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Travis Gettys
Raw Story 2013-10-21 16:29:00
Fox News employees set up a series of dummy accounts to rebut critical blog posts, according to a new book. NPR media reporter David Folkenflik writes in his forthcoming book Murdoch's World that the network's public relations staffers set up "sock puppet" accounts to fill comments sections of "negative or even neutral" blog posts in the mid-to-late '00s with "pro-Fox rants." The reporter says Fox employees set up wireless broadband connections that couldn't be traced to back to the network to help cover their tracks, and one employee used an AOL dial-up connection. |
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George Chidi
Raw Story 2013-10-20 16:16:00
It's time to swat bugs at Healthcare.gov, administration officials said Sunday. President Obama plans to address the issue of the sign-up website's broken functionality tomorrow in a Rose Garden event, UPI reported Sunday. |
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Campbell Clark
The Globe and Mail 2013-10-20 15:54:00
A senior Israeli minister has come to enlist the Canadian government in efforts to persuade the world to keep up pressure on Iran until it gives in - thoroughly - on its nuclear program. Yuval Steinitz, Israel's Minister of Strategic Affairs, was briefed Friday by British and other officials now in nuclear talks with Iran. He flew to Canada for meetings Monday with Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird, and heads to Washington Tuesday. Amid all the other Mideast issues, there's little doubt what tops Israel's agenda: pushing an uncompromising stance on nuclear talks with Iran. "The greater the pressure, the greater the chances for diplomacy to succeed," Mr. Steinitz said in an interview with The Globe and Mail. "It would be unwise, to say the least, to ease the pressure on Iran before you get a final and satisfactory solution to the problem." The election of centrist Iranian President Hasan Rouhani, who pledges to settle the nuclear issue, has led some to express hope for a deal with the United States and other Western countries that believe Tehran is seeking to develop nuclear weapons. |
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Aruna Viswanatha, Karen Freifeld, and David Henry
The Globe and Mail 2013-10-22 15:48:00
JPMorgan Chase & Co. CEO Jamie Dimon has pleaded with and complained to the U.S. Justice Department but cannot convince the government to end its criminal probe of his bank because prosecutors are not yet certain of their findings, people familiar with the matter said. Dimon has negotiated a tentative $13-billion deal to settle many of the U.S. investigations into mortgage bonds that JPMorgan - and the banks it bought during the financial crisis - sold to investors. But the criminal investigation proved to be a sticking point during negotiations, the sources said, and Dimon's inability to win this point underscores the breadth of the problems his bank faces even after it resolves these mortgage suits. The criminal probe relates to whether JPMorgan misrepresented the quality of the mortgages it was packaging into bonds and selling to investors. |
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Sam Pizzigati
Too Much 2013-10-13 15:36:00
If the Supreme Court chooses to erase our remaining post-Watergate campaign finance reforms, Richard Nixon's scandalous reign may come to seem - thanks to growing inequality - mere kid's play. The U.S. Supreme Court last week heard oral arguments in a case that could end up giving America's wealthy a perpetual green light to contribute as much as they want directly to politicians and political parties. Credit Shaun McCutcheon, an electrical company CEO from Alabama, for starting the ball on this case rolling. In the 2012 election cycle, McCutcheon contributed heavily to conservative candidates and Republican Party committees. But the experience left the mega millionaire feeling terribly aggrieved. Federal campaign finance reform legislation enacted four decades ago in the wake of the Watergate scandal limits how much individuals can give directly to candidates and political parties. In 2012, McCutcheon ran up against those limits, then sitting at about $46,000 for candidates and $70,000 for party committees. |
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Elizabeth Stoker and Matt Bruenig
Salon 2013-10-15 15:28:00
The American right obsesses over abortion and birth control, not helping people. It's different around the globe Last week, the nation's capital was host to Value Voters 2013 Summit, a three-day political conference for predominantly religious conservatives. Among the smattering of social and economic issues at hand, the overall tenor of the Summit focused on eliminating Obamacare, expanding the tangible presence of Christianity through the public arena and military and preventing the proliferation of easily available birth control and abortion. In speeches, lunches and breakout sessions, American's Christian Right worked out strategies to bring the values of the federal government in line with their preferred Christian ethical dictates, using democracy as their chief tool. It isn't unusual for Christians living in democracies to use the vote to express their ethics, and to shape government to do the same. That the moral and ethical preferences of a given society should inform government is a foundational principle of democracy, after all. And American values voters are far from the first Christians to undertake the project of bringing their government's policies in line with Christian ethics: European Christian parties have aimed to do the same for decades. But between American Christian voters and their European counterparts, a curious departure opens up: while European Christians generally see the anti-poverty mission of Christianity as worthy of political action, the American Christian Right inexplicably cordons off economics from the realm of Christian influence. By all means, the American Christian Right is willing to leverage government authority to carry out a variety of Christian ethical projects, especially within the arena of family life. Michele Bachmann would make abortion illegal, and Rick Santorum has stated on multiple occasions that he supports laws against homosexual intercourse. But Christian politicians in the United States curtail their interest in making the gospel actionable when it comes to welfare. While the government should see to the moral uprightness of marriage, sex and family, the Value Voters 2013 Summit was notably bereft of talks on living wages, labor rights or basic incomes. |
