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Joe Quinn
Sott.net 2013-08-28 15:17:00
In January this year, the web site of UK-based ' One email had "Syrian Issue" in the subject field and the other has "Iranian Issue" in the subject field. Both emails appeared to be from David Goulding, the actual business development manager of Britam Defence, and appeared to have been sent to Phillip Doughty, the actual founder of Britam. Many alternative news web sites have used these emails as evidence that the recent alleged 'chemical weapon' attack in Syria was the work of the Western-backed Syrian rebels rather than the Syrian military. The problem however is that the emails appear to be have been faked. The Iranian issue email stated: Amongst the other documents that were hacked is a word document apparently detailing a training program for Saudi military personnel to defend against an attack by an unknown enemy. |
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Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
The Age 2013-08-27 08:12:00
Saudi Arabia has secretly offered Russia a sweeping deal to control the global oil market and safeguard Russia's gas contracts, if the Kremlin backs away from the Assad regime in Syria. The revelations come amid high tension in the Middle East, with US, British, and French warships poised for missile strikes against Syria, and Iran threatening to retaliate. The strategic jitters pushed Brent crude prices to a five-month high of $US112 a barrel. ''We are only one incident away from a serious oil spike. The market is a lot tighter than people think,'' said Chris Skrebowski, editor of Petroleum Review. Leaked transcripts of a behind closed doors meeting between Russia's Vladimir Putin and Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan shed an extraordinary light on the hard-nosed Realpolitik of the two sides. |
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Dale Gavlak and Yahya Ababneh
MintPress News 2013-08-29 11:59:00
Rebels and local residents in Ghouta accuse Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan of providing chemical weapons to an al-Qaida linked rebel group Ghouta, Syria - As the machinery for a U.S.-led military intervention in Syria gathers pace following last week's chemical weapons attack, the U.S. and its allies may be targeting the wrong culprit. Interviews with people in Damascus and Ghouta, a suburb of the Syrian capital, where the humanitarian agency Doctors Without Borders said at least 355 people had died last week from what it believed to be a neurotoxic agent, appear to indicate as much. The U.S., Britain, and France as well as the Arab League have accused the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for carrying out the chemical weapons attack, which mainly targeted civilians. U.S. warships are stationed in the Mediterranean Sea to launch military strikes against Syria in punishment for carrying out a massive chemical weapons attack. The U.S. and others are not interested in examining any contrary evidence, with U.S Secretary of State John Kerry saying Monday that Assad's guilt was "a judgment ... already clear to the world." | |
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Comment: He's been a busy busy little bee, that Bandar...
Saudi snake, Prince Bandar, tried first to bribe Russia to drop its support of Syria, then threatened to unleash Chechen terrorists at 2014 Winter Olympics |
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Eric W. Dolan
The Raw Story 2013-08-30 05:52:00
We shouldn't bomb every country that does something bad, Florida Congressman Alan Grayson (D) said on Thursday. The progressive Democrat told CNN he was opposed to a U.S. military strike against Syria over its alleged use of chemical weapons. "The administration would have to explain why this affects some vital American interest," Grayson said. "I haven't heard any discussion of that at all. I think the only people who really want in to happen are the military industrial complex. I just don't understand how this involves us, Americans." Obama said Wednesday he was still undecided about an attack against Syria, but he also said the use of chemical weapons violated international norms and Syria needed to be punished. |
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| Puppet Masters |
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Peter Oborne
The Telegraph 2013-08-29 11:55:00
Britain and America show contempt for the lessons of the past in pressing for action It is more than 10 years since Parliament last voted on whether or not to go to war. This was on March 18 2003, when a stirring speech by Tony Blair convinced many sceptical MPs of the case for military action against Iraq. But Mr Blair's claim that Britain possessed "extensive, detailed and authoritative" evidence concerning Iraq's weapons of mass destruction turned out to be nonsense, and we invaded the country on the back of a false prospectus. The consequences were terrible: countless Iraqis were killed in the civil war that followed, along with 179 British soldiers. The similarities with today's Commons vote are haunting. The Prime Minister is contemplating an attack on Iraq's near neighbour Syria, also ruled by a Baathist regime. At the heart of the issue are allegations about weapons of mass destruction. Once again, Britain finds herself in alliance with the United States, and without the authority of the United Nations. |
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CNN
A senior officer who was playing golf Thursday near Fort Hood, Texas, told CNN he witnessed the arrest of one of the two surviving suspects of the shooting at the Army installation.2009-11-05 05:11:00 Shortly after the shooting, the officer said, military police told him to clear the course and he saw other MPs surround the building that held the golf carts, he said. The senior officer said he ducked into a nearby house for cover as 30 to 40 cars carrying MPs approached. He said he saw a soldier in battle-dress uniform, his hands in the air. The MPs ordered him to lie on the ground and open his uniform, presumably to ensure he was not carrying explosives, the senior officer said. |
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Comment: This doesn't fit with the official story. But then, mass shootings rarely do in the U.S.
