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Michael Snyder
The Economic Collapse 2013-07-23 11:39:00
Everything is going to be just great. Haven't you heard? The stock market is at an all-time high, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke says that inflation is incredibly low, and the official unemployment rate has been steadily declining since early in Barack Obama's first term. Of course I am being facetious, but this is the kind of talk about the economy that you will hear if you tune in to the mainstream media. They would have us believe that those running things know exactly what they are doing and that very bright days are ahead for America. And it would be wonderful if that was actually true. Unfortunately, as I made exceedingly clear yesterday, the U.S. economy has already been in continual decline for the past decade. Any honest person that looks at those numbers has to admit that our economy is not even close to where it used to be. But could it be possible that we are making a comeback? Could it be possible that Obama and Bernanke really do know what they are doing and that their decisions have put us on the path to prosperity? Could it be possible that everything is going to be just fine? Sadly, what we are experiencing right now is a "mini-hope bubble" that has been produced by an unprecedented debt binge by the federal government and by unprecedented money printing by the Federal Reserve. Once this "sugar high" wears off, it will be glaringly apparent that by "kicking the can down the road" Bernanke and Obama have made our long-term problems even worse. Unfortunately, most Americans don't understand these things. Most Americans just let their televisions do their thinking for them, and right now their televisions are telling them that everything is going to be fine. |
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| Puppet Masters |
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BBC
2013-07-23 11:19:00
Al-Qaeda has said it carried out two mass jailbreaks in Iraq, which freed hundreds of prisoners including senior leaders of the Islamist militant group. In an online statement, al-Qaeda said Sunday's attack was the final one in a campaign aimed at freeing inmates. At least 20 security guards died when gunmen stormed the Abu Ghraib and Taji jails near Baghdad. Abu Ghraib gained global notoriety in 2004 when images were released showing US guards abusing Iraqi detainees. Iraqi officials had previously tortured regime opponents in Abu Ghraib during Saddam Hussein's rule. Comment: Oh but nothing near the scale and depth of depravity reached by the U.S. governors of the jail... On Tuesday, an al-Qaeda affiliate calling itself the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant said it carried out the attacks on the prisons. | |
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Comment: No doubt, like the thousands of Al Qaeda-type
nutcases freed by NATO in Libya, imprisoned by progressive leader
Muammar Ghaddafi in accordance with Western wishes to 'remove safe
harbor for terrorists' in the aftermath of 9/11, these Iraqi
fundamentalists, kept at bay by the progressive Maliki government to
date, will join their brethren across the Middle East incausing bloody
mayhem in the name of their lord and master, the CIA...
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Spencer S. Hsu
The Washington Post 2013-07-17 20:52:00
An unprecedented federal review of old criminal cases has uncovered as many as 27 death penalty convictions in which FBI forensic experts may have mistakenly linked defendants to crimes with exaggerated scientific testimony, U.S. officials said. The review led to an 11th-hour stay of execution in Mississippi in May. It is not known how many of the cases involve errors, how many led to wrongful convictions or how many mistakes may now jeopardize valid convictions. Those questions will be explored as the review continues. The discovery of the more than two dozen capital cases promises that the examination could become a factor in the debate over the death penalty. Some opponents have long held that the execution of a person confirmed to be innocent would crystallize doubts about capital punishment. But if DNA or other testing confirms all convictions, it would strengthen proponents' arguments that the system works. |
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Philip Dorling
The Age 2013-07-21 22:06:00
Central Australia's Pine Gap spy base has played a key role in the United States' controversial drone strikes involving the ''targeted killing'' of al-Qaeda and Taliban chiefs, Fairfax Media can reveal. Former personnel at the Australian-American base have described the facility's success in locating and tracking al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders - and other insurgent activity in Afghanistan and Pakistan - as ''outstanding''. A Fairfax Media investigation has confirmed that a primary function of the top-secret signals intelligence base near Alice Springs is to track the precise ''geolocation'' of radio signals, including hand-held radios and mobile phones, in the eastern hemisphere, from the Middle East across Asia to China, North Korea and the Russian far east. This information has been used to identify the location of terrorist suspects, which then feeds into the United States drone strike program and other military operations. The drone program, which has involved more than 370 attacks in Pakistan since 2004, is reported to have killed between 2500 and 3500 al-Qaeda and Taliban militants, including many top commanders. |
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SkyNews
2013-07-22 12:49:00
Edward Snowden May Leave Airport In Two Days Edward Snowden's lawyer says he should be allowed to leave a Moscow airport transit area in the next few days. The American is expected to be granted papers by Wednesday allowing him to move to the city centre, according to his Russian lawyer Anatoly Kucherena. Mr Kucherena, who helped the 30-year-old file his request for temporary asylum in Russia, said: "He should get this certificate (allowing him to leave the airport) shortly." His bid for temporary asylum in Russia may take up to three months to process but he can pass through customs based on the initial response to his request, Mr Kucherena added. The former National Security Agency (NSA) worker has not ruled out seeking Russian citizenship, his lawyer said. Snowden believes it would be unsafe to try to travel to Latin America soon because of US efforts to extradite him to face espionage charges after he leaked details of the Prism surveillance programme. |
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Dan Lamothe
Marine Corps Times 2013-07-17 21:23:00
When insurgents attacked the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, last fall, Col. George Bristol held a key post in the region. As commander of Joint Special Operations Task Force-Trans Sahara, he was in a position to know what options the U.S. had to protect Americans under fire. U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans died in the Sept. 11 attacks, sparking national outcry and a congressional investigation examining the lack of protection. Several U.S. officials have testified before Congress since - but not Bristol, a salty Marine whose task force was responsible for special operations in northern and western Africa. Defense Department officials have told members of Congress that Bristol cannot be forced to testify because he retired after stepping down during a March change of command ceremony, according to several media reports. The Pentagon reinforced that point of view to Marine Corps Times on Tuesday. "Col. Bristol was not invited by Congress to testify before he retired," said Air Force Maj. Robert Firman, a spokesman with the Office of the Secretary of Defense. "The DoD has cooperated fully with Congress and the Accountability Review Board since the beginning of this investigation, and we will continue to do so." That isn't the case, however. While Bristol is preparing for retirement, he is on active duty through the end of July, said Maj. Shawn Haney, a Marine spokeswoman, on Wednesday. He will be placed on the inactive list on Aug. 1, she said. That contradicts statements that Pentagon officials have issued to both Congress and the media. |
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Daniel Halper
Congressman Frank Wolf, a Republican from Virginia, said today on the
House floor that survivors of the Benghazi terror attack have been
forced to sign non-disclosure agreements:Weekly Standard 2013-07-18 21:07:00
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David Sherfinski and Stephen Dinan
The Washington Times 2013-07-17 20:52:00
IRS employees have told congressional investigators that they were ordered by the agency's Washington office to give extra scrutiny to tea party groups' applications for tax-exempt status, according to excerpts from interviews with the employees that were released by House committee chairmen Wednesday. Carter Hull, a tax law specialist with 48 years of experience at the IRS, told investigators that Lois Lerner, the former head of the Exempt Organizations division, demanded he send some of the reviews of tea party groups to the IRS chief counsel's office in Washington. The chief counsel is one of two political appointees in the IRS. The Internal Revenue Service has come under fire over the past several months after the agency's auditor, J. Russell George, exposed that the agency was targeting conservative groups for intrusive scrutiny. This week,The Washington Times reported that government employees also improperly accessed IRS information to look at data on a handful of political candidates and donors. |
