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Richard Sawyer
Sott.net 2014-05-17 06:30:00
How the fracking companies benefit from Western-lead destabalisation of Ukraine and other conflicts of interest Citing a 'new study', The BBC, Independent and a multitude of copy & paste MSM outlets, have alarmingly reported that the UK is set to run out of its oil, coal, and gas supplies in a little over five years time. The reality below the ground however is that the UK is not actually going to run out of energy supplies any time soon. Facts can't be allowed to get in the way of profits, and the study was (apparently deliberately) distorted for use in a PR campaign on behalf of the widely criticized Fracking Industry. The story also reveals a tangled web of connections between academia, government officials, energy company lobbyists accentuated by a Fracking company director who actually holds a ministerial position for the UK Government. Why am I not surprised? | |
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| Puppet Masters |
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RT
2014-05-19 17:55:00
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his Venezuelan counterpart, Nicholas Maduro, have struck a deal which will see 240,000 barrels of oil and diesel sent to the Palestinian Authority by state-owned company Petróleos de Venezuela. During his three-day visit to the oil rich South American nation, which sits on the world's largest oil reserves, Abbas thanked Maduro for his support. "Thank you Venezuela for helping to break the monopoly that Israel has over our economy. Thank you Venezuela for responding to our needs. Thank you Venezuela for being available to continue to lend the Palestinian people more support in their fight," said Abbas. Maduro reiterated his support for Palestine and its desire to be a fully independent state. | |
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Odessablogger
2011-03-14 16:08:00
Well here is an awkward issue dear readers. For some weeks there has been rumour of a Palestinian gentleman being "spirited away" from the sovereign state of Ukraine in an American-esque style black op/rendition. I have deliberately left this matter alone whilst waiting for something more solid than rumour. | |
Comment: It seems they haven't left! See the following video, 'Mossad agents provocateurs in Ukraine', which states that ex-IDF troops (funded by an "Israeli tycoon"), as well as Mossad, participated (and directed) the original anti-government protests that culminated in the current coup-installed junta:
We wonder if dual Israeli-Ukrainian citizen/oligarch/ | |
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Eric Zuesse
WashingtonsBlog 2014-05-18 15:46:00
The key person behind the May 2nd massacre inside Odessa's Trade Unions Building appears to have been Ihor Kolomoyskyi who was appointed to be the regional governor in that area by Yulia Tymoshenko, the Ukrainian Presidential candidate that the Obama Administration has apparently been hoping will win the May 25th election to take over the Ukrainian Government, from the junta that the Obama Administration imposed in Ukraine on February 22nd. Just weeks before this coup, on February 4th, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Asia, Victoria Nuland, chose Tymoshenko's ally Arseni Yatsenyuk to head the post-coup interim government, which appointed Kolomoyskyi. Only a few months before this coup, Nuland had asserted that U.S. taxpayers had already invested more than $5 billion, in order to bring "democracy" to Ukraine, by which she was referring to the U.S. effort to oust the Russian-oriented, democratically elected, leader of Ukraine, President Viktor Yanukovych, who had prosecuted and imprisoned Tymoshenko for embezzlement and abuse of governmental office. Tymoshenko was then on 11 October 2011 sentenced to seven years in prison, and was ordered to pay the government restitution of $188 million. She was released from prison less than three years later, two days after the coup, on 24 February 2014. The Ukrainian criminal code was immediately changed, in order to legalize the actions for which Tymoshenko had been imprisoned. This allowed Tymoshenko to run for the Ukrainian Presidency. She had been Prime Minister 2007-2010. Both she and her husband, Oleksandr Tymoshenko, and his father, all three of whom were on the board of United Energy Systems of Ukraine (and thus Ms. Tymoshenko was called "the gas princess"), have been legally prosecuted as embezzling state funds; but so have most of Ukraine's oligarchs and political leaders (and there's a lot of crossover between those two categories). | |
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RT
2014-05-05 17:17:00
Government surveillance no longer targets individuals, but entire populations, former CIA contractor Edward Snowden has said. The whistleblower appeared via video link in a Toronto debate over the NSA intelligence gathering programs. Commenting on the antics of the National Security Agency, which have been described in the past as "Orwellian in nature," Snowden said every citizen is affected by intelligence gathering programs "It's no longer based on the traditional practice of targeted taps based on some individual suspicion of wrongdoing," Snowden said in the brief video. "It covers phone calls, emails, texts, search history, what you buy, who your friends are, where you go, who you love." Snowden's video link was screened during a Munk debate in Toronto, where former US National Security Administration director General Michael Hayden and Harvard law Professor Alan Dershowitz went head to head with Glen Greenwald and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian over government surveillance. | |
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Pepe Escobar
Common Dreams 2014-05-19 08:11:00
A specter is haunting Washington, an unnerving vision of a Sino-Russian alliance wedded to an expansive symbiosis of trade and commerce across much of the Eurasian land mass -- at the expense of the United States. And no wonder Washington is anxious. That alliance is already a done deal in a variety of ways: through the BRICS group of emerging powers (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa); at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Asian counterweight to NATO; inside the G20; and via the 120-member-nation Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). Trade and commerce are just part of the future bargain. Synergies in the development of new military technologies beckon as well. After Russia's Star Wars-style, ultra-sophisticated S-500 air defense anti-missile system comes online in 2018, Beijing is sure to want a version of it. Meanwhile, Russia is about to sell dozens of state-of-the-art Sukhoi Su-35 jet fighters to the Chinese as Beijing and Moscow move to seal an aviation-industrial partnership. This week should provide the first real fireworks in the celebration of a new Eurasian century-in-the-making when Russian President Vladimir Putin drops in on Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing. You remember "Pipelineistan," all those crucial oil and gas pipelines crisscrossing Eurasia that make up the true circulatory system for the life of the region. Now, it looks like the ultimate Pipelineistan deal, worth $1 trillion and 10 years in the making, will be inked as well. In it, the giant, state-controlled Russian energy giant Gazprom will agree to supply the giant state-controlled China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) with 3.75 billion cubic feet of liquefied natural gas a day for no less than 30 years, starting in 2018. That's the equivalent of a quarter of Russia's massive gas exports to all of Europe. China's current daily gas demand is around 16 billion cubic feet a day, and imports account for 31.6% of total consumption. | |
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Robert Fantina
Counterpunch 2014-05-15 14:11:00
Can anyone doubt that the United States is governed for the corporate good? The lofty concept of 'for the people' evaporated into mythical fairy dust generations ago. In the new millennium, any pretense to serve the people, rather than the corporation, has been swept away; apparently, the elected, so-called representatives, and the corporations who own them, are convinced that the 99% are sufficiently lulled into a somnolent belief that the U.S. is the greatest country in the world, and what's good for business is good for them. Those with that bizarre belief overlook some very basic and rudimentary facts: | |
Comment: Be sure to check out Robert Fantina's latest book, Empire, Racism and Genocide: a History of US Foreign Policy, published by Red Pill Press.
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John W. Whitehead
The Rutherford Institute 2014-05-19 13:44:00
Living in a free society means not having to look over your shoulder to see whether the government is watching or fearing that a government agent might perpetuate violence upon you. Unfortunately, as I detail in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, subjected as we are to government surveillance, body scanners, militarized police, roadside strip searches, SWAT team raids, drones, and other trappings of a police state, "we the people" do not live in a free society any longer. Not only are we no longer a free people but we have become a fearful people, as well, helped along in large part by politicians eager to capitalize on our fears. As Julie Hanus writes for Utne: "Since the 1980s, society at large has bolted frantically from one panic to the next. Fear of crime reduced us to wrecks, but before long we were also howling about deadly diseases, drug abusers, online pedophiles, avian flu, teens gone wild, mad cows, anthrax, immigrants, environmental collapse, and - let us not forget - terrorists." Now thanks to an increasingly militarized police force and police officers who shoot first and ask questions later, we've got one more fear to add to that growing list, and with good reason: fear of the police - local, state and federal agents. Who wouldn't be afraid of police officers who go around shooting unarmed citizens, tasering women - young and old alike, and forcing law-abiding Americans to the ground at gunpoint? Such was the case when a Missouri police officer shot and wounded an unarmed panhandler. Texas police, during a raid on a home where music was reportedly being played too loudly, repeatedly tasered a 54-year-old grandmother, kicking and punching other members of the household. A 20-year-old Florida woman who was tasered by a police officer while she was handcuffed ended up in a permanent vegetative state and eventually died. And then there was the homeless man who was shot and killed by Albuquerque police for squatting on public land. | |
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Lydia Bradbury
Liberty Voice 2014-05-16 00:00:00
The fallout from the new government's budget is still being seen in Australia, but it is already obvious that climate change is a loser when it comes to funding. Prime Minister Tony Abbott has long been skeptical of global warming and the science behind it, but with his new-found legislative power it seems as though he is looking at making that viewpoint into law. According to critics, there is no longer even the pretence of working towards limiting the effects of climate change as the government works to protect the interests of fossil fuel producers and businesses. Whether or not there is a real connection between big business interest and the new budget, Abbott and his cabinet have taken the axe to climate change research and are poised to fundamentally damage all scientific research in Australia in the process. The budgetary facts are inescapably grim for researchers and scientists based in renewable energies and research. The funding for all government programs related to climate change is set to shrink at an alarming rate, going from $5.75 billion this year to a scant $500 million in the next four years. Additionally, the Emissions Reduction Fund which is meant to help lower greenhouse gas emissions in Australia is going to be reduced to only $1.14 billion. This was devastating news after Environment Minister Greg Hunt had gone on record promising to provide $2.55 billion to fund the program. Nevertheless, it is not only climate change programs that are feeling the pinch of the Abbott budget. The Commonwealth Science and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), Australia's national science agency, will have $111 million worth of funding slashed over the next four years, which will affect an uncertain number of programs and a loss of tenth of the CSIRO workforce. | |
Comment: No matter what the beliefs are concerning the causes of climate change, and no matter the methods conceived to "deal" with it, there are extenuating circumstances of great consequence when cocky politicians set industries in motion and then pull out the rug. Opinions trump research. Big business survives. Talent goes elsewhere. People inevitably suffer.
