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Fars News Agency
2014-02-17 13:07:00
Belgian Minister for Foreign Affairs Didier Reynders said that over 20 of around 200 Belgian terrorists who went to fight in Syria were killed there. Reynders told La Libre newspaper that the identities of over 200 Belgians people, who are fighting with the most extremist groups in Syria including the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISI), have been established or being established, and that over 20 of these people have been killed in Syria. He said that the most pressing concern is keeping track of these individuals to assess the threat they pose after they return to Belgium or go to other countries, noting that these individuals aren't just extremist in their mentality, but they would return possessing experience and knowledge that would allow them to do anything. Reynders cited the case of two young women, ages 17 and 19, who went to Syria and were involved in relations with members of very extremist armed groups, but they disappeared and may have been abducted by a rival extremist group. News reports have been revealing that European countries are growing concerned over the potential ramifications of supporting terrorism in Syria, as they are worried about what terrorists from these countries who went to Syria could do should they return to Europe. | |
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Matt Taibbi
Rolling Stone Magazine 2014-02-14 13:47:00
How HSBC hooked up with drug traffickers and terrorists. And got away with it The deal was announced quietly, just before the holidays, almost like the government was hoping people were too busy hanging stockings by the fireplace to notice. Flooring politicians, lawyers and investigators all over the world, the U.S. Justice Department granted a total walk to executives of the British-based bank HSBC for the largest drug-and-terrorism money-laundering case ever. Yes, they issued a fine - $1.9 billion, or about five weeks' profit - but they didn't extract so much as one dollar or one day in jail from any individual, despite a decade of stupefying abuses. People may have outrage fatigue about Wall Street, and more stories about billionaire greedheads getting away with more stealing often cease to amaze. But the HSBC case went miles beyond the usual paper-pushing, keypad-punching sort-of crime, committed by geeks in ties, normally associated with Wall Street. In this case, the bank literally got away with murder - well, aiding and abetting it, anyway. For at least half a decade, the storied British colonial banking power helped to wash hundreds of millions of dollars for drug mobs, including Mexico's Sinaloa drug cartel, suspected in tens of thousands of murders just in the past 10 years - people so totally evil, jokes former New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, that "they make the guys on Wall Street look good." The bank also moved money for organizations linked to Al Qaeda and Hezbollah, and for Russian gangsters; helped countries like Iran, the Sudan and North Korea evade sanctions; and, in between helping murderers and terrorists and rogue states, aided countless common tax cheats in hiding their cash. "They violated every goddamn law in the book," says Jack Blum, an attorney and former Senate investigator who headed a major bribery investigation against Lockheed in the 1970s that led to the passage of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. "They took every imaginable form of illegal and illicit business." That nobody from the bank went to jail or paid a dollar in individual fines is nothing new in this era of financial crisis. What is different about this settlement is that the Justice Department, for the first time, admitted why it decided to go soft on this particular kind of criminal. It was worried that anything more than a wrist slap for HSBC might undermine the world economy. "Had the U.S. authorities decided to press criminal charges," said Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer at a press conference to announce the settlement, "HSBC would almost certainly have lost its banking license in the U.S., the future of the institution would have been under threat and the entire banking system would have been destabilized." It was the dawn of a new era. In the years just after 9/11, even being breathed on by a suspected terrorist could land you in extralegal detention for the rest of your life. But now, when you're Too Big to Jail, you can cop to laundering terrorist cash and violating the Trading With the Enemy Act, and not only will you not be prosecuted for it, but the government will go out of its way to make sure you won't lose your license. Some on the Hill put it to me this way: OK, fine, no jail time, but they can't even pull their charter? Are you kidding? | |
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| Puppet Masters |
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Sean Cockerham
McClatchy - Washington Bureau 2014-01-29 00:00:00
Members of the Senate Intelligence Committee lambasted the nation's top intelligence chiefs on Wednesday, complaining of lies about gathering the phone records of Americans and failing to cooperate with Congress in an investigation of the CIA's controversial interrogation programs. Committee members grilled Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and CIA Director John Brennan at the first intelligence committee hearing since President Barack Obama proposed reforms to the spy program. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., told them an ongoing "culture of misinformation" has undermined the public's trust in America's intelligence leadership. "That trust has been seriously undermined by senior officials' reckless reliance on secret interpretations of the law and battered by years of misleading and deceptive statements senior officials made to the American people," Wyden said. He said the deception didn't help the fight against terror, but instead hid bad policy choices and violations of civil liberties. Wyden singled out Clapper's testimony to Congress last March that the National Security Agency does not collect data on millions of Americans, an assertion proved false by leaks by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. Clapper has since apologized, suggesting he misspoke. But five members of Congress, led by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., called this week for the White House to fire Clapper for misleading Congress. | |
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Mail & Guardian, South Africa
2014-02-17 15:30:00
Mining giant Anglo American Platinum (Amplats) is losing about R100-million a day because of a strike by the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu), which entered its fourth week on Monday. "The company is losing 4 000oz, amounting to R100-million in revenue daily," said Amplats spokesperson Mpumi Sithole. Amplats on Saturday said it was suing Amcu for damages and losses suffered over their work stoppage. Amplats was seeking R591-million but this could rise if damages continued, said Sithole. "The provisional quantum of the damages claim is about R591-million, although as Amcu's wrongful conduct is continuing, the damages will continue to accrue," she said. | |
Comment: On 5 October 2012, Anglo American Platinum simply dealt with a similar strike by firing 12,967 striking South African miners.
Later that same month, British/American-controlled South African security forces opened fire on mineworkers, killing 34. Hey, it's just business. | |
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Sabrina Tavernise
The New York Times 2014-02-10 00:00:00
Despite efforts by the Obama administration to ease shortages of critical drugs, shortfalls have persisted, forcing doctors to resort to rationing in some cases or to scramble for alternatives, a government watchdog agency said on Monday. The number of annual drug shortages - both new and continuing ones - nearly tripled from 2007 to 2012. In recent years, drug shortages have become an all but permanent part of the American medical landscape. The most common ones are for generic versions of sterile injectable drugs, partly because factories that make them are aging and prone to quality problems, causing temporary closings of production lines or even entire factories. The analysis by the United States Government Accountability Office, released Monday, was required by a 2012 law that gave the Food and Drug Administration more power to manage shortages. The watchdog agency was designated to evaluate whether the F.D.A. had improved its response to the problem, among other things. The accountability office concluded that the F.D.A. was preventing many more shortages now than in the past - 154 potential shortages in 2012 compared with just 35 in 2010 - but that the total number of shortages has continued to grow. In 2012, the number of drugs in short supply, both new and long-term, was 456, the report said, up from 154 in 2007. Such drugs now include the heart medicine nitroglycerin, and cisatracurium, which is used to paralyze muscles during surgery and for patients on ventilators. | |
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Norman Solomon
Alternet 2014-02-12 16:18:00
The online mega-retailer has a little-known $600-million contract with the CIA. President Obama is now considering whether to order the Central Intelligence Agency to kill a U.S. citizen in Pakistan. That's big news this week. But hidden in plain sight is the fact that Amazon would be an accessory to the assassination. Amazon has a $600 million contract with the CIA to provide the agency with "cloud" computing services. After final confirmation of the deal several months ago, Amazon declared: "We look forward to a successful relationship with the CIA." The relationship means that Amazon -- logoed with a smiley-face arrow from A to Z, selling products to millions of people every week -- is responsible for keeping the CIA's secrets and aggregating data to help the agency do its work. Including drone strikes. Drone attacks in Pakistan are "an entirely CIA operation," New York Times reporter Mark Mazzetti said Tuesday night in an interview on the PBS NewsHour. He added that "the Pakistani government will not allow the [U.S.] military to take over the mission because they want to still have the sort of veneer of secrecy that the CIA provides." The sinister implications of Amazon's new CIA role have received scant public attention so far. | |
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SABC News
2014-02-17 15:21:00
Twenty-two gold miners who came out of an abandoned Gold One mine shaft in Benoni on Gauteng's East Rand have been arrested. Police say the gold miners who had temporarily blocked a shaft over the last two years will be charged with illegal mining. They say the miners were examined by paramedics before being taken away to the nearby police station. Some of the illegal miners came to the surface earlier on Monday. Others were rescued on Sunday and have already been charged. At least 200 illegal miners are believed to be trapped underground. Many of them are believed to be illegal migrants from Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Lesotho. Emergency workers battled for most of the day trying to persuade illegal miners to vacate an abandoned mine shaft in Benoni. The miners want an assurance from police that they will not be arrested. | |
Comment: How's that 'freedom and democracy' working out for you, South Africa?