Reviving the War of Terror: Patsy framed in Secret Team psy-op to generate public support for wars |
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Craig Whitlock
Washington Post 2010-04-27 19:22:00
The Obama administration said Tuesday it would provide more information to Congress about the Fort Hood shootings but continued to defy a subpoena request for witness statements and other documents. After days of negotiations, the Pentagon and Justice Department informed a Senate committee that they would not comply with congressional subpoenas to share investigative records from the Nov. 5 shootings at Fort Hood, Tex., which killed 13 people. The agencies said that divulging the material could jeopardize their prosecution of Army Maj. Nidal M. Hasan, the accused gunman. Comment: Alternatively, divulging the material could jeopardize their cover story that Hasan acted alone (or at all). The Pentagon did budge in other areas, however, saying it had agreed to give the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs access to Hasan's personnel file, as well as part of an Army report that scrutinized why superiors failed to intervene in Hasan's career as an Army psychiatrist, despite signs of his religious radicalization and shortcomings as a soldier. |
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Pepe Escobar
Asia Times Online 2013-08-30 09:01:00
This deafeningly hysterical show of Syria as Iraq 2.0 is only happening because a president of the United States (POTUS) created a ''credibility'' problem when, recklessly, he pronounced the use of chemical weapons in Syria a ''red line''. Thus the US government urgently needs to punish the transgressor - to hell with evidence - to maintain its ''credibility''. But this time it will be ''limited''. ''Tailored''. Only ''a few days''. A ''shot across the bow'' - as POTUS qualified it. Still, some - but not all - ''high-value targets'', including command and control facilities and delivery systems, in Syria will have to welcome a barrage of Tomahawk cruise missiles (384 are already positioned in the eastern Mediterranean). We all know how the Pentagon loves to christen its assorted humanitarian liberations across the globe with names like Desert Fox, Invincible Vulture or some other product of brainstorming idiocy. So now it's time to call Operation Tomahawk With Cheese. It's like ordering a pizza delivery. ''Hello, I'd like a Tomahawk with cheese.'' ''Of course, it will be ready in 20 minutes.'' ''Hold on, wait! I need to fool the UN first. Can I pick it up next week? With extra cheese?'' |
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Ulrike Putz
Spiegel online 2013-08-30 08:44:00
Food is scarce in Syria, the currency is collapsing and entire industries have come to a standstill. But not even economic suffering brought on by the civil war will likely help end it. It's a sector that ought to be booming. Businessman Wissam* works in hospital supplies. He sells bandages, needles and disinfectants -- all products for which there is a great need in the increasingly bloody Syrian civil war. But unfortunately, Wissam has little opportunity to sell his wares. "More than 50 percent of the Syrian healthcare system's infrastructure has been destroyed," says the man in his mid 40s. Of the 75 state-run hospitals, just 30 remain in operation. In the embattled city of Homs, just one of 20 hospitals remains open. The Al-Kindi Hospital in Aleppo, once the largest and most modern medical facility in the country, is now a pile of ash. Wissam is matter-of-fact about the situation. The destruction of the hospitals is widespread, he says, and those who are injured or sick receive hardly any medical care. The business is "dying a slow death," he adds. | |
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Comment: The West and the Gulf petro-monarchies must be proud of their campaign of death and destruction. Another destroyed country.
