in the middle of Canada is actually the aftereffect of a freak hailstorm in the province of Alberta this past weekend. The photograph, taken by a pilot, shows the remains of the storm in the city of Airdrie. The now-viral photo, first shared on Twitter, was reportedly taken by a Jazz Aviation pilot, Captain Daryl Frank, north of Calgary on Saturday. According to a report from the Huffington Post, the hailstorm and high winds hit not only Airdrie but also Cochrane and north Calgary Saturday afternoon. The storm, although leaving behind up to 12 inches of accumulation that measured two miles wide and 10 miles long, only lasted an estimated 30 minutes, reported WunderGround. |
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David Figura
Reports of fish kills on several of the Finger Lakes has prompted
testing by the state Department of Environmental Conservation, officials
confirmed this week.syracuse.com 2013-07-03 10:15:00 David Lemon, fisheries manager for the DEC's Region 7, said Tuesday, "I've heard that several of the western Finger Lakes are experiencing significant fish mortality events." Locally, he mentioned Cayuga and Skaneateles lakes. "We've had no reports of significant die-offs in either Owasco and Otisco Lakes," he said. Dennis Rhoads, a veteran angler from Summerhill, said he's seen dead fish on Cayuga Lake. He said he's also been talking to other anglers on Cayuga and Seneca Lakes and has been reading reports from fishermen on LakeOntarioUnited.com, an online fishing forum. Earlier this week, he said: "Last several weeks we have seen lots of dead fish on Cayuga Lake. Bass, perch, sunfish etc.," he said. "We were on lake yesterday at latest and saw recent dead fish. Guys are reporting big kills on all Finger Lakes from Hemlock, Canandagua to Cayuga."
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Lyn Mccabe
longisland.com 2013-07-06 09:18:00
1,000 to 1,200 pounds of dead bluefish have been hauled in from the Shinnecock Bay, but not other fish species is showing signs of a ... Shinnecock Bay fishermen have been scratching their heads as to what is happening to the bluefish, which have been washing up dead on the shores since last weekend. Now, the Marine Animal Disease Laboratory at Stony Brook University is stepping in to investigate the unusual die-off of this particular species. According to Southampton Town trustee Ed Warner, the dead bluefish started turning up last Sunday, June 30. They first were found floating in the center of the bay east of the Shinnecock Reservation in small numbers, but the number of dead fish found rose exponentially. By midway through this week, town trustees had removed 1,000 to 1,200 pounds of dead cocktail bluefish, each weighing between 2 and 4 pounds, Warner said to Newsday. |
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ninemsn.com.au
2013-07-06 08:46:00
A third killer whale carcass has been found by wildlife rangers at Fraser Island, off the southern Queensland coast. The whale was discovered late on Friday in a creek north of Kingfisher Bay on the island by Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service staff. The discovery comes two days after two whales, believed to be a mother and calf, died on Wednesday when their pod became stranded on a sandbar in the Great Sandy Strait which separates the island from the mainland. It's believed the whale discovered on Friday, which measures seven metres, had been dead for at least 24 hours before its discovery. |
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CTV News
2013-07-08 21:56:00
Hundreds of thousands of residents are without power in the Greater Toronto Area and streets are flooded with rainwater after severe thunderstorms dumped nearly 100 millimetres of water across the region. As of late Monday evening, 91 mm of rain fell in the city while rainfall totals measured 106 mm at the suburban Pearson International Airport after the storms blew through. The rain began at 4 p.m. local time, stranding commuters in cars, buses and subway trains as the busy rush hour was getting underway. Toronto Hydro reported late Monday that approximately 300,000 residents remained without power across the city. The agency advised residents to call 416-542-8000 to report an outage. Tanya Bruckmueller, public affairs advisor at the agency, said Monday evening it was impossible to guess when power will be restored. She said extra work crews were on standby ahead of the storm's arrival, and more were being called in. | |
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Comment: 22 June 2013: Calgary, Alberta devastated in deluge of biblical proportions
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Matt Stewart
Stuff.co.nz 2013-07-08 21:41:00
Stargazers could be mistaken for thinking the night sky had filled with flash photography last night after a series of 'heat' lightning strikes off the Wairarapa coast were seen across Kapiti, Wellington and as far north as Masterton. Karori man Stuart Cunningham noticed the flashes in the sky when he was walking to his house about 8pm. They were ''non directional'' and he originally thought someone nearby was doing flash photography. But when he logged on to Facebook he realised people as far away as Christchurch were also reporting seeing it. While some speculated the flashes came from alien life forms coming to earth, he believed it was more likely a meteor shower. MetService forecaster Dan Corbett said 124 strikes were recorded between about 6pm and midnight after a trough of cold air moved over relatively warm waters off the Wairarapa coast creating the conditions for the lightning storm. Nearly all of the strikes happened out to sea and because they were so far offshore they struck without sound. Source: The Dominion Post |
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