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RT.com
2013-10-15 16:37:00
Washington's struggle to govern itself has already cost the American economy hundreds of millions of dollars on the first day of the government shutdown. And things are likely to get even more expensive, with neither Republican nor Democrat lawmakers willing to back down from their stance on Barack Obama's signature health care bill.
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RT
2013-10-14 15:38:00
What is American exceptionalism? Where does the US's world monopoly on democracy come from? How does the US give itself license to do as it pleases? "Exceptionalism" is a film by RT correspondent Anissa Naouai.
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Pepe Escobar
Asia Times Online 2013-10-15 10:32:00
This is it. China has had enough. The (diplomatic) gloves are off. It's time to build a "de-Americanized" world. It's time for a "new international reserve currency" to replace the US dollar. It's all here, in a Xinhua editorial, straight from the dragon's mouth. And the year is only 2013. Fasten your seat belts - and that applies especially to the Washington elites. It's gonna be a bumpy ride. Long gone are the Deng Xiaoping days of "keeping a low profile". The Xinhua editorial summarizes the straw that broke the dragon's back - the current US shutdown. After the Wall Street-provoked financial crisis, after the war on Iraq, a "befuddled world", and not only China, wants change. This paragraph couldn't be more graphic: Instead of honoring its duties as a responsible leading power, a self-serving Washington has abused its superpower status and introduced even more chaos into the world by shifting financial risks overseas, instigating regional tensions amid territorial disputes, and fighting unwarranted wars under the cover of outright lies. |
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| Puppet Masters |
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Press TV
2013-10-10 00:00:00
An Israeli military officer, who was an advisor to Cameroon's president, has been killed in a helicopter crash in the central African country. Retired Colonel Avi Sivan's chopper went down near Cameroon's capital city of Yaounde on Monday, Israeli daily Ha'aretz reported. Sivan was responsible for training a presidential guard brigade unit in Cameroon. There have been no comments on the cause of the incident. |
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Ed Pilkington
Guardian 2013-10-13 17:05:00
Jill Abramson says she was approached by UK embassy officials after announcing collaboration with Guardian over NSA files The editor of the New York Times, Jill Abramson, has confirmed that senior British officials attempted to persuade her to hand over secret documents leaked by the former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. Giving the newspaper's first official comments on the incident, Abramson said that she was approached by the UK embassy in Washington after it was announced that the New York Times was collaborating with the Guardian to explore some of the files disclosed by Snowden. Among the files are several relating to the activities of GCHQ, the agency responsible for signals interception in the UK. "They were hopeful that we would relinquish any material that we might be reporting on, relating to Edward Snowden. Needless to say I considered what they told me, and said no," Abramson told the Guardian in an interview to mark the International Herald Tribune's relaunch as the International New York Times. The incident shows the lengths to which the UK government has gone to try to discourage press coverage of the Snowden leaks. In July, the government threatened to take legal action against the Guardian that could have prevented publication, culminating in the destruction of computer hard drives containing some of Snowden's files. |
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Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel
2013-10-15 17:01:00
People in Ohio, Michigan and 15 other states found themselves temporarily unable to use their food stamp debit-style cards on Saturday, after a routine test of backup systems by vendor Xerox Corp. resulted in a system failure. Xerox announced late in the evening that access has been restored for users in the 17 states affected by the outage, hours after the first problems were reported. "Restarting the EBT system required time to ensure service was back at full functionality," spokeswoman Jennifer Wasmer said in an email. An emergency voucher process was available in some of the areas while the problems were occurring, she said. U.S. Department of Agriculture spokeswoman Courtney Rowe underscored that the outage was not related to the government shutdown. Earlier Saturday shoppers left carts of groceries behind at a packed Market Basket grocery store in Biddeford, Maine, because they couldn't get their benefits, said shopper Barbara Colman, of Saco, Maine. The manager put up a sign saying the EBT system was not in use. Colman, who receives the benefits, called an 800 telephone line for the program and it said the system was down due to maintenance, she said. "That's a problem. There are a lot of families who are not going to be able to feed children because the system is being maintenanced," Colman said. She planned to reach out to local officials. "You don't want children going hungry tonight because of stupidity," she said. |
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CBS Boston
2013-10-15 16:57:00
People in Ohio, Michigan and 15 other states found themselves unable to use their food stamp debit-style cards on Saturday, after a routine test of backup systems by vendor Xerox Corp. resulted in a system failure. At about 9 a.m. Saturday, reports from across the country began pouring in that customers' EBT cards were not working in stores. At 2 p.m., an EBT customer service representative told CBS Boston that the system was currently down for a computer system upgrade. Xerox spokeswoman Jennifer Wasmer released further details later in the afternoon in an emailed statement. "While the electronic benefits system is now up and running, beneficiaries in the 17 affected states continue to experience connectivity issues to access their benefits. Technical staff is addressing the issue and expect the system to be restored soon," Wasmer said. "Beneficiaries requiring access to their benefits can work with their local retailers who can activate an emergency voucher system where available. We appreciate our clients' patience while we work through this outage as quickly as possible." |
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Daniel Halper
The Weekly Standard 2013-10-13 16:42:00
Despite the government shutdown, Vice President Joe Biden is vacationing at Camp David this long weekend. He's joined at the Maryland retreat by his family, including his wife (Jill Biden), children, and grandchildren. The vice president is also there with "essential" government workers, who must work despite the government shutdown. That includes his Secret Service detail, as well as the Secret Service details assigned to the rest of his family, and other support staff. They are protecting the Bidens as they vacation -- but aren't getting paid because of the federal shutdown. The vice president's public schedule simply reads: |
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John Glover
Bloomberg 2013-10-14 16:37:00
Reneging on its debt obligations would make the U.S. the first major Western government to default since Nazi Germany 80 years ago. Germany unilaterally ceased payments on long-term borrowings on May 6, 1933, three months after Adolf Hitler was installed as Chancellor. The default helped cement Hitler's power base following years of political instability as the Weimar Republic struggled with its crushing debts. "These are generally catastrophic economic events," said Professor Eugene N. White, an economics historian at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. "There is no happy ending." |
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RT
2013-10-15 03:10:00
A US debt default could hit on Thursday, and world leaders are second guessing the dominant role America plays in finance. Regardless of the final decision in Washington, confidence and credibility in the US has already eroded. In an editorial published by the Chinese state-owned press agency Xinhua, a columnist says the US economy has 'failed' and put many countries who hold state assets in dollars at risk. "To that end, several corner stones should be laid to underpin a de-Americanized world," the editorial read. Last week China, the biggest US creditor, started to make preparations for a technical default on loans. The European Central Bank and the People's Bank of China (PBC) have agreed to start supplying each other with their currencies, avoiding the dollar as an intermediary currency. The currency swap agreement will last for three years and provide a maximum of 350 billion yuan ($56 billion) to the ECB and 45 billion euro ($60.8 billion) to the PBC. In a further sign of growing distrust, China introduced a so-called "haircut", or a discount, on the value of US Treasuries held as collateral against futures trades. Developing and developed nations are equally concerned, and institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have issued several warnings. |
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Tom Howell Jr.