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Fars News Agency
2014-02-17 13:07:00
Belgian Minister for Foreign Affairs Didier Reynders said that over 20 of around 200 Belgian terrorists who went to fight in Syria were killed there. Reynders told La Libre newspaper that the identities of over 200 Belgians people, who are fighting with the most extremist groups in Syria including the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISI), have been established or being established, and that over 20 of these people have been killed in Syria. He said that the most pressing concern is keeping track of these individuals to assess the threat they pose after they return to Belgium or go to other countries, noting that these individuals aren't just extremist in their mentality, but they would return possessing experience and knowledge that would allow them to do anything. Reynders cited the case of two young women, ages 17 and 19, who went to Syria and were involved in relations with members of very extremist armed groups, but they disappeared and may have been abducted by a rival extremist group. News reports have been revealing that European countries are growing concerned over the potential ramifications of supporting terrorism in Syria, as they are worried about what terrorists from these countries who went to Syria could do should they return to Europe. | |
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Andrew E. Harrod
Investigative Project on Terrorism 2013-09-06 12:47:00
German citizens have participated in the bloody expulsion of Christian villages in Syria, according to the German news magazine Focus. The incident is part of a larger problem involving German and other citizens from Western countries joining jihadist groups in Syria's brutal, multiparty civil war, raising Muslim terrorism concerns in Syria and beyond. A radical Muslim militia conducted an "ethnic cleansing" of Syrian Christian villagers near the border with Turkey on Aug. 6. According to the Focus report, two unnamed Western intelligence services identified German Muslim converts and other Germans with an "immigration background" as militia members. A recent propaganda video shows jihadists speaking in German praising the expulsions, during which several murders occurred. The video also shows jihadists desecrating the bodies of Syrian soldiers with kicks to the head. | |
Comment: And so it turns out that Al-Assad wasn't being a "conspiracy theorist" after all when he said - THREE YEARS AGO - that Western governments were sending fighters into his country...
...and now, 200,000 dead people later, those terrorists are beginning to return home... | |
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Voice of Russia
2013-12-28 12:23:00
Up to 4-5 thousand European jihadist militants with EU passports are fighting on the side of al-Qaeda in Syria, according to Belgium's state security structures. Meanwhile, battle-hardened jihadists are returning to Europe in increasing numbers, posing a real threat to EU security. Syrian rebels are often seen as heroes to a small section of youths upon return, making them ideal to further foster recruitment. According to Belgian state security structures, 4-5 thousand jihadist militants with EU passports were fighting against the Assad regime in Syria, mass media of Belgium reported Friday. There are up to twenty Chechens in the ranks of the Syrian radical Islamists; they went there from different regions of Belgium, a source in the state security agency says. The counter-intelligence service and the police of Belgium believe that about 200 owners of Belgian passports are fighting in Syria on the side of the Islamists, and about 20 of them were killed. It is also reported that a group of Belgian Dutch-speaking jihadists, trained in Syria, participated in at least one of the last acts of terrorism on the territory of Iraq. There is information that Belgian Islamic terrorists migrate from Syria into Turkey and Lebanon. The security services possess information about the plans of recruiters to take jihadists trained in Syria to Morocco and Tunisia. Somalia is not excluded either. | |
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Jesse Hathaway
Media Trackers 2014-02-10 00:00:00
Documents from an Ohio National Guard (ONG) training drill conducted last January reveal the details of a mock disaster where Second Amendment supporters with "anti-government" opinions were portrayed as domestic terrorists. The ONG 52nd Civil Support Team training scenario involved a plot from local school district employees to use biological weapons in order to advance their beliefs about "protecting Gun Rights and Second Amendment rights." Portsmouth Fire Chief Bill Raison told NBC 3 WSAZ-TV in Huntington, West Virginia that the drill accurately represented "the reality of the world we live in," adding that such training "helps us all be prepared." Internal ONG documents provided to Media Trackers after repeated delays provide further context to what WSAZ-TV reported last winter. In the disaster-preparedness scenario, two Portsmouth Junior High School employees poisoned school lunches with mustard gas, acting on orders from white-nationalist leader William Pierce. The ONG team discovered biological weapons being produced in the school, requiring activation of containment and decontamination procedures. | |
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Daniel Halper
President Obama "quipped" today during a visit to Monticello with the French president, "That's the good thing about being president, I can do whatever I want."The Weekly Standard 2014-02-10 12:00:00 Via the pool report: MonticelloThe comment came around the time the White House announced it would be delaying the Obamacare mandate for some businesses unilaterally.
The French president is here in the U.S. on a state visit. More notes from the pool: Monticello | |
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John W. Whitehead
The Rutherford Institute 2014-02-17 11:58:00
Relationships are fragile things, none more so than the relationship between a citizen and his government. Unfortunately for the American people, the contract entered into more than 200 years ago has been reduced to little more than a marriage of convenience and fiscal duty, marked by distrust, lying, infidelity, hostility, disillusion, paranoia and domestic abuse on the part of the government officials entrusted with ensuring the citizenry's safety and happiness. Don't believe me? Just take a stroll through your city's downtown. Spend an afternoon in your local mall. Get in your car and drive to your parents' house. Catch the next flight to that business conference. While you're doing so, pay careful attention to how you and your fellow citizens are treated by government officials - the ones whose salaries you are paying. You might walk past a police officer outfitted in tactical gear, holding an assault rifle, or drive past a police cruiser scanning license plates. There might be a surveillance camera on the street corner tracking your movements. At the airport, you may be put through your paces by government agents who will want to either pat you down or run scans of your body. And each time you make a call or send a text message, your communications will most likely be logged and filed. When you return home, you might find that government agents have been questioning your neighbors about you, as part of a "census" questionnaire. After you retire to sleep, you might find yourself awakened by a SWAT team crashing through your door (you'll later discover they were at the wrong address), and if you make the mistake of reaching for your eyeglasses, you might find yourself shot by a cop who felt threatened. Is this the behavior of a government that respects you? One that looks upon you as having inviolate rights? One that regards you as its employer, its master, its purpose for being? | |
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Anne Sewell
The Digital Journal 2014-02-16 03:14:00
Way back on February 13, 1960, France tested its first atomic bomb, "Gerboise Bleue" (Blue Jerboa). Declassified documents released recently show that radiation from the test in the Algerian Sahara desert reached much further than they said at the time. In fact, the radiation fallout is likely to have reached as far as the southern coast of Spain as well as Sicily and Sardinia in Italy, within just 13 days of the blast. The French daily newspaper Le Parisien published the military papers on February 14. Originally the affected zone was said to be restricted to within the Sahara desert in Algeria, but it can be seen from the image below that in reality, it affected northern, eastern and central Africa plus southern Europe. | |
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Paul Wallis
The Digital Journal 2014-02-17 00:06:00
Brussels - You're not broke, you're adjusted. You're not miserable, you're emotionally fluxed. You're not using meaningful language, you're finding excuses. The politically obsessive EU has decided that the word "bankruptcy" has too much of a stigma. It would be nice to think that this is just another case of vacuous people producing verbal vacuums, but it's more complex than that, as The Daily Mail explains: Ah, er, um, hang on... "Making it less troublesome to open bank accounts in different countries and easier to escape from debt...?" Less troublesome for whom? Easier for whom? | |
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Douglas J. Hagmann
Homeland Security Us 2014-02-15 21:56:00