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Ben Wolfgang and Dave Boyer
The Washington Times 2013-07-17 20:42:00
More than two years after her upstart Senate campaign rocked the Delaware political world, Christine O'Donnell got an unexpected contact from a U.S. Treasury Department agent warning that her private tax records may have been breached. The phone message earlier this year shocked the battled-scarred candidate, a tea party favorite who knocked off Republican mainstay Michael Castle in the primary before losing in a bid to win Vice President Joseph R. Biden's former seat. "Ms. O'Donnell, this is Dennis Martel, special agent with the U.S. Department of Treasury in Baltimore, Md. ... We received information that your personal federal tax info may have been compromised and may have been misused by an individual," he said in the January message left on her cellphone. For Ms. O'Donnell, the message immediately raised red flags. On March 9, 2010, the day she revealed her plan to run for the Senate in a press release, a tax lien was placed on a house purported to be hers and publicized. The problem was she no longer owned the house. The IRS eventually blamed the lien on a computer glitch and withdrew it. Now Mr. Martel, a criminal investigator for the Treasury Department's inspector general for tax administration, was telling her that an official in Delaware state government had improperly accessed her records on that very same day. |
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William Douglas
McClatchy 2013-07-19 00:00:00
Congress is growing increasingly wary of controversial National Security Agency domestic surveillance programs, a concern likely to erupt during legislative debate _ and perhaps prod legislative action _ as early as next week. Skepticism has been slowly building since last month's disclosures that the super-secret NSA conducted programs that collected Americans' telephone data. Dozens of lawmakers are introducing measures to make those programs less secret, and there's talk of denying funding and refusing to continue authority for the snooping. The anxiety is a sharp contrast to June's wait-and-see attitude after Edward Snowden, a government contract worker, leaked highly classified data to the media. The Guardian newspaper of Britain reported one program involved cellphone records. The Guardian, along with The Washington Post, also said another program allowed the government access to the online activity of users at nine Internet companies. | |
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Comment: It has been publicly known since 2004 that the
US government secretly, illegally, and unconstitutionally spies on its
citizens. As Congress and the federal courts have done nothing so far,
is seems unlikely that much will come of this debate.
What is the U.S. government's agenda? The NSA whistleblower from EIGHT years ago: Interview with Russell Tice |
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David Shepardson
The Detroit News 2013-07-17 20:25:00
Federal Reserve Board chairman Ben Bernanke declined to answer a question from a Michigan member of Congress that's perplexing many homeowners: Should they refinance? Last week, the average U.S. rate on a 30-year-mortgage climbed to 4.5 percent - a two-year-high. Rep. Bill Huizenga, R-Zeeland, who is vice chair of the Monetary Policy and Trade Subcommittee, said at a congressional hearing on Wednesday that he had recently refinanced his mortgage and wanted to pass along a question one of his friend's had: "Should he refinance right now?" Bernanke said he couldn't answer. "I'm not a qualified financial adviser," Bernanke said. "I wouldn't want to." Separately, Rep. Gary Peters, D-Bloomfield Township, asked whether Japan was manipulating its currency to aid big companies. The Japanese yen has fallen by about 30 percent this year. Bernanke said Japan is not manipulating its currency, but using monetary policy trying to "break the deflation they've had for about 15 years and a side effect of that is the yen has weakened. ... The international consensus is as long as a country is using domestic policy tools for domestic purposes that that would be an acceptable approach." |
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Philip Bump
The Atlantic Wire 2013-07-17 20:10:00
As an aside during testimony on Capitol Hill today, a National Security Agency representative rather casually indicated that the government looks at data from a universe of far, far more people than previously indicated. Chris Inglis, the agency's deputy director, was one of several government representatives - including from the FBI and the office of the Director of National Intelligence - testifying before the House Judiciary Committee this morning. Most of the testimony largely echoed previous testimony by the agencies on the topic of the government's surveillance, including a retread of the same offered examples for how the Patriot Act and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act had stopped terror events. But Inglis' statement was new. Analysts look "two or three hops" from terror suspects when evaluating terror activity, Inglis revealed. Previously, the limit of how surveillance was extended had been described as two hops. This meant that if the NSA were following a phone metadata or web trail from a terror suspect, it could also look at the calls from the people that suspect has spoken with - one hop. And then, the calls that second person had also spoken with - two hops. Terror suspect to person two to person three. Two hops. And now: A third hop. |
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*** Already freed and back to the USA *** |
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Press TV
2013-07-15 19:36:00
Members of the US Congress have called for the imposition of sanctions against Argentina over its growing ties with Iran and Buenos Aires' bid for joint investigations with Tehran into the 1994 AMIA Jewish center bombing. In a letters to US Secretary of State John Kerry and US Attorney General Eric Holder, the Congressmen cited growing economic and diplomatic relations between Iran and Argentina as grounds for slapping sanctions against Buenos Aires. A memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed by Iran and Argentina to probe the bombing at the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA) was cited as another reason to take action against Buenos Aires. The July 10 letter to Kerry said the US Congressmen found it "extremely troubling" that Argentina had agreed to a joint effort with Iran to investigate the AMIA bombing, which left 85 people dead. Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi and his Argentinean counterpart, Hector Timerman signed the MoU in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on January 27. | |
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Comment: AMIA was Mossad False-flag Operation
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Michael O'Brien
President Obama lauded former President George H.W. Bush at an event
honoring the winner of the 5,000 Daily Point of Light Award. NBC's
Peter Alexander reports. NBC News 2013-07-15 19:20:00
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RT.com
2013-07-22 19:29:00
If full-body scanners and TSA pat-downs make you feel uncomfortable, you now have an alternate option - for the hefty price of $85. The Transportation Security Administration has launched a new program that will allow members to bypass regular airport security checkpoints. Those enrolled in the "trusted traveler" program, called TSA PreCheck, will no longer have to remove their shoes, jackets, and belts. Members can also keep their laptop computers in their bags. Currently, only members of frequent-flier programs are given the opportunity to apply without paying a fee. But TSA Administrator John Pistole on Friday announced that all travelers will soon be able to join PreCheck - as long as they pay $85, provide identifying information, pass a background check, and undergo fingerprinting. Pistole said that enrollment will be opened to the public later this year, and that he expects an additional 3 million people to sign up for PreCheck before the end of the year. About 12 million travelers are currently enrolled. If his estimates are accurate, the TSA will reap about $255 million from the program in 2013. |
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| Society's Child |
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Peter Allen
French politician causes outrage after stirring up memories of holocaustThe Daily Mail, UK 2013-07-23 15:44:00 In an incendiary outburst, Gilles Bourdouleix also accuses gypsies of incest Calls made for UDI party leader Jean-Louis Borloo to sack his colleague A French politician has caused outrage by suggesting that Adolf Hitler 'did not kill enough' Roma gypsies. In the latest ferocious attack on travellers, MP Gilles Bourdouleix stirred up memories of the Holocaust, when the Nazis sent thousands of gypsies to the gas chambers because Hitler believed them to be sub-human. Mr Bourdouleix, who represents a constituency in the Maine and Loire region of west France, was visiting an illegal Roma camp in the town of Cholet, where he is deputy mayor, when he made the incendiary comments.