Washington Times 2013-10-13 20:44:00
The chief of the International Monetary Fund says the U.S. government's stalemate over spending and its debt limit is "very, very concerning" and could roll back economic progress around the world. Christine Lagarde, who took over the financial watchdog-and-rescue organization in 2011, said global finance ministers assembled for meetings in Washington last week feeling like Japan had finally turned the corner and that economies in the U.S. and Europe were on the upswing. "And then they found out that the debt ceiling was the issue," she said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press." "They found out that the government had shut down and that there was no remedy in sight. So it really completely transformed the meeting in the last few days." Ms. Lagarde, a lawyer from France, added a global perspective to the standoff that has roiled Washington for weeks and befuddled overseas investors who typically view the U.S. as a paragon of financial rectitude. |
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Joe Conason
AlterNet 2013-10-11 20:33:00
Now big-wigs are begging these yo-yos not to crash the economy. America's great minds of business and finance have reached a consensus on the government shutdown and worse, the prospect of a debt default: While the latter is worse, both are bad. Those same great minds are well aware how the shutdown came to pass and why default still looms on the horizon, whether next week, next month, or next year. Yes, the frightened corporate leaders surely know how this happened -- because their money funded the tea party candidates and organizations responsible for the crisis. Consider Rep. Ted Yoho, R-Fla., a tea party freshman whose outspoken stupidity on a default's potential benefits, such as an improved U.S. credit rating, has provided a bit of dark humor in these dark days. Yoho, a large-animal veterinarian, announced months ago that he would never vote to raise the debt ceiling. Like most Republican candidates, he had no problem raising contributions from business interests, notably including contractors, insurance companies, manufacturers and agricultural processors. All of which presumably share the horror of default expressed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. But no doubt Yoho parroted the usual right-wing cliches about taxes, regulation, labor, and health care, so all the business guys wrote a check without caring that Yoho is an ignorant yobbo. |
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Brianna Ehley
Fiscal Times 2013-10-08 20:28:00
The National Security Agency's $2 billion mega spy center is going up in flames. Technical glitches have sparked fiery explosions within the NSA's newest and largest data storage facility in Utah, destroying hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment, and delaying the facility's opening by one year. And no one seems to know how to fix it. For a country that prides itself on being a technology leader, not knowing the electrical capacity requirements for a system as large as this is inexcusable. Within the last 13 months, at least 10 electric surges have each cost about $100,000 in damages, according to documents obtained by the Wall Street Journal. Experts agree that the system, which requires about 64 megawatts of electricity - that's about a $1 million a month energy bill--isn't able to run all of its computers and servers while keeping them cool, which is likely triggering the meltdowns. |
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Daily Caller
2013-10-10 19:26:00
Embattled IRS official Sarah Hall Ingram made 155 visits to the White House to meet with a top Obama White House official with whom she exchanged confidential taxpayer information over email. Of Ingram's 165 White House meetings with White House staff, a staggering 155 of them were hosted by deputy assistant to the president for health policy Jeanne Lambrew, according to a June Watchdog.Org analysis of White House visitor records. Ingram exchanged confidential taxpayer information with Lambrew and White House health policy advisor Ellen Montz, according to 2012 emails obtained by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. |
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| Society's Child |
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USA Today
2013-10-14 16:28:00
A crowd converged on the World War II Memorial on the National Mall, pushing through barriers Sunday morning to protest the memorial's closing under the government shutdown. Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas were among those who gathered Sunday morning, along with former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, according to WTOP radio. Cruz said President Obama is using veterans as pawns in the shutdown. "Tear down these walls," the crowd chanted. Protesters also sang God Bless America and other patriotic songs as they entered the memorial plaza. |
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Diahann Reyes
CNN 2013-10-15 03:53:00
For the second time in two days, dry ice placed in a container exploded at Los Angeles International Airport on Monday night. No injuries were immediately reported. The explosion took place just before 8:30 p.m. at the Tom Bradley International Terminal, the airport police said. CNN affiliate KCAL said the blast took place in an employee restroom, inaccessible to non-employees. "The investigation is in its infancy," said Los Angeles Police Detective Gus Villanueva. He added that there's "no nexus to terrorism at this point." The FBI was called in. On Sunday, dry ice in a plastic bottle exploded in an employee restroom at the airport, causing a brief shutdown of Terminal 2, the FBI said. No injuries were reported, and Terminal 2 resumed operations after a brief evacuation. The airport has nine terminals. | |
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Press TV
2013-10-15 03:06:00
A 21-story building has collapsed in Colombia's second-largest city, leaving at least two people dead with several others feared missing. The incident occurred in the Colombian city of Medellin on Saturday when construction workers were trying to fix a crack in a load-bearing structure of the building, media reports said. Rescue workers continued to search for missing people after the apartment building collapsed, leaving two unidentified victims so far. Among those still missing were a team of construction workers, a security guard and a local resident who ran back into the building at the last minute to retrieve an object. Emergency officials said they rescued two people after the collapse, though one of the individuals could be paralyzed. The 54-unit building had been evacuated on Friday due to the appearance of cracks on the complex. Following the collapse, five other neighboring buildings in the area were evacuated. Another tower is also showing cracks, said Medellin Mayor Claudia Restrepo. Authorities have launched an inquiry into the cause of the collapse. |
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Patrick Gower
Bloomberg 2013-10-14 00:54:00