I feel that this is one of the most important investigations I've ever done. If my findings are correct, each of us might soon experience a severe, if not crippling blow to our personal finances, the confiscation of any wealth some of us have been able to accumulate over our lifetimes, and the end of the financial world as we once knew it. The evidence to support my findings exists in the trail of dead bodies of financial executives across the globe and a missing Wall Street Journal Reporter who was working at the Dow Jones news room at the time of his disappearance. If the bodies were dots on a piece of paper, connecting them results in a sinister picture being drawn that involves global criminal activity in the financial world the likes of which is almost without precedent. It should serve as a warning that we are at the precipice of something so big, it will shake the financial world as we know it to its core. It seems to illustrate the complicity of big banks and governments, the intelligence community, and the media. Although the trail of mysterious and bizarre deaths detailed below begin in late January, 2014, there are others. Not only that, there will be more, according to sources within the financial world. Based on my findings, these are not mere random, tragic cases of suicide, but of the methodical silencing of individuals who had the ability to expose financial fraud at the highest levels, and the complicity of certain governmental agencies and individuals who are engaged in the greatest theft of wealth the world has ever seen. | |
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Martin Farrer
The Guardian 2014-02-16 22:24:00
Payment revealed by News Corp in US likely to reignite debate over how much tax is paid by international corporations Rupert Murdoch's media group received a $882m tax rebate from Australia last year in a revelation that is likely to reignite the debate over how much tax is paid by international corporations. The payment by a "foreign tax authority" was revealed in accounts published by News Corporation in the US earlier this month and related to a $2bn claim by News Corp for historic losses on currency transactions by its Australian subsidiaries. The payment was estimated to be worth $600m to News Corp but the final figure grew to $882m after interest charges. It was one of the the biggest single factors in the multi-billion dollar federal budget blowoutannounced by Australian treasurer Joe Hockey in December. The Australian Tax Office wanted to challenge the claim but was overruled by the Federal Court of Appeal in July last year, the Australian Financial Review reported on Monday. The refund amounted to one of the largest ever faced by the ATO but a decision over whether to appeal against the ruling came amid the build-up to the federal election with News Corp's Australian titles launching a series of attacks on the then Labor government. | |
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| Society's Child |
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Brasscheck TV
2009-11-23 07:58:00
The century is still young and the Bush-Bama administration were such masters of lying its hard to pick one...Iraq...9/11...the "healthy: economy... swine flu But one of the most amazing - and vicious - lies of all time has to be that Hurricane Katrina destroyed the city of New Orleans. Amazing because it flies in the face of all evidence and eye witness accounts. Vicious because it removes the liability (and thus the potential of compensation) from the guilty parties: the US Army Corps of Engineers, the US Federal Government, and the Wall Street Corporate interests that own both. Changing public opinion after a well-crafted and heavily promote lie has made its way around the world is one of the hardest things on earth to do, but if you stick with it long enough, you can do it. Last week, as the result of a relentless, grass roots campaign, a judge finally agreed: It wasn't Katrina that devastated New Orleans, it was the systematic failure of the multi-billion dollar tax payer federal levee system.
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Lucy Crossley
The Daily Mail 2014-02-11 17:17:00
A bullied teenager has been jailed after stabbing a girl in the face and smashing another's head against a fence - because they called him Harry Potter. Ryan Walker, 19, wears glasses and has short dark hair, just like actor Daniel Radcliffe who plays the young wizard in the hit film series. A court heard how after two girls called Walker Harry Potter, he snapped, stabbing one of them in the face so hard that the blade of his vegetable knife broke. Walker then pushed the other girl's head into a nearby fence and shouted: 'Die, die'. He claimed he launched the ferocious attacks in Southampton, Hampshire, after being goaded repeatedly by the girls who called him Potter. Southampton Crown Court heard how Walker returned to his family flat after shopping for his mother and he had to pass 15-year-old Emma Keeble and 16-year-old Leah Pearce sitting on the stairs. One of the girls touched his shopping bag before verbally abusing him and telling him he resembled Harry Potter. Outraged Walker saw red, rushed to his flat before coming back downstairs with a milk bottle full of water and threw it over the girls. | |
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Anna Hodgekiss
The Daily Mail 2014-02-17 16:44:00
Shannon Bowley can only shuffle around on her bottom or take a few slow steps with the aid of a walking frame. She was due to have a life-changing operation this Friday which would have loosened her muscles to help her walk independently. But just six days before surgery, her family were dealt a devastating blow when they received a letter informing them that NHS England had cancelled funding for the operation. Shannon's grandmother and full-time carer Samantha Jones, 42, said her grand-daughter had also been through a year of painful procedures in preparation for the surgery. | |
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SABC
2014-02-17 15:42:00
Seventy students have been arrested at the University of KwaZulu Natal's Edgewood Campus in Pinetown, west of Durban. This follows a students' protest which turned violent. Students have been on strike since last week. They are protesting against the way the National Students' Financial Aid Scheme allocates funding. Monday morning students went on the rampage, forcing other students from lecture rooms. Earlier police used rubber bullets and teargas to disperse protesting students. Provincial police spokesperson Thulani Zwane explains, "Students were protesting and they were also damaging the classes at the campus. Seventy of them were then arrested and charged for public violence. Those who were arrested will appear tomorrow in the Pinetown Magistrate's Court facing charges of public violence. The police are still monitoring the situation in the area." | |
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Ted Thornhill
Daily Mail 2014-02-17 14:55:00
Chinese zoo keepers managed to save the life of a mentally disturbed man after he announced he wanted to improve the lives of caged tigers at a local zoo by offering them his own body to eat. Yang Jinhai, 27, had posted several online messages about how optimistic he was about starting a new life after getting a job as a security guard in Chengdu in southwest China's Sichuan province. But he quickly found the job boring and monotonous and moved instead to a job in a printing factory where he also then resigned, saying that he felt there was more to life. After going to the local zoo he wrote how depressing it was to see the 'noble and magnificent tigers' living in such humble surroundings, where they were caged and unable to follow their natural instincts to hunt and kill. He then announced that he had decided to sacrifice himself in order to provide the Bengal tigers with support. | |
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Kim Janssen
Chicago Sun-Times 2014-02-14 09:11:00
"I'm the last person in the world that you want to lie to right now," former Willow Springs cop Gary Engel said. "Your life is in my hands." Engel, 61, was allegedly rehearsing. His accomplice, Steven Mandell, was sitting in the wheelchair that they both hoped a torture victim would be strapped into within the hour, the feds say. "I know you are going to play with his f------ d---, right?" a smiling Mandell said, motioning to his genitals. "You going to put a little blade there?" "You know what a banana split looks like?" Engel replied. The shocking scene - recorded by a hidden FBI camera in a Northwest Side torture chamber former Chicago cop Mandell had built - was filmed on Oct. 25, 2012. | |
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Irving DeJohn
NY Daily News 2014-02-17 09:01:00
It's a bird. It's a plane. It's super perv! A Connecticut High School teacher was busted for allegedly bedding a male student, authorities said. Meghan Eagan, 25, a teacher at Crosby High School in Waterbury, Conn., was arrested on four counts of sexual assault for carrying on trysts with a male student at her home, according to reports. Eagan and the student allegedly engaged in the illicit activity from the end of December through January, CBS Connecticut reported. | |
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Washington Post
2014-02-17 08:56:00
Rescuers on Monday found the wreckage of a plane that slammed into a snow-covered mountain in Nepal and burst into flames, killing 18 people, including a child, authorities said. Moving slowly through thick snow, rescuers walked for 13 kilometers (8 miles) to the crash site. Air traffic control had lost contact with the plane on Sunday afternoon in poor visibility due to snow, rain and fog. "Our plane was technically airworthy and we believe it was the weather that caused the crash," said Ram Hari Sharma of Nepal Airlines. He said there will be a full investigation. The state-run airline is often criticized over allegations of corruption and flying old planes. Last year, the European Union banned all Nepalese airlines from flying to Europe because of poor safety records. The plane had 15 passengers and three crew members. One passenger was Danish, according to the Danish Foreign Ministry, while the rest were Nepalese. The age of the passenger with the infant ticket was not given. | |