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RT.com
2013-10-22 13:08:00
UK politicians are resisting a proposal by a watchdog to raise their salaries by 11 per cent in exchange for their expenses. MPs want to cling onto their perks which include hotels, free tea and biscuits and the installation of TVs in second homes. The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) has proposed a wage increase of £7,000 ($11,289) for members of parliament on the condition they sacrifice their tax payer-funded allowances. The 11 percent raise would boost politicians' salaries to £74,000 ($119,000) a year. The IPSA found that last year the expenses cost UK taxpayers £161,000 ($260,000) which works out at around £250 ($400) per MP. However, MPs have dug their heels in and complained that professionals such as doctors, lawyers and policemen claim expenses and therefore MPs should have the same right. They believe they should be compensated for "regular unsocial hours or residence away from home." "We find it hard to believe that employers in other sectors would expect their employees to wait until 0100 before booking a hotel," said an official letter by parliamentarians to the IPSA. |
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William Boardman
Global Research 2013-10-20 00:00:00
The FBI went after Levision's secure email service called Lavabit. The NSA and the rest of the security state couldn't get into it. "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." The Fourth Amendment of the U. S. Constitution The founding document of the United States is inherently suspicious of a government's willingness to abuse its powers, a suspicion rooted in centuries of tyranny around the world. Even the U.S. government, as well as state and local governments, have abused their powers from time to time since the country's beginning. The drift toward an American police state intensified under the guise of anti-Communism, but that was mostly a convenient cover for state intrusion into people's lives. The Soviet Union collapsed, but the nascent American police state kept growing. The Patriot Act of 2001, a massive assault on personal and political liberty, was largely written before 9/11 and passed, largely unexamined, in the hysterical atmosphere and raw panic of that over-hyped "new Pearl Harbor." Now we have a police state apparatus of almost unimagined dimension, most of which is kept secret and remains unknown, despite the efforts of a few reporters and whistle blower, who tell the truth at their personal peril. The "American police state" is likely an abstraction in the minds of many people, and as long as they remain unknowing and passive, it's likely to leave them alone. But even law-abiding innocence is not a sure protection of a person's right to be secure. And when the police state comes after you in one of its hydra-headed forms, the assault can be devastating. |
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John W. Whitehead
The Rutherford Institute 2013-10-21 21:11:00
It's 3 a.m. You've been asleep for hours when suddenly you hear a loud "Crash! Bang! Boom!" Based on the yelling, shouting and mayhem, it sounds as if someone - or several someones - are breaking through your front door. With your heart racing and your stomach churning, all you can think about is keeping your family safe from the intruders who have invaded your home. You have mere seconds before the intruders make their way to your bedroom. Desperate to protect your loved ones, you scramble to lay hold of something - anything - that you might use in self-defense. It might be a flashlight, your son's baseball bat, or that still unloaded gun you thought you'd never need. In a matter of seconds, the intruders are at your bedroom door. You brace for the confrontation, a shaky grip on your weapon. In the moments before you go down for the count, shot multiple times by the strangers who have invaded your home, you get a good look at your accosters. It's the police. Before I go any further, let me start by saying this: the problem is not that all police are bad. The problem, as I point out in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, is that increasing numbers of police officers are badly trained, illiterate when it comes to the Constitution, especially the Fourth Amendment, and, in some cases, willfully ignorant about the fact that they are supposed to be peacekeepers working for us, the taxpayer. Consider, for example, the sad scenario that played out when a SWAT team kicked open the door of ex-Marine Jose Guerena's home during a drug raid and opened fire. Thinking his home was being invaded by criminals, Guerena told his wife and child to hide in a closet, grabbed a gun and waited in the hallway to confront the intruders. He never fired his weapon. In fact, the safety was still on his gun when he was killed. The SWAT officers, however, not as restrained, fired 70 rounds of ammunition at Guerena - 23 of those bullets made contact. Guerena had had no prior criminal record, and the police found nothing illegal in his home. |
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| Society's Child |
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Eric W. Dolan
Raw Story 2013-10-22 16:25:00
Speaking at daily Mass last Thursday, Pope Francis warned Christians against turning their faith into a rigid ideology. "The faith passes, so to speak, through a distiller and becomes ideology," he said, according to Radio Vatican. "And ideology does not beckon [people]. In ideologies there is not Jesus: in his tenderness, his love, his meekness. And ideologies are rigid, always. Of every sign: rigid. "And when a Christian becomes a disciple of the ideology, he has lost the faith: he is no longer a disciple of Jesus, he is a disciple of this attitude of thought... For this reason Jesus said to them: 'You have taken away the key of knowledge.' The knowledge of Jesus is transformed into an ideological and also moralistic knowledge, because these close the door with many requirements." |