It took more than a year for Mark Hudson to find his six-bedroom home in the English countryside. Within weeks of moving in, he got a bid that topped the 1.75 million pounds ($2.8 million) the property cost. "Somebody called offering a significantly higher sum," said Hudson, a 55-year-old manager at a publishing company, who in August swapped his home in Clapham, a London district favored by young bankers and lawyers, for Dorset, the farm-dotted county 125 miles (202 kilometers) southwest of London that was the setting for Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles. "It looks like we caught it just at the right time," he said. Country homes are coming back into fashion, after lagging behind urban locations such as London's West End since the 2007 financial crisis when banks cut off mortgages. Prices for manor houses, farmhouses and cottages valued at more than 750,000 pounds climbed at the fastest rate in more than three years in the third quarter, Knight Frank LLP said in a report today, as Prime Minister David Cameron makes reviving the housing market central to his efforts to pull the economy out of recession. "It's U.K. economic growth and broader housing-market confidence," said Liam Bailey, global head of residential research at the London-based property broker. The government last week introduced the second phase of its Help to Buy program, which offers mortgage guarantees that allow purchases with down payments as low as 5 percent. The first phase, which began in April, provided interest-free loans for buyers of newly built homes. | |
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Comment:
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Jeff Cox
CNBC 2013-10-12 16:02:00
As Washington is struggling with debt and all its political ramifications, American companies and consumers are embracing it, running up record amounts in 2013. Whether it's corporate loans, all quality levels of bonds or simple consumer credit, the debt party is back on in the U.S., whether it's in the boardroom or the living room. Amid the financial crisis of 2008, the U.S. went into what economists call a "debt deleveraging cycle" - akin to a credit hangover, where the party has ended and everyone there decides to quit drinking cold turkey. Somebody has clearly turned the lights back on, though, and corporate and individual buying is soaring. Consumer credit, for instance, surged past the $3 trillion mark in the second quarter of 2013 and continues on an upward trajectory, according to the most recent numbers from the Federal Reserve. At $3.04 trillion, the total is up 22 percent over the past three years. Student loans are up a whopping 61 percent. Total household debt, according to the Fed's flow of funds report, is at $13 trillion, nearly back to its pre-crisis level in 2007 and a shade below government debt of $15 trillion. "We have not solved (anything) when it comes to the deleveraging myth," said Michael Pento, president of Pento Portfolio Strategies. "We have learned nothing." |
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Daniel Thomas
Financial Times 2013-10-13 20:57:00
Sir Richard Branson has had to defend his tax arrangements after a spotlight was cast on the billionaire's decision to move to his luxury island in the Caribbean. The entrepreneur, one of the most public advocates for British industry across the world, has not paid taxes on non-UK personal income since moving to Necker Island in 2007. The founder of the Virgin empire has sold or transferred property he owned in the UK to his grown-up children, Sam and Holly. A report in The Sunday Times highlighted the lack of British tax being paid by Sir Richard, who is frequently pictured with Union Jacks and has been reported to talk disparagingly of tax exiles. |
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Chris Hedges
Truth Dig 2013-10-14 20:20:00
The final days of empire give ample employment and power to the feckless, the insane and the idiotic. These politicians and court propagandists, hired to be the public faces on the sinking ship, mask the real work of the crew, which is systematically robbing the passengers as the vessel goes down. The mandarins of power stand in the wheelhouse barking ridiculous orders and seeing how fast they can gun the engines. They fight like children over the ship's wheel as the vessel heads full speed into a giant ice field. They wander the decks giving pompous speeches. They shout that the SS America is the greatest ship ever built. They insist that it has the most advanced technology and embodies the highest virtues. And then, with abrupt and unexpected fury, down we will go into the frigid waters. The last days of empire are carnivals of folly. We are in the midst of our own, plunging forward as our leaders court willful economic and environmental self-destruction. Sumer and Rome went down like this. So did the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires. Men and women of stunning mediocrity and depravity led the monarchies of Europe and Russia on the eve of World War I. And America has, in its own decline, offered up its share of weaklings, dolts and morons to steer it to destruction. A nation that was still rooted in reality would never glorify charlatans such as Sen. Ted Cruz, House Speaker John Boehner and former Speaker Newt Gingrich as they pollute the airwaves. If we had any idea what was really happening to us we would have turned in fury against Barack Obama, whose signature legacy will be utter capitulation to the demands of Wall Street, the fossil fuel industry, the military-industrial complex and the security and surveillance state. We would have rallied behind those few, such as Ralph Nader, who denounced a monetary system based on gambling and the endless printing of money and condemned the willful wrecking of the ecosystem. We would have mutinied. We would have turned the ship back. |
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Dugan Arnett
Kansas City Star 2013-10-12 20:15:00
There wasn't much left by the time she arrived, just a burnt-out structure and the haze of smoke that lingered around it. The siding and gutters had melted. The roof was gone. Inside, piles of ash filled the rooms that had once bustled with the pleasant sounds of a family. That morning last April when Melinda Coleman received word that emergency vehicles were gathering around her Maryville house, she had hoped for the best. But if the events of the past year and a half had taught her anything, it was that when the town of Maryville was involved, that seemed unlikely. Since the morning her daughter had been left nearly unconscious in the frost of the home's front lawn, this northwest Missouri community had come to mean little besides heartache. Few dispute the basic facts of what happened in the early morning hours of Jan. 8, 2012: A high school senior had sex with Coleman's 14-year-old daughter, another boy did the same with her daughter's 13-year-old friend, and a third student video-recorded one of the bedding scenes. Interviews and evidence initially supported the felony and misdemeanor charges that followed. |
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Patrick Cooley
Cleveland Plain Dealer 2013-10-12 20:00:00
The Rev. James McGonegal, pastor of a West Side Cleveland Catholic church, was charged today with soliciting sex while being HIV-positive. He had been arrested Friday in Edgewater Park. In the incident report released today, an off-duty Cleveland Metroparks ranger said McGonegal offered the ranger $50 to help him "get off," then exposed himself and masturbated, all while sitting inside his late-model Jeep SUV. The report said McGonegal had three sex devices in his Jeep when he was arrested around 12:45 p.m. The priest, 68, was released on personal bond from Cleveland City Jail this morning other media reports said. He has not been arraigned as the charges were not filed until around noon. |