Surrounded by armed police, Mr Bourdouleix was trying to persuade the new arrivals to move on. But as he began to speak to community leaders, some of the Roma gypsies standing by began to make Nazi salutes in his direction. Mr Bourdouleix was recorded by a local journalist saying: 'Like what, Hitler didn't kill enough'. |
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Nicholas Watt & Charles Arthur
The Guardian 2013-07-23 10:46:00
Every household in Britain connected to the internet will be obliged to declare whether they want to maintain access to online pornography, David Cameron will announce on Monday. In the most dramatic step by the government to crack down on the "corroding" influence of pornography on childhood, the prime minister will say that all internet users will be contacted by their service providers and given an "unavoidable choice" on whether to use filters. The changes will be introduced by the end of next year. As a first step, customers who set up new broadband accounts or switch providers would have to actively disable the filters by the end of this year. |
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Ari Bloomekatz
Los Angeles Times 2013-07-19 11:59:00
Organized "bash mob" crime rampages of roving groups attacking innocent people and businesses have been striking cities around the United States. Law enforcement agencies in Southern California have reported few similar problems -- until now. In the last several days, there have been several reports of such group crime waves in South L.A., Hollywood, San Bernardino and Victorville. Long Beach police are bracing for another one Friday. These so-called bash mobs of "flash mob" crime waves are organized through social media and have been a problem in Chicago, Philadelphia and Washington. In April, 28 Chicago youths were arrested on suspicion of attacking pedestrians along the city's famed Magnificent Mile. Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn signed legislation in May enacting stiffer penalties for people who text or use social media to organize mob attacks. |
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RT.com
2012-09-07 22:32:00
A federal judge has upheld a verdict that strips a Pennsylvania family of their grandfather's gold coins - worth an estimated $80 million - and has ordered ownership transferred to the US government. Judge Legrome Davis of the Eastern District Court of Pennsylvania affirmed a 2011 jury decision that a box of 1933 Saint-Gaudens double eagle coins discovered by the family of Israel Switt, a deceased dealer and collector, is the property of the United States. In the midst of the Great Depression, then-President Franklin Roosevelt ordered that America's supply of double eagles manufactured at the Philadelphia Mint be destroyed and melted into gold bars. Of the 445,500 or so coins created, though, some managed to escape the kiln and ended up into the hands of collectors. In 2003, Switt's family opened a safe deposit back that their grandfather kept, revealing 10 coins among that turned out to be among the world's most valuable collectables in the currency realm today. |
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Tom Lyons
Herald-Tribune 2013-07-18 21:50:00
After leaving her operating room scrub nurse duties at Sarasota's Doctors Hospital on Wednesday, Louise Goldsberry went to her Hidden Lake Village apartment. Her boyfriend came over, and after dinner - about 8 p.m. - Goldsberry went to her kitchen sink to wash some dishes. That's when her boyfriend, Craig Dorris - a manager for a security alarm company - heard her scream and saw her drop to the floor. Goldsberry, 59, said she had looked up from the sink to see a man "wearing a hunting vest." He was aiming a gun at her face, with a red light pinpointing her. "I screamed and screamed," she said. But she also scrambled across the floor to her bedroom and grabbed her gun, a five-shot .38-caliber revolver. Goldsberry has a concealed weapons permit and says the gun has made her feel safer living alone. But she felt anything but safe when she heard a man yelling to open the door. He was claiming to be a police officer, but the man she had seen looked to her more like an armed thug. Her boyfriend, Dorris, was calmer, and yelled back that he wanted to see some ID. But the man just demanded they open the door. The actual words, the couple say, were, "We're the f------ police; open the f------ door." Dorris said he moved away from the door, afraid bullets were about to rip through. Goldsberry was terrified but thinking it just might really be the police. Except, she says she wondered, would police talk that way? She had never been arrested or even come close. She couldn't imagine why police would be there or want to come in. But even if they did, why would they act like that at her apartment? It didn't seem right. |
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Kristin Tate
Mr Conservative 2013-07-20 21:44:00
Ten men raped a 13-year-old girl who had run away from her home. They taped each other raping her on a cell phone and cheered each other on the entire time. Two of the ten men have been charged for the horrific attacks, which happened on June 29 in Austin, Texas. The two captured suspects are 25-year-old Juan Lozano Ortega and 26-year-old Edgar Gerardo Guzman Perez. The girl had run away from home prior to the attacks, and was staying in a group home for children. It was there that she met three unknown men and got into a car with them. Those three men have not yet been caught by officials. The affidavit for the case said, "All of the other males took turns having sex with victim against her will, which lasted through the early morning hours." |
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Adam Taylor
Business Insider 2013-07-20 17:20:00
The Federal Reserve is currently "reviewing" a landmark 2003 decision that first allowed regulated banks to trade in physical commodity markets. Why exactly shouldn't banks be able to trade physical commodities? To see one argument, take a look at a big report from David Kocieniewski in today's New York Times. According to Kocieniewski, a Goldman Sachs-owned company has been involved in an elaborate plan to move around aluminum in a way that has inflated market prices. The report states that every time an American consumer buys a product containing aluminum, they pay a price that has been affected by this maneuver. Sources told The New York Times that in total the plan has cost American consumers more than $5 billion over the last three years. |
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NBC New York
2013-07-18 21:36:00
A Manhattan courtroom was briefly evacuated Tuesday after bedbugs were spotted crawling up the neck of a man who showed up to answer a desk-appearance ticket, according to a published report. The woman who first noticed the bloodsucking creepy crawlers yelped to others in the courtroom and chaos ensued; several people ran out of the proceedings, including the man with the bugs on him, the Daily News reported. A Manhattan Criminal Court spokesman confirmed to the News that there was bug-related havoc in one of the arraignment rooms around 11:30 a.m., but said that no evidence of bedbugs was found in the area. Court officers called in an exterminator as a precaution. The courtroom was evacuated for a time during the extermination treatment, and when it reopened, the three rows near where the alleged bug man had been sitting were roped off. |
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Michael Doyle
McClatchy 2013-07-18 21:35:00
Washington - The FBI will review thousands of old cases, including some involving the death penalty, in which hair samples helped secure convictions, under an ambitious plan made public Thursday. More than 2,000 cases the FBI processed from 1985 to 2000 will be re-examined, including some in which execution dates have been set and others in which the defendants already have died in prison. In a key concession, Justice Department officials will waive usual deadlines and procedural hurdles that often block inmates from challenging their convictions. "This will be critical to giving wrongly convicted people a fair chance at a fair review," said Steven D. Benjamin, a Virginia attorney who's the president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. The defense lawyers' association joined with The Innocence Project, based at New York City's Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University, as well as pro bono attorneys to press for the review. The study will focus on whether analysts exaggerated the significance of their hair analyses or reported them inaccurately. Defendants will be notified and free DNA testing offered if errors in lab work or testimony are detected. "The government's willingness to admit error and accept its duty to correct those errors in an extraordinarily large number of cases is truly unprecedented," declared Peter Neufeld, a co-director of the Innocence Project. "It signals a new era in this country that values science and recognizes that truth and justice should triumph over procedural obstacles." |
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David Martosko