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Japan Times
2013-04-17 16:09:00
The National Institute of Population and Social Security Research on March 27 announced a population estimate for Japan in 2040. As expected, what emerges out of this is a nation with an unprecedented rapidly aging and declining population. The implications of the estimate must be taken very seriously and preparations made to ameliorate the impact of this situation. The estimate shows population trends in 2040 for each municipality. It is imperative that both the central and local governments design a sustainable social security system in time as well as to consider ways to secure a sufficient number of workers to prevent a decline in industrial capability. Local governments also need to work out measures aimed at maintaining and stabilizing people's lives in local communities by foreseeing what will happen to their industries, social services, transportation and so on. The estimate shows that Japan's population in 2040 will stand at 107.276 million, a decline of about 20 million from 2010′s 128.057 million. A January 2012 estimate by the same institute had shown that in 2060, Japan's population will number 86.737 million, about 30 percent less from the 2010 level. |
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Sean Fine
The Globe and Mail 2013-10-21 15:57:00
The Conservative government is seeking to give victims of crime a more active role in the legal process. A bill will be put forward this fall that extends victim involvement "from the time of the offence to the final disposition of the sentence," Justice Minister Peter MacKay said in an exclusive interview with The Globe and Mail. A new victims' bill of rights would attempt to include them "at all levels and at all points in the process." It would put "victims in a better place, their more rightful place, which is at the heart of the system," he said. "They're not just another Crown witness. They want a more effective voice." In June, Canada's Ombudsman for Victims of Crime, Sue O'Sullivan, suggested giving victims the right to a speaking role in the plea-bargaining process - a system already in place in Arizona. Mr. MacKay would not say whether this would be part of his bill. What he did say was that it would have substantive and wide-ranging meaning for victims. |
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Carrie Tait and Kim Mackrael
The Globe and Mail 2013-10-20 15:44:00
Nine blackened tankers are scattered around the site. Part of the rail is mangled, warped, and burned black. A train carrying propane and crude that crashed in the hamlet of Gainford, Alta., early Saturday morning is once again raising questions about the safety of moving oil by rail in Canada, particularly in the wake of July's fatal rail disaster in Lac-Mégantic, Que. No one was hurt in Gainford, but it was Canadian National Railway Co.'s third notable derailment in the past month involving hazardous materials, and it caused explosions and fire on both sides of a four-line highway. Alberta's oil industry is a key reason rail has become a popular shipping method. As oil-sands production climbs, the amount of available space on North America's pipeline network declines. The province's energy industry could stall if shipping by rail came off the table. "The system is safe," Federal Transport Minister Lisa Raitt said in an interview Saturday. "Although we will see derailments, we've never seen an accident or an incident like Lac-Mégantic, that's for sure. But the system is safe. |
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Ricardo Rojas
Reuters 2013-10-12 15:24:00
For four generations Banesa Blemi's family, descendants of Haitian immigrants, put down roots as low-wage sugar cane cutters in their adopted homeland, and came to consider themselves Dominicans. Then, last month the country's Constitutional Court issued a decision effectively denationalizing Blemi and her family, along with an estimated 250,000 fellow immigrants born after 1929. "I have no country. What will become of me?" said Blemi, 27, standing with relatives outside the family's wooden shack near La Romana, the heart of the Dominican Republic's sugar cane industry and one of the Caribbean's top tourist resorts. "We are Dominicans - we have never been to Haiti. We were born and raised here. We don't even speak Creole," she said, referring to Haiti's native tongue. |
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Mochizuki
Fukushima Diary 2013-10-21 13:22:00
Two Fukushima workers commented on Twitter that the previous Typhoon "WIPHA" caused a slope in Fukushima plant area to collapse. The slope faces the main street, and the earth and sand blockaded the street. Also, there was a part to have had a subsidence. Those workers are surprised because there was no press release from Tepco about this. The worker added there are more slopes in the area and they may collapse due to the next Typhoon that may hit eastern Japan this weekend. (cf, Next typhoon to hit eastern Japan this weekend / "Very strong" again [URL 2]) |
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Timothy Weisberg
Owner found breeding and selling snakes out of homenbcwashington.com 2013-10-16 12:54:00
It was snakes galore at an Ohio home. Inside cages, others slithering across the floor, police found nearly 100 snakes that were eventually confiscated and taken to an Ohio sanctuary. The snakes were seized after police say the home owner, Joseph McCollum, was bitten by a rattlesnake and had not seeked proper treatment, NBC affiliate WXLY reported.That's when police found the snakes and a 12-year-old boy living in the home. Four of the snakes - a western diamondback, a cobra, an asian cobra and copperhead - were venomous and taken to a reptile zoo in Kentucky, WXLY reported. "It concerns me there were venomous snakes in a home [in the] same building another family was in, they were not aware of the situation," Reptile Zoo employee Kristen Wiley told WXLY. McCollom was arrested and charged with endangering the welfare of a child and operating a business from his home. | |