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Press TV
2013-08-30 08:28:00
German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle has ruled out his country's participation in any military against Syria following failure by permanent members of UN Security Council (UNSC) to reach any agreement on the controversial issue. Westerwelle stated in a partially reported interview with German newspaper Neue Osnabruecker Zeitung that such military action had "neither been asked nor is it being considered by us," according to comments published by the newspaper on the interview prior to its Saturday release. The remarks come following a Russia-called UNSC meeting on Thursday on the developing situation in Syria failed to achieve any results. The discussions, which lasted for less than an hour, ended as participants failed to reach a consensus with the ambassadors of China, France, Britain, Russia and the United States gradually leaving the talks. The meeting was the second time the permanent UNSC members met to discuss a draft resolution on Syria submitted by Britain. |
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Press TV
2013-08-30 08:18:00
A top Russian official has reiterated Moscow's opposition to any United Nations Security (UNSC) resolution that would allow a military action against Syria. "Russia opposes any resolution of the UN Security Council indicating the probability of the use of force [or] any resolution that could be used for military action against Syria," Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov said Friday as cited in a report by the ITAR-TASS News Agency. The remark came following an urgent meeting of UNSC's five permanent members - Britain, China, France, Russia and the US - ended Thursday without any agreement on the source of a recent chemical weapons use in Syria and a potential plan of action. |
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Ernesto Londoño
The Washington Post 2013-08-30 05:46:00
The Obama administration's plan to launch a military strike against Syria is being received with serious reservations by many in the U.S. military, which is coping with the scars of two lengthy wars and a rapidly contracting budget, according to current and former officers. Having assumed for months that the United States was unlikely to intervene militarily in Syria, the Defense Department has been thrust onto a war footing that has made many in the armed services uneasy, according to interviews with more than a dozen military officers ranging from captains to a four-star general. |
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Karen DeYoung
The Washington Post 2013-08-30 05:41:00
The administration insisted Thursday that President Obama has both the authority and the determination to make his own decision on a military strike against Syria, even as a growing chorus of lawmakers demanded an opportunity to vote on the issue and Britain, the United States' closest ally, appeared unlikely to participate. Britain's sudden withdrawal came after Prime Minister David Cameron, deserted by rebels in his own Conservative Party, lost a parliamentary vote for provisional authorization for military action in Syria. |
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Daniel Halper
The Weekly Standard 2012-12-21 05:35:00
John Kerry, who is expected to be nominated as secretary of state later this afternoon, has made frequent visits to Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. Assad is now under fire for mass murdering his own civilians, as he fights an internal war to keep his position of power. Even Obama has called for Assad to go. In February 2009, Kerry led a delegation there to engage Syria. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad told visiting US members of Congress on Saturday that the United States should 'move away from a policy based on dictating decisions.' Assad's guests on Saturday included US Senator John Kerry, who headed the third delegation this week to call on the Syrian president's door as Washington reviews its policies toward countries the previous administration regarded as hostile. Assad told his visitors that future relations should be based on a 'proper understanding' by Washington of regional issues and on common interests, SANA news agency reported," AFP reported at the time. |
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Spencer Ackerman and Paul Lewis
The Guardian 2013-08-29 05:30:00
