Roberto Abraham Scaruffi: The European Union Times - World News, Breaking News

Wednesday 17 July 2013

The European Union Times - World News, Breaking News

The European Union Times



Posted: 16 Jul 2013 02:02 PM PDT

Police in Los Angeles and Oakland clashed with pockets of violent protesters intent on wreaking havoc following the verdict in a high-profile court case that saw the killer of a black youth declared ‘not guilty.’
A number of protesters were taken into police custody Monday night after the LAPD declared an unlawful assembly shortly before 10 pm on Monday night in the Crenshaw district.
The scene along Crenshaw Boulevard and adjacent streets was chaotic as rioters set fires, assaulted bystanders, and vandalized cars and businesses, authorities said.
Police estimated that up to 150 people were engaged in acts of civil disobedience in the Crenshaw area.
LAPD reported that it arrested a total of 13 individuals and Oakland police detained nine.
Earlier Monday, a group of protesters stormed a Wal-Mart on Crenshaw Boulevard as guards hurried to close the security gates. A short time later, LAPD officers wearing helmets and carrying batons swarmed the store to disperse the looters, The Los Angeles Times reported.

Some of the protesters hurled chunks of concrete at officers on Vernon Avenue, the LAPD said. No injuries were reported.
The LAPD declared a tactical alert at approximately 9 p.m. local time, which requires that off-duty officers remain on duty when their shifts end to assist with high-priority calls.
The eruption of violence created a “nightmare” for local commuters as automobiles were trapped around Leimert Park and bus service was cancelled on Crenshaw and Martin Luther King Jr. boulevards, Metro reported.
The LAPD has warned it has 300+ officers have been deployed and it will take a strict approach to people who come out to the Crenshaw area tomorrow.
Meanwhile, Oakland had also experienced its share of disturbances as police turned on protesters with tear gas and concussive grenades in response to youths smashing windows and throwing rocks at members of the media.

There had also been reports that a masked protester attacked a waiter with a hammer-like object in Oakland.
The violence comes in the wake of a murder case that polarized the nation along racial lines in the death of Trayvon Martin. Defense lawyers argued that Martin, 17, attacked George Zimmerman, who responded by shooting and killing the teen in apparent self-defense.
The prosecution attempted to portray the actions of Zimmerman, 29, who is Hispanic, as racially motivated as he “stalked” and targeted Martin because he was black, they said.

Peaceful protests held in other US cities
Despite the sporadic incidences of violence in Los Angeles and Oakland, peaceful protests went ahead in other cities across the US.
In San Francisco, streets were closed off as people marched against Zimmerman’s acquittal.
In New York hundreds marched from Union Square to Times Square. RT’s Marina Portnaya estimated that police outnumbered demonstrators 2:1 and, while no arrests were made, the marchers made their presence known.
Marchers carried signs and chanted “Justice for Trayvon Martin!” and “No justice, no peace!”
Even though a new trial for George Zimmerman is unlikely, the protests have already succeeded in changing the conversation for the better, Professor Charles Rose, who teaches Excellence in Trial Advocacy at Stetson University in Florida, told RT.
“You could look at the glass as half-empty or half-full. I prefer to think that what it gets us in the United States to do is what we, as a nation of immigrants, always need to do, which is to talk about how we come together,” he said. “That issue of race is always present in the United States and it gives us an opportunity, once the emotion has run out, to give us a way to talk about this in a way that can be positive for the country in the long term.”




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Posted: 16 Jul 2013 01:39 PM PDT

New study conducted by an international team of researchers has unveiled the mystery of a genetic flaw which significantly increases the risk of obesity.
A type of gene called FTO, which is known as fat-boosting gene, has put many lives at higher risks of obesity that is estimated to be one in six people.
The recent study revealed that FTO made fatty foods more tempting and affected on hunger hormone called ghrelin, according to the paper published in The Journal of Clinical Investigation.
The team, led by researchers at University College London, studied people with two copies of the FTO gene inherited from each parent. Each copy comes in a high and a low-risk form.
Those people who have two-high risk copies of the FTO gene are reported to be 70% more likely to become overweight than those ones with low-risk genes.
Examining the two groups unraveled that the level of hunger hormone did not fall in men with the high-risk genes after eating meal and even their ghrelin levels began to increase quickly.
Furthermore, a series of brain scans after a meal demonstrated that in the high-risk patients pictures of high-fat foods were more appealing than in the low-risk group.
“Their brain is set up to be particularly interested in anything to do with high-calorie food,” said Dr Rachel Batterham, head of the centre for obesity research at University College London.
While experts have tied a person’s genetic code to obesity, they believe that drugs targeting ghrelin might reduce weight gain.
“Protein meals do lower ghrelin more, so anything that suppresses ghrelin is more likely to be effective in FTO patients,” Batterham explained while stressed that exercise such as cycling was also an excellent way to reduce ghrelin levels.
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Posted: 16 Jul 2013 01:28 PM PDT