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Marie Schuster
France24 2014-05-03 08:47:00
In honour of World Press Freedom Day, the Maison des Journalistes (MDJ), a French non-profit organization that offers shelter and support to journalists forced to flee their home countries, opened its doors to FRANCE 24. Based in Paris's 15th arrondissement, the MDJ was founded in 2002, and has since housed more than 250 journalists from 54 different countries. Johnny (who declined to give his last name), a journalist from the Central African Republic(CAR), left his home in the capital Bangui after his brother was killed. For the past four months, he has been living in a tiny room at the non-profit overlooking a nearby cemetery. "The first few nights were rough, but I got used to it," he said of his new lodgings. | |
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James Vincent
The Independent 2014-05-18 19:32:00
Even during the paranoia and antagonism of the Cold War, the United States and Russia managed to find common cause in space. In July 1975, both countries celebrated the first joint space flight, as Apollo and Soyuz spacecraft docked in orbit, astronauts and cosmonauts smiling for the cameras as they shook hands through the air lock. But now the spirit of co-operation appears to have died, with the International Space Station - the $150bn (£89bn) international research laboratory that is still physically divided along Cold War lines - becoming the rope in a tug-of-war between American and Russian politicians. The dispute began in April, when a leaked Nasa memo revealed that the agency would be suspending all contact with the Russian government because of the country's "ongoing violation of Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity". | |
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Associated Press
2014-05-18 19:22:00
The White House chief of staff says President Barack Obama is "madder than hell" about reports of treatment delays at veterans' hospitals across the country. Top aide Denis McDonough tells CBS' Face the Nation that Obama is demanding that Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki (shin-SEHK'-ee) and others in the administration "continue to fix these things until they're functioning the way that our veterans believe they should." | |
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Christina Sarich
Natural Society 2014-05-18 00:27:00
"The world today has 6.9 billion people and that's headed up to about 9 billion. If we do a really great job, we could lower that by perhaps 10 or 15 percent." ~ Bill Gates (video here) Bill Gates believes the density of the population in poor areas is too big, and with his depopulation plans he can 'solve' that problem. Consider his huge buyout of Monsanto stock - he owns millions of shares of Monsanto and Cargill stock, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation keep scooping it up. He owns more than $23 million worth, or 500,000 Monsanto shares. Seattle-based Agra-Watch, part of the Community Alliance for Global Justice, has said: "Monsanto has a history of blatant disregard for the interests and well being of small farmers around the world... [This] casts serious doubt on the foundation's heavy funding of agricultural development in Africa."It also casts serious doubt on the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and its true interests in supporting the 'poor' populations they so proudly claim they are trying to 'help. 'Gates also funds programs that blast men's reproductive organs with radiation so that they can no longer produce progeny, and covert nanotechnology that delivers dangerous vaccines. The Gates Foundation is also teaming up with the British government in raising $4 billion to fund their birth control agenda worldwide by 2020. | |
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Mark Sappenfield,
Obama's new India problem: What to do with Narendra Modi? (+video)Christian Science Monitor 2014-05-18 00:00:00
Narendra Modi will be the next prime minister of India, but until Friday, he was banned from traveling to the US because of allegations related to a 2002 riot. It's a new complication for already-rocky US-India relations. On Friday, President Obama did what just about everyone knew he must and invited Narendra Modi, India's new prime-minister-in-waiting, to the United States. It was anything but a routine invitation. Mr. Modi remains the only person ever to be banned from traveling to the United States under the International Religious Freedom Act. Until Friday, the Obama administration had not officially clarified whether the future leader of the world's largest democracy would even be allowed to come to Washington. In truth, there was little suspense. India is important to US Asia policy, and recent relationshave been so rocky that it would have been unthinkable for Mr. Obama to respond to the success of Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) with anything other than overt enthusiasm. But the fact that the decision came only now - only after it was abundantly clear that the BJP had won India's recent elections in a landslide of historic proportions - hints at a reluctance. Unfairly or not, Modi is in many ways the face of the 2002 Gujarat riots, which saw some of the worst religious violence in India's recent history. For a American president who has taken pains to reach out to the Muslim world - not to mention a president who is himself a minority - that represents an unneeded complication in America's already-strained friendship with India. | |
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Jim Hightower
Common Dreams 2014-05-18 17:40:00
Psssst, Wanna Buy My Corporation? Where's Charles Dickens when we need him? The novelist, who laid bare the shame of gross income inequality in 19th century England, came up with some perfect names for his more despicable characters, including Scrooge, Mr. Tulkinghorn, and Miss Havisham. So I'm wondering what moniker Dickens would've given to Robert Marcus. Who? He's the CEO of Time Warner Cable who already won gold in the 2014 Greed Olympics for grabbing the most cash with the least effort in the shortest time. Marcus became chief of the cable company on New Year's Day. He immediately reached out to his corporation's biggest rival, Comcast, offering to sell Time Warner Cable to the giant. Only six weeks later, the deal was done. Why would a CEO rush to eliminate both his corporation and his own job? Perhaps because of a lucrative little provision in the contract he signed to become Time Warner's honcho. It's a CCC - a "change of control clause." | |
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Greg Hunter
USAWatchdog.com 2014-05-18 00:00:00
Economist John Williams has a dire prediction for the U.S. dollar. Williams says, "I don't see what will save it at this point. . . . Now we are to the point that the dollar has been ignored for years. The federal deficit has been ignored for years. . . . That's what we are on the brink of disasterwith, and that is what has to be addressed now, and that's not happening." Williams also contends, "The way I see it, the dollar could go to zero in terms of its purchasing power. You don't want to have your assets in U.S. dollars."How are we going to get there? Look no further that the dismal first quarter gross domestic product (GDP) numbers that officially only eked out .1% growth. This is one of the reasons why Williams thinks a "renewed broad economic downturn continues to unfold." Williams goes on to say, "We're turning down a new. The first quarter should be revised to negative territory, and I believe the second quarter will be reported negative as well. That will happen by July 30 when you have the annual revisions to the GDP. In reality, the economy is much weaker than that . . . . Generally, when you adjust for inflation and you use too low of a rate for inflation, that overstates the economic growth." | |
Comment: More and more economic analysts are saying the same thing - the US Dollar is doomed to collapse and everyone should be preparing for this certain end.