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Comment: See also.Snakes alive! Countless reports of snakes turning up in weird places
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Brett Wilkins
Digital Journal 2013-10-21 17:23:00
A leading Canadian animal rights group has released secretly-shot video footage of cruelty and abuse of chickens at two Alberta farms. Canadian Press reports Mercy For Animals Canada recorded the undercover video footage at Creekside Grove Farms in Spruce Grove and Ku-Ku Farms near Edmonton. The video, which was aired on CTV's W5 program last week, shows hens cruelly crowded into battery cages, where they spend their entire lives, as well as chicks having their heads smashed before being thrown into garbage bags to suffocate to death, often while still conscious. The footage also shows dead hens rotting in cages and chicks covered in feces. The battery cages shown in the video are considered so inhumane that they have been banned in the entire European Union, New Zealand and the US states of California and Michigan, Mercy For Animals Canada said. |
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George Franco
MyFoxAtlanta 2013-10-22 02:59:00
Mableton, Georgia - A potential and unusual murder mystery two thousand miles away has left an Atlanta family with a lot of heart-breaking questions. A Mableton mother is searching for answers about her son's death, including why internal organs were missing from his body. 24-year-old Ryan Singleton left metro Atlanta in early July to chase his dream of becoming an actor or model in Hollywood. Instead of dreams coming true, his mother is now living a nightmare, wondering about her son whose body turned up near one of the most inhospitable places on earth in Death Valley, California. Iris Flowers told FOX 5'S George Franco, "He (her son) went to Las Vegas during a weekend visit and got missing in Baker, California on the way back." Ms. Flowers learned joggers discovered Singletons' body on September 21st in the desert near Baker, California, between Las Vegas and Los Angeles. She says she'll never forget the call from police. Ms. Flowers said. "There were no organs. He said ma'am, there were no eyes, there was no heart, there was no lungs, there was no liver, there were no kidneys." |
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Roberto A. Ferdman
Quartz 2013-10-21 01:49:00
As if airplane pilots didn't already have enough to worry about, they're now facing record levels of attacks from laser pointers while landing their planes. The FBI's terrorism unit is investigating two incidents last week at New York City's LaGuardia airport in which airplane pilots were temporarily blinded by green lights shone from several miles away. They are thought to have come from small, handheld laser pointers, such as the battery-powered ones often used in classrooms. Laser lights that hit at a particular angle can illuminate the whole cockpit with a bright green or red light, and blind the pilots as they're trying to land. Things are so bad that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) even has a webpage about the problem, explaining how pilots can mitigate its effects, and laying out its potential costs. The lasers have never caused a crash, but they can disorient pilots at crucial moments. "It can blur the vision basically, it can fog the vision of the cockpit when you're looking out the glass so it's much harder to look out the glass and identify locations where you're going," FBI special agent Rich Frankel told CBS. |
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Daniel Taylor
Since 2008 Old-Thinker News has been covering the rapidly advancing Internet of Things (IoT). According to CIA chief David Patraeus the IoT will have a monumental impact on "clandestine tradecraft."Old-Thinker News 2013-10-21 21:27:00
Consumer appliances are now becoming activated and "smart." RFID chips and wireless internet connections enable devices like televisions, refrigerators, printers, and computers to communicate with each other and generally make life easier for us. This comes at a price, however. Your privacy is eliminated. A detailed multi-dimensional image of our daily lives will be built with this system. Individuals to entire group dynamics will be tracked. It will be unparalleled in history. Everything from daily travel routes to eating habits will be traceable. Every day objects will be transmitting data 24/7. |
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Kate Randall
World Socialist Web Site 2013-10-19 00:00:00
Nearly half of public school children in the United States were poor in the school year that ended in 2011, according to a new study by the Southern Education Foundation (SEF), the oldest US educational charity. In 17 states in the South and four in the West, children from low-income families comprised a majority in public schools The SEF study, based on data collected by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), further found that the percentage of low-income students in public schools rose dramatically from 2001 to 2011, far outpacing public school funding. The study also found a direct correlation between levels of poverty and academic performance. The findings are the latest exposure of the growth of poverty in the US alongside burgeoning social inequality. The SEF study defines poor students as those qualifying for either free or reduced-price lunches in preschool through 12th grade (P-12). According to Department of Agriculture Guidelines, a student from a household with an income below 130 percent of the Federal Poverty Guidelines (FPG) - about $29,000 for a family of four - qualified for free lunches. Children from four-person households with incomes below 185 percent FPG (about $41,000) qualified for reduced-price lunches. | |
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Comment: As income inequality rises and more people
fall into poverty, children bear the brunt of this and the cycle of
poverty continues. The heartless psycopaths in power have the wealth and
ability to change things, but prefer to have a docile underclass
willing to do their bidding just to survive.