Mail Online 2013-07-18 20:34:00
The U.S. Department of Justice, overseen by Attorney General Eric Holder, has ordered the Sanford, Florida police department to keep possession of all the evidence from George Zimmerman's second-degree murder trial - including the exonerated neighborhood watch volunteer's gun. Sanford police confirmed on Thursday that the DOJ asked the agency not to return any pieces of evidence to their owners. Zimmerman was expected to get his firearm back by month's end. The development is a sign that the criminal section of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division is seriously investigating Zimmerman to determine if federal civil rights charges should be filed. Zimmerman was acquitted of murder and manslaughter on Sunday in a Florida courtroom, but civil rights violations provide an exception to the U.S. Constitution's protection against double jeopardy after a defendant has been found 'not guilty' in a state or local jurisdiction. |
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Rob Hotakainen
McClatchey 2013-07-22 20:21:00
After surviving years of drought and watching the size of the U.S. cattle herd fall to its lowest level in more than 60 years, Texas cattleman Bob McCan would just as soon steer clear of the U.S. government's latest meat-labeling rules. For many U.S. consumers, it's a popular idea: Label packages to let them know what country the meat comes from. But with his herd of roughly 4,000 including cattle from Mexico, McCan said there's no good reason to segregate the animals when he sells them. All it would do, he said, is create hundreds of millions of dollars of extra handling costs that would get passed on, driving up the price at grocery stores. "We don't want beef to become a luxury item," said McCan, a fifth-generation rancher from Victoria, Texas. McCan, now the president-elect of the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, is among a group of cattle producers and meat companies that has sued the U.S. Department of Agriculture for moving ahead in late May with new country-of-origin labeling rules. In a lawsuit filed July 8 in U.S. District Court in Washington, the groups claim the labels will hurt beef exports and are unconstitutional as "compelled speech" that doesn't advance a government interest. Backers of the new rules, who say labeling can be done at a minimal cost, are braced for another battle with cattle producers. | |
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Zachary A. Goldfarb
The Washington Post 2013-07-21 00:00:00
The battle over the future of Detroit is set to begin this week in federal court, where government leaders will square off against retirees in a colossal debate over what the city owes to a prior generation of residents as it tries to rebuild for the next. Soon after Detroit emergency manager Kevyn D. Orr and Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) approved a bankruptcy filing Thursday, groups representing the 20,000 retirees reliant on city pensions successfully petitioned a county court to effectively freeze the bankruptcy process. Now, city and state officials, who say the court ruling will not affect their plans, are asking a federal judge to hold hearings early this week to validate the bankruptcy and move forward with a strategy for Detroit to discharge much of its estimated $19 billion debt. Orr has promised that retired city workers, police officers and firefighters will not see pensions or health benefits reduced for at least six months. But on Sunday, he said those retirement benefits will have to be cut down the road. | |
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Comment: "The "no money" pretext is a lie. The deficit
of Detroit stands at $327 million. In comparison, a handful of
billionaires in the state have a net worth of $24 billion, close to 75
times the budget deficit. A mere ten percent surtax on the wealthiest nine individuals
in Michigan would cover the city's deficit 7 times over. Wall Street
giants such as Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and UBS have extracted
more than $474 million from the city in fees related to the sale of
debt, according to a report from Bloomberg News."
Financial dictator of Detroit will institute slash and burn policy to benefit banksters US: 20 Things We Can Learn About The Future Of America From The Death Of Detroit |
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The Christian Science Monitor
2013-07-22 19:31:00
How Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder has dealt with financial crises in the state - and how he will handle the Detroit bankruptcy - could hold lessons for the rest of the US. Gov. Rick Snyder (R) of Michigan could be forgiven for sounding like a bit of a cheerleader when discussing Detroit's bankruptcy Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press." "I'm very bullish about the growth opportunities of Detroit," he said. On one hand, finding the silver lining of perhaps the worst fiscal disaster in the history of America's cities is his job - it's hard to imagine Michigan truly thriving so long as its largest city is an economic millstone. Yet, on a much more personal level, it seems like Governor Snyder sincerely believes he was built for this. A businessman who was elected during the depth of the recession, when Michigan stood as America's worst-case scenario, Snyder has made sweeping changes to the public sector in the state - from pensions to health care. Detroit, in many ways, is the final exam he has been preparing for since taking office. Indeed, considering that Detroit's bankruptcy could drag out through the 2014 election, how Snyder is seen to manage it could be crucial to his reelection prospects. But more broadly, how Detroit and Michigan navigate their seismic changes could hold lessons for the country. All the problems that the city and state are facing are looming for states from Illinois to California. In that way, Snyder's big moment could offer a hint of the sort of belt-tightening that could lie ahead for many parts of the country. |
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| Secret History |
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Andrew C. Isenberg
The Daily Beast 2013-07-21 04:45:00
Wyatt Earp is one of America's most famous vigilantes who delivered justice the American way - except it's all a lie. Biographer Andrew Isenberg on how Earp built this myth and its dangerous echoes through American history. Eighty-five years ago in Los Angeles, the Western lawman Wyatt Earp, who participated in an infamous gunfight in Tombstone, Arizona, in 1881, met with an aspiring screenwriter, Stuart Lake, and began to dictate his memoirs. Four years later, Lake sold the screen rights to Earp's story to Fox, and the first of what would be dozens of Earp films went into production. By now, most Americans have learned what they know of Wyatt Earp from the screen. Older viewers may have first learned of Earp in 1957 from Gunfight at the OK Corral, which starred Burt Lancaster, or, between 1955 and 1961, from the ABC television program The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, starring Hugh O'Brian. Younger Americans know Earp from 1993's Tombstone, with Kurt Russell as Earp, or 1994's Wyatt Earp, starring Kevin Costner. Harrison Ford is reportedly planning to play Earp in a film adaptation of the 2007 novel Black Hats. Over the decades, film and television has told a consistent narrative about Earp. According to the screen, he reluctantly pinned on a badge and was drawn into the Tombstone gunfight because of his sense of duty, his unshakable commitment to law and order, and his loyalty to his brothers, also lawmen. After the gunfight resulted in the deaths of three cowboys, the dead men's allies exacted their revenge on the Earps by shooting two of Wyatt's brothers in the back, killing one and crippling the other. Despairing of bringing the men responsible to justice in the frontier courts, Earp, wearing a deputy U.S. marshal's badge, hunted down and killed some of the men he deemed responsible. Some screen treatments admit some flaws in Earp's character, yet all of the films condone Earp's vigilante killings. Justice, in this view, is found not in fickle courtrooms, but in the character of stalwarts such as Earp, who possess an innate sense of law and order. It is a view that suggests, to paraphrase Mao, that justice grows out of the barrel of a gun. |
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| Science & Technology |
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Mount Sinai Press Office
Findings reveal new understanding of how virus suppresses the human immune system.The Mount Sinai Hospital / Mount Sinai School of Medicine 2013-07-23 14:57:00 Disabling a protein in Ebola virus cells can stop the virus from replicating and infecting the host, according to researchers from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. The data are published in July in the journal Cell Host and Microbe. Ebola viruses cause severe disease in humans because they can deactivate the innate immune system. Christopher Basler, PhD, Associate Professor of Microbiology at Mount Sinai and his team have studied how Ebola viruses evade the immune system, and discovered that a viral protein called VP35 is critical to deactivating the immune system. They found that when VP35 interacts with an important cellular protein called PACT, it blocks PACT from activating the immune system, allowing the virus to spread. |