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CBS News - Crimesider
2014-05-02 16:00:00
An Arizona teen accused of multiple sex crimes against one underage girl has been re-arrested as the number of potential victims climbs to 18, the Pinal County Sheriff's Office (PCSO) said Thursday evening. According to CBS affiliate KPHO, police had been investigating allegations that 12 more girls were victimized by the same man, 18-year-old Tyler Kost, of San Tan Valley in suburban Phoenix. Now sheriff's investigators say another five cases have been identified, and they expect the number of victims to continue to grow. Kost had posted bail after he was arrested on Monday, reports the station. After he was picked up again, detectives requested that he be held on a "no bond" status, PCSO spokesman Tim Gaffney said. Nearly all of the potential victims are high school students, according to sheriff's spokesman Sgt. Pat Ramirez. Investigators said that one girl was only 13 years old, while the oldest victim is 17. | |
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Robert Bridge
Russia Today 2014-05-16 13:53:00
What does the National Weather Service, Social Security Administration and now, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), all have in common? These government agencies are all hoarding weapons and ammunition for no good reason. In August 2012, it wasn't just conspiracy theorists who sounded the alarm after it was revealed that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was in the process of buying 750 million rounds of ammo. That mindboggling order came on the heels of another 450 million rounds of hollow point bullets it already bought earlier that year. The ostensible reason: target practice. Comment: Hollow points are bullets that you use specifically to kill your target. They're designed to punch large holes in soft tissue, insuring a kill by doing the most damage per hit. From wikipedia: When a hollow-point hunting bullet strikes a soft target, the pressure created in the pit forces the material (usually lead) around the inside edge to expand outwards, increasing the axial diameter of the projectile as it passes through. This process is commonly referred to as mushrooming, because the resulting shape, a widened, rounded nose on top of a cylindrical base, typically resembles a mushroom. The greater frontal surface area of the expanded bullet limits its depth of penetration into the target, and causes more extensive tissue damage along the wound path. That's 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition for an agency, created in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks, that is supposed to "respond to domestic emergencies." But what would such a "domestic emergency" look like that requires the firepower to fight the equivalent of about a dozen Iraqi wars, with ammunition that is banned by the Geneva Convention? | |
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RT
2014-05-18 15:58:00
Briton's wealthiest people own a third of the country's GDP, with a combined fortune of 874 billion dollars, which is an increase of 15.4 percent on last year's total, according to an annual survey. The Sunday Times Rich List shows that the United Kingdom's richest are richer than ever before, which is in sharp contrast with many ordinary Britons who are struggling after five years of austerity. "I've never seen such a phenomenal rise in personal wealth as the growth in the fortunes of Britain's 1,000 richest people over the past year," said Philip Beresford, who has compiled the list since 1989. | |
Comment: Meanwhile, austerity bites hard for the common men and women, withdeclining health, forced labour, and food poverty on the rise
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If there is one thing that you cannot live without, it is fresh water. Just try it some time. Seriously - try to live for 24 hours without using a single drop of fresh water. You will quickly learn how indispensable it is. Unfortunately, a lot of people that are "strategically relocating" to another part of the United States are not taking the availability of fresh water seriously when making the decision about where to move. If you live in an area that receives very little precipitation and that is not close to a consistent source of fresh water, what would you do if something happened and the water got shut off? Without water, you cannot grow food, you cannot cook, you cannot wash your clothes, you cannot take a bath and you cannot even use the toilet. The most basic things that we do in life are totally dependent on the availability of fresh water. So why are so many "preppers" considering moving to some of the driest areas of the entire country? Thanks to the drought that never seems to end, there are some southwestern cities that are now rapidly running out of water. Just check out what is happening right now in one cityin Arizona... In the northern Arizona city of Williams, restaurant patrons don't automatically get a glass of water anymore. Residents caught watering lawns or washing cars with potable water can be fined. Businesses are hauling water from outside town to fill swimming pools, and building permits have been put on hold because there isn't enough water to accommodate development.And in some areas of southern Nevada, the authorities are actually paying people to remove their lawns because there is so little water. So why would anyone that wants to become independent of the system actually move to those areas? | |
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Molly Knefel
Rolling Stone 2014-05-16 11:30:00
Of all the constitutional rights afforded to Americans, the right to counsel is one of the most well known. In movies and TV shows, cops recite Miranda rights immediately upon arresting anyone, informing suspects of their right to an attorney even if they cannot afford one. This protection for indigent defendants was ensured by the Supreme Court case Gideon v. Wainwright in 1963; four years later, another case established due process rights for children. In that case, called In re Gault, the court ruled that "Under our Constitution, the condition of being a boy does not justify a kangaroo court." But in juvenile courts across the country, children often face the full weight of the criminal justice system without the protection of a defense attorney. According to a report from the U.S. Attorney General's office, "Some systems ensure that every child in the system is represented, while others allow 80-90 percent of youth who are charged with offenses to appear without counsel." Children may be unrepresented for a variety of reasons, including lack of access to a public defender or pressure from judges or prosecutors to waive their constitutional right to an attorney. | |
Comment: You can tell a lot about a nation by the way it treats its children.
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The Connexion
2014-05-16 11:27:00
A French Air Force Mirage jet crashed in a field near Briey, in north-eastern France, yesterday. Authorities confirmed that the pilot ejected and parachuted to the ground safely as his single-seater Mirage 2000-5F jet went down at about 4.30pm in a field near houses in the tiny village of Barroches, Meurthe-et-Moselle, about 100km north of Nancy. No one on the ground was injured. The pilot, from the 116 air base at Luxeuil-Saint-Sauveur, was found in a tree and taken to hospital as a precaution. An investigation into the cause of the crash is ongoing and the area around the site has been sealed. In June 2013, a Mirage 2000 jet crashed in the Haute Saone in central France. | |
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Fascists from the Right Sector attempt to enter Europe's largest nuclear power plant in S.E. Ukraine
RT
2014-05-18 10:43:00
Ukrainian police stopped a group of armed men from entering Europe's largest nuclear power plant, located in southeastern Ukraine. In video footage allegedly showing the attempted break-in, the men say they are members of the Right Sector group. The gunmen were stopped Thursday at the entrance of the city of Energodar, near Zaporizhia Nuclear Power Plant, the facility's press service said in a Friday statement on its website. The power plant's authorities said the incident did not affect the station's operations. However, security at the plant and throughout Energodar has been heightened. Several cars full of men who introduced themselves as members of the notorious neo-Nazi group Right Sector were stopped at a checkpoint near Energodar, Ukraine's Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper reported. The men were wearing masks, had guns, and said that they were headed to "protect the nuclear power plant and the city from possible seizures," according to the paper. "We moved out to protect the city, but we were stopped and circled by police," a Right Sector member told RBK Ukraine. Local police said they confiscated the men's weapons and launched a criminal investigation. Footage posted on Svoboda TV's YouTube account on Thursday - allegedly shot during the attempted break-in - shows a group of masked men preparing to enter Energodar. | |
Comment: The EU should think twice about supporting headless fascists in Ukraine, whose mindless actions are an endangerment to not only democracy, but also to the human species.
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ITAR-TASS
2014-05-18 10:24:00
East Ukraine's Kharkov region will hold a regional independence referendum following south-eastern Ukrainian cities of Donetsk and Lugansk, member of the coordinating council of movement "Southeast" Yuri Apukhtin said at a rally near the monument to Soviet leader Lenin on the Square of Freedom in this Ukrainian city on Sunday. "Kharkov region will hold a referendum on independence following Donetsk and Lugansk. Our task is not to participate in Ukrainian presidential elections in any case. We should meet on this square on May 25. We do not recognise these elections," he stated. Meanwhile, Apukhtin criticised the second all-Ukraine national unity roundtable meeting in the city of Kharkov on Saturday. In his words, he refused to participate in this meeting, though he was invited to attend it. Representatives from movements "Southeast", "Borba" (Struggle) and the Ukrainian Communist Party are participating in the rally on the Square of Freedom. Many demonstrators came with Russian national flags. | |
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Voice of Russia
2014-05-18 10:16:00
There have been signs of brewing anger in the Ukrainian Armed Forces as many servicemen are increasingly displeased with Kiev's policies. On Saturday, a group of self-defense fighters held talks with servicemen deployed at an airfield near Kramatorsk. "They say they don't want war, they don't want to shoot or kill anyone. Many come from our region. But they refuse to surrender - they have orders to obey," a spokesman for the self-defense forces told reporters. Discontent among the servicemen has been fueled by worsening food supplies, the spokesman said. Also stationed at the airport are about 70 representatives of some unknown organizations, probably Right Sector radicals. "They wear black uniforms without any insignia and don't communicate with the military," the spokesman said. | |
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Russia Today
2014-05-18 08:33:00
Attorneys for the state of Kentucky are in federal court Friday afternoon attempting to have the United States government release hemp seeds imported from abroad that were intended to be used in pilot growing projects. It became lawful to use industrial hemp in Kentucky starting in 2013, and a farm bill signed by US President Barack Obama earlier this year paved the way for states to grow the crop for research. The US Drug Enforcement Agency nevertheless seized around 250 pounds of hemp seeds shipped from Italy to the University of Kentucky earlier this month, prompting state officials to turn around and sue that agency and others. | |
Comment: Hemp is a huge potential source of new income for farmers in the US. It can be used to make rope, clothing, and a host of other useful products. With the US economy in shambles, it's a wonder why any government agency would interfere with discovering new sources of income.