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Source
2013-10-10 19:06:00
Woman suffers broken bones in face after DUI arrest A Chicago woman has filed a lawsuit against the Skokie Police Department claiming an officer used excessive force after she was arrested for DUI. Cassandra Feuerstein, 47, was arrested for DUI after officers found her pulled over at the side of the road and asleep behind the wheel. But Feuerstein claims her civil rights were violated after she was taken to the police station. Surveillance video portrays a calm scene as Feuerstein interacts with an officer until she says she asked to call her husband and kids. |
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| Secret History |
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Was Germany's 'Dark Countess' the daughter of executed French royals Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette?
Sam Webb
A 200-year-old mystery that links a castle in a German town, a
mysterious 'Dark Countess' and the French royal family may be on the
cusp of finally being solved. In 1807 a covered carriage arrived in the
central German town of Hildburghausen. A man, now known to be Leonardus
Cornelius van der Valck, a secretary in the Dutch embassy in Paris from
July 1798 to April 1799, got out. With him was an enigmatic and
secretive young woman who would go on to fire the imaginations of
historians everywhere.Daily Mail UK 2013-10-15 16:46:00 Known as the 'Dark Countess', many believed she was none other than Marie Thérèse Charlotte de Bourbon - daughter of the French King Louis XVI and his wife, Marie Antoinette, who were executed during the French Revolution. Rarely seen in public and always veiled, she lived under the protection of the Duke and Duchess of Saxony- Hildburghausen in castle of Eishausen.
Now a team of archaeologists, supported by Central German Radio, may be about to shed light on a secret that has gone unsolved for more than two centuries. Additional images |
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| Science & Technology |
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Yuriy Humber
Any drop in USGS activity would impact lesser developed nations such as
the Philippines, which run smaller-scale monitoring and rely on the USGS
for global earthquake data, Robert Geller, a professor of seismology at
Tokyo University, said by phone. It would also affect ordinary citizens
in the U.S, he said.BusinessWeek.com 2013-10-15 16:35:00 "If a big quake occurred now, hypothetically, inside the U.S., disaster relief work might be slowed down if USGS data wasn't available to the government," Geller said. The effect of the shutdown depends on whether the agency has curtailed the monitoring itself or stopped putting the data online, he said. Earthquake Risk Despite the warning, the National Earthquake Information Center of the USGS at Golden, Colorado, does not expect delays in earthquake monitoring and said data is being gathered at the same rate as before the shutdown. "At this point we are getting earthquakes posted on our website on time, within 20 minutes for magnitude 5 and larger worldwide, and earlier for a national event," Jana Pursley, a geophysicist at the center, said today in a phone interview. |
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RT
2013-10-15 16:21:00
Going to the grocery store is about to get a lot more personal: one of the biggest names in food is preparing to launch "smart shelves" to gather intelligence on consumers and customize their shopping experience. Mondelēz International, the parent company of Kraft Foods, plans on having their space-age smart shelves rolled out on supermarket floors sometime in 2015. And if all goes as planned, soon after the multi-national corporation behind products such as Chips Ahoy, Oreo, Wheat Thins and Ritz will begin collecting analytics about impulse buys and learn new ways to bring customers the products they crave. |
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Kanina Foss
Wits University 2013-10-15 14:22:00
Lightning strikes causing rocks to explode have for the first time been shown to play a huge role in shaping mountain landscapes in southern Africa, debunking previous assumptions that angular rock formations were necessarily caused by cold temperatures, and proving that mountains are a lot less stable than we think. In a world where mountains are crucial to food security and water supply, this has vast implications, especially in the context of climate change. Professors Jasper Knight and Stefan Grab from the School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies at Wits University used a compass to prove - for the first time ever - that lightning is responsible for some of the angular rock formations in the Drakensburg. |
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Larry O'Hanlon
Discovery News 2013-10-15 05:40:00
If you enjoy leaves turning, pumpkin patches and other rites of autumn, thank the giant impact event early in Earth's history which knocked our planet's axis off kilter, creating the seasons that we know and love today. But was there just one planet-tilting impact? University of Western Ontario geologist Grant Young thinks there were two, separated by billions of years. He has been studying rocks from the Ediacaran Period, 540 to 635 million years ago and says he sees signs of massive changes to Earth's seasons and climate that can best be explained by a axis-shifting collision of a small planetary body into the ocean about 570 million years ago. That's long after the famous smash up with a Mars-sized body that is credited with creating the Moon around 4 billion years ago and giving Earth its mild tilt and modern seasons. It was also at the time Earth was seeing the earliest animals, or metazoans, come into being. "I think this might have stimulated the evolution of metazoans," Young told Discovery News. The scenario he has presented in the October issue of GSA Today is that there was first the collision that created the Moon. But instead of that giving Earth its current tilt (which wobbles a bit, and is currently at 23.5 degrees), that first event knocked the planet over almost on its side. That orientation would give the poles a temperate climate without nights for half the year and the equator much less sunshine all year round. |
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Amy Maxmen
Nature News 2013-10-10 10:58:00