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Lee Moran
NY Daily News 2014-02-17 08:49:00
An angry Arkansas homeowner shot and killed a teen girl after she and her pals dumped leaves and smashed eggs on his car as a prank, police said. Willie Noble allegedly gunned down Adrian Broadway, 15, outside his Little Rock home just before 1 a.m. Saturday. The 48-year-old reportedly burst out of his home in a blind rage after seeing the girl and five of her friends targeting his vehicle, reports KATV. He then opened fire on the Hyundai Sonata they were driving, and Broadway suffered a gunshot wound. The youngsters managed to speed away from the property, making it to the local Kum & Go gas station where they called for an ambulance. Broadway was rushed to Arkansas Children's Hospital but later died. Noble was arrested and charged with first-degree murder, committing a terroristic act and aggravated assault, reports KATV. | |
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Lee Moran
NY Daily News 2014-02-17 08:29:00
A devout Christianity student learning about moral decision-making shot his fiancée dead then tried to make it look like a suicide, police said. Charles Pittman, 21, allegedly gunned down long-term lover Olivia Greenlee as they sat inside her Toyota Corolla in Union University, Jackson, Tenn., parking lot last Tuesday night. He is then accused of staging the scene to make it look like the music education student had killed herself. Greenlee, also 21, was found dead inside the vehicle the following morning. Cops claim they found a gun, belonging to a pal of Pittman that was taken without his knowledge, inside the car. | |
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CBS New York
2014-02-16 08:23:00
The body of missing fashion designer Michele Savoia was found in the Hudson River not from the yacht where he lived, his friends told CBS 2′s Don Champion. Police confirmed that a body had been recovered around 2 p.m. near Pier 57 in Chelsea and identified Savoia on Sunday night. Savoia, of the House of Savoia, was last seen early Thursday morning inside Marquee, a nightclub on Tenth Avenue in Manhattan. He was attending a party thrown by Paris Hilton, police said. Savoia, also known as "The Tailor," was seen on surveillance video leaving the club alone at around 4 a.m., Champion reported. "If I had to describe Michele Savoia is a red corvette going 150 miles per hour down a highway without a driver," friend Felix Rodriguez said. | |
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Daniel Arkin
NBC News 2014-02-17 08:16:00
Three people aboard a small private aircraft died Sunday after a crash into a cliff near the Telluride Regional Airport in Colorado, officials said. The single-engine Beechcraft Bonanza left the Telluride airport at 11:20 a.m. Sunday en route to the southwestern city of Cortez, Colo., amid light snow with one-mile visibility and calm winds, according to a statement from San Miguel County Sheriff Bill Masters. Air traffic control at both the Telluride and Denver airports lost contact with the aircraft, prompting a search coordinated by the sheriff's office at 12:40 p.m., the statement said. | |
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Columbus Dispatch
2014-02-17 08:05:00
A Pennsylvania woman charged with her newlywed husband with killing a man they met through Craigslist admitted to the slaying in a jailhouse interview with a local newspaper and said she has killed more than 20 other people across the country. Police said investigating. In an interview with The Daily Item in Sunbury, 19-year-old Miranda Barbour said she wants to plead guilty to killing Troy LaFerrara in November. She also said in the interview that she has killed at least 22 other people from Alaska to North Carolina in the past six years as part of her involvement in a satanic cult. "I feel it is time to get all of this out. I don't care if people believe me. I just want to get it out," Barbour told the newspaper for a story published on Saturday. Sunbury Police Chief Steve Mazzeo told the newspaper that investigators are aware of Barbour's claims of involvement in other murders. He said they are "seriously concerned" and have contacted police in other jurisdictions. | |
Comment: Here's the previous article that reported the initial murder by Ms. Barbour and her husband: Newlywed couple found murder victim on Craigslist, police say
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Politiken
2014-02-17 12:02:00
Taxidermists puncture one of the stranded whales to reduce the explosion hazard in front of large audiences. A large crowd of people were up early to see conservators from the Natural History Museum have the most rotten of two stranded sperm whales to explode. It says whale expert Thygesen Jensen, itself come to Henne Strand to follow the process. »Taxidermists prepare to puncture the most decayed - that is rotten - of the two stranded whales. When they do, there will definitely be definitely an explosion, because there is real pressure enclosed, "he predicted earlier in the day. | |
Comment: The amount of disrespect these folks display is unbelievable!
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Derek Kinner
Washington Times 2014-02-17 07:36:00
A Florida jury's inability to agree on a murder charge will give prosecutors and defense attorneys fodder for their next moves in the case of a teen fatally shot after an argument over loud music. Michael Dunn, a 47-year-old software developer, was convicted Saturday of attempted murder for shooting into a carful of teenagers after the argument but jurors couldn't agree on the most serious charge of first-degree murder. A mistrial was declared on the murder charge. State Attorney Angela Corey said her office would consider seeking a retrial of Dunn on a first-degree murder charge. Meanwhile, defense attorney Cory Strolla said he plans to appeal based on several issues, including how the jury could reach guilty verdicts on four counts and deadlock on another. | |
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| Secret History |
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Becky Oskin
Live Science 2014-02-11 07:50:00
A treasure trove of fossils chiseled out of a canyon in Canada's Kootenay National Park rivals the famous Burgess Shale, the best record of early life on Earth, scientists say. "Once we started to break fresh rock, we realized we had discovered something incredibly special," said Robert Gaines, a geologist at Pomona College in Pomona, Calif., and co-author of a new study announcing the find. "It was an extraordinary moment." The Burgess Shale refers to both a fossil find and a 505-million-year-old rock formation made of mud and clay. The renowned Burgess Shale fossil quarry, a UNESCO World Heritage site located in Yoho National Park, is in a glacier-carved cliff in the Canadian Rockies. The fossils were discovered in 1909. Since then, several other fossil sites have been found in the Burgess Shale, but none as rich as the original. | |
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P Gosselin
Fire in the sky, torrential rains, droughts and Biblical floods - all supposedly brought on by the sins and wickedness of man. Is it really a surprise we are hearing it all once again today?NoTricksZone 2014-02-16 15:31:00
The online Spiegel today has a report on a new book titled The Book of Miracles which presents and examines a collection of 16th century depictions of celestial phenomena and portentous signs. They were recently discovered as part of a collection of 169 illustrations created in Augsburg, Germany around 1552. End-of-world visions, it turns out, are a human mental disorder that has been around for as long as civilization itself. Comment: A "mental disorder", eh? Somebody needs to look out his window more often! And read history.
The images were created as Europe was in the grips of the Little ice Age, a time of bad weather, bitter cold, storms and crop failures, starvation and human misery. The 16th century depictions reveal images of a civilization obsessed with the end-of-the-world.Priests and elitists of the time conducted terrifying witch hunts to find those allegedly responsible for the black magic that cooked up the extreme weather. Sound familiar? | ||
Comment:
Actually, the only antidote is to wipe the slate clean. This is no "mental disorder". This is paleontological fact: civilization is periodically destroyed or severely retarded. Sure, global warming blamed on human-produced CO2 that will only cause damage 100 years from now is a scam - of course it is, it's a tar baby set up by the elites so they can control people and assuage their growing restlessness as the climate goes kaflooey - but how anyone can think 'everything is normal' with the weather - planetary and cosmic - these days is baffling. Clearly, given that about everything drawn in the book has been reported numerous times around the world in the last ten years or so, what this incredible manuscript shows us is not "what people in olden days were hallucinating about"... but what they were ACTUALLY SEEING the last time around.
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| Science & Technology |
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Dan Bloom
Mail Online 2014-02-16 18:00:00
The first potato genetically modified to resist blight may soon be grown in Britain. It was engineered in a three-year project that saw genes from a wild South American potato inserted into a normal Desiree. Scientists say it is fully resistant to blight, caused by the organism Phytophthora infestans, which destroys up to half of British crops in a bad year. The disease was responsible for the Irish famine of 1845 and remains potato farmers' greatest enemy, costing them £60 million a year. | |
Comment: Are you inflamed over GMO foods?