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Russia Today
2014-05-16 00:00:00
Police have fired water cannons and used tear gas to disperse several thousand demonstrators in the Turkish town of Soma, which became the scene of the country's worst mining disaster earlier this week. People scattered into side streets as the police were dispatched onto one of Soma's main commercial thoroughfares, where the offices of the local government and labor union are situated, an eyewitness told Reuters. | |
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Russia Today
2014-05-16 00:00:00
Moscow has accused a UN report on violence in Ukraine's Odessa of being purposefully blind to hard facts and simply "carrying out a political order to whitewash" the actions of the coup-appointed government in Kiev. The Russian foreign ministry believes that the report presented by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights is marked by a systematic and routine ignorance of any Kiev involvement in sparking the Odessa carnage, while placing all the blame unequivocally with the pro-Russian self-defense forces. The ministry statement remarks that not a single word was said about neo-Nazi elements who engaged in setting buildings on fire with people inside, shooting dead anyone who opposed them and finishing off the wounded in plain sight. | |
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RT.com
2014-05-16 12:07:00
Russia's National Commercial Bank, Crimea's biggest lender, has begun issuing cards on the basis of the PRO 100 payment system, developed by Russia's biggest financial institution, Sberbank. The other two biggest banks of the peninsula - Morskoy Bank and the Black Sea Bank of Reconstruction and Development - also plan to join in the near future. The Crimean banks chose the PRO100 payment system amid the urgent situation with card payments on the peninsula and the need to take quick action, Kommersant says.Russia's National Commercial Bank isn't a member of international payment systems like Visa and MasterCard, while the other two can neither service their existing cards nor issue new ones. | |
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Russia Today
2014-05-17 18:51:00
100,000 signatures have been collected for the petition calling Russian lawmakers to backpedal on the smoking ban. Also, restaurants and bars have found a way to partially avoid the ban that's due to come into effect on June 1. The Association of Restaurateurs and Hoteliers of Russia that unites over 3,000 food and beverage establishments is also demanding to postpone or cancel the ban on smoking in restaurants, cafes and bars. The organization, along with the all-Russia movement "For the rights of smokers," has drafted a list of amendments to the legislation and launched a petition, which collected 100,000 signatures in favor of the changes. | |
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Lily Dane
The Daily Sheeple 2014-05-13 16:18:00
Obamacare was officially launched nearly seven months ago, and there are still four states that still have broken exchanges. Maryland, Massachusetts, Oregon and Nevada have spent $474 federal tax dollars on their websites so far, and will likely spend far more repairing them, or on moving them to the federal exchange. The Fiscal Times reported the numbers, and they are shocking:
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Rossella Lorenzi
Discovery News 2014-05-19 14:28:00
Turkish archaeologists excavating a harbor site on the European side of the Bosphorus have unearthed a 1,200-year-old wooden object which they claim is the ancient equivalent of a tablet computer. The device was a notebook and tool - in one. The Byzantine invention was found within the remains of one of the 37 ships unearthed in the Yenikapi area of Istanbul, a site which has been at the center of excavations for the past 10 years. Also known as Theodosius Port, it was built in the late 4th century during the reign of the Byzantine Emperor Theodosius I and become the city's most important commercial port. Probably belonging to the ship's captain, the wooden object, whose cover is finely carved with decorations, is the size of a modern seven-inch tablet, but it's much thicker. | |
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RT.com
2014-05-16 11:38:00
Amid Ukraine's looming political crisis, thousands of illegal immigrants from the country may soon flood its neighboring country - Slovakia, a tendency which raises concern, says the Slovakian prime minister. "We can speak of thousands of illegal migrants from Ukraine who are motivated to cross the Schengen borders in our or other zones," said Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico at the GLOBSEC annual conference in the country's capital, Bratislava, reported Itar-Tass. Meanwhile, organized criminal groups have recently been stepping up illegal transportation of migrants across the Slovak-Ukrainian border, according to Mr Fico. Slovakia borders Ukraine's Transcarpathia region in the West. This is Ukraine's shortest border - only 98 km long. In February, Jozef Danko, spokeman for the Slovakian village of Vysne Nemecke on the border with Ukraine, told Voice of Russia radio that the inflow of vehicles from Ukraine has recently increased, not only from the nearest cities which border Vysne Nemecke but also from other parts of Ukraine. "If earlier there were many cars from Uzhhorod [Ukrainian city] and Transcarpathia [region], now there are more cars from Kiev," he added. | |
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Robert Sorokanich
Paleontologists have just unearthed the fossilized bones of a gigantic dinosaur that's never been seen before. They believe it's an entirely new species - and based on the size of its bones, it's way bigger than what we thought was the biggest dinosaur ever. Meet the new number one among earthly creatures.Gizmodo 2014-05-17 09:00:00
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Acsilyn Miyazaki
China Topix 2014-05-16 04:04:00
Archaeologists have discovered new forms of the first known Chinese characters including an unusual human skull. The discovery was part of the latest research on a number of ancient tortoise shells as well as inscribed animal bones. Archaeologists announced the discovery on Thursday, reported state news agency Xinhua. Archaeologists found two Chinese characters, Gou and Shou, in their earliest forms. They also unearthed extraordinary tortoise shells with military tokens. This was according to Chinese Academy of Social Sciences researcher, Song Zhenhao. | |
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| Science & Technology |
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Stephanie Pappas
Live Science 2014-05-19 14:00:00
Going on a first date? The chance that it leads to wedding bells may depend, in part, on how similar his or her DNA is to yours. New research finds that people tend to pick spouses whose genetic profile shares similarities with their own. The effect is subtle (other similarities, such as similarity in education, have a larger influence), but it's important to understand that mating isn't truly genetically random, researchers report today (May 19) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The genetic effect might even signal or contribute to social inequality, they write. The current U.S. social system might inadvertently sort people by genetics, for example, or contribute to schisms seen at the level of our very DNA. Picking a partner When it comes to marriage, the adage "birds of a feather flock together" is more on-point than the idea that opposites attract. Many studies have found that people tend to marry others who are similar to them in education, social class, race and even body weight. The phenomenon is called assortative mating. The question, according to study leader and University of Colorado research associate Benjamin Domingue, was whether these assortative mating differences are visible at the genetic level. The researcher analyzed genetic data from 825 non-Hispanic white Americans who participated in the U.S. Health and Retirement Study. They compared the similarity of the DNA of married couples with the similarity of random, non-coupled individuals. The results, mirrored in a follow-up study with data from the long-running Framingham Heart Study, revealed that married people have more similar DNA segments than random pairs of people. | |
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Elizabeth Palermo
Live Science 2014-05-16 06:08:00
Dogs and people have more in common than a love of Frisbees and long walks on the beach. A new study finds that certain dogs, just like certain humans, carry a gene mutation that causes albinism - a condition that results in little or no pigment in the eyes, skin and hair. The study by researchers at Michigan State University identifies the exact genetic mutation that leads to albinism in Doberman pinschers, a discovery that has eluded veterinarians and dog breeders until now. Interestingly, the same mutated gene that causes albinism in this dog breed is also associated with a form of albinism in humans. "What we found was a gene mutation that results in a missing protein necessary for cells to be pigmented," study co-author Paige Winkler, a doctoral student in the College of Veterinary Medicine at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan, said in a statement. Winkler said the gene mutation found in Doberman pinschers is responsible for a condition known as oculocutaneous albinism, which also affects humans. The condition expresses certain characteristics in both humans and dogs. "With an albino Doberman, you see a white or lighter-colored coat, pink noses and lips, along with pale irises in the eyes," Winkler said. "These traits are very similar to the characteristics humans display with this particular condition, causing light-pigmented skin and hair, along with eye discoloration and vision disturbances." | |
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P. Gosselin
NoTricksZone 2014-05-16 00:00:00
A reader/professor has sent me an internal memo he recently obtained from a meteorologist and member of the Deutsche Meteorologische Gesellschaft [German Meteorological Society], abbreviated as DMG. Clearly grave concern is emerging over a large swath of the broader German meteorological-climatological community in the wake of the Lennart Bengtsson witchhunt. Comment: Bengtsson, a leading academic from the University of Reading, left the high-profile Global Warming Policy Foundation as a result of threats and McCarthy-style pressure. His 'defection' was described as the biggest switch from the pro-climate change lobby to the sceptic camp to date. The memo was authored by a group of dissenting DMG-member meteorologists and intended to be published in the DMG reports, but never saw the light of day. It reveals a growing and widespread worry over the suppression of scientific views among German Meteorological Society members. One of the authors of the memorandum wrote an e-mail to the reader who provided the copy to me. He writes: "A circle of mostly older colleagues of the Free University of Berlin, who very much reject the tone one finds in today's field of climatology, has asked me to draft a memorandum on the subject and to publish it in theReports of the German Meteorological Society. Shortened by a half and totally watered down, the memorandum appeared in the last issue. I now take the liberty to bring the original version to your attention.I've deleted the name to protect the source. What follows is the original, un-watered down version of the memorandum - translated in English: | |
Comment: Clearly the meteorologists and climatologists are not lone targets in the campaigns waged to undermine ethical scientific research. It is despicable for world-renowned experts to be subjected to ostracism and life threats in order to silence inconvenient viewpoints differing with a particular political or self-serving agenda. And, the public doesn't bat an eyelash. Aren't we better than this?