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Mike Wall
SPACE.com 2013-07-22 14:33:00
A newfound asteroid about the size of a football field will cruise past Earth tonight (July 22), and you can follow all the action live online. The near-Earth asteroid 2013 NE19, estimated to be between 194 feet and 426 feet wide (59 to 130 meters), will pass within 2.6 million miles (4.2 million kilometers) of Earth tonight - about 11 times the distance between our planet and the moon. There is no danger that it will strike Earth on this pass, scientists say. The online Slooh Space Camera will webcast live views of 2013 NE19's close approach as seen from an observatory in the Canary Islands off the west coast of Africa. You can watch the asteroid webcast live here on SPACE.com at 9 p.m. EDT (0100 GMT Tuesday), courtesy of Slooh. Asteroid 2013 NE19, which was discovered just last Monday (July 15), will be quite faint, making it a difficult target for backyard observers. But it should be readily visible in Slooh's remote-controlled telescope, the group said. "Slooh's imaging technology and high-altitude location in the Canary Islands are well suited for a tricky object like this, which may be impossible for garden-variety setups to capture," Slooh CEO Michael Paolucci said in a statement. |
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Ian Burrell
The Independent 2013-07-20 21:35:00
The power of computing, and the thrill of its apparently infinite possibilities, has also long been a source of fear. Going into a San Francisco second-hand book shop, shortly before a visit to Google's headquarters in California, I happened upon a copy of Dick Tracy, an old novel based on Chester Gould's cartoon strip starring America's favourite detective. For a 1970 publication, the plot seemed remarkably topical. Dick, and his sidekick Sam Catchem, find themselves battling a sinister character known as "Mr Computer" who wants to control the world. His strange powers enable him to remember everything he hears or sees and recall it instantly. This is a bad guy who can store data, analyse voice patterns and read private thoughts. My visit to the legendary "Googleplex" at Mountain View comes at an awkward time for the company. Edward Snowden's revelations about the snooping of the US Government's National Security Agency (NSA) in its clandestine electronic-surveillance programme PRISM have provoked a crisis of trust in Silicon Valley. Larry Page, Google co-founder and CEO, rushed out a blog to deny claims in leaked NSA documents that it - in parallel with other American internet giants - had been co-operating with the spying programme since 2009. "Any suggestion that Google is disclosing information about our users' internet activity on such a scale is completely false," he said. |
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Brenda Salinas
all tech considered 2013-07-21 06:21:00
When a young Indian-American woman walked into the funky L.A. jewelry boutique Tarina Tarantino, store manager Lauren Twisselman thought she was just like any other customer. She didn't realize the woman was actress and writer Mindy Kaling . "I hadn't watched The Office,"Twisselman says. Kaling both wrote and appeared in the NBC hit. This lack of recognition is precisely what the VIP-identification technology designed by NEC IT Solutions is supposed to prevent. The U.K.-based company already supplies similar software to security services to help identify terrorists and criminals. The ID technology works by analyzing footage of people's faces as they walk through a door, taking measurements to create a numerical code known as a "face template," and checking it against a database. In the retail setting, the database of customers' faces is comprised of celebrities and valued customers, according to London's Sunday Times. If a face is a match, the program sends an alert to staff via computer, iPad or smartphone, providing details like dress size, favorite buys or shopping history. The software works even when people are wearing sunglasses, hats and scarves. Recent tests have found that facial hair, aging, or changes in weight or hair color do not affect the accuracy of the system. | |
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Comment: The technology is being used in more places, but unlike celebrities, many people aren't happy about the practice:
Facebook in New Privacy Row Over Facial Recognition Feature 5 Unexpected Places You Can Be Tracked With Facial Recognition Technology Google debates face recognition technology |
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Kelly Servick
ScienceNow 2013-07-22 15:00:00
When a flock of birds changes direction on a dime, it's easy to imagine that the group is controlled by a single, collective mind. But in reality, the individual matters. That's the message of new research on group navigation in homing pigeons. The study used computer tracking to reveal a complex hierarchy, where even birds with a low social rank on the ground may be trusted leaders in the air. In research on animal social dynamics, large mammals such as wolves and gorillas have received a lot of attention, because their groups' smaller numbers make them easier to study, says Andrew King, a behavioral ecologist at Swansea University in the United Kingdom who was not involved in the study. But when hundreds or thousands of creatures synchronize their movements, the decision-making process is harder to sort out. King says that these big groups have traditionally been viewed as hoards of anonymous agents in a democracy. "Five or so years ago, papers were saying that you should be finding consensus decisions where everybody has an equal say." And yet elaborate synchronized movements arise from individuals with various abilities and social roles. Zoologist Dora Biro of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom wanted to investigate how a flock of pigeons manages to stay organized as it navigates the skies. "Different individuals within these flocks might have different ideas about where they want to go," she says "but at the same time, they want to maintain a kind of cohesive flock, because there's safety in numbers." Computerized tracking methods make this type of research possible. Remote visual sensors and GPS units on the birds can keep tabs on every bird at every moment, and complex data analysis can tease out meaningful social patterns. |
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Brett Smith
RedOrbit 2013-07-22 18:50:00
Conventional theories have placed life on land for the last 500 million years, but a new study from a team of American and Australian researchers might push that back to 2.2 billion years. To support their claim, the scientists presented evidence in the form of tiny newly discovered fossils the size of a match head called Diskagma buttonii that were discovered in ancient soil samples. "They certainly were not plants or animals, but something rather more simple," said co-author Gregory Retallack, co-director of paleontological collections at the University of Oregon's Museum of Natural and Cultural History. The fossils are small, vase-like structures with a cup on one end and a basal tube on the other end. Retallack says these ancient organisms are comparable to a modern soil organism called Geosiphon, a fungus containing a cavity filled with symbiotic cyanobacteria. "There is independent evidence for cyanobacteria, but not fungi, of the same geological age, and these new fossils set a new and earlier benchmark for the greening of the land," he said. "This gains added significance because fossil soils hosting the fossils have long been taken as evidence for a marked rise in the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere at about 2.4 billion to 2.2 billion years ago, widely called the Great Oxidation Event." That event, which occurred around 2.4 billion years ago, boosted atmospheric oxygen to around 5 percent - still a far cry from today's level of 21 percent. |
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| Earth Changes |
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Adam Mann
Wired 2013-07-23 15:13:00
(Click here to watch the video) In the blink of an eye, an enormous bright red light flashes above a thundercloud, spreading energetic branches that extend five times taller than Mount Everest and look like jellyfish tendrils and angel's wings. These mysterious phenomena are known as Transient Luminous Events (TLEs), and are usually invisible to the naked eye because they happen on millisecond timescales, too fast to be seen. They occur between 50 to 100 kilometers above the ground, a long-ignored area of the atmosphere that is too high for aircraft but too low for satellites to investigate. There, the thin air interacts with strong electrical fields to ionize molecules and create arcing plasmas.