Two controversial studies suggest antiviral mechanism called RNA interference may exist in vertebrates after all. Organisms including plants, fungi and flies fight viruses using an elegant mechanism involving RNA snippets that mammals apparently ditched at some point in their evolutionary history. At least, that is what scientists thought - but two controversial reports published today suggest otherwise. The RNA defence mechanism hinges on the fact that most viruses copy their RNA when they replicate. Invaded cells recognize viral RNA and automatically launch RNA interference, or RNAi, to stop the virus from multiplying and spreading to other host cells. The RNAi process begins when an enzyme known as DICER chops a long strand of the virus RNA into chunks that are about 22 genetic letters long. Next, another one of the host cell's molecules ships the fragments off to the invading virus where they cling to the viral RNA, preventing its replication. "It's an incredible system because it can be adapted to any virus," says Olivier Voinnet, a molecular biologist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland, and an author of one of the papers, which are published in Science1, 2. | |
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Comment: For some food for thought see: On viral 'junk' DNA, a DNA-enhancing Ketogenic diet, and cometary kicks
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Rong-Gong Lin ll, Rosanna Xia and Doug Smith
Los Angeles Times 2013-10-15 03:25:00
More than 1,000 old concrete buildings in Los Angeles and hundreds more throughout the county may be at risk of collapsing in a major earthquake, according to a Times analysis. By the most conservative estimate, as many as 50 of these buildings in the city alone would be destroyed, exposing thousands to injury or death. A cross-section of the city lives and works in them: seamstresses in downtown factories, white-collar workers in Ventura Boulevard high-rises and condo dwellers on Millionaires' Mile in Westwood. Despite their sturdy appearance, many older concrete buildings are vulnerable to the sideways movement of a major earthquake because they don't have enough steel reinforcing bars to hold columns in place. Los Angeles officials have known about the dangers for more than 40 years but have failed to force owners to make their properties safer. The city has even rejected calls to make a list of concrete buildings. In the absence of city action, university scientists compiled the first comprehensive inventory of potentially dangerous concrete buildings in Los Angeles. The scientists, however, have declined to make the information public. They said they are willing to share it with L.A. officials, but only if the city requests a copy. The city has not done so, the scientists said. |
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Douglas Main
LiveScience 2013-10-14 14:00:00
About 46 million years ago, a mosquito sunk its proboscis into some animal, perhaps a bird or a mammal, and filled up on a meal of blood. Then its luck turned for the worse, as it fell into a lake and sunk to the bottom. Normally this wouldn't be newsworthy, and nobody would likely know or care about a long-dead insect in what is now northwest Montana. But somehow, the mosquito didn't immediately decompose - a fortuitous turn of events for modern-day scientists - and became fossilized over the course of many years, said Dale Greenwalt, a researcher at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. Greenwalt discovered the mosquito fossil after it was given to the museum as a gift, and he immediately realized the specimen's rarity. It is, in fact, the only blood-engorged mosquito fossil found, Greenwalt told LiveScience. The fossil is even stranger because it comes from shale, a type of rock formed from sediments deposited at the bottom of bodies of water, as opposed to amber, the age-old remains of dried tree sap, in which insect remnants are generally better preserved. "The chances that such an insect would be preserved in shale is almost infinitesimally small," Greenwalt said. In their study, Greenwalt and his collaborators bombarded the mosquito fossil with molecules of bismuth, a heavy metal, which vaporizes chemicals found in the fossil. These airborne chemicals are then analyzed by a mass spectrometer, a machine that can identify chemicals based on their atomic weights, Greenwalt said. The beauty of this technique, called time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry, is that it doesn't destroy the sample - previously, similar techniques required grinding up portions of fossils, he added. The analysis revealed hidden porphyrins, organic compounds found in hemoglobin, the oxygen-carrying protein in blood, hidden in the fossilized mosquito's abdomen. |
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| Earth Changes |
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Press TV
2013-10-15 15:53:00
Mexico's health minister has warned of a cholera outbreak across four central states and the capital, claiming the life of one person and infecting many others. The east-central state of Hidalgo has the highest count of confirmed cases with 145 people being infected, including the death of a 75-year-old woman, said Health Minister Mercedes Juan on Monday. Other states affected with cholera include Mexico with nine, Veracruz with two, San Luis Potosi with one, and a couple others in Mexico City, the official added. Juan said that another 3,075 "probable cases" have been detected throughout the country. The ministry has launched a nationwide public health campaign aimed at preventing further infections. |
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Carrie Mess
The Guardian, UK 2013-10-14 15:41:00
If you aren't in the ag world, you most likely haven't heard about the devastating loss that ranchers in western South Dakota are struggling with after being hit by winter storm Atlas. For some reason the news stations aren't covering this story. I don't understand why they wouldn't. This story has heartbreak, tragedy and even a convenient tie into the current government shutdown. Isn't that what the news is all about these days? But the news isn't covering this story. Instead, it is spreading around on social media, and bloggers are writing from their ranches in South Dakota. Bloggers are trying to explain how the horrible happened. And now I am going to join them to tell you the part of the story that I know, and I am going to ask you to help these people, because if you are here reading this, I know you give a crap about these people. Last weekend western South Dakota and parts of the surrounding states got their butts handed to them by Mother Nature. A blizzard isn't unusual in South Dakota, the cattle are tough and can handle some snow. They have for hundreds of years. Unlike on our dairy farm in Wisconsin, beef cattle don't live in climate controlled barns. Beef cows and calves spend the majority of their lives out on pasture. They graze the grass in the spring, summer and fall and eat baled hay in the winter. |
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Aaron Sheldrick
A once-in-a-decade typhoon threatened Japan on Tuesday, disrupting
travel and shipping and forcing precautions to be taken at the wrecked
Fukushima nuclear power plant. Typhoon Wipha is moving across the
Pacific straight towards the capital, Tokyo, and is expected to make
landfall during the morning rush hour on Wednesday, bringing
hurricane-force winds to the metropolitan area of 30 million people.Reuters via Yahoo News 2013-10-15 15:40:00 The center of the storm was 860 km (535 miles) southwest of Tokyo at 0800 GMT, the Japan Meteorological Agency said on its website. It was moving north-northeast at 35 kph (22 mph). The storm had weakened as it headed north over the sea but was still packing sustained winds of about 140 kph (87 mph) with gusts as high as 194 kph (120 mph), the agency said.