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Ian Sample
The Guardian, UK 2014-05-18 14:24:00
Researchers have worked out how to make matter from pure light and are drawing up plans to demonstrate the feat within the next 12 months. The theory underpinning the idea was first described 80 years ago by two physicists who later worked on the first atomic bomb. At the time they considered the conversion of light into matter impossible in a laboratory. But in a report published on Sunday, physicists at Imperial College London claim to have cracked the problem using high-powered lasers and other equipment now available to scientists. "We have shown in principle how you can make matter from light," said Steven Rose at Imperial. "If you do this experiment, you will be taking light and turning it into matter." The scientists are not on the verge of a machine that can create everyday objects from a sudden blast of laser energy. The kind of matter they aim to make comes in the form of subatomic particles invisible to the naked eye. The original idea was written down by two US physicists, Gregory Breit and John Wheeler, in 1934. They worked out that - very rarely - two particles of light, or photons, could combine to produce an electron and its antimatter equivalent, a positron. Electrons are particles of matter that form the outer shells of atoms in the everyday objects around us. | |
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Vincent Torley
Uncommon Descent 2014-05-17 12:18:00
Over at his Website, Debunking Christianity, John Loftus has put up a very brief post titled, What About the Origins of Life Itself? It reads as follows: A commenter named formerlutheran responded: Loftus then posted a follow-up reply, praising science at the expense of theism: Another commenter named Luiz Fernando Zandra posed another objection to the theory of Intelligent Design: In this short post, I'd like to set the record straight. | |
Comment: For an in depth analysis of the problem of the origin of life, see engineer Bryant M. Shiller's book, Origins of Life: The 5th Option.
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Ron Cowen
Nature 2014-05-16 12:05:00
The evidence for the primordial gravitational waves that caused a sensation when it was announced in March could be less strong than previously thought, according to a cosmologist, adding to reports of existing rumours that questioned the work. The observation recorded by the BICEP2 telescope at the South Pole in March would confirm a weird but popular theory that the Universe ballooned from subatomic to macroscopic size during its first tiny fraction of a second. Gravitational waves originated in this cosmic 'inflation' would make their presence known by polarizing the thermal radiation left over from the Big Bang - the cosmic microwave background - in a particular swirling pattern known as b-modes. But dust in the Milky Way galaxy scatters microwaves with this same pattern, and this galactic microwave radiation must be carefully identified and subtracted to see the primordial fingerprint. Raphael Flauger of New York University and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton suggested in a lecture presented on 15 May at Princeton University in New Jersey that one of six methods used by the BICEP2 astronomers to distinguish primordial b-modes from the foreground was not applied correctly. | |
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CNBC
2014-05-16 10:34:00
A senior German official has warned that Google may have such a dominant market position that a breakup of the company "must be seriously considered." Such a move - which would be difficult to enforce because Google is based in the United States - could be a last resort for countries seeking to prevent the Internet search giant from systematically crowding out competitors, said Sigmar Gabriel, who is Germany's economy minister and vice chancellor. "A breakup, of the kind that has been carried out for electricity and gas grids, must be seriously considered here," Gabriel wrote in an op-ed published Friday by German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. "But it can only be a last resort. That's why we are focusing on anti-trust style regulation of Internet platforms." Google has for years faced criticism over its dominant position in Europe, where no serious local rival has emerged to challenge its search business. But Gabriel's comments reflect a new sense of urgency among European governments and businesses that the continent's home-grown Internet industry risks being smothered by American rivals. On Thursday, some 400 companies - including major German and French publishers - announced they were submitting a new anti-trust complaint against Google. The grouping, calling itself Open Internet Project, alleges that Google promotes its own products in search results at the expense of rivals. | |
Comment: Crowding out other internet providers is not the only issue with internet domination by Google. The company has been accused of being highly selective in its search results, vacuuming up huge amounts of personal data from individuals, and of turning over data to the NSA.
The Disappeared: SOTT.net and Google's conspicuous omissions Google shuts down millions of websites Q&A: Google to Dig Deeper into Users' Lives Google faces legal action over alleged secret iPhone tracking Google Comes Under Fire for 'Secret' Relationship with NSA | |
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Ernesto Guido, Nick Howes & Martino Nicolini
Cbet nr. 3868, issued on 2014, May 16, announces the discovery of an apparently asteroidal object (~ magnitude 18.2) on CCD images taken on 2014, May 09.3 by R. J. Sanders with the Catalina Sky Survey's 0.68-m Schmidt telescope. This object has been found to show cometary appearance by observers elsewhere. The new comet has been designated C/2014 J1 (CATALINA).Remanzacco Observatory 2014-05-17 17:48:00 We performed follow-up measurements of this object, while it was still on the neocp. Stacking of 50 unfiltered exposures, 15-sec each, obtained remotely on 2014, May 16.4 from Q62 (iTelescope network, Siding Spring) through a 0.70-m f/6.6 CDK astrograph + CCD, shows that this object is slightly diffused. The FWHM of this object was measured about 20% wider than that of nearby field stars of similar brightness (at the moment of our imaging session the Moon - 0.98 phase - was just about 40 degree away from the comet). Our confirmation image (click on it for a bigger version)
M.P.E.C. 2014-K04 assigns the following parabolic orbital elements to comet C/2014 J1: T 2014 June 13.44; e= 1.0; Peri. = 191.98; q = 1.74; Incl.= 160.18. | |
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Ian O'Neill
Discovery News 2014-05-15 19:33:00
It's no secret that the sun has wide ranging impacts on our planet - it is, after all, the primary energy source for our biosphere. But when it comes to how the sun impacts climate variations and weather phenomena, scientists can have a hard job teasing out the sun-Earth connections. One connection, however, is no secret. When the solar wind impacts the Earth's magnetosphere - the global magnetic field that deflects the sun's ionizing particles to the poles - high latitudes can be treated to a beautiful light display called the aurora. But can the solar wind have other, more "everyday" impacts on our atmosphere? Yes, says a new study published today (May 14) in the journal Environmental Research Letters. | |
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| Earth Changes |
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Laura Parker
National Geographic 2014-05-16 14:16:00
"Exceptional drought" makes for tough times in Oklahoma. In Boise City, Oklahoma, over the catfish special at the Rockin' A Café, the old-timers in this tiny prairie town grouse about billowing dust clouds so thick they forced traffic off the highways and laid down a suffocating layer of topsoil over fields once green with young wheat. They talk not of the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, but of the duster that rolled through here on April 27, clocked at 62.3 miles per hour. It was the tenth time this year that Boise City, at the western end of the Oklahoma panhandle, has endured a dust storm with gusts more than 50 miles per hour, part of a breezier weather trend in a region already known for high winds. "When people ask me if we'll have a Dust Bowl again, I tell them we're having one now," says Millard Fowler, age 101, who lunches most days at the Rockin' A with his 72-year-old son, Gary. Back in 1935, Fowler was a newly married farmer when a blizzard of dirt, known as Black Sunday, swept the High Plains and turned day to night. Some 300,000 tons of dirt blew east on April 14, falling on Chicago, New York, Washington, D.C., and, according to writer Timothy Egan in his book The Worst Hard Time, onto ships at sea in the Atlantic. | |
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The Northern Star
2014-05-18 10:05:00
Police and National Parks and Wildlife rangers attended the rescue of a melon headed whale on the beach south of Brunswick Heads yesterday morning. The rare coastal whale, more akin to a large dolphin, was found about 5.30am, 5km south of Brunswick Heads and was released back into deep water by local police. However, the marine mammal returned to shore soon after and beached itself again. A team of carers from National Parks and Wildlife, Ballina Seabird Rescue and Orrca Inc helped Seaworld veterinarians prepare the whale for transport in a special trailer to the Gold Coast aquarium. There the animal will undergo blood tests and treatment before being released back into the wild. Ballina Seabird Rescue spokesman Keith Williams, alias Capt Turtle, explained that the whale's sickness was not unlike Parvovirus in dogs. He said the whale would not end up as an amusement for Seaworld visitors. | |
Comment: For more unusual occurrences of this kind over the past month, involving normally deep sea dwelling creatures, see also: Bizarre fish caught off Pensacola pier, Florida
Strange deep sea fish caught at Pamban, India Rare Sturgeon washes up along Connecticut River Rare, mysterious deep sea fish washes ashore along North Carolina coast Monster jellyfish spotted on beaches of South West Wales Rare, deep-water megamouth shark caught off the coast of Japan Scientists puzzled by odd creature found on South African beach Something stirring down below? Rare deep water goblin shark caught off Key West, Florida | |
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WFLA.com
2014-05-17 09:38:00
Florida Fish and Wildlife officials are working to identify a very unusual fish. The specimen was caught off a pier in Pensacola, and as of Friday, was on its way to the FWC Fish and Wildlife Research Institute. The fish has a long smooth tail with no fins, and looks almost prehistoric. Researchers will confirm the ID of the species, and take a tissue sample for DNA analysis. | |
Comment: Just some of the bizarre and deep water creatures turning up on beaches around the world!