White House says any strike would be 'discreet and limited' in statement intended to reflect reluctance to draw US into conflict The Obama administration's preferred option for a potential strike on Syria is likely to leave Bashar al-Assad's government with significant chemical weapons and military infrastructure, according to military analysts. Although vice-president Joe Biden said on Thursday that President Obama had yet to take a final decision on attacking the Syrian regime for allegedly gassing civilians on 21 August, administration statements ruled out several military options more severe than aerial bombing or sea-based missile strikes. In the first confirmation of the scope of any attack, White House principal deputy press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters Thursday that Obama was contemplating "something that is discreet and limited." |
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| Society's Child |
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Aaron Taube
Human Rights Watch demanded that Dunkin' Doughnuts remove an ad running in Thailand that the organisation is calling "bizarre and racist."Business Insider, Australia 2013-08-30 06:00:00 The ad, for a chocolate "Charcoal Doughnut," features a woman in blackface makeup with bright pink lips, evoking memories of the minstrel shows that once mocked black Americans in the United States. Here's the ad:
"It's both bizarre and racist that Dunkin' Doughnuts thinks that it must colour a woman's skin black and accentuate her lips with bright pink lipstick to sell a chocolate doughnut," Phil Robertson, the deputy Asia director for Human Rights Watch, told the Associated Press. |
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El Paso Inc
An electronic failure may be to blame for a practice bomb that was
dropped from a jet onto a tavern's parking lot, a Maryland National
Guard official said Friday.2013-08-30 14:04:00 An A-10 Warthog jet from the 104th Fighter Squadron in the 175th Wing was returning from a training mission Thursday night to Warfield Air National Guard Base in Middle River when the inert device was dropped, guard spokesman Lt. Col. Charles Kohler said. The guard has grounded the aircraft while it investigates. Kohler didn't yet know exactly what device it was, but said it is made to fly like a 500-pund bomb, but weighs much less. "This is an unfortunate incident and we're very lucky that no one was hurt. Safety is a top priority in all operations," Kohler said. A customer at Darlene's Tavern in Sudlersville came in from outside saying he thought a car in the parking lot was on fire, said owner Darlene Hurley. The car was covered in dust and stones and a few feet away was a 3-foot deep hole, she said. They called 911. Police officers dug in the hole and when they spotted the fins of the device, they called in the fire marshal's bomb squad, Hurley said. Bomb technicians determined that it was a practice aerial bomb and the device was turned over to the National Guard, the fire marshal's office said. "It could have been a whole lot worse. It landed about 100 feet from the building," Hurley said noting that there are propane tanks nearby. "It could have been really, really bad. Thank God everyone was OK." Source: Associated Press |
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FOX 4 Newsroom
2013-08-30 14:56:00
Chillicothe - Police in Chillicothe, Missouri, said they are investigating one of the most usual cases of animal cruelty they have ever seen. Police received an anonymous tip that sent them to a home where a number of rabbits were being abused. Police described what they found as bizarre. "They had rabbit cages that weren't being kept up, feces wasn't being cleaned up or removed from the cages," said Captain Tony Kirkendoll. "Animals were laying in their own urine and feces. They were left out in the sun, no shade." Police found 17 neglected animals and two decomposed rabbits. The rabbits that were found alive are being treated at an area shelter. James Venneman, 29, of Chillicothe, faces 18 counts of animal cruelty and neglect charges. Chillicothe is about 90 miles northeast of Kansas City, Mo. |
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Holly Richmond
Grist Org 2013-08-29 09:30:00
When you see something rare - Lady Gaga; the blue-footed booby - it's customary not to shoot it. Unless you're the dickish hunter who shot the first endangered gray wolf to appear in Kentucky in 150 years:
The hunter, 31-year-old James Troyer, killed the wolf back in March, but the Department of Agriculture only recently confirmed it was indeed a federally endangered gray wolf, not a German Shepherd like officials originally thought.