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Nadra Nittle
Press-Telegram 2013-10-14 13:35:00
A marine science instructor has made what's being called the discovery of a lifetime: She found an 18-foot-long oarfish Sunday in Toyon Bay on Catalina Island.
While snorkeling, Jasmine Santana of the Catalina Island Marine Institute discovered the obscure fish, which had evidently died of natural causes. When she reached the bottom of the bay, she spotted a silver creature with eyes the size of half-dollars. Santana's colleagues saw her struggling to move the dead animal and came to her aid, ultimately discovering that it would take 15 people to move the animal to the beach. Mark Johnson, a longtime CIMI staffer, said in a statement that he'd yet to witness such a sight during his tenure at the institute. "In 32 years here, I have never seen anything like this," he said. Because oarfish dive more than 3,000 feet deep, sightings of the creatures are rare, according to CIMI. Oarfish have the distinction of being the longest bony fish species, CIMI reports. Officials from the institute sent tissue samples and footage of the oarfish to an expert at UC Santa Barbara, where the species of the creature will be determined. | ||
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Examiner
2013-10-15 12:32:00
Moose die-off, this is a term that is not going away anytime soon as moose are disappearing at an alarming rate across North America. This moose-die off is seen in several northern states where ticks are prevalent and according to the N.Y. Times on Oct. 14, moose have been found with over 100,000 ticks on them. According to the Northern Wild website, moose are testing positive for Lyme disease.While climate change is considered a variable in the moose-die off, it is also a factor in the amount of ticks you will find during any given year. Ticks thrive when the weather is warmer. The winter tick is one of several types of ticks found on animals in the wild, and according to the website, Moose in Minnesota, this state is one of the states seeing the moose die-off, the moose population are visibly suffering from the ticks. This is seen with moose that are missing massive spots of fur, as they have tried to remove the ticks from their bodies by rubbing up against trees. While a few ticks sucking the blood of a moose doesn't lead to much blood loss, but a hundred thousand ticks sucking blood can leave the moose with substantial blood loss. The winter tick, found on moose, take their final blood meal in the spring, a time when the moose are at their weakest from a winter of very little food. According to Lymedisease.org, a moose calf can lose their entire blood supply from ticks, killing them. Lymedisease.org reports researchers blaming climate change for the population explosion in ticks. This is because ticks live longer when it is warmer and "reproduce in greater numbers if there's less snow on the ground by spring." |
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RT
2013-10-15 10:17:00
A powerful typhoon is bearing down on Japan - and its path is set to go through the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant. It's less than 24 hours until the storm is due to hit. The storm has been branded a "once in a decade event". The country's weather agency has issued warnings of torrential rain and strong winds ahead of the coming typhoon, Wipha. 450 flights have been canceled across Japan in measures against the coming typhoon. The combined cancelations will affect 60,850 passengers, Japan Airlines Co said. East Japan Railway Co said it had canceled 31 bullet trains going north and west from Tokyo, Reuters reported. The typhoon is moving towards the country at a speed of 35 kilometers per hour, and is currently to the south of the country in the Pacific ocean. Near its center, the speed of the typhoon can exceed 144 kilometers per hour. "Wipha will remain a strong and expansive extra-tropical system as it tracks along the eastern coast of Japan," the US-based Joint Typhoon Warning Center reported on its website. The exact track of Wipha is crucial: if its center passes just west of Tokyo, a large storm surge would affect the city of more than 35 million people and potentially bring major flooding. |
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Press TV
2013-10-15 02:59:00
At least 32 people have been killed and hundreds others injured following a powerful earthquake in central Philippines. A temblor measuring 7.2 on the Richter scale struck early on Tuesday, crumbling a number of buildings and cracking roads on Bohol Island and the Cebu Island, near Balilihan region, the US Geological Survey (USGS) announced. According to the Philippines Office of Civil Defense, at least 15 people have been killed in the city of Cebu, 16 in the province of Bohol, and one in the province of Siquijor, following the powerful quake. Hundreds more have been wounded and at least 33 others are reported missing. The quake has also destroyed centuries-old monuments and modern buildings in and around Balilihan, one of the Philippines' major tourist hubs. The officials warned that the death toll could rise, though they expressed relief that the quake occurred on a public holiday. |
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AFP
2013-10-15 02:44:00
Typhoon Nari slammed into central Vietnam early Tuesday killing five people, ripping roofs of homes and damaging roads, state media reported. The storm, which claimed 13 lives in the Philippines over the weekend, tore through the communist country's central region -- from the tourist town of Hue to Quang Ngai to the south, Vietnam Television reported. Trees were uprooted and thousands of houses had their roofs ripped off while many roads became impassable due to torrential rain, footage showed. Schools were closed Tuesday in Danang city, which bore the brunt of the typhoon when it hit packing winds of up to 133 kilometers (82 miles) an hour, state media said. Before Nari hit, Vietnam evacuated more than 120,000 people to makeshift shelters in public buildings away from vulnerable coastal areas, according to the country's disaster authorities. Vietnamese weather forecasters said the typhoon had crossed the border to Laos by midday Tuesday. Nari is the 11th tropical storm to hit Vietnam so far this year. Last month Typhoon Wutip left a trail of destruction in the communist state, damaging nearly 200,000 houses and killing several people. Forty people have been killed in flooding in Vietnam since early September, according to official figures. |
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US Geological Survey
2013-10-14 19:50:00