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Dieter Bohn
The Verge 2014-02-16 16:34:00
Scientists at Penn State University have successfully controlled tiny nanomotors inside living human cells. Consisting of tiny, rocket-shaped bits of metal, the nanomotors were propelled by ultrasonic waves and steered with magnets. Researcher Tom Mallouk wasn't afraid to talk up potential future applications, saying that the technology could one day be used "to treat cancer and other diseases by mechanically manipulating cells from the inside." Once inside a living cell, the nanomotors could pulverize the cell's contents like an "egg beater" or just break the cell's membrane, Penn State's note about the research says, which could allow for targeted attacks on specific cells. More importantly, Mallouk says that the nanomotors were able to move independently of one another, instead of the "whole mass of them going in one direction." | |
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Daniel Stolte
University of Arizona 2014-02-16 13:24:00
A new study reconstructing the evolutionary tree of flu viruses challenges conventional wisdom and solves some of the mysteries surrounding flu outbreaks of historical significance. The study, published in the journal Nature, provides the most comprehensive analysis to date of the evolutionary relationships of influenza virus across different host species over time. In addition to dissecting how the virus evolves at different rates in different host species, the study challenges several tenets of conventional wisdom, for example the notion that the virus moves largely unidirectionally from wild birds to domestic birds rather than with spillover in the other direction. It also helps resolve the origin of the virus that caused the unprecedentedly severe influenza pandemic of 1918. The new research is likely to change how scientists and health experts look at the history of influenza virus, how it has changed genetically over time and how it has jumped between different host species. The findings may have implications ranging from the assessment of health risks for populations to developing vaccines. | |
Comment: This research is indeed very interesting and insightful, but, unfortunately, it doesn't consider another important factor, like a possibility of viruses and new strains arriving from space. Read the following articles to learn more:
New study confirms cometary activity (possibly fragment of Comet Halley) preceded Justinian Plague, wiping out Roman civilization and Western Europe 1,500 years ago New Light on the Black Death: The Viral and Cosmic Connection Two of history's deadliest plagues were linked, with implications for another outbreak: Scientists discover link between Justinian plague and Black Death | |
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Victoria Woolaston
Daily Mail 2014-02-12 11:17:00
If we could see the mobile signals being sent and received from the hundreds of devices that surround us, they would cover us like a psychedelic patchwork quilt. That's according to the latest visualisations from U.S artist Nickolay Lamm. Lamm worked with computer engineering professors in Illinois to learn how mobile networks and frequencies are distributed across U.S cities such as New York and Chicago. The result is a colourful grid system that blankets buildings and famous landmarks, and in real-life would change and glow as the frequencies changed. | |
Comment: The science is conclusive: Wireless (Wi-fi) is damaging our brains and cells in general, despite what the industry-payed studies try to make us believe.
See also: The Hidden Dangers of Cell Phone Radiation Electromagnetic radiation and its effect on the brain: an insider speaks out Cell Phones and Cancer: the Risk is Real European Leaders Call for Ban of Cell Phones and WiFi in Schools Telecom company patent admits wireless radiation is harmful | |
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Denise Chow
Live Science 2014-02-15 08:00:00
The first prototypes of a high-tech suit of armor to give soldiers superhuman abilities could be ready to test this summer, according to top military officials. The suits, which have drawn comparisons to the one worn by Marvel Comics superhero "Iron Man," could be delivered to special operations forces as early as June. The Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit, or TALOS, is being developed by engineers at MIT; the U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command (RDECOM); and researchers at other businesses and academic institutions. Prototypes of the suit, which is designed to provide protection from bullets and is equipped with a variety of sensors and cameras, are being assembled and could be ready for the military to test in June, reported Military.com. | |
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Discovery News
2014-02-15 08:54:00
Advances in genetic sequencing are giving rise to a new era of scientific racism, despite decades of efforts to reverse attitudes used to justify the slave trade and Nazi theology, experts said on Friday. New forms of discrimination, known as neoracism, are taking hold in scientific research, spreading the belief that races exist and are different in terms of biology, behavior and culture, according to anthropologists who spoke at the annual American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in Chicago. "Genome science can help us a lot in the individualization of medical practice," said Nina Jablonski, an anthropology professor at The Pennsylvania State University. But she warned that science could be "misused" to propagate the belief that people inherently have different abilities based on skin color or ethnic background. She cited new research urging that children be identified based on their genetically predetermined educational abilities and then put in separate schools that could be used to foster different kinds of learning. "We have heard this before and it is incredibly worrying," she said, recalling the segregation era when blacks and whites were schooled separately and African Americans were considered inferior. | |
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Dylan Love
Business Insider 2014-02-12 12:04:00
"Careto" is the name of "a sophisticated suite of tools for compromising computers and collecting a wealth of information from them," reports The Washington Post. Here's how it works. It sends out emails designed to look as though they were sent legitimately from news sources like The Guardian and others. A population of people end up clicking on a link that takes them to a shady site that scans their computer for vulnerabilities. It works against Windows, OS X and Linux systems, and there may be iOS and Android versions on the way. | |
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| Earth Changes |
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Lucy Rodgers and Mark Bryson
BBC News 2014-02-17 13:12:00
The UK has been battered by strong winds and lashed by heavy rain in a series of ferocious storms that have barrelled across the Atlantic. The storms, which began in October last year, have forced many from their homes and are set to make the 2013-14 winter the wettest on record. More than 5,000 homes and businesses have been flooded and many rivers in southern England have reached their highest ever recorded levels. | |
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Dr Tony Cooper
The Daily Mail 2014-02-17 12:12:00
Last week, a hole as deep as a double-decker bus is high suddenly opened up in the back-garden of a house in South-East London, almost swallowing a child's trampoline as the ground collapsed without warning. Had the poor owner's daughter been rushing out to play on the trampoline, she could have very easily have been seriously injured or even killed.
Two weeks ago, there was a similarly narrow escape for a family living in High Wycombe, when, overnight, a deep hole appeared without warning in the driveway just next to the house. This time the adult daughter's car did end up buried at the bottom of the hole, thankfully, while there was no one in it. And in Kent last week, motorists hoping to use the M2 were left fuming by the motorway's temporary closure, after a substantial hole - 15ft deep - suddenly appeared in the central reservation. Again, no one was hurt but had the hole opened up just a few yards away, it is obvious what a different story it could so easily have been. All of these holes are what the public call sinkholes and now, after weeks of heavy rain, they seem to be appearing with ever greater regularity. Hard statistics are difficult to find - not least because sinkholes that appear on farmland often go unreported - but having studied them for 35 years, I'd estimate that sinkholes are currently appearing at four-to-five times their normal rate. | ||
Comment: The appearance of sinkholes worldwide is has been accelerating for many years now. Truly a sign of the times. Here is just a small sample of stories SOTT has archived:
Sinkholes - A Sign of the Times? Will the Dead Sea be eaten by sinkholes? Huge chasms are appearing in the region at a rate of one per day Sinkholes become an item of study 45 sinkholes open up in Kaski, Nepal - 50 families displaced so far | ||
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wildlifeextra.com
2014-02-17 08:53:00
A shocking 65 per cent of forest elephants have been illegally killed for their ivory in between 2002 and 2013 new data from the field in Central Africa shows. Many organisations collaborated in the study, which was coordinated by WCS, and covered 80 sites, in five countries, over the twelve years of data collection. "These new numbers showing the continuing decline of the African forest elephant are the exact reason why there is a sense of urgency at the United for Wildlife trafficking symposium in London this week," said Dr. John Robinson, WCS Chief Conservation Officer and Executive Vice President of Conservation and Science. "The solutions we are discussing in London this week and the commitments we are making cannot fail or the African forest elephant will blink out in our lifetime. United for Wildlife, which is headed by The Duke of Cambridge, is determined to work together to turn back these numbers." Conservationists gathered at the United for Wildlife symposium - "International Wildlife Trafficking: Solutions to a Global Crisis" are discussing ways to protect wildlife and combat trade. Said WCS's Dr. Fiona Maisels, one of the researchers releasing the new numbers and a co-author of the landmark paper: "At least a couple of hundred thousand forest elephants were lost between 2002-2013 to the tune of at least sixty a day, or one every twenty minutes, day and night. By the time you eat breakfast, another elephant has been slaughtered to produce trinkets for the ivory market." The results show that the relatively small nation of Gabon has the majority (almost 60 percent) of the remaining forest elephants, while historically, the enormous Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) would have held the largest number of forest elephants. "The current number and distribution of elephants is mind-boggling when compared to what it should be," said WCS's Dr. Samantha Strindberg, one of the co-authors. "About 95 percent of the forests of DRC are almost empty of elephants." | |