Gee, I don't know. How odd that something that looked like a wolf turned out to be a wolf. </Daria voice> |
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Nina Golgowski and Ginger Adams Otis
New York Daily News 2013-08-27 11:18:00
Amanda Catherine Hein, 26, of Allentown, allegedly delivered the healthy baby boy at Starters Pub and then continued watching a pay-per-view wrestling match with three male friends. A Pennsylvania woman gave birth in the bathroom of a sports bar, smothered the baby boy in a trash bag and then left him to die in a toilet tank - a crime punishable by death. Amanda Hein, 26, of Allentown, has been ordered held without bail. She was charged with criminal homicide. In Pennsylvania, the intentional murder of a child under 12 is a capital offense. The baby boy was alive and healthy - carried from 33 to 36 weeks - when Hein delivered him at Starters Pub in Bethlehem, Pa., on Aug. 18, the coroner said. |
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Eric W. Dolan
TheThe Raw Story 2013-08-29 05:56:00
Archbishop of Canterbury, the head of the Church of England, has warned Christians that their views on sexual orientation were beginning to look like an "atrocious injustice". Justin Welby spoke at the opening of the Evangelical Alliance on Wednesday. During a question and answer session after his speech, the archbishop was asked why he voted against same-sex marriage legislation. "What I voted against was what seemed to me to be the rewriting the nature of marriage in a way that I have to say within the Christian tradition and within scripture and within our understanding is not the right way to deal with the very important issues that were attempted to be dealt with in that bill," he replied. |
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| Secret History |
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Remains of iron age Scottish village discovered in rural area is hailed as 'exciting and unexpected'
Daily Record, UK
2013-08-30 14:46:00
The remains of an extensive iron age "loch village" have been uncovered by archaeologists in the first discovery of its kind in Scotland. The ancient site in Wigtownshire appears to have been a settlement of at least seven houses built in wetlands around a small loch, Historic Scotland said. Experts believe the significant find could be "Scotland's Glastonbury", a reference to the lake village in Somerset, said to be a spot of international significance. Culture Secretary Fiona Hyslop said the discovery at the Black Loch of Myrton was an "exciting and unexpected" find. Historic Scotland said the dig began as a small-scale pilot excavation of what was initially thought to be a crannog in the now-infilled loch, which was under threat of destruction as a result of drainage work. |
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The Guardian, UK
2013-08-30 14:35:00
A 5,000-year-old mystery has been sparked after part of a human skull was found on a riverbank. Archaeologists said the unbroken piece of upper skull was in "fabulous" condition with the intricate marks from the blood vessels still visible on the inner surface. There are suggestions it may have belonged to a middle-aged woman from the neolithic period - around the time Stonehenge was built. The skull is also prompting questions about where it may have come from. A dog walker stumbled across the fragment, which measures 15cm by 10cm (6in by 4in), this year but initially thought it was part of a ball or a coconut shell. The next day he returned to the site on the banks of the Avon near Pershore, Worcestershire, for a closer look and, realising what it was, called police. West Mercia police contacted experts at Worcestershire Archaeology, who sent the skull to be radiocarbon dated. |
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Anthony Bond
The Daily Mail, UK 2013-08-27 11:04:00
Hidden within the Himalayas, 155ft from the ground, these man-made caves are one of the World's greatest archaeological mysteries. Thousands of holes are carved into the fragile, sandy-coloured cliff in a gorge so large it dwarfs the Grand Canyon. The astonishing number of caves, some dug into the cliffside, others tunnelled from above are thousands of years old but who built them and why remains a mystery.