Event Time 2013-10-15 00:12:37 UTC 2013-10-15 08:12:37 UTC+08:00 at epicenter Location 9.765°N 124.022°E depth=56.8km (35.3mi) Nearby Cities 5km (3mi) E of Balilihan, Philippines 21km (13mi) SSE of Tibigan, Philippines 22km (14mi) NE of Tagbilaran, Philippines 35km (22mi) NE of Danao, Philippines 629km (391mi) SSE of Manila, Philippines Technical Details |
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volcanodiscovery.com
Klyuchevskoy (Kamchatka):
(11 Oct) We posted the following time-lapse video of the eruption this
morning (or evening, in Kamchatka time). At 08:30 UTC (17:30 local
time), a new vent opened in the saddle between Klyuchevskoy and
neighboring Kamen volcano, producing a fountain of lava and ash rising
to about 7 km altitude. The KVERT webcam even captured lightning during
this eruption:2013-10-13 18:51:00
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Comment: The Jebel Zubair volcano also erupted in December 2011, resulting in the formation of a new island.
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| Fire in the Sky |
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Danna Walker
Catonsville Patch 2013-10-15 14:24:00
A rash of reports came in about 8 p.m. Monday of a giant meteor shooting through the sky over Maryland, according to The Washington Post. Witnesses said on social media that the meteor was in the northeast sky traveling eastward. The American Meteor Society (AMS) reported: We are currently investigating more reports about this event. |
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BBC News
2013-10-15 14:20:00
A display of the Northern Lights over the Highlands and Islands of Scotland has been lit up by a fireball meteor. Images of the aurora borealis were captured in clear skies on Monday night, including along the west coast and in the Western Isles. The Northern Lights are generated when particle streams from the sun collide with atoms high up in the atmosphere. Byron Griffiths, who lives on the Isle of Lewis, took one shot of the fireball as it fell through the sky. |
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LunarMeteoriteHunters.blogspot.com
Meteor Alert: Several larger meteor events and increased meteor activity
expected! - Through the end of OCT2013! Get out and watch and HAVE your
security/allsky cameras ON!2013-10-15 10:05:00 BUT WAIT and see what will happen in November 2013!!! - LunarMeteoriteHunter...Tokyo NEO Asteroids Close Approaches October 2013 8 known NEOs with an LD of 10 or less. Several more are expected to be discovered this month! 2013 SU24, 2013 SC21, 2013 TQ4, 2013 TO4 2013 TR12, 2013 TX68, 2013 TT5, 2013 TM127 |
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Geraldton Newspapers
A brilliant meteor seen over most of Western Australia about 7pm
yesterday was unusual, but not unexpected, according to Guardian
astronomy expert Dave Reneke. Mr Reneke said to expect an intense period
of meteor activity over the next week or so, with the 'Orionids' meteor
shower.2013-10-15 09:50:00 Comment: The Orionids are certainly on their way, though this 'meteor' was seen over most of Western Australia, which doesn't sound like just a part of the Orionids' meteor activity. "The Orionids are one of the better showers of the year and are well known to produce 'fireballs,' slow-moving meteors that are actually on fire, producing a variety of colours and long, extended tails," he said. "It was more than likely the cause of the one spotted early last night. "Once seen, these objects are seldom forgotten!" Mr Reneke said a meteor shower occurred when the Earth passed through the tail of a comet that came by years before. "When the Earth intercepts a debris stream, individual particles travel through the earth's atmosphere and start to burn up," he said. "This time we are passing through the tail of Halley's Comet that came by in 1986. |
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LumarMeteoriteHunters.blogspot.com
Video link2013-10-15 09:57:00
Additional link |
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WTOP
Washington - Did you see a flash in the sky tonight?2013-10-14 20:44:00 Multiple reports came into the WTOP newsroom Monday night about a fireball in the area. One listener traveling eastbound on Interstate 66 toward the Route 7 exit said they saw one headed northbound. Fox 5's Greg Redfern and WTOP's space expert said he and another person saw a bright fireball to the northeast around 8:25 p.m. Redfern says the fireball appeared white to him while another said it was red. It was moving downward and was "bright as tonight's moon" said Redfern. While he says his view was partially blocked by trees, he says it was a good one. So far there have been more than 30 reports of fireball sightings to the American Meteor Society, seen as far north as New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania and other northeastern areas. |
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| Health & Wellness |
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EndAllDisease
2013-10-15 17:25:00
Hamburger chef Jamie Oliver has won his long-fought battle against one of the largest fast food chains in the world - McDonalds. After Oliver showed how McDonald's hamburgers are made, the franchise finally announced that it will change its recipe, and yet there was barely a peep about this in the mainstream, corporate media. Oliver repeatedly explained to the public, over several years - in documentaries, television shows and interviews - that the fatty parts of beef are "washed" in ammonium hydroxide and used in the filling of the burger. Before this process, according to the presenter, the food is deemed unfit for human consumption. According to the chef and hamburger enthusiast, Jamie Oliver, who has undertaken a war against the fast food industry, "Basically, we're taking a product that would be sold in the cheapest way for dogs, and after this process, is being given to human beings." Besides the low quality of the meat, the ammonium hydroxide is harmful to health. Oliver famously coined this the "the pink slime process." |
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BBC
2013-10-15 13:18:00
An Irish family has said their pet dog is helping to protect their three-year-old daughter by warning them when she is about to have an epileptic seizure. The Lynch family, from County Clare, believe their Great Dane, Charlie, can sense changes in their child up to 20 minutes before she has a fit. Brianna Lynch has epilepsy since birth. Her family said Charlie will alert them by walking in circles around Brianna. He also gently pins her against a wall to stop her from falling during a fit. Brianna's condition was picked up when she was three months old. It can lead to traumatic seizures, some of which cause her to go into a trance-like state, while others cause violent convulsions during which she is at risk of falling and hitting her head. Brianna's mother, Arabella Scanlan, said Charlie is not a trained "seizure alert dog" but was just a normal, family pet who appears to have developed some kind of special skill through his own instincts. They first noticed it some time ago when the huge Great Dane began to get agitated and walk in circles around Brianna. Minutes later the toddler had an epileptic fit. "If you see a child having a seizure, it's pretty horrific, it's frightening, it's terrible, it's gut-wrenching," Ms Scanlan said. "Charlie will know about 15 to 20 minutes before she's going into seizure. He'll get ever so panicky and giddy, almost as if you'd think 'this stupid dog is going to knock her over'." In fact, at first the family thought they might have to find another home for their clumsy Great Dane, amid concerns that he would knock the toddler down as a result of his agitation. |