Fear, stress among the poor hinder learning Poverty Goes Straight to the Brain How Can the World's Richest Country Let Children Go Hungry? 6 Tricks Corporate Elites Use to Hoard All the Wealth $240 billion amassed by 100 richest people enough to end extreme poverty four times over: Oxfam |
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Jeremy Blum
South China Morning Post 2013-10-21 19:37:00
Images of Taiwanese soldiers decked out in black body armour and ballistic masks have gone viral thanks to exposure on Japanese news sites, where viewers compared the look of the officers to something out of a video game or comic book. The photographs, originally part of a series taken during a 2011 ceremonial parade in Taipei, depict Taiwan's Armed Forces, including both male and female special operations soldiers and military frogmen. All of the soldiers in the photos wield heavy weaponry including assault rifles, bulletproof shields and submachine guns, but the images that especially captivated netizens were those that showed the elite forces wearing ballistic face masks. |
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Abigail Haworth
What happens to a country when its young people stop having sex? Japan is finding out...The Guardian 2013-10-20 16:17:00
Ai Aoyama is a sex and relationship counsellor who works out of her narrow three-storey home on a Tokyo back street. Her first name means "love" in Japanese, and is a keepsake from her earlier days as a professional dominatrix. Back then, about 15 years ago, she was Queen Ai, or Queen Love, and she did "all the usual things" like tying people up and dripping hot wax on their nipples. Her work today, she says, is far more challenging. Aoyama, 52, is trying to cure what Japan's media calls sekkusu shinai shokogun, or "celibacy syndrome". Japan's under-40s appear to be losing interest in conventional relationships. Millions aren't even dating, and increasing numbers can't be bothered with sex. For their government, "celibacy syndrome" is part of a looming national catastrophe. Japan already has one of the world's lowest birth rates. Its population of 126 million, which has been shrinking for the past decade, is projected to plunge a further one-third by 2060. Aoyama believes the country is experiencing "a flight from human intimacy" - and it's partly the government's fault. |
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| Secret History |
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Robin McKie
Guardian 2013-10-20 16:20:00
The idea of these early humans being plant-eating, self-medicating sophisticates has been brought into question by the findings of researchers at London's Natural History Museum It was the tell-tale tartar on the teeth that told the truth. Or at least, that is what it appeared to do. Researchers - after studying calcified plaque on Neanderthal fossil teeth found in El Sidrón cave in Spain - last year concluded that members of this extinct human species cooked vegetables and consumed bitter-tasting medicinal plants such as chamomile and yarrow. These were not brainless carnivores, in other words. These were smart and sensitive people capable of providing themselves with balanced diets and of treating themselves with health-restoring herbs, concluded the researchers, led by Karen Hardy at the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies in Barcelona. Our vision of these long-extinct people needs adjusting, they argued. But now this tale of ancient tartar has taken a new twist with two researchers at London's Natural History Museum challenging the Barcelona group's conclusions. Dental research does not prove that Neanderthals were self-medicating, vegetable-eating sophisticates, one told the Observer. There are other, equally valid but decidedly more grizzly explanations to account for those microscopic fragments of herbs and plants found in Neanderthal teeth. |
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Nevine El-Aref
Ahram Online 2013-10-22 12:39:00
The tomb of the fifth dynasty Head of Physicians of Upper and Lower Egypt, Shepseskaf-Ankh, was discovered in Abusir Necropolis - 25km from the Giza plateau, during excavation by a Czech archaeological mission. The tomb is carved in limestone and consists of a large open court, eight burial chambers for Shepseskaf and his family members, and a very distinguished huge false door engraved with the various titles and names of Shepseskaf-Ankh. Among the titles he held were, 'The priest of god Khnum,' who provides life, and 'The priest of Sun temples' for several fifth dynasty kings. Ali Al-Asfar, deputy-head of the ancient Egyptian section at the Ministry of State of Antiquities (MSA) pointed out that some of the titles engraved on the false door reflect the social status of Shepseskaf-Ankh, who came from an elite ancient Egyptian family. |
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Science Alert
2013-10-22 00:12:00
Scientists have proposed that the most recently discovered ancient human relatives - the Denisovans - somehow managed to cross one of the world's most prominent marine barriers in Indonesia, and later interbred with modern humans moving through the area on the way to Australia and New Guinea. Three years ago the genetic analysis of a little finger bone from Denisova cave in the Altai Mountains in northern Asia led to a complete genome sequence of a new line of the human family tree - the Denisovans. Since then, genetic evidence pointing to their hybridisation with modern human populations has been detected, but only in Indigenous populations in Australia, New Guinea and surrounding areas. In contrast, Denisovan DNA appears to be absent or at very low levels in current populations on mainland Asia, even though this is where the fossil was found. Published today in a Science opinion article, scientists Professor Alan Cooper of the University of Adelaide in Australia and Professor Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in the UK say that this pattern can be explained if the Denisovans had succeeded in crossing the famous Wallace's Line, one of the world's biggest biogeographic barriers which is formed by a powerful marine current along the east coast of Borneo. Wallace's Line marks the division between European and Asian mammals to the west from marsupial-dominated Australasia to the east. |
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| Science & Technology |
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University of Indiana
2013-10-22 13:35:00
Bloomington, Indiana -- The search for a common ancestor linking modern humans with the Neanderthals who lived in Europe thousands of years ago has been a compelling subject for research. But a new study suggests the quest isn't nearly complete. The researchers, using quantitative methods focused on the shape of dental fossils, find that none of the usual suspects fits the expected profile of an ancestor of Neanderthals and modern humans. They also present evidence that the lines that led to Neanderthals and modern humans diverged nearly 1 million years ago, much earlier than studies based on molecular evidence have suggested. The study, which will be published online this week by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was carried out by an international team of scholars from The George Washington University, Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research in Austria, Indiana University and Atapuerca Research Team in Spain. "Our results call attention to the strong discrepancies between molecular and paleontological estimates of the divergence time between Neanderthals and modern humans," said Aida Gómez-Robles, lead author of the paper and a postdoctoral scientist at the Center for the Advanced Study of Hominid Paleobiology of The George Washington University. "These discrepancies cannot be simply ignored, but they have to be somehow reconciled." |
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Anura Guruge
This 'LINEAR' C/2012 X1 was discovered after C/2012 S1 - i.e., ISON.