Strange deep sea fish caught at Pamban, India Rare Sturgeon washes up along Connecticut River Rare, mysterious deep sea fish washes ashore along North Carolina coast Monster jellyfish spotted on beaches of South West Wales Rare, deep-water megamouth shark caught off the coast of Japan Scientists puzzled by odd creature found on South African beach Something stirring down below? Rare deep water goblin shark caught off Key West, Florida | |
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Freedom & Democracy Watch
2014-05-17 00:00:00
A landslide in Dariali Valley in northern Georgia has severed the only road across the Caucasus Mountain Range. Five people are still missing. Locals say three Turkish construction workers died who were working on the Dariali hydro power station. The pipeline that ships gas from Russia to Armenia is damaged. Rescue workers have now started to evacuate locals. Energy Minister Kakhi Kaladze says the top priority is to reopen the road and get the pipeline back online. The landslide happened in Dariali Valley in northern Georgia, on the Caucasus range near the Russian border. It severed the road connecting Georgia and Russia and the rock masses that tumbled down blocked off the Tergi river and may flood Larsi border crossing, a joint Georgian-Russian checkpoint, and adjacent areas of the Russian republic North Ossetia. | |
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US Geological Survey
2014-05-17 21:11:00
Event Time 2014-05-18 01:02:29 UTC 2014-05-18 07:02:29 UTC+06:00 at epicenter Location 4.259°N 92.747°E depth=9.8km (6.1mi) Nearby Cities 319km (198mi) WSW of Banda Aceh, Indonesia 337km (209mi) WSW of Sabang, Indonesia 375km (233mi) W of Meulaboh, Indonesia 377km (234mi) WSW of Sigli, Indonesia 1000km (621mi) W of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Technical Details | |
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RT.com
2014-05-16 02:39:00
Wildfires continued to whip through southern California on Thursday, forcing more people to evacuate their homes in the San Diego area and inspiring the governor to declare a state of emergency. Officials have opened an investigation into arson. San Diego County officials have had no choice but to maintain existing evacuation advisories for the thousands of people who live or work in the path of the fires. Orders issued Wednesday prohibited the 9,000 students who normally attend California State University to avoid campus. More were advised to stay away from their usual places of school and employment on Thursday, as the fires showed no sign of slowing down. "That's the number one priority, is to save life and then to save property," San Diego County Supervisor Dianne Jacob said at a news conference on Thursday, as quoted by the Los Angeles Times. "We are not out of the woods yet | |
Comment: It's hardly arson if they broke out in multiple locations simultaneously across the state. Teenagers are a convenient scapegoat to keep folks believing the authorities can do anything about earth changes. Note that they acknowledge the Santa Ana winds are supposed to happen in October, not May! Did the teenagers cause that too?...
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The Extinction Protocol
2014-05-17 00:00:00
A team of scientists from the United States have traveled to Grenada, exploring the darkest corners of a huge underwater volcano off the island's coast hoping to better understanding the mysteries of earthquakes and tsunamis, and ultimately saving lives. President of US Ocean Exploration Trust, Robert Ballard, famous for discovering the Titanic 12,000 feet below the surface of the icy North Atlantic in 1985, has set his sights on exploring the volcano, 'Kick'em Jenny', studying its eruption history and learn more about how underwater volcanoes can pose a threat. Ballard, who is also director of the Centre for Ocean Exploration at the University of Rhode Island's Graduate School of Oceanography, said the Kick'em Jenny volcano has a history of explosive eruptions, which could have the potential to trigger tsunamis, the effects from which could be felt as far away as the northeastern United States. According to the US Geological Survey (USGS), the Kick'em Jenny volcano has erupted 10 times since 1939, with the most recent eruption in 1990. "This is the most hazardous part of our planet, where (tectonic) plates are head-on," said Ballard,noting that the devastating 2011 Japanese earthquake and the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami were both underwater earthquakes. The American television network, ABC TV, said reporters from its 'Nightline' program accompanied Ballard and his team of 40 explorers aboard their exploration vessel Nautilus during the final 48 hours of their 90-day voyage, which was documented for an upcoming National Geographic special, 'Caribbean's Deadly Underworld', which premieres Sunday on the US network, Nat Geo WILD. | |
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Translated by Sott Editors
Advance.hr 2014-05-17 17:51:00
Most of the Balkan region has been affected by floods of catastrophic proportions, which have so far claimed at least 20 lives. This figure is significantly higher according to some sources. The flooding has crippled Serbia and Bosnia, as well as Croatia as of yesterday. Tens of thousands of people have been evacuated and more then 250,000 homes remain without power. Most sources suggest this is "the biggest flood ever recorded in Balkan history". According to the latest news, floods have claimed 12 lives in Bosnia and Herzegovina and 8 lives in Serbia. So far there are no fatalities in Croatia, but in certain regions the situation is becoming increasingly difficult. Some sources report more precipitation in one day than in past 4 months. This has lead to many rivers flooding cities and settlements across the region. | |
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D. J. Walter Scott
The Hindu 2014-05-04 14:36:00
A day after catching deep sea lobsters, considered a 'prize catch,' country boat fishermen have caught rare fish, believed to be fully grown 'Rhinochimaera,' a deep sea fish. Fishermen, who ventured into the south sea for fishing in a motorised 'vallam' (country boat) on Friday morning and returned on Saturday morning, caught the fish while fishing about 40 nautical miles south of Pamban. I. Litisan, who owned the 'vallam,' said the fishermen had gone to the deep sea looking for a better catch when they caught the rare fish. Each fish weighed about six to seven kg. As the fish were not consumed, they were cut into pieces for drying, he said. Sources in the Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute (CMFRI) said the fish belonged to the Rhinochimaera genus and Chimaera family. The exact species could be confirmed only after a detailed study, they said. These fish could have migrated from the deep sea, they added. Mr. Litisan said fishermen in his boat also caught about 50 deep sea lobsters, totally weighing about five kg. They were sold at Rs. 1,000 a kg, he said. | |
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rt.com
2014-05-16 20:11:00
Nearly one quarter of the US honeybee population died over the winter, according to an annual survey. Beekeepers report the losses remain higher than they consider sustainable, and the death rate could soon affect the country's food supply. "More than three-fourths of the world's flowering plants rely on pollinators, such as bees, to reproduce, meaning pollinators help produce one out of every three bites of food Americans eat,"the US Department of Agriculture said in a statement about the survey. Bees' pollinating role adds $15 billion to the value of U.S. crops, including apples, almonds, watermelons and beans, according to government reports. The study, produced by a partnership between the USDA, the Apiary Inspectors of America and the Bee Informed Partnership, found that 23.2 percent of honeybee colonies died over the winter, which is higher than the "acceptable winter mortality rate" of 18.9 percent. | |
Comment: For more information on Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) and the disappearing bees:
Northern Europe hit by most bee deaths - EU study Japanese fruit farmers stung badly by bee shortage Again and again: 37 million bees found dead A new suspect in bee deaths: the U.S. government Bee deaths wane, cause unknown in Minnesota Scientists discover what's killing the bees and it's worse than you thought Cell Phones Caused Mysterious Worldwide Bee Deaths, Study Finds Bumblebees: Gone with the Wind? A Major Disappearance | |
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The rare nearly 7-foot-long Atlantic sturgeon that weighs about 100 pounds was found Saturday near Elys Ferry Road. "It had been here a while, it started to decay...started to smell," said eyewitness Gary Weed. This fish is labeled an endangered species by the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. State experts are taking a closer look at the big discovery at the DEEP Marine headquarters in nearby Old Lyme. "We had seen a few wash up in Long Island Sound the last couple of years, the same size or pretty close, but this is the largest we've seen in the river so far," said Tom Savoy, who is a DEEP fisheries biologist.