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Child Health Safety
2012-03-14 04:26:00
An extraordinary new paper published by a courageous doctor and investigative medical researcher has dug the dirt on 30 years of secret official transcripts of meetings of UK government vaccine committees and the supposedly independent medical "experts" sitting on them with their drug industry connections. If you want to get an idea of who is responsible for your child's condition resulting from a vaccine adverse reaction then this is the paper to read. What you have to ask yourself is if the people on these committees are honest and honourable and acting in the best interests of British children, how is it this has been going on for at least 30 years? This is what everyone has always known but could never prove before now. Pass this information on to others so they can see what goes on in Government health committees behind locked doors. We quote here from the author's summary and the paper: Deliberately concealing information from parents for the sole purpose of getting them to comply with an "official" vaccination schedule could be considered as a form of ethical violation or misconduct. Official documents obtained from the UK Department of Health (DH) and the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) reveal that the British health authorities have been engaging in such practice for the last 30 years, apparently for the sole purpose of protecting the national vaccination program. |
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| Science of the Spirit |
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Tanya Lewis
LiveScience 2013-10-15 13:48:00
The mere act of being born triggers development of the brain's sensory system, new research shows. In a mouse study, the birthing process caused levels of a brain chemical called serotonin to drop, triggering the formation of the brain's sensory maps that organize input from vision, touch and other senses. The findings could help scientists understand healthy human brain development and mental illness, the researchers say. "Our results clearly demonstrate that birth has active roles in brain formation and maturation," study leader Hiroshi Kawasaki of Kanazawa University in Japan said in a statement. The brains of humans, mice and other mammals are equipped with maps for processing different types of sensory information. For example, the barrel cortex in rodents represents tactile information from the whiskers, and the layout of the neurons in that map mirrors the layout of whiskers on the animal's face. Previously, researchers found that the brain chemical serotonin, the target of many depression medications, also plays a role in the development of sensory maps. But serotonin's exact involvement was not well understood. |
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Diamond Dixon
Adolescence can be an impressionable time for girls as they begin
forming ideas about dating and sexuality. Now, a University of Missouri
researcher has found that sisters often take on key roles of confidants,
sources of support and mentors during conversations about romantic
relationships. Sisters may be helpful in health education efforts to
promote safe-sex practices and healthy romantic relationships.University of Missouri 2013-10-15 14:43:00 "Our findings indicate that sisters play important roles as adolescent girls form ideas about romantic relationships and sexuality," said Sarah Killoren, an assistant professor of human development and family studies at MU and the study's lead author. "Sisters are important communication partners when it comes to these sensitive topics." Killoren says that older sisters should be included in family-oriented programs designed to help teens make better choices, such as abstaining from intercourse, practicing safe sex or developing healthy romantic relationships. Killoren found sisters most frequently played the role of confidant. Sisters displayed this role by giving information about themselves and by asking for more information about their sisters' lives. The disclosures made during their conversations revealed levels of intimacy between sisters, Killoren said. The second role, sources of support, was displayed when sisters encouraged their siblings' ideas about dating and sexuality. The mentor role was displayed when sisters served as role models for one another, most frequently by giving advice. |
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Technische Universität München
How do we motivate ourselves when studying for an exam or working to a
tight deadline? The more unpleasant the task, the more willpower we need
to rise to the challenge. Unfortunately, our reserves of willpower are
quickly depleted. Which means that other mechanisms are required to
motivate people to continually perform at a high level. And now
scientists have shown that internal, unconscious motivation can
significantly improve performance capabilities.2013-10-15 14:33:00 In an ideal world, employees would totally identify with their company's business objectives, be experts in their field and extremely motivated about their work. But in reality, this is not always the case and this places the spotlight on motivational skills for anyone in a leadership position. "There are three components to motivation. The first is our conscious objectives and desires - for example, the aspiration for a highly paid role in a company in order to achieve a certain standard of living. We are also driven by unconscious, implicit motives. These are deeply rooted in our emotions and can include the desire to do things well, have an impact on and control over others, and engage in interpersonal relationships," explains Prof. Hugo Kehr from the Chair of Psychology at Technische Universität München (TUM). "The third motivational component builds on the skills and capabilities that we bring to a role." |
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| High Strangeness |
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