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| Science & Technology |
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Honor Whiteman
Medical News Today 2013-08-30 09:00:00
Scientists say they have discovered a protein deficiency in the brain that is a major cause of age-related memory loss, according to a study published online in the journal Science Translational Medicine. The researchers, from Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC), say this discovery offers the "strongest causal evidence" that age-related memory loss and Alzheimer's disease are individual recognizable conditions. The study, conducted on postmortem human brain cells and in mice, revealed that the hippocampus in the brain - a region that plays an important part in memory, lacks a protein called RbAp48 in those who experience age-related memory loss. The finding suggests that a deficiency of this protein is a cause of memory loss, but more importantly, the researchers say this form of memory loss is reversible. They began conducting this current study in order to seek direct evidence that Alzheimer's disease is a completely separate condition from age-related memory loss. Previous research has suggested that Alzheimer's disease hinders a person's memory by affecting the entorhinal cortex (EC) in the brain. The EC is a region that provides important pathways to the hippocampus. According to the study authors, it was thought that age-related memory loss was an early sign of Alzheimer's, but they add that recent evidence suggests age-related memory loss is a separate process that affects the dentate gyrus (DG). This is a subregion in the hippocampus that has direct input from the EC. |
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| Earth Changes |
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Robert Felix
Ice Age Now 2013-07-29 15:00:00
Snow in 113 Santa Catarina cities. "The record snow for sure is historic , because never in our files , we have the record of the phenomenon in so many cities," says weatherman Marcelo Martins . In 2010 , there were 23 municipalities with snow during the month of August, says the weatherman. In September of the following year , only 16 cities recorded the phenomenon . Many cities in the state have not seen snow for many winters. In the Itajai Valley, for example , the phenomenon was not seen for 13 years. In Hill Cambirela in Palhoça, the last snow was recorded in 1984. |
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US Geological Survey
2013-08-30 13:04:00
Event Time 2013-08-30 16:25:02 UTC 2013-08-30 04:25:02 UTC-12:00 at epicenter Location 51.610°N 175.361°W depth=33.5km (20.8mi) Nearby Cities 94km (58mi) ESE of Adak, Alaska 1520km (944mi) SSE of Anadyr', Russia 1769km (1099mi) E of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy, Russia 1785km (1109mi) E of Yelizovo, Russia 2649km (1646mi) W of Whitehorse, Canada Technical Details |
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Jennifer Smith
The Daily Mail, UK 2013-08-30 12:56:00
The rose-coloured rocks fell 200ft after the massive landslide, half-a-mile from the town of Sidmouth in Devon. The area on the Devon coast is prone to landslides, with some residents worrying their homes will soon be next.
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Marc Lallanilla
LiveScience 2013-08-27 12:37:00
On Saturday morning (Aug. 24), residents of Rome were startled to discover that a steaming vent, spitting out a steady stream of water and mud, had erupted from the ground near a runway at Rome's busy Fiumicino airport. Geologists and engineers are investigating the vent to ensure that it's not a broken pipe or some other accident, according to VolcanoDiscovery. Assuming that it's not manmade, it could be a fumarole, a vent of steaming-hot hydrothermal water that erupts at the Earth's surface. "There are a lot of hot springs in the area around Rome, so it might not be surprising that new vents could open," Erik Klemetti, assistant professor of geosciences at Denison University in Granville, Ohio, told LiveScience. "Likely this doesn't lead to anything more than maybe a new hot spring, if it is related to the normal geothermal activity across the area," Klemetti said. "Once volcanologists can sample the gases being emitted, we might have a better idea of what the ultimate source of the vent might be."
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Comment: "Likely"? "It might not be surprising"? From
that we take it that their first reaction was surprise because they
don't know what it is and that this doesn't usually happen in Rome!