'S' vs. 'X'. This 'LINEAR' (and there are a lot of comets discovered by
LINEAR) is still in the asteroid belt. It will not make perihelion till
February 21, 2014. So it is trailing ISON by 3 months.nhlife.wordpress.com 2013-10-22 12:43:00
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Ernesto Guido, Nick Howes & Martino Nicolini
Cbet nr. 3676, issued on 2013, October 22, announces the discovery of a new comet (discovery magnitude ~18.8) by M. Schwartz on CCD images obtained with the 0.41-m f/3.75 Tenagra III astrograph. The new comet has been designated P/2013 T2 (SCHWARTZ).Remanzacco Observatory 2013-10-22 12:34:00 We performed follow-up measurements of this object, while it was still on the neocp. Stacking of 16 R-filtered exposures, 50-sec each, obtained remotely from MPC code F65 (Faulkes Telescope North) on 2013, October 16.4 through a 2.0-m f/10.0 Ritchey-Chretien + CCD (operated by Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network), shows that this object is a comet: sharp central condensation surrounded by a coma about 6" in diameter. Below our confirmation image. Click on it for a bigger version.
M.P.E.C. 2013-U18 (including prediscovery Catalina Sky Survey data from Sept. 14.4 UT, when the magnitude was given as 17.8-18.6) assigns the following elliptical orbital elements to comet P/2013 T2: T 2013 June 20.65; e= 0.53; Peri. = 342.52; q = 1.60; Incl.= 9.36 |
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| Earth Changes |
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Times of India
A suspected volcano-like eruption has been reported in a remote village
of Manipur near the India-Myanmar border which forced locals to evacuate
the area, official sources said on Sunday.2013-10-20 15:06:00 According to locals in Tusom village in Ukhrul district of Manipur, a deafening sound was followed by the rolling down of a huge boulder from a nearby hilltop which then released a lava-like liquid that charred trees and plants on the hill slopes. Although the incident reportedly occurred on October 13, road link between the district headquarters and Tusom was so bad it took the villagers several days to reach the information about the matter to the officials concerned, sources said. The district headquarters is 120km away from the village. No casualty was, however, reported in the incident. Official reports from the district said mud, water and other discharges were still flowing from the hilltop. Villagers have moved to safer places in the neighbourhood, they added. Sources said it would take time to assess whether the event was a volcanic eruption or not. |
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Times of Israel
2013-10-22 15:04:00
A small earthquake shook the Sea of Galilee area on Tuesday morning, the fifth such tremor in less than a week. The quake, measuring 3.3 on the Richter scale, caused no reported damage or injuries. On Sunday, two minor earthquakes, both measuring 3.6 in intensity, were reported in the north, which followed similar quakes on Saturday and Thursday. No injuries have been reported, although some buildings in Tiberias were lightly damaged by the tremors. Last Sunday, a 6.4-magnitude quake, centered in the Mediterranean Sea near Crete, was felt in Athens, Egypt and Israel. And in September, an early-morning 3.5-magnitude quake was felt in the northern Dead Sea area, including in Jerusalem. In response to the string of temblors, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened a special cabinet meeting Monday to discuss the state's earthquake preparedness, and, on Sunday, the Home Front Command and emergency services representatives held a meeting to discuss emergency procedures in the case of a more major earthquake. However, seismologist Dov Lakovsky of the Geophysical Institute of Israel told The Times of Israel Sunday that there was no cause for alarm and that the quakes were just "a bit stronger than usual." Such tremors, he said, "happen all the time." According to the GII's statistics, seven earthquakes strong enough to be felt have rattled Israel in 2013. Israel is situated along the Syrian-African rift, a tear in the earth's crust running the length of the border separating Israel and Jordan, and is part of the Great Rift Valley, which extends from northern Syria to Mozambique. Israel's last major earthquake rattled the region in 1927 - a 6.2-magnitude tremor that killed 500 and injured another 700. An earthquake in 1837 left as many as 5,000 people dead. According to a 2010 Haaretz report, major earthquakes strike Israel once every 80 years or so. The country is currently in the midst of a program to upgrade buildings to withstand earthquakes. |
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Gwynn Guilford
Quartz 2013-10-21 01:57:00