(Click here to watch the video) These spectacles are relatively new to science. Pilots had reported enigmatic bright flashes throughout the 20th century, but their anecdotal evidence didn't amount to proof. The first image of a TLE was captured accidentally in 1989 when a University of Minnesota professor aimed a low-light TV camera at the sky to film a rocket launch. Replaying the tape later on, Professor John R. Winckler saw brilliant columns of light extending from the tops of storm clouds. Hearing of the finding, NASA officials immediately ordered a review of video tapes taken from the space shuttle that looked at lightning events on Earth. They found dozens more examples of TLEs, and later scientists have been recording them ever since. |
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Shoaib-ur-Rehman Siddiqui
Business Recorder, Pakistan 2013-07-18 14:53:00
Tharparkar: Wildlife Department has failed to control the New Castle "Ranikhet" disease as two more peacocks died of the deadly disease here on Thursday raising the overall death toll to 118. It should be mentioned that beauty of Tharparkar, renowned for the wandering peacocks in open air, was fading due to deaths of peacocks due to birds epidemics. More than 300 peacocks were killed of New Castle disease locally known as Ranikhet last year and 118 have died during last two months. The locals who love the precious bird like their other pets have expressed grave concerns over outspread of disease as it claimed more than 100 of their beloved birds besides leaving dozens others affected. It was feared that death toll may rise further as many peacocks were stated to be adversely affected of Ranikhet. They demanded the Wildlife Department and government to take steps to save the precious birds from extinction. |
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NASA
2013-07-23 15:04:00
Forest fires are burning north and east of Russia's Irkutsk Oblast. The Irkutsk Oblast is located in southeastern Siberia in the basins of Angara, Lena, and Nizhnyaya Tunguska Rivers. NASA's Aqua satellite passed over the area and captured an image showing multiple forest fires and smoke plumes. Some of the places affected by the smoke include Cokhchuolu, Ust'ye-Chony, Skysykatakh, and Chernyshevskiy along the Vilyuy River. These appear to be recreational areas. South of the Vilyuy River is the town of Mirny. It is known for having the world's largest diamond mine. |
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NASA
2013-07-23 14:59:00
Forest fires continue to plague the hot, dry western part of the United States this summer. In Idaho, several fires were spotted by NASA's Aqua satellite on July 20, 2013. Actively burning areas, detected by MODIS's thermal bands, are outlined in red. The Lodgepole Fire was detected at noon on Saturday, July 20. Local fire resources were dispatched to the scene where aggressive fire suppression efforts were put into place. The fire is currently burning in lodge pole pine and dispersed Douglas fir. Currently 650 acres have burned and the cause of this fire is under investigation. The 3,060 acre Ridge Fire has been burning since July 18, the result of a lightning strike. It is currently 7% contained. Fire crews are being helicoptered into the remote, steep location to fight the fire. |
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sciencedaily.com
Scientists from Denmark and Canada are worried by their new findings
showing that several bioaccumulative perfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs)
are crossing the blood brain barrier of polar bears from Scoresby Sound,
East Greenland.2013-07-23 14:09:00
PerFluoroAlkyl Substances (PFASs) and precursor compounds have been used in a wide variety of commercial and industrial products over the past six decades. Applications include water and oil repellent coatings, e.g. for textiles, paper products, carpets and food packaging, pharmaceuticals and surfactants in cleaning products and fire-fighting foams. PFASs are highly resistant to chemical, thermal and biological degradation. PFASs and their precursor compounds have shown a dramatic increase and dispersal around the world over the past four decades. An increasing amount of information is becoming available on the toxicity of these compounds. Hence, studies have documented the toxicity of PFASs on wildlife and human health, including carcinogenesis, genotoxicity and epigenetic effects as well as reproductive and developmental toxicities, neurotoxicity, effects on the endocrine system and immunotoxicity. Bioaccumulative PFASs enter all parts of the brain Despite the fact that the liver is considered the major repository in the body for most PFASs, some shorter chain compounds from this grouping have previously been reported in the brain of chicken embryos, suggesting that they are able to cross the blood-brain barrier. Previous studies have shown a dramatic biomagnification of several PFASs, and particularly one known as perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) as well as several compounds of the perfluorinated carboxylate (PFCAs) grouping, in polar bears. PFOS have been shown to be at concentrations in the liver that are 100 fold higher than the ringed seals on which they are predating. In a new study Arctic researchers from Carleton University in Canada and Aarhus University in Denmark have used the polar bear as a sentinel species for humans and other predators in the top of the food chain. The researchers demonstrated accumulation of PFOS and several PFCAs in eight brain regions of polar bears collected from Scoresby Sound, East Greenland. Dr. Robert Letcher, Carleton University, explains: "We know that fat soluble contaminants are able to cross the brain-blood barrier, but is it quite worrying that the PFOS and PFCAs, which are more associated with proteins in the body, were present in all the brain regions we analyzed." Professor Rune Dietz, Aarhus University, is also worried about the results: "If PFOS and PFCAs can cross the blood-brain barrier in polar bears, it will also be the case in humans. The brain is one of the most essential parts of the body, where anthropogenic chemicals can have a severe impact. However, we are beginning to see the effect of the efforts to minimize the dispersal of this group of contaminants." |
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Fiona Harvey
Two decades of plummeting population halves number of key species, adversely affecting bees, birds and biodiversity - studyThe Guardian 2013-07-23 13:46:00
Europe's grassland butterfly population has plummeted in the past two decades, new research published on Tuesday shows, with a near halving in the numbers of key species since 1990. The precipitous decline has been blamed on poor agricultural practices and pesticides, by the European Environment Agency, which carried out the research. Falling numbers of butterflies are bad news not just for nature-lovers and for biodiversity, but have a knock-on effect on farming, as - like bees - they act as pollinators, and their disappearance harms birds and other creatures that need them for food. Butterfly populations are a leading indicator of the health of other insect species. The new study therefore suggests many other species of insect, which are also food sources for birds and small mammals, and which play a key role in the health of the countryside, are also under threat. Scientists from the EEA, the European Unoin's environment watchdog, looked at 17 key species of grassland butterflies, of which seven were common species and 10 more specialist, using data gathered from 1990 to 2011 in 19 European countries. Of the total 17 species, eight have declined, including the common blue, which has suffered a serious fall in numbers; two species remained stable, including the Orangetip; and only one increased. The trend for the remaining six species is still uncertain, including the much-appreciated Lulworth skipper, beloved of butterfly watchers. Grassland butterflies make up the majority of butterflies in Europe, with over 250 species out of the more than 400 found in Europe. Others species prefer to colonise woods, wetlands, heaths and other habitats. Chris van Swaay, one of the authors of the report, from the Dutch conservation organisation De Vlinderstichting, said that the same pesticides that affect bees - leading to the EU to ban certain products, at least temporarily - also have an effect on butterflies. "The pesticide problem is especially a problem in the intensive agricultural areas of western Europe," he said. "In eastern Europe, it is less of a problem." |
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Carolyn Roy
ksla.com 2013-07-17 13:07:00