Between this and all these sinkholes opening up the world over, fireballs in the sky and increased extreme weather events, clearly something strange is happening on, above and below this planet! |
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BBC
2013-08-29 10:41:00
A huge waterspout has been spotted off the coast of the Croatian city of Dubrovnik. Amateur footage captured by a passerby from a nearby cliff face shows a whirling column of air and water travelling across the ocean. Funnels and waterspouts are caused by unstable weather conditions and are becoming increasingly common in this part of Adriatic Sea. |
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Tina Jensen
krqe.com 2013-08-28 05:06:00
State biologists are trying to unravel a mystery of what killed a herd of elk in northeastern New Mexico. More than 100 elk found were dead on a ranch about 20 miles north of Las Vegas this week. Sky News 13 flew over the gruesome discovery on the sprawling 75,000-acre Buena Vista Ranch near Mora. The elk weren't shot, so the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish is investigating just what caused the deaths. Their top suspicion: something called Epizootic Hemorrhagic Disease, or EHD. The often-fatal disease is caused by insect bites. "With EHD, an elk could get a fever," said Game and Fish spokesperson Rachel Shockley. "It's usually a pretty fast illness, and up to eight to 36 hours later the animals go into shock, and then they die." |
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Lacey Avery
Eighty dead sea turtles have been recorded since the first week of July on the country's southeastern beachesThe Guardian 2013-08-28 04:55:00
An assortment of marine animals and birds reside along the black volcanic sand beaches of Guatemala's Pacific coast, but lately both residents and visitors on the southeast beaches of the country have observed a tragic event - the stranding of dead sea turtles. Eighty dead sea turtles have been recorded since the first week of July on the beaches of La Barrona, Las Lisas, Chapeton and Hawaii according to a statement released by the Wildlife Rescue and Conservation Association (ARCAS), a Guatemalan non-profit organization formed by citizens in 1989. "The entire coast has historically been a significant nesting area for olive ridley and leatherback sea turtles," Colum Muccio, ARCAS administrative director, told mongabay.com. While not known to nest in Guatemala, east pacific green turtles forage in estuaries and mangrove waterways along the Pacific coast. |
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| Fire in the Sky |
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SpaceWeather.com
2013-08-30 07:39:00
NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office has upgraded its estimates of a major fireball that exploded over the southeastern USA on August 28th. Lead researcher Bill Cooke says " the fireball reached a peak magnitude of -13, brighter than a Full Moon, and cast shadows on the ground. This indicates that the meteoroid had a mass of over 50 kg (110 lbs) and was about 40 cm (16 inches) in diameter. It hit the top of Earth's atmosphere traveling 23.7 km/s (53,000 mph)." "As far as I know, this is the brightest event our network has observed in 5 years of operation," he continues. "There are reports of sonic booms reaching the ground, and data from 4 doppler radars indicate that some meteorites may have fallen along the fireball's ground track." (Note: The city in the ground track map is Cleveland, Tennessee, not Cleveland, Ohio.) Using data from multiple cameras, Cooke has calculated a preliminary orbit for the meteoroid. The shape and dimensions of the orbit are similar those of a Jupiter-family comet. If meteorites are recovered from the Tennessee countryside, their chemical composition will tell researchers more about the origin of the fireball. |
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Space.com
NASA's All-Sky cameras captured a very bright meteor burning up in the
atmosphere at the same time that the Moon was in the camera field of
view. Early estimates: meteor weighed ~100lbs and was traveling ~53,000
mph.2013-08-30 00:28:00
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| Health & Wellness |
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Alliance for Natural Health
2013-08-27 19:04:00
Would some of their labels say, "Brewed with pure Rocky Mountain spring water, GMO corn syrup, and fish bladder"? If you like to kick back now and then with a cold one, you may not have given much thought to what's in the bottle or can. Perhaps you were reassured by ads with wholesome images of sparkling mountain streams and barley rippling in the breeze, or by slogans like "Budweiser: The Genuine Article." The reality is far less appetizing. The list of legal additives to beer includes:
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Allison Rose Levy
Alternet 2013-08-24 18:36:00