It's getting colder in China, which means firing up the coal plants and turning the atmosphere into a toxic sauna. And it's not surprising that China's first major "airpocalypse" of this winter season was in Harbin, the capital of Heilongjiang province, in China's far northeast. Visibility in Harbin hit 10 meters (33 feet) today, as the city's air quality index (AQI), which measures fine particulate matter (PM2.5) per cubic meter, exceeded 500 - at least 20 times greater than levels the World Health Organization deems safe. And that was just in the "good" neighborhoods. In some areas, PM2.5 soared to 1,000. (For comparison, PM2.5 exceeded 900 during Beijing's notorious airpocalypse last winter.) "You can't see your own fingers in front of you," Harbin's official news site noted, reports Sinosphere, the New York Times' new China blog. That was severe enough to prompt local officials to close schools and warn Harbin's 11 million residents to stay home. And that wasn't just for their lungs. The noxious fug clouded visibility so much that it caused two pileups before the police closed off highways (link in Chinese), shutting Heilongjiang province airports as well. Meanwhile, patients with breathing problems mobbed Harbin hospitals, driving admissions up 30%, says Sinosphere. |
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| Fire in the Sky |
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Times Live
2013-10-22 00:21:00
It is Britain's version of The X-Files. Tucked away in the Natural History Museum in London are the laboratories of the Identification and Advisory Service. It is here that experts scrutinise the array of strange objects discovered by the public - from apparent dragon skulls to objects that appear to come from outer space. The most recent case is particularly baffling - a mass of slime found on a nature reserve after reports of a meteor streaking through the skies. "The slime is still a genuine mystery," said Chesca Rogers, who is leading the effort to identify the gelatinous material. "There are stories in folklore that link it with meteor sightings. Some people think it might be unfertilised frog spawn, others think it is a fungus, or a slime mould or that it is plant-related." References to "star jelly" date back to the 16th century. The discovery this week of more slime, at a time when frogs are not spawning, has deepened the mystery further. Generally, most oddities are quickly uncovered as something altogether ordinary. John Tweddle, manager of the centre, said: "Sea bird pelvises can look like the right shape for a dragon's skull, so we get people saying they think they have found a dragon." |
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| Health & Wellness |
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Michael Sutphin
Virginia Tech 2013-10-22 15:29:00
Veterinary researchers at the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine at Virginia Tech have helped identify the origin and possible evolution of an emerging swine virus with high mortality rates that has already spread to at least 17 states. A team of researchers led by Dr. X.J. Meng, University Distinguished Professor of Molecular Virology, has used virus strains isolated from the ongoing outbreaks in Minnesota and Iowa to trace the likely origin of the emergent porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV) to a strain from the Anhui province in China. The virus, which causes a high mortality rate in piglets, was first recognized in the United States in May of this year. "The virus typically only affects nursery pigs and has many similarities with transmissible gastroenteritis virus of swine," said Meng, who is a faculty member in the Department of Biomedical Sciences and Pathobiology. "There is currently no vaccine against porcine epidemic diarrhea virus in the United States. Although some vaccines are in use in Asia, we do not know whether they would work against the U.S. strains of the virus." |
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Natalie Wood-Wright
Poor sleep quality may impact Alzheimer's disease onset and progression.
This is according to a new study led by researchers at the Johns
Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who examined the association
between sleep variables and a biomarker for Alzheimer's disease in older
adults. The researchers found that reports of shorter sleep duration
and poorer sleep quality were associated with a greater β-Amyloid
burden, a hallmark of the disease. The results are featured online in
the October issue of JAMA Neurology.Johns Hopkins University 2013-10-21 14:37:00 "Our study found that among older adults, reports of shorter sleep duration and poorer sleep quality were associated with higher levels of β-Amyloid measured by PET scans of the brain," said Adam Spira, PhD, lead author of the study and an assistant professor with the Bloomberg School's Department of Mental Health. "These results could have significant public health implications as Alzheimer's disease is the most common cause of dementia, and approximately half of older adults have insomnia symptoms." Alzheimer's disease is an irreversible, progressive brain disease that slowly destroys memory and thinking skills. According to the National Institutes of Health, as many as 5.1 million Americans may have the disease, with first symptoms appearing after age 60. Previous studies have linked disturbed sleep to cognitive impairment in older people. |
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Andreas Eenfeldt, MD.