The new killer virus in the Middle East, novel coronavirus, aka Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) is deadly, there is no cure, its transmission mechanisms are hazy, though there have been cases of human to human transmission, yet the WHO imposes no travel restrictions in the run-up to the Hajj. Some questions to be answered…
How interesting. Is the World Health Organization once again going to sit back and limit itself to informing us of the various phases the disease is going to run through until the final declaration that it has become a pandemic without imposing quarantine, without imposing travel restrictions? This was the case with Influenza H1N1, when the pharmaceutical lobbies rubbed their hands in glee as the illness spread around the world creating millions of new cases.
H1N1 did not have an unusual death rate. MERS-CoV has. In fact, it has a fatality rate of 56%, over half of the patients – a total of 45 of the 80 laboratory-confirmed cases since April 2012 (what about the others?) have died. The virus attacks men and women alike (65% to 45%) and all age groups (from 14 months to 94 years, with prevalence for adults in their fifties). The median incubation period is just under a week (5.2 days).
The infections come from Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Qatar and United Arab Emirates in the Middle East, France, Germany and the UK in Europe and Tunisia in Africa, according to the latest World Health Organization update. So what happened to the previously reported cases in Scandinavia?
The report states that all European and Tunisian cases had direct contact with the Middle East and while the WHO postulates about the transmission mechanisms being unclear, the fact is that human to human transmissions have taken place among travelers to the Middle East and close contacts who had never been there. In which case we may conclude that there exists human to human transmission of an unknown virus with a 56% fatality rate without any known cure and therefore, are we not facing a PHEIC (Public Health Emergency of International Concern)?
After doing nothing except postulate, observe and carry out tests, and after months of constant criticism in this column, the WHO has finally convened Emergency Committee meetings, today being the second (the first was July 5). How many meetings do they need to recognize the fact that nature is trying to create a pandemic based on foci of infection in the lower respiratory tract, as has been obvious over the last decade, which has again proved to be the case with MERS-Co, in which tests reveal the viral load is far higher in this area than in the upper respiratory samples?
The conclusions are easy to reach. One is a suspicion that the pharmaceutical lobbies walk hand-in-hand with those in charge of public health, in which information is manipulated in a sinister fashion until a mass market is produced for the distribution of drugs, called “products” by the said industry. The other conclusion is that if the suspicion is unfounded, then the WHO is manned by scientists and laboratory technicians far more fascinated by whether or not a case is a false positive than they case if one is a false negative, or indeed if a host of cases and new infections are going unreported.
A 56% fatality rate is not a matter to be played around with. Let’s be honest, it provides a wonderful sample for the Pharma lobby to make tens of billions of dollars.
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Posted: 16 Jul 2013 12:23 PM PDT
March 23 Movement (M23) rebels
Clashes between army forces and rebels in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have left at least 130 people dead, including 10 soldiers, the government says.
“Our forces have inflicted very heavy losses on the M23 (March 23 Movement) fighters, 120 have been killed and 12 captured,” government spokesman Lambert Mende said on Monday, referring to clashes that erupted over the weekend.
Mende added that the violent clashes which broke out on Sunday in North Kivu Province between the Congolese army and the M23 rebels also killed 10 soldiers.
He further said the death toll from the fighting is not yet definitive, stressing that “until now the army forces have responded with bravery and efficiency to this attack.”
The Congolese spokesman went on to say that army forces succeeded in recapturing the positions which had been previously held by rebels as they escaped.
Reports say that some 2,000 soldiers were dispatched during the skirmishes. However, Mende did not confirm the figure.
Some 3,000 UN troops have recently been deployed to the region. The troops that are from Malawi, South Africa and Tanzania, are joining about 17,000 UN soldiers already sent to the area.
Meanwhile on Sunday, the Uganda Red Cross (URC) said more than 60,000 refugees from the DRC have crossed into Uganda since July 11 to escape clashes between the Congolese army and a group of Ugandan rebels at a border town.
The M23 rebels and several other armed groups are active in the eastern Congo and are fighting for control of the country’s vast mineral resources, such as gold, the main tin ore, cassiterite, and coltan (columbite-tantalite), which is used to make many electronic devices, including cellphones.
Since early May 2012, more than three million people have fled their homes in the eastern Congo. About 2.5 million have resettled in Congo, but some 500,000 have crossed into neighboring Rwanda and Uganda.
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Posted: 16 Jul 2013 12:16 PM PDT

Search engine Yahoo has won a court case to release NSA records and potentially prove it resisted handing over customer data to US authorities. The ruling could clear Yahoo’s name following allegations it collaborated with the NSA to spy on citizens.
The US Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Court ruled that data, pertaining to a 2008 order for Yahoo to hand over customer information to US authorities, should be revealed.
“The Government shall conduct a declassification review of this Court’s Memorandum Opinion of [Yahoo's case] and the legal briefs submitted by the parties to this Court,” the ruling read.
Through the ruling the Internet search engine seeks to prove that it did not collaborate with the NSA in its Prism spy program.
Classified documents leaked by former CIA employee Edward Snowden revealed that the NSA gathered supposedly private user information from the data banks of as Yahoo, Facebook Inc., Microsoft Corp., Google Inc. and others. All of the organizations have denied being in cahoots with US authorities and maintain the NSA gleaned the information without their knowledge.
“Yahoo! takes users’ privacy very seriously. We do not provide the government with direct access to our servers, systems, or network,” said a company spokesperson back in June when Edward Snowden went public with the NSA leaks.
The company filed a request to the US Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Court on June 14 to make the 2008 case public. Yahoo says it means to help inform the public in the ongoing debate over the US government’s sweeping spy programs.
US authorities have not expressed any opinion over the data that is to be disclosed but has asked that they be given two week to review the information before its release.
Staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Mark Rumold, expressed doubts over the government’s transparency.
“It remains to be seen how forthcoming (the government) will be. The administration has said they want a debate about the propriety of the surveillance, but they haven’t really provided information to inform that debate. So declassifying these opinions is a very important place to start,” Rumold told AP.
EFF also noted in a statement that more companies could have made requests to the court and the Yahoo request had a gag order on it.
“We encourage every company that has opposed a FISA order or directive to move to unseal their oppositions so the public will have a better understanding of how they’ve fought for their users,” said the company.
Washington has come under fire for its sweeping surveillance programs, provoking the ire of civil rights groups. The Obama Administration justifies the covert gathering of meta-data as a measure against terrorism.
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