Texakana, AR (KSLA) - A buzzard landing on a power line set off a chain of events Tuesday morning in Texarkana that left about 1,200 customers without power and one unsuspecting driver shaken and burned. Jerry Cunningham says he was driving in the 1700 block of East 9th St. when he heard what sounded like an electrical transformer blowing and then saw power lines arcing in his direction. The next thing he knew, something hit his car, cracking the windshield and sending sparks flying. "I had all my windows and sunroof opened. That is where I got these burns from," Cunningham says, pointing to red welted streaks on his side. "It hurts like crazy." AEP SWEPCO says the buzzard had landed on a ground wire and when that wire broke, it fell on a 12,000 volt transmission line. Power was restored to customers about an hour later. |
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Associated Press
2013-07-22 22:52:00
Yogyakarta - Indonesia's most volatile volcano spewed smoke and ash Monday, forcing hundreds of people to flee their villages along its slopes, a disaster official said. Mount Merapi on the main island of Java rumbled as heavy rain fell around its cloud-covered crater, said Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, disaster mitigation agency spokesman. The volcano unleashed a column of dark red volcanic material 1,000 meters (3,280 feet) into the air, and the ash made the rain thick and muddy in several villages as terrified residents fled to safety, he said. The sound was heard 30 kilometers (18 miles) away, but an eruption did not occur and the volcano's alert level was not raised, Nugroho said. The 2,968-meter (9,737-foot) mountain is the most active of 500 Indonesian volcanoes. Its last major eruption in 2010 killed 347 people. Indonesia, an archipelago of 240 million people, is prone to earthquakes and volcanic activity because it sits along the Pacific "Ring of Fire," a horseshoe-shaped series of fault lines. |
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Stuff.co.nz
2013-07-22 21:22:00
A long, silver, unpleasant-looking fish with sharp teeth which washed up at Rabbit Island was dubbed a monster fish by beach visitors. However, it was likely to be a frostfish, said Nelson-based University of Otago marine educator Richard de Hamel. Frostfish got their name because they tended to be found on frosty mornings when the temperature dropped and they came to shore, he said. He recalled that one was found at Ruby Bay four years ago, and another at Mapua. Beach walkers were not the only ones to discover the frostfish at Rabbit Island - seagulls found it to be a large snack. Source: Fairfax NZ News |
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Chris McKee
KASA.com 2013-07-22 18:18:00
Albuquerque - Friday's heavy downpour created a mystery in an Albuquerque backyard. After a lot of rain fell in a short time, the earth opened up revealing a deep underground pit at the home of Alex Sanouvon. "I've been here 25 years and I have never seen anything like that," said Sanouvon. "Then suddenly, I just hear this collapse and all of the water rushed down and I came to look at it, and there was that hole." Sanouvon said. The hole is a little less than 10 feet deep and about 3 ½ feet wide. Cinder blocks show the hole was built by someone and a large pipe sits at the bottom. Sanouvon said when he moved in to the house decades ago, the hole wasn't mentioned.. |
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Matthew Brockett
Bloomberg 2013-07-22 03:02:00
New Zealanders ran screaming from buildings in Wellington yesterday as a magnitude 6.5 earthquake blew out windows and caused part of the city's port to slide into the sea. The earthquake struck at 5:09 p.m. local time and was centered offshore, 57 kilometers (35 miles) south-southwest of the capital city, at a depth of 14 kilometers, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. It was New Zealand's biggest quake since a magnitude 6.3 killed 185 people in the South Island city of Christchurch two years ago, and the strongest to hit the central region of the country since 1942, GNS Science seismologist John Ristau said. There is an 8 percent chance of another magnitude 6 event or larger in the next 24 hours, and 20 percent over the next seven days, Ristau said in a telephone interview. "A large earthquake can increase stress or decrease stress on neighboring faults, that's what we're looking closely at," he said. |
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Gwynne Dyer
Information Clearinghouse 2013-07-17 00:00:00
If you drop a frog in a pot of boiling water, so they say, it will hop right out again. Frogs aren't stupid. Well, okay, but they're not THAT stupid. However, if you put a frog in a pot of cool water, and gradually turn the heat up under it, the frog will not notice what's happening. It will happily sit there until the water boils, and it dies. Now, I have never carried out this experiment personally - I prefer my frogs' legs fried - so I can't vouch for the truth of it. It's just a story the environmentalists like to tell. Besides, I already knew that human beings have trouble in detecting slow-moving threats. You can watch us failing to do it every day: we persistently ignore the fact that we are running into trouble at a civilisational level, even though the evidence is all around us. The foundation of every civilisation is an adequate food supply: human beings simply cannot live at the density of population that civilisation implies without a reliable agriculture. But the supply of good agricultural land is limited, and the number of human beings is not. You can postpone the problem for a while by increasing the yield of the available land: irrigate it, plant higher-yielding crops, fertilise the soil artificially, use pesticides and herbicides to protect the crops as they grow. But even these techniques have limits, and in many cases we have reached or exceeded them. So we are running into trouble. Why isn't anybody taking action? Governments everywhere are well aware of the problem: we are now 7 billion people, heading for an estimated 11 billion by the end of this century, and the food situation is already getting tight. So tight, in fact, that the average price of the major food grains has doubled in the past ten years. But everybody finds local reasons to ignore that fact. | |
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Comment: There actually are things that governments
could do to alleviate suffering, if they had any conscience. The
diversion of crops for biofuels could be ended, the wealth inequality
could be addressed and the hold of the banking cartel could be put at an
end for starters. None of this is likely to happen because most
governments are controlled by a wealthy oligarchy whose only concerns
are the continuation of their status and luxurious lifestyles. However,
as far as climate change, there is little at this juncture that can be
done.The real threat is not global warming, but from cyclical cometary
bombardments. The earth has been increasingly bombarded with comets and
meteors; the related cometary dust loading in the atmosphere and the
changes in the earth's magnetic field have caused wild fluctuations in
the weather and consequent disruptions in crop production. As the PTB
well know, there is nothing to be done thus they are hiding the real
causes. These psychopaths in power know that as soon as the real threat
from cometary bombardments becomes obvious, their reign of terror may
come to an ignominious end. For a more complete explanation read:
Celestial Intentions: Comets and the Horns of Moses Forget About Global Warming: We're One Step From Extinction! Climate Change Swindlers and the Political Agenda Reign of Fire: Meteorites, Wildfires, Planetary Chaos and the Sixth Extinction |
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US Geological Survey
2013-07-22 18:32:00
Event Time 2013-07-22 07:01:42 UTC 2013-07-22 09:01:42 UTC+02:00 at epicenter Location 46.042°S 34.825°E depth=10.0km (6.2mi) Nearby Cities 244km (152mi) WNW of Marion Island, Prince Edward Islands 1538km (956mi) SSE of Port Alfred, South Africa 1558km (968mi) SSE of Port Elizabeth, South Africa 1562km (971mi) SSE of East London, South Africa 1963km (1220mi) SSE of Maseru, Lesotho Technical Details |
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| Fire in the Sky |
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No new articles. |
| Health & Wellness |
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Daniel Stolte
University of Arizona 2013-07-22 14:45:00