Dietdoctor.com 2013-10-22 09:17:00
The frequent reader here has no doubt heard Tommy Runesson's impressive story before. But now it's also in the Swedish newspaper Corren and we get to admire some new pictures of Tommy. Like the one above - it's probably time for a new pair of pants. Here's the full article, translated into English. Ate a High-Fat Diet - Lost 200 lbs In two years Tommy Runesson lost 200 lbs. By exercising and eating fruit? No, with fat. Initially, the diabetes nurse had trouble believing what she saw. The patient Tommy Runesson's blood sugar, cholesterol and lipid levels just kept improving, while he was eating exactly the opposite of what the official dietary guidelines dictate. Tommy is full of contradictions in many ways. Despite always being obese, he has felt fine both physically and mentally. He has no idea what his health markers looked like when he was obese, as he had hardly ever seen a doctor. But he can take a guess... - Oddly enough, I was never bullied, nor did I feel awkward as a fat boy. Perhaps someone yelled "fatso" at me in school at times, but it never stuck with me. Tommy has a background as a trained chef and has always loved food, "real" food as he calls it, in the old traditional style. Meat and fish and rich sauces with piles of pasta, bread and potatoes. And Coca Cola. He had big portions and was obese already as a child. But he never had a sweet tooth, and was never particularly fond of pastries and candy. As he felt fine, he didn't consider losing weight, even though deep inside he of course knew he should. | |
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Comment: An impressive story indeed, one that should be the norm, not the exception:
Sweden becomes first Western nation to reject low-fat diet dogma in favor of low-carb high-fat nutrition The Ketogenic Diet - An Overview Solve Your Health Issues with a Ketogenic Diet |
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Jan Johansen
Newswire 2013-10-19 18:42:00
There has been a lot of talk about the dangers of wheat lately. A lot of it has been sparked by the book 'Wheat Belly" by William Davis, M.D. It has a lot of information that is presented in a very believable way. Many experts are saying we are faced with an epidemic of gluten intolerance. There is a whole industry of gluten free products springing up. Many people are reading about gluten free lifestyles. Even if they aren't having the classic symptoms of gluten intolerance they are opting for this change in their lifestyle. Other experts are saying that it isn't just the gluten we need to be aware of. One of the main health-harming culprits is found with wheat germ agglutinin (WGA), a category of lectins. Regardless if the wheat is soaked, sprouted or cooked, these compounds remain intact. Tiny and hard to digest, lectins can accumulate within the body and wreak havoc on physical and mental well-being. WGA is neurotoxic, crossing the blood brain barrier and attaching to the myelin sheath, consequentially inhibiting nerve growth - a serious consideration for those suffering from degenerative neurological diseases such as multiple sclerosis and Alzheimer's. These and other aspects of wheat have also been linked to schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. |
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| Science of the Spirit |
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Andrea Estrada
University of California - Santa Barbara 2013-10-21 15:40:00
Bold and outgoing or shy and retiring - - while many people can shift from one to the other as circumstances warrant, in general they lean toward one disposition or the other. And that inclination changes little over the course of their lives. Why this is the case and why it matters in a more traditional context are questions being addressed by anthropologists at UC Santa Barbara. Using fertility and child survivorship as their main measures of reproductive fitness, the researchers studied over 600 adult members of the Tsimane, an isolated indigenous population in central Bolivia, and discovered that more open, outgoing - - and less anxious - - personalities were associated with having more children - - but only among men. Their findings appear online in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior. "The idea that we're funneled into a relatively fixed way of interacting with the world is something we take for granted," said Michael Gurven, UCSB professor of anthropology and the paper's lead author. Gurven is also co-director of the University of New Mexico-based Tsimane Health and Life History Project. "Some people are outgoing and open, others are more quiet and introverted. But from an evolutionary standpoint, it doesn't really make sense that our dispositions differ so much, and are not more flexible. |
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Sherri McGinnis González
University of Illinois 2013-10-21 14:53:00
Childhood poverty and chronic stress may lead to problems regulating emotions as an adult, according to research published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "Our findings suggest that the stress-burden of growing up poor may be an underlying mechanism that accounts for the relationship between poverty as a child and how well your brain works as an adult," said Dr. K. Luan Phan, professor of psychiatry at University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine and senior author of the study. The study was conducted by researchers at UIC, Cornell University, University of Michigan and University of Denver. The researchers found that test subjects who had lower family incomes at age 9 exhibited, as adults, greater activity in the amygdala, an area in the brain known for its role in fear and other negative emotions. These individuals showed less activity in areas of the prefrontal cortex, an area in the brain thought to regulate negative emotion. |
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| High Strangeness |
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John Stressman
Mason police officers responded to a suspicious person complaint on Oct. 9 in a residential area.LansingStateJournal 2013-10-18 00:30:00 When they arrived, the officers found the exterior of the residence secure and no evidence of damage or vandalism. The resident reported being on the phone and computer and playing Xbox simultaneously when the phone and television went crazy: volumes went up and down and channels changed by themselves. Then, suddenly, the electronics resumed normal functions. The complainant went on to report looking out a window and spotting a very thin male wearing a white hoodie standing in the bushes outside the residence that then walked away. An officer returned outside and checked all around for evidence of the reported mischief-maker without results. The report is closed unless further information is uncovered. From Oct. 8 through Oct. 14, Mason Police investigated 46 reported incidents involving a variety of both criminal and noncriminal activities. |
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| Don't Panic! Lighten Up! |
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MyNews13
2013-10-21 23:53:00
Orlando -- An interesting shopper was found outside of an Orange County Walmart late Saturday night. A 6-foot gator was found by the sliding glass door at the Walmart on Orange Blossom Trail in Apopka. It got a lot of attention from customers and workers. Walmart employees eventually had to lock the door because it kept sliding open. Robin Watkins was inside shopping around when someone told her there was a gator outside, so she and many others went to check it out. Watkins says she never felt scared; it was just cool to see. "It was just... it was neat. But I am glad they locked the doors for safety because I do have my child with me," Watkins said. Watkins said she believes there is a lake nearby, and that's most likely where the gator came from. After a while, the gator walked into the woods. |