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Mike Wright
Watford Observer 2014-02-17 05:03:00
Homes in Croxley Green had to be evacuated after a 20ft deep sinkhole emerged in the back garden of one of the properties. Police were called to the house in Dugdales at around 6pm yesterday after the hole, which is approximately 5ft by 5ft wide, was discovered. As the sinkhole was close to the property, a house and three flats, in the cul de sac were evacuated. Residents were not allowed back into their homes this morning. | ||
Comment: Sinkhole appears in Hemel Hempstead, UK - Fourth major sinkhole to hit country in two weeks
Sinkhole opens up in Barnehurst back garden, UK M2 motorway closed in Kent, England after monster 15ft-deep sinkhole suddenly opens up in central reservation 30 foot-deep sinkhole swallows car overnight in High Wycombe, England | ||
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Mike Brunker
NBC News 2014-02-15 03:56:00
Winter administered a fresh whipping to parts of the Northeast overnight, as a new storm brought more snow and high winds to the region. The latest blast came as residents were still digging out from a major storm that caused at least 25 deaths, and at its height, left hundreds of thousands without power on the East Coast and in the South. New England was absorbing the worst of the weekend storm, which was moving in Saturday evening. Up to 12 inches of snow fell in eastern Massachusetts, and parts of Maine and Rhode Island overnight, Weather Channel meteorologist Mark Swaim said. New York City and Boston, which both saw flurries overnight, were waking up to lower than average temperatures: Upper 20s in Beantown and lower 30s in the Big Apple. Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick on Saturday warned drivers to stay off the roads for a 12-hour period beginning at 5 p.m., saying, "It won't be possible to keep up with the clearing of the roads." | |
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Mark Duell, Tom Kelly, Daniel Martin and Emily Davies
The Daily Mail 2014-02-11 11:31:00
The embattled Environment Agency chairman, who is a former Labour Cabinet minister, has risked fresh controversy over his comments. He said: 'Anyone who builds in a flood plain, anyone who buys a property in a flood plain, needs to think about the flood risk.' David Cameron, who is struggling to contain a Cabinet war over the official response to the floods, has refused to rule out sacking Lord Smith. He pledged 'no restraints' on disaster spending as Labour accused ministers of 'fighting like rats in a sack' in an unedifying blame game with the EA. | |
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birdsontheedge.org
2014-02-15 13:48:00
The last two weeks have been marked by a run of storms in the Atlantic that have brought very high winds and seemingly endless rainfall. At first we worried about the weather's impacts on the land with widescale flooding in southern England. How would landbirds find enough food if the ground became saturated and the rain prevented them from foraging. Even our garden birds were suffering. At the same time our coasts were being battered with high winds and huge waves. As defences were being breached, seawater was coming inland and would impact on plant communities and eventually their associated birds. Then, last week we started to see exactly what the storms were also doing to our seabird populations. North-west Europe has many millions of seabirds and the majority of these winter out in the Atlantic. We could only guess what it must be like out there for small birds that need to be able to dive for fish in roaring seas and winds up to 100 mph. | |
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Jean-Louis Santini
Yahoo! News 2014-02-16 00:00:00
A warmer Arctic could permanently affect the pattern of the high-altitude polar jet stream, resulting in longer and colder winters over North America and northern Europe, US scientists say. The jet stream, a ribbon of high altitude, high-speed wind in northern latitudes that blows from west to east, is formed when the cold Arctic air clashes with warmer air from further south. The greater the difference in temperature, the faster the jet stream moves. According to Jennifer Francis, a climate expert at Rutgers University, the Arctic air has warmed in recent years as a result of melting polar ice caps, meaning there is now less of a difference in temperatures when it hits air from lower latitudes. "The jet stream is a very fast moving river of air over our head," she said Saturday at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. "But over the past two decades the jet stream has weakened. This is something we can measure," she said. | |
Comment: Melting Ice caps?. Readers may be interested in the following articles.
CryoSat shows Arctic sea ice volume up 50% from last year How the global warming whopper is being buried under a jillion pounds of Arctic ice | |
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Simon Gilbert
Mirror, UK 2014-02-16 13:51:00
A mystery loud droning noise 'like Independence Day' has been reported in the skies above Coventry. The sounds - compared to something out of the hit blockbuster film about alien invasion - have been audible during recent stormy weather. Reports have described a loud noise in the sky which lasted around one minute and was heard by residents in Whitley, Walsgrave, Stoke and Wyken. Mitch Wise, 19, from Walsgrave, said the noise was so loud he could hear it inside his house despite all the windows and doors being closed. He said: "I did think it sounded like something out of Independence Day, that kind of noise. "I was just in my bedroom when I heard this loud noise outside my house. I looked outside my window, but I couldn't see anything. "I saw two guys looking up to the sky outside. It was scary! "I thought it was thunder at first but it was too long to be that or a jet. "It was like a loud droning noise that lasted about a minute. I was just confused, I couldn't work out what it was. "It was a lot louder than a lorry going past. It was loud with all the windows closed, but when I opened them it was really loud." Another reader told the Coventry Telegraph the noise sounded like a hurricane. | |
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Alex Morales
Bloomberg News 2014-02-01 13:00:00
Stronger Pacific Ocean winds may help explain the slowdown in the rate of global warming since the turn of the century, scientists said. More powerful winds in the past 20 years may be forcing warmer seas deeper and bringing cooler water to the surface, 10 researchers from the U.S. and Australia said today in the journal Nature. That has cooled the average global temperature by as much as 0.2 degree Celsius (0.36 Fahrenheit) since 2001. Scientists have been trying to find out why the rate of global warming has eased in the past 20 years while greenhouse-gas emissions have surged to a record. Today's paper elaborates on a theory that deep seas are absorbing more warmth by explaining how that heat could be getting there. "The net effect of these anomalous winds is a cooling in the 2012 global average surface air temperature of 0.1 - 0.2 degree Celsius, which can account for much of the hiatus in surface warming observed since 2001," the researchers wrote. They're led by Matthew England, a professor of oceanography at the University of New South Wales in Australia. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in September that the average temperature since 1998 has increased at less than half the rate since 1951. The world has warmed by an average 0.05 degree per decade since 1998, compared with the 1951-2012 average of 0.12 degree a decade, the UNIPCC said. | |
Comment:
Forget About Global Warming: We're One Step From Extinction! Climate Change Swindlers and the Political Agenda Read more in the Comets and Catastrophe series section of Sott.net | |
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A tsunami of Snow Buntings At first blush, this rural farmhouse may not appear to harbor what may be the most extraordinary bird feeding operation in Ohio. But indeed it does. If there is anything out there that rivals this in terms of sheer numbers, and the atypical "feeder" species involved, I am unaware of it. I visited this Delaware County residence yesterday, after being tipped off to the amazing assemblage of birds by Dick Miller, whose sister and brother-in-law, Mike and Becky Jordan, reside in the home. Mike and Becky have been very gracious in extending their hospitality to visitors, including your narrator, which is much appreciated! I'm not going to post their address on the Internet, but Mike and Becky do welcome birders who would like to witness the phenomenon that unfolds in the following photos. If you would like to visit, just send me an email at: jimmccormac35@gmail.com, and I'll pass along the pertinent information.
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Comment: See also : Rare Arctic bird turns up in Darwin, Australia
UK storms bring in rare Arctic gulls to Pembrokeshire Storm blows Canadian bird 3,000 miles on to Tyrone lough, Northern Ireland Bird watchers flock to Portland, UK after a rare Arctic Brunnich's Guillemot spotted Ice Age Cometh: Snowy Owl invasion coming in North America? Maine experiencing a Canadian owl invasion Incredible Hawk Owl invasion in Estonia! Huge Snowy Owl invasion becomes official in Canada and U.S. Thousands of Hawk Owls descend on Finland as food in northern Russia runs out Ice Age Cometh: Unprecedented influx of Arctic Ivory Gulls into UK | ||
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A number of earthquakes shake the mountain.
In California there has been a quake swarm at Mammoth mountain that has been going for more than a week. No Eruption yet, but plenty of quakes. California's Long Valley caldera, near Mammoth Mountain, is the largest supervolcano on the planet, says Alessandro Decet. In the last week it has recorded a few earthquakes, with the most intense a magnitude 3.0. Since everything is still mild in intensity, no alarm or status change was issued. However, the earthquakes are increasingly shallow, signaling that magma may be about to get closer to the surface. | |
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David Rose
Daily Mail, UK 2014-02-15 03:39:00
Mat Collins, a Professor in climate systems at Exeter University, said the storms have been driven by the jet stream - the high-speed current of air that girdles the globe - which has been 'stuck' further south than usual. Professor Collins told The Mail on Sunday: 'There is no evidence that global warming can cause the jet stream to get stuck in the way it has this winter. If this is due to climate change, it is outside our knowledge.' His statement carries particular significance because he is an internationally acknowledged expert on climate computer models and forecasts, and his university post is jointly funded by the Met Office. Prof Collins is also a senior adviser - a 'co-ordinating lead author' - for the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). His statement appears to contradict Met Office chief scientist Dame Julia Slingo.