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Marko Djurica
Reuters 2014-05-17 10:13:00
Seven bodies were pulled from flooded homes in Bosnia and the army rushed to free hundreds of people stranded in a school in Serbia on Saturday during the worst floods to hit the Balkans in over a century. Soldiers steered huge amphibious vehicles through streets under 2-3 meters of water in the town of Obrenovac, 30 km (18 miles) southwest of the Serbian capital Belgrade, trying to rescue an estimated 700 people crammed into the top floors of the Jefimija primary school. "The whole town is under water," a Reuters photographer at the scene said. Up to 70 people at a time scrambled onto the vehicles, mainly women and frightened children. Others, stranded in flooded homes, climbed from roofs and balconies into small boats to be taken to safety. | |
Comment: Europe has particularly been flooded since the beginning of the year, as the map below shows:
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Sam Cook
St. Paul Pioneer Press 2014-05-16 08:35:00
The fish began piling up along the western shore of Grand Lake near Duluth on Monday, not long after the ice had gone out. Pushed by a strong east wind, thousands of dead fish washed up in reed beds and the front yards of lakeshore residents. Perhaps as many as 35,000 fish died, said Dan Wilfond, fisheries specialist for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources at French River, although he cautioned that that was a rough estimate. The fish, victims of winterkill -- low oxygen levels -- included sunfish, crappies, walleyes, northern pike and largemouth bass, Wilfond said. Grand Lake, a 1,600-acre lake between Saginaw and Twig, is popular with anglers. "It was disheartening," Wilfond said. "It was a pretty severe kill." Tim Goeman, DNR regional fisheries supervisor at Grand Rapids, said he was not aware of other lakes across northeastern Minnesota that have suffered winterkill. | |
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Joe Borlik and Scott Gustin
MyFox8.com 2014-05-16 14:51:00
Nags Head - A rarely seen deep sea fish washed up on the beaches of North Carolina on Monday evening. A Lancetfish was found in Nags Head on a beach south of Jennette's Pier. It is an open ocean fish and rarely comes to shore. Lancetfishes have large mouths and very sharp teeth. They grow up to 6.6 feet in length. Very little is known about their biology, though they are widely distributed in all oceans, except the polar seas. Officials with Jennette's Pier say the rare fish was alive when it washed up on the shore. | |
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Scott Neuman
New York Now 2014-05-14 05:29:00
Tropical storms are migrating out of the tropics, reaching their peak intensity in higher latitudes, where larger populations are concentrated, a new NOAA-led study published in the journal Nature says. Each decade for the past 30 years, tropical cyclones - which include hurricanes and typhoons - have become strongest on average about 30 to 40 miles farther north or south of the equator, the study says. In a statement on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's website, the agency says:
While intensity estimates for tropical storms have proven difficult to pin down, "the location where a tropical cyclone reaches its maximum intensity is a more reliable value and less likely to be influenced by data discrepancies or uncertainties," says Jim Kossin, a scientist with NOAA's National Climatic Data Center, who is the paper's lead author. | |
Comment: The warming of the atmosphere in higher latitudes causes the troposphere to expand and bulge poleward, redirecting the jet streams and lifting up excess moisture. This effect shifts rain belts into traditionally colder climate zones where the warm precipitation encounters frigid air. As a general rule, one inch of rain translates into ten inches of snow. In 1999, Maurice Ewing, former director of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, stated that it's cold enough right now to cause an ice age - all we need is more moisture. Given that underwater volcanoes are pouring heat into the oceans, the tropic zones are expanding poleward and worldwide flooding is at an all-time high (all components of a regular and reliable earth cycle), we may soon be in breach of that critical moisture threshold.
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| Fire in the Sky |
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WBIR.com
2014-05-16 14:13:00
One of two meteors that lit up the Southern sky Thursday night burned up over Tennessee. Bill Cooke, head of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office, said the very bright meteor entered the atmosphere over Columbia, S.C. at 9.38 p.m. The basketball-sized meteor flew northwest at speeds reaching more than 78,000 miles-per-hour, eventually burning 52 miles above Pikeville, Tenn., just north of Chattanooga. In all, the meteor flew 290 miles, which Cooke said is quite rare. The video below is from Cooke's blog and shows the meteor shooting across the sky.
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Comment: This report of a meteor was about 45 min prior to a boom heard over West Virginia on the same night.
National Weather Service believes "boom" over West Virginia caused by meteor | ||
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| Health & Wellness |
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Dr. Mercola
Mercola.com 2014-05-14 08:48:00
As recently reported by CNN Health1 and Time Magazine,2 five things account for nearly two-thirds of all deaths in the US, or about 900,000 each year:
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Christina Sarich
Natural Society 2014-05-19 14:01:00
In an act of lucidity and light that our own country should somewhat imitate, Russian lawmakers are considering equating GMO-related activities to a terrorist act or death threat, a criminal act that Russia says deserves the punishment which killers and creators of mass ecological and human genocide deserve. A Russian newspaper, Izvestia, writes that criminal liability will be imposed on any act that involves producing, selling, or transporting genetically modified organisms, if Russian lawmakers get their way. A bill supporting this ideaology was submitted to the Russian State Duma lower parliament house by the Duma agrarian committee as well as the Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR) (who claimed the parliament's bill was too mild.) Those initiating the bill suggest that criminal responsibility should be applicable to companies and government officials, but not to farmers who were convinced that GMOs were safe to grow. They believe individuals should only undergo disciplinary action, and not criminal charges. The bill would also heavily fine companies for distorting or concealing information about the environmental impacts of GMOs. If this bill were to pass in the US, I'm sure Monsanto would go broke paying all the fines they would be subject to. They've paid off scientists and entire institutions, as well as our own FDA and EPA to conceal evidence about both health and environmental damage that GMOs cause. | |
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Jon Rapoport
Activist Post 2014-05-17 08:30:00
If you worked for a federal agency that was killing people at the rate of 100,000 a year, every year, like clockwork, and if you knew it, wouldn't you feel compelled to say or do something about it? At the FDA, which is, in fact, killing Americans at that rate, no one has ever felt the need to step forward and speak up. Let's shift the venue and ask the same question. If you were a medical reporter for a major media outlet in the US, and you knew the above fact, wouldn't you make it a priority to say something, write something, do something? I'm talking about people like Sanjay Gupta (CNN, CBS), Gina Kolata (NY Times), Tim Johnson (ABC News), and Thomas Maugh II (LA Times). | |
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Gary Null
Dr. Sherri J Tenpenny warns about the perils of vaccination.Youtube 2011-11-07 04:22:00
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Comment: See also: If you think your kid's vaccines are safe, don't watch this!