Researchers have uncovered a signal that prevents the immune system from spinning out of control. The findings could help develop more effective therapies for autoimmune disorders, allergies, chronic inflammation and cancer. A team led by a University of Arizona researcher has discovered a previously unknown mechanism that prevents the immune system from going into overdrive, shedding light not only on how our body controls its response to pathogens but on conditions such as autoimmune diseases, allergies and chronic inflammation as well. The group found a protein previously believed to only play a role in blood clotting acts as a negative feedback signal, telling defense cells to calm down, thereby preventing an immune reaction from spiraling out of control. The results, which could lead to new therapeutics for a variety of disorders caused by a faulty immune response, are published in the scientific journal Immunity. When pathogens such as viruses or bacteria invade our body, the immune system reacts by producing a flurry of chemical signals, known as chemokines that act as a bugle call recruiting specialized defender cells to the scene, such as macrophages, which devour the intruders. This first line of defense is known as inflammation. "Inflammation is a necessary defense mechanism - you can't live without it," said Sourav Ghosh, assistant professor in the department of cellular and molecular medicine at the UA College of Medicine and lead author of the study. "On the flip side, if you can't regulate the inflammation, it can damage the body." |
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Jim Sliwa
A benign crystal protein, produced naturally by bacteria and used as an
organic pesticide, could be a safe, inexpensive treatment for parasitic
worms in humans and provide effective relief to over a billion people
around the world. Researchers from the University of California, San
Diego, La Jolla, CA, report on this potentially promising solution in a
study published ahead of print in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology.American Society for Microbiology 2013-07-23 14:39:00 Hookworms, and other intestinal parasites known as helminths infect more than 1 billion people in poverty-stricken, tropical nations, sucking the vitality from the body, and leaving hundreds of millions of children physically and mentally stunted. Current drugs are insufficiently effective, and resistance is rising, but little effort has been made to develop better drugs because the relevant populations do not represent a profitable market for drug companies. "The challenge is that any cure must be very cheap, it must have the ability to be mass produced in tremendous quantities, safe, and able to withstand rough conditions, including lack of refrigeration, extreme heat, and remote locations," says Raffi Aroian, a researcher on the study. |
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Daily News
2013-07-18 16:40:00
A toddler with a rare condition has finally spoken her first words after eating four tubs of Cream Cheese a week. Little Fields Taylor, from Melton Mowbray in Leicestershire, suffers from a rare genetic disorder which affects her ability to speak. But miraculously, after starting a new diet just three months ago, which includes almost a kilo of Philadelphia a week, the adorable three year old has finally spoken her first words. Delighted Mum, Stevie, 34, said: "The first time I heard Fields say Mum it was just wonderful. "I didn't really believe that something so simple as changing her diet could make such a big different. "The amount of Philadelphia she goes through is a bit mad but the effect it's had is amazing. "It's just fabulous to know that she does have a voice inside her and we can finally communicate." The toddler has been diagnosed with an extremely rare condition called Glut1 Deficiency - it means her brain is starved of energy because her body cannot transport enough glucose. There is no cure for Glut1, which affects just 25 people in the UK, but children can be helped with a special diet called the Ketogenic Diet. Her new diet is high in fat, and forces her brain to use this as its energy source - rather than glucose. |
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Mario Vittone
Slate 2013-06-04 07:18:00
In many child drownings, adults are nearby but have no idea the victim is dying. Here's what to look for. The new captain jumped from the deck, fully dressed, and sprinted through the water. A former lifeguard, he kept his eyes on his victim as he headed straight for the couple swimming between their anchored sportfisher and the beach. "I think he thinks you're drowning," the husband said to his wife. They had been splashing each other and she had screamed but now they were just standing, neck-deep on the sand bar. "We're fine; what is he doing?" she asked, a little annoyed. "We're fine!" the husband yelled, waving him off, but his captain kept swimming hard. "Move!" he barked as he sprinted between the stunned owners. Directly behind them, not 10 feet away, their 9-year-old daughter was drowning. Safely above the surface in the arms of the captain, she burst into tears, "Daddy!" How did this captain know - from 50 feet away - what the father couldn't recognize from just 10? Drowning is not the violent, splashing call for help that most people expect. The captain was trained to recognize drowning by experts and years of experience. The father, on the other hand, had learned what drowning looks like by watching television. If you spend time on or near the water (hint: that's all of us) then you should make sure that you and your crew know what to look for whenever people enter the water. Until she cried a tearful, "Daddy," she hadn't made a sound. As a former Coast Guard rescue swimmer, I wasn't surprised at all by this story. Drowning is almost always a deceptively quiet event. The waving, splashing, and yelling that dramatic conditioning (television) prepares us to look for is rarely seen in real life. |
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| Science of the Spirit |
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Wellcome Trust
New research reveals how our brains are able to pick out important
sounds from the noisy world around us. The findings, published online
today in the journal eLife, could lead to new diagnostic tests for hearing disorders.2013-07-23 12:07:00 Our ears can effortlessly pick out the sounds we need to hear from a noisy environment - hearing our mobile phone ringtone in the middle of the Notting Hill Carnival, for example - but how our brains process this information (the so-called 'cocktail party problem') has been a longstanding research question in hearing science. Researchers have previously investigated this using simple sounds such as two tones of different pitches, but now researchers at UCL and Newcastle University have used complicated sounds that are more representative of those we hear in real life. The team used 'machine-like beeps' that overlap in both frequency and time to recreate a busy sound environment and obtain new insights into how the brain solves this problem. In the study, groups of volunteers were asked to identify target sounds from within this noisy background in a series of experiments. |
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| High Strangeness |
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Dean Nelson
The Telegraph, UK 2013-07-22 21:29:00
Since the end of last year its security services have been investigating sightings of 'yellow spheres' rising over its highly militarised border. They initially suspected them to be Chinese unmanned aircraft or drones deployed in the cat and mouse game played by the two sides on their contested frontier. China's People's Liberation Army is understood to have strongly denied any drone deployment but India's Defence Research Development Organisation (DRDO), which develops new weaponry, has so far failed to identify the unidentified flying objects. The objects appeared to be at to high an altitude for its instruments to probe. |
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| Don't Panic! Lighten Up! |
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Pepe Escobar
Asia Times 2013-07-16 19:53:00
Hi, my name is Mostafa and I'll be your moderate insurgent today. I'm addressing you all because we badly need your help. We could have started a Facebook page, like We Need Your Weapons or something, or ask the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights to make a YouTube video, but I prefer to speak straight to your heart. Our Supreme Commander, the blessed General Salim Idriss, has acknowledged we are now receiving many new weapons from many friendly Arab countries, which helped us "destroy more than 90 armored vehicles" of the Syrian regime. And Amrika helped us to get the guns, of course. But we need more. Your President Mr Obama told the Blessed King of Saudi Arabia last Friday that he is committed to providing more support for us. Your Secretary of State Mr Kerry said on Saturday there must be more support for us "in order to have an impact on the ground". Your CIA said they will make sure only moderate insurgents get the weapons, and not the bad guys. But your Congress is blocking our weapons. Oh people from Congress! |