Coca-Cola claims diet drinks promote weight loss, but studies show that artificial sweeteners actually contribute to weight gain. In response to a plunge in sales of artificially sweetened sodas last week, Coca-Cola announced plans to roll out an ad campaign to win back popular favor for its aspartame-containing beverage, Diet Coke. (Diet Pepsi, which also contained aspartame, saw its sales fall 6.2 percent in 2012 while regular Pepsi sales fell little more than half that amount.) The safety of aspartame, which the FDA approved for human consumption in 1981, has long been in dispute, before, during, and after its approval by the FDA. The simmering controversy is notable for the parallels between aspartame's safety and regulatory history, and that of another controversial industrial food product - genetically modified foods also known as GMOs. |
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Sayer Ji
Greenmedinfo.com 2013-08-29 17:43:00
A stunning new report reveals that the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has been monitoring independent health sites and their users in an attempt to identify 'anti-vaccine influencers' and their effect on lackluster vaccine uptake. A newly fashioned United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) working paper tracking "the rise of online anti-vaccination sentiments in Central and Eastern Europe" identifies independent health websites, including GreenMedInfo.com, Mercola.com, NaturalNews.com and VacTruth.com, as contributing to lackluster vaccine uptake. The UNICEF report, titled "Tracking anti-vaccination sentiment in Eastern European social media networks," obtained data using "state-of-the-art social medial monitoring tools," and confirmed that parents are using social media networks to decide whether to vaccinate their children |
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| Science of the Spirit |
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Morgan Kelly
Poverty and all its related concerns require so much mental energy that
the poor have less remaining brainpower to devote to other areas of
life, according to research based at Princeton University. As a result,
people of limited means are more likely to make mistakes and bad
decisions that may be amplified by -- and perpetuate -- their financial
woes.Princeton University 2013-08-29 17:39:00 Published in the journal Science, the study presents a unique perspective regarding the causes of persistent poverty. The researchers suggest that being poor may keep a person from concentrating on the very avenues that would lead them out of poverty. A person's cognitive function is diminished by the constant and all-consuming effort of coping with the immediate effects of having little money, such as scrounging to pay bills and cut costs. Thusly, a person is left with fewer "mental resources" to focus on complicated, indirectly related matters such as education, job training and even managing their time. In a series of experiments, the researchers found that pressing financial concerns had an immediate impact on the ability of low-income individuals to perform on common cognitive and logic tests. On average, a person preoccupied with money problems exhibited a drop in cognitive function similar to a 13-point dip in IQ, or the loss of an entire night's sleep. |
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Mark Steel
The Independent, UK 2013-08-29 13:34:00
The main lesson from the anniversary of Martin Luther King's famous speech seems to be that everyone in the world agrees with it and always has done. Sarah Palin said "May his dream become reality". John McCain and George W Bush made tributes to him, and I expect the ghost of the bloke who shot him said, "He was a great and uniquely wonderful man, a role model for everyone in the world, and as a professional assassin it was an honour and privilege to assassinate someone with as much integrity as Dr King." And everyone insists he would have supported what they're doing now. The anti-immigration, pro-war Tea Party claims Dr King was a conservative who would back them. Fox News claimed that if he was still alive he'd support their campaign against black rap music. Jeremy Clarkson will claim that when King organised a boycott of Alabama buses, it wasn't because they were segregated but because he knew public transport was rubbish, and he wanted to go everywhere in a BMW 3.0 litre V8 M60. Psychoanalysts will insist the speech was a call for more people to go into therapy, as his dream of children living in a world in which they weren't judged by the colour of their skin can only be interpreted as an unconscious desire to drown his father. David Cameron praised King's "visionary leadership", so he seems to believe it's in the spirit of such leadership to send vans around inner cities plastered with messages condemning illegal immigrants. Because presumably if Dr King was around now, he'd say: "I know I demanded compassion for all people, but even I draw the line at some bastard poncing off our housing benefits just because his village got burned down in Somalia." Politicians and newspapers that condemn immigrants and Muslims for "flooding" the country are full of praise for the "Dream" speech, to the extent that you need to check you heard it right, as maybe he said: "I have seen the promised land, and there's no bloody Bulgarians in it for a start." |