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OK - I am addressing the popular question concerning why I don't recommend calcium supplements. Basically, the American public has been completely bamboozled by the American Dairy Association to believe that calcium is somehow the most important mineral ever and that we should all want to get as much of it in our diets or supplementally as possible ("don't forget to take your Tums!"). There is no rational foundation for this. Calcium is, in fact, the single most abundant mineral in our food supply. Even if you completely avoid dairy products (which isn't the worst idea in the world, btw) there would still be plenty of existing calcium in other foods to meet anyone's daily requirements. If, for some reason you truly are deficient in calcium, the problem isn't likely to be a "deficiency" of dietary calcium. The problem is much more likely to relate to deficiencies in essential cofactors (i.e., magnesium, phosphorus, vitamin D3, vitamin A, vitamin K2, boron...etc.) OR - very commonly - an issue with insufficient hydrochloric acid production, absolutely required for the proper ionization of calcium so that it may be properly absorbed. Hormonal imbalances and errant signaling can also contribute improper calcium metabolism. If these happen to be your issues, then calcium isn't going to be the only thing you are likely missing and calcium supplementation is anything but advised. | |
Comment: Learn more about the benefits of bone broth:
Broth: A Food That Heals Stock vs Broth - Are You Confused? Top 5 reasons why bone broth is the bomb. The amazing health benefits of bone broth 10 benefits of bone broth + gut healing recipe Bone Broth - One of your most healing diet staples Traditional Bone Broth in Modern Health and Disease | |
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Steve Connor
The Independent, UK 2014-05-18 14:12:00
Millions of people are unwittingly pouring hundreds of tons of tiny plastic beads down the drain. These can persist in the environment for more than 100 years, and have been found to contaminate a wide variety of freshwater and marine wildlife, The Independent on Sunday can reveal. Few consumers realise that many cosmetic products, such as facial scrubs, toothpastes and shower gels, now contain many thousands of microplastic beads which have been deliberately added by the manufacturers of more than 100 consumer products over the past two decades. Plastic microbeads, which are typically less than a millimetre wide and are too small to be filtered by sewage-treatment plants, are able to carry deadly toxins into the animals that ingest them, including those in the human food chain such as fish, mussels and crabs, scientists said. While many people have assiduously tried to recycle their plastic waste, cosmetics companies have at the same time been quietly adding hundreds of cubic metres of plastics such as polyethylene to products that are deliberately designed to be washed into waste-water systems - one estimate suggests that, in the US alone, up to 1,200 cubic metres of microplastic beads are washed down the drains each year. Scientists and environmentalists have started lobbying the industry to stop using plastic microbeads in exfoliant skin creams and washes, but with limited success - a relatively small number of firms have publicly agreed to phase them out, and even then have given themselves several years to do so. Britain, along with the rest of the EU, is being urged to follow the lead of New York State which last week became the first place in the world to prohibit the use of plastic micropellets in cosmetic products after a failure by the vast majority of personal-care companies to agree to an immediate voluntary ban. The New York State Assembly decided to act after scientists found disturbing levels of microplastic beads in the Great Lakes of North America. The researchers said the beads arrived in waste water contaminated with the microplastic residues of more than 100 consumer products, including facial scrubs, soaps, shampoos and toothpaste. | |
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The Telegraph
2014-05-18 12:02:00
Pornography now is so widespread in the United States that it deserves to be addressed seriously as a major public health crisis, a panel of activists has said. On the eve of a two-day conference on sexual exploitation, they suggested that porn be tackled in the same manner as teenage smoking or drunk driving. "There's an untreated pandemic of harm from pornography," said Dawn Hawkins, executive director of Morality in Media, which has campaigned against pornography since 1962. | |
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Dr. Kelly Brogan, M.D. & Sayer Ji, Founder
Greenmedinfo.com 2014-05-17 09:00:00
"Could you please make sure the eggs aren't runny? I'm pregnant." At their first prenatal appointment, pregnant women are doled out a list of NO's including deli meats, fish, and unpasteurized cheese. There is a growing awareness of the fact that this list may be dangerously NON EXHAUSTIVE (and largely misguided, especially when it comes to unpasteurized dairy and eggs). Even a recent, bold pronouncement by the Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, attempted to sound the alarm about chemical exposures with recommendations for "unproven" but potentially harmful exposures. They describe the importance of considering chemicals in personal care products, over the counter medications and supplements, metals and industrial pollutants in fish, and pesticides. However, they dilute their message by making statements such as "Realistically, pesticides are so rigorously regulated that human exposure via food residues is usually minimal, even in non - organic products." Unfortunately, the concept of "dose makes the poison" is no longer operative in a world of multiple, synergistic chemical exposures, the toxicity of which appears to be contingentupon each individual's endocrine and immune system. | |
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Russia Today
2014-05-18 07:55:00
Activists pushing for greater disclosure on genetically modified foods in Oregon said they are working on a petition campaign to require labeling on such products, while one small community has plans to ban GMO food altogether. | |
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ScienceDaily
2014-05-17 14:14:00
Sleeping pills increase the risk of cardiovascular events in heart failure patients by 8-fold, according to research from Japan. The study was presented today at the Heart Failure Congress 2014, held 17-20 May in Athens, Greece. The Congress is the main annual meeting of the Heart Failure Association of the European Society of Cardiology. Dr Masahiko Setoguchi said: "Sleeping problems are a frequent side effect of heart failure and it is common for patients to be prescribed sleeping pills when they are discharged from hospital. They also have other comorbidities and may be prescribed diuretics, antiplatelets, antihypertensives, anticoagulants and anti-arrhythmics." He added: "Cardiac function of heart failure patients worsens with repeated hospitalizations. We therefore decided it was important to investigate the relationships between drugs prescribed at discharge, rehospitalization and cardiovascular events in heart failure patients." The researchers retrospectively examined the medical records of 111 heart failure patients admitted to Tokyo Yamate Medical Center from 2011 to 2013. Information was collected on the presence of coexisting cardiovascular and other medical conditions, medications administered during hospitalization and those prescribed at discharge, laboratory test results, electrocardiogram, echocardiogram and chest radiographic data and vital signs at admission and discharge. | |
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The Connexion
2014-05-13 00:00:00
Your mobile phone could give you cancer - but only if you use it for more than 15 hours every month over several years. Researchers at the University of Bordeaux said in the scientific journal Occupational and Environmental Medicine that their study of people with meningiomas and gliomas in Gironde, in the Calvados, Manche and the Hérault, revealed a link between years of heavy mobile phone use and a specific type of cancerous brain tumour. They found that regular professional mobile phone users, such as salespeople, living in urban areas were at greater risk of developing the tumours. | |
Comment: Did you catch that last part?
"But the American National Cancer Institute has said that no study has consistently linked mobile phones with brain cancer." Considering how committed the ANCI and other US government agencies like the FDA are in suppressing alternative treatments to chemotherapy, and how invested they are in maintaining the status quo, it's no wonder they would make statements like the above! The following graphs illustrate this point in a study made by Dr. Henry Lai of University of Washington, but you can bet that these numbers are probably conservative and that the facts tell an even more dangerous story.
See also: Cellphones cause brain tumors, says new report by international EMF collaborative Neurosurgeon shows how low levels of radiation such as Wi-Fi, smart meters and cell phones cause the blood brain barrier to leak How the telecom Industry seeks to confuse about the dangers of cell phones | |
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RT
2014-05-17 02:13:00
Selling energy drinks to minors will soon be illegal in Lithuania, as the parliament voted overwhelmingly to ban highly caffeinated beverages to people under the age of 18. Lithuania is the first EU country to enact such a ban. The ban, which includes non-alcoholic beverages containing more than 150 milligrams per liter of caffeine, will take effect in November. It also applies to beverages containing a range of stimulants like guarana, ginsenosides, glucuronolactone, and taurine. While considering the measure, the Baltic state's government cited health concerns, stating that a high concentration of caffeine may lead to addiction and hyperactivity. Citing scientists, the parliamentarians also stressed that it may encourage youngsters to try drugs. As a result, lawmakers unanimously voted for the ban, with only six people choosing to abstain. Now Lithuania, an EU member since 2004, hopes other countries in the 28-member bloc will follow suit. | |
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| Science of the Spirit |
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ScienceDaily
2014-05-19 12:01:00
Much like key players in social networks, University of Kansas scientists have found evidence that there are keywords in word networks that hold together groups of words in our memory. In a study published in the Journal of Memory and Language, Michael Vitevitch, KU professor of psychology, showed that research participants recognized these keywords more quickly and accurately than other words that were like the keywords in many respects except for their position in a network of 20,000 similar-sounding English words that he and colleagues created in 2008. "If words are indeed stored like a network in memory, said Vitevitch, "we should be able to see how characteristics of the network affect language-related processes. Our findings clearly show that there are words that hold key positions on the word network and that we process them more quickly and accurately than similar words that they hold together in our memory." | |
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Have you wondered how caught up we get in our daily lives that we hardly make the time to bond with nature. In our spare time, we either watch TV, play games, sit on the computer or meet friends. That has a negative impact on our health. There is a term called 'Ecopsychology' which shows the connection between ecology and human psychology. Well, hope this doesn't sound too boring, but its a simple theory which we just forget. Distancing yourself from nature and finding comfort in this concrete jungle has negative effect on humans, mentally and physically, and even nature. We develop less empathy towards nature, so end up destroying what we never created, but the fact remains that humans have an emotional bond with Mother Nature, which we remain oblivious to. | |
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Patricia Pearson
Mail Online 2014-05-17 03:32:00
At around 4am that morning, my father gave an audible sigh. It was loud enough to wake my mother, who sleepily assumed that he was having a bad dream. But he wasn't. That sigh was his final breath as he died. No one, least of all my father, had known he was ill. As for my mother, she'd assumed he was still asleep when she rose a few hours later and had breakfast alone. Afterwards she'd returned to the bedroom and tried, with increasing desperation, to wake him. There was, however, one person who knew about Dad's death well before Mum did: my sister Katharine, who lived 100 miles away and was herself suffering from terminal breast cancer. 'On the night of my father's death,' she told mourners at his memorial service some weeks later, 'I had an extraordinary spiritual experience. 'It was about 4.30am and I couldn't sleep, when all of a sudden I began having this amazing experience. For the next two hours, I felt nothing but joy and healing. I felt hands on my head, and experienced vision after vision of a happy future.' When she awoke that morning, she'd described them to her teenage son Graeme as she drove him to school. Among