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Scott Mayerowitz
Fox News - DC 2014-02-14 16:49:00
The relentless snow and ice storms this winter have led to the highest number of flight cancellations in more than 25 years, according to an analysis by The Associated Press. U.S. airlines have canceled more than 75,000 domestic flights since Dec. 1, including more than 14,000 this week. That's 5.5 percent of the 1.37 million flights scheduled during that period, according calculations based on information provided by flight tracking site FlightAware. It's the highest total number and highest percent of cancellations since at least the winter of 1987-1988, when the Department of Transportation first started collecting cancellation data. The nation's air traffic system was still recovering Friday from the latest bout of bad weather. Flights were taking off again but thousands of passengers weren't. "This year is off to a brutal start for airlines and travelers," says FlightAware CEO Daniel Baker. "Not only is each storm causing tens of thousands of cancellations, but there's been a lot of them." And February still has two weeks left. Mother Nature isn't entirely to blame. A mix of cost-cutting measures and new government regulations has made airlines more likely to cancel flights and leave fliers scrambling to get to their destination. | |
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Shepard Ambellas
Intellihub 2014-02-04 15:48:00
Current worldwide weather anomalies and drastic changes with the earth and sun give indication that some type of massive celestial object may be moving in to range, possibly even threatening the inhabitants of earth as emergency preparations by various nations have been taken It's no big secret that weather patterns are drastically changing worldwide. In Indonesia alone 19 volcanoes were raised to alert status Tuesday, after the Mount Sinabung eruption in North Sumatra killed 16 people last week. Three volcanoes in the region still remain on "high alert". This doevtails with seismic activity in the U.S. Yellowstone region which was also reported to have picked up recently, showing a clear trend of noticeable earth changes worldwide. And what about the recent cold spell which broke cold weather records in over 50 cities across the U.S.? Shockingly, the temperatures even ran into the frigid negatives throughout pockets of the U.S. that typically never fall that low in temperature. Influential weathermen, like NBC's Today's Al Roker, are now claiming that the "polar vortex" is to blame, a term listed in some 1959 weather publication entitled the "Glossary of Meteorology" and almost unheard of by modern society. Some weathermen say that the dense cold air has migrated down from the poles causing unusually abnormal weather patterns further south into the United States, making for the coldest spell in decades. Strangely on Jan. 8, the Today show made mention of a "left winged global conspiracy" regarding the polar vortex, giving a force-fed tidbit to the masses. Take note that the seeding has already begun and corporate propaganda is already in full swing. | |
Comment: There is evidence that these environmental events may be caused by a companion star to the Sun:
"Check out the Wikipedia page on the so-called 'Nemesis' hypothesis. (And see here for additional resources.) It was introduced in 1984 by two teams of astronomers (Whitmire & Jackson, and Davis, Hut & Muller) to explain the periodically spaced extinction events observed in the earth's fossil record. The idea was that a companion sun passing through or close to the spherical Oort cloud would send a death-dealing swarm of comets in earth's direction every 26 million years or so. Its presence may also help explain the non-random trajectories of certain long-period comets, as well as the strange and unexpected elliptical orbit of the recently discovered transneptunian object Sedna." You can read more here: The Cs Hit List 07: Sun Star Companion, Singing Stones and Smoking Visions
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| Fire in the Sky |
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Ben Hamilton
The Copenhagen Post 2014-02-16 00:00:00
Mystery continues to surround the landing of a strange rock in the grounds of Rygaards school in Hellerup late last month. It was a case of hold that front page as fully 50 Year 4 children from the international department of Rygaards School descended upon the offices of The Copenhagen Post on the morning of Friday January 31. But they were too late, as we had already gone to print. If only, in the immortal words of Aqua, we could turn back time. Armed with their pens, notepads and fearsome interview techniques, the intrepid reporters of the future first lay siege to managing editor Ben Hamilton (that would be me) with an onslaught of questions. Whoa, we thought you were the ones with the story! And then it was down to business. A suspect rock, possibly a meteorite, had landed in their school's grounds. They had the eye-witness accounts, the details and the expert opinions - all this humble scribe needed to do was thread it all into a news story and nail it onto that front page. No pressure at all. | |
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| Health & Wellness |
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Marcus Constantino
Charleston, West Virginia -- People across the Kanawha Valley are all asking themselves the same questions: Is my water safe to drink? Can I shower in it? Can I even rinse off my toothbrush?Chalrestown Daily Mail 2014-02-16 20:29:00 After thousands of gallons of a relatively-obscure chemical leaked into the Elk River on Jan. 9 and then into the water plant that supplies nine counties, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention set 1 part per million as the safe level for crude MCHM in drinking water based on limited information available, mostly tests on rats. However, the CDC took a step back on Jan. 15 - two days after the first zone had been lifted from the do-not-use order - and advised pregnant women not to drink tap water until undetectable levels of crude MCHM are found in the tap water. In a press conference at the state Capitol this month, Dr. Tanja Popovic, acting director of the National Center for Environmental Health within the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said the CDC doesn't like to use the word "safe," and that the advisory was meant to "empower" pregnant women. "What we want them to do is we want them empowered to feel that they can follow their instincts and do what they feel is good for them," Popovic said. If you ask Elizabeth Brown, an internal medicine doctor from South Charleston, about the safety of your tap water, her advice to you will be simple: "I don't think it's really safe for anyone at this point." Brown has seen the effects of what she believes is MCHM exposure first-hand. She continues to see them daily. "My patients who are coming in with strange rashes and irritated eyes they connect with the water, I'm telling them to avoid it for now and use extra caution," Brown said. |
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Chris Decker, ND
Primal Docs 2014-02-15 00:01:00
My father used to eat a fairly healthy bacon-and-eggs breakfast every morning before heading off to his job at the factory - that is, till we all got word from the medical powers-that-be that this sort of fare would kill us. Dutifully, my dad swapped his heart-healthy but now anathema bacon for a big bowl of Rice Krispies sweetened with a top layer of Cheerios, over which he would slice half a banana and pour a cup of 2 percent milk. At 9 p.m. every night it was his habit to have milk and cookies, which he'd share with our five dogs. And he loved candy. My parents had a special cupboard in our kitchen set aside for themselves that housed nothing but sweets. My father also made a point of eating plenty of vegetables, which he also believed were good for his heart, and, I think, just because he liked them. He ate this way, as far as I know, for decades, obediently and unquestioningly following the low-cholesterol dictates of medical authority, just as a lot of people did. On the day I started naturopathic medical school, my dad died of a massive stroke. He was dead, I was told three thousand miles away, before he could even be got to the hospital. I don't know how many countless lives have been lost owing to the absolutely unsubstantiated medical advice that cholesterol and saturated fat are bad for us and that we should eat a bunch of carbohydrate in all its various guises, but my father, as you now know, was one of them. | |
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Christina Sarich
NaturalSociety 2014-02-16 01:41:00
While it isn't Monsanto getting away with murder this time around, Dow and DuPont Chemical companies have been given a seal of approval by the European Union to grow their GMO corn. The vote which took place that could have vetoed the proposition lost 19 to 28, with 4 member states abstaining from voting. This means only five states wanted GM corn, but the way the weighted voting system is set up in the EU, theCommission is now obliged to pass the GMO crop initiative. Without a negative qualified majority against the proposal the Commission says it will pass it, according to the Health and Consumer Policy Commissioner, Tonio Borg. Germans who didn't want GMO crops in their country are furious at their representatives from abstaining to vote, since their single vote would have made a difference. Peter Simone from the Green's said:
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Beverly Meyer
Primal Docs 2014-02-11 00:00:00
Want to know your brain a little better? Here's an intro to one of your main inhibitoryneurotransmitters - GABA. Inhibitory sounds like a bad thing, but there's a balance between the excitatory and theinhibitory aspects of all function; just as there's light/dark, up/down, fast/slow and cold/hot. If we were to run on hot all the time, like most of us do in modern times, we'd get burnt out. Sick... Tired... And often oddly wired at the same time. | |
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Olly Bootle
Daily Mail 2014-02-13 02:07:00
We've all heard of placebos. They're dummy pills. They can't do anything real. After all, there's nothing in them.At least, that's what we thought. But in recent years, evidence has built up to suggest that placebos can be highly effective - particularly in treating pain, depression, and even alleviating some of the symptoms of Parkinson's disease. And it isn't just dummy pills that seem to be able to work: you could get life-changing improvements from a pretend potion that's actually just water; or perhaps fake acupuncture with needles that don't even puncture your skin. The key is simply that you think it might help you. But when it comes to placebos, it doesn't get much more dramatic than what's been called sham surgery - as Dr David Kallmes discovered a few years ago. He's a successful radiologist at the Mayo Clinic, one of the world's leading hospitals - it's where the Presidents of the United States often get treated. For the past 15 years, he's been fixing broken backs by injecting them with a special kind of medical cement. Dr Kallmes regularly performed the procedure - called vertebroplasty - and found it hugely effective. 'We saw terrific results from the procedure, really amazing results,' he told me. However, there were some questions as to exactly what was going on - because some people seemed to get better even when the operations went horribly wrong. | |
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| Science of the Spirit |
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Humberto Braga
LVX 2014-01-11 13:05:00
What is it that holds humanity back from creating world peace? We have the resources, the scientific understanding, the environmental awareness, the community, and the inner drive to create a paradise on earth. So why is humanity constantly falling back in to the same old self-consuming patterns it has suffered throughout history? What is at the root of all our problems, and how can we fix it for once and all? I propose that it all starts with one thing: psychological education and healing. | |
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John Grohol, Psy.D
PsychCentral 2014-02-16 13:32:00
According to a new study, researchers have found that people who troll online often have nasty personalities. And, well, they like doing it. Trolls enjoy trolling. Surprised? Not sure anyone would be. Nonetheless, the researchers found that trolls scored highly on a number of personality traits examined: Machiavellianism, psychopathy, narcissism, extraversion, disagreeableness and sadism. Trolling is, according to the researchers (Buckels et al., 2014), the "practice of behaving in a deceptive, destructive, or disruptive manner in a social setting on the Internet with no apparent instrumental purpose." People who troll like to post comments to websites or communities online that cause trouble, insult others, and cause general mayhem, just for the sheer pleasure of seeing what happens when they do so. The researchers coined their own term for four of the personality variables they studied, which they call the Dark Tetrad of personality: Machiavellianism, psychopathy, narcissism, and sadism. Machiavellianism is a willingness to manipulate and deceive others, while psychopathy is not having any remorse or empathy for others. The researchers thought everyday sadism would be most conducive to trolling behavior online. In two studies of over 1,215 participants, the researchers found that a number of personality traits were associated with a greater likelihood for trolling. | |
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| High Strangeness |
A group of three mountain bikers reportedly saw a reptilian humanoid last week in the middle of a trail located in the Sonoran desert. The bicyclists were riding the 24 Hours in the Old Pueblo race course, a 17 mile trail, when they spotted the creature. "It's a tough one," said G. Johnson, 34, a self-described businessperson from Tucson. "It is a 24 hour track, so you better come prepared with more than enough food and water. There are times you just wanna go back and wish you had never got there in the first place. But when you see what nature has to offer you here...well, those regrets dissipate rather quickly." Johnson states that he and two other friends were half way into the track when something "terrifying" made the group consider cancelling the ride. | |
Comment: See also: Cryptoterrestrials Have a Psychosocial and Memetic Campaign?
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UFODI
Location: London Ontario CanadaYou Tube 2014-02-02 00:00:00 Date: 02/02/2014 Tonight, this is what I saw from the parking lot of Sugarcreek Village. I guess I'm one of "those" people now. I whipped out my phone and videoed as best I could under the circumstances. There were approximately 6-8 orange lights that seemed to hang in the air, but still move around each other. I'm a pilot, so I opened foreflight and called London tower. Nada on radar. Ontario is one of the ten provinces of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province by a large margin, accounting for nearly 40% of all Canadians, and is the second largest province in total area. |
Comment: More UFO sightings in Ontario, Canada:
UFO Sightings Keep Rolling In From Ontario Canada UFO Flap Over Ontario Canada In March 2007 A Pulsating UFO in Ontario, Canada UFO sightings in Canada are on the rise Canada: Oshawa, Ontario - UFO witth Black Frayed Edges Canada: Man Sees Erratic Moving Light While Filming Moon Kincardine, Ontario, Canada: UFO Moves Like a Firefly Canada: Dunrobin, Ontario UFO spotted hovering over tree line Canada: Reports of UFO spotted flying over Ontario |
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UFOswig
Leon Guanajuato Mexico: UFO seen to be increasing and decreasing its brightness and flashing. The color was a white metal type.You Tube 2014-01-31 00:00:00 |
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Martyn Curran
Video footage of a UFO in Carlow, Ireland.You Tube 2014-02-03 00:00:00 |
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John Gillies
Footage clips of objects above Midlothian, Scotland.You Tube 2014-02-05 00:00:00 |
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| Don't Panic! Lighten Up! |
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Tomas Jivanda
The Independent, UK 2014-02-16 11:30:00
A horse that was moved into his owner's house to take shelter from the winter storms in Germany won't stop coming back. Nasar, a three-year-old Arabian horse, has decided he likes the comforts of a human home and now prefers to spend his days wandering around the house rather than being out in the field with his own kind. "He is not a fan of the wind and the rain," owner Stephanie Arndt told Die Welt newspaper, adding: "Nasar is extremely curious". The inquisitive animal has now been captured in a series of portraits galloping around the home, drinking juice from a glass and even having bash on a keyboard. After first moving in when storms hit Flensburg, northern Germany, in December, Nasar has his own room with hay, but enjoys investigating all the rooms in the house. He has also become accustomed to human treats and started eating sweets. Now the storms are up, the friendly steed is only allowed to enjoy roaming around the house during the day however, with Ms Arndt left with the difficult job of getting him out to the stables at night. In pictures: Nasar the horse enjoys some home comforts | |
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Joy Camp
Commercials the Super Bowl didn't want you to see:You Tube 2014-02-05 20:30:00 |
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John G. Browning
The Texas Bar Journal 2014-02-01 00:00:00
My recent article "To Boldly Go Where Few Judges Have Gone Before," published in the September 2013 issues of the Texas Bar Journal, I took a lighthearted look at Star Trekreferences cropping up in judicial opinions. The response was overwhelming, with national legal blogs and bar publications of other states picking up the story and even reprinting it. I heard from lawyers and judges all over the country as they confessed their own secret Star Trek fandom. I also received emails from fans of that other science fiction mega-franchise,Star Wars, demanding to know when I was going to show a little geek love for Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Princess Leia, and the other denizens of the Star Wars universe. Being a devotee of Star Wars as well as Star Trek, I'm happy to oblige. A Long Time Ago, in a Courtroom Far, Far Away And really, when you think about it, why shouldn't there be a look at how George Lucas's "galaxy far, far away" has subtly influenced lawyers and judges? No, I'm not talking about a clerks-like debate on the use of independent contractors in building the Death Star, the numerous OSHA violations in Jabba the Hutt's palace, or even whether a Tatooine "stand your ground" law would have gotten Han Solo off the hook for shooting Greedoin the cantina. Nor am I referring to the numerous reported cases involving Lucas film's army of lawyers protecting the company's intellectual property rights against would-be infringers with the zeal of X-wing pilots making the Death Star trench run (and in the process, even taking exception with political groups' use of the term "Star Wars" in association with the Reagan-era Strategic Defense Initiative).1 | |
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CBS News - Seattle
2014-02-14 12:21:00
Two math majors at Reed College lost control of a massive snowball that rolled into a dorm, knocking in part of a bedroom wall. No one was injured. The students began making the snowball last week during a rare snowstorm in Portland, Oregon. Nobody weighed the object, but college spokesman Kevin Myers says it was estimated to weigh 800 pounds or more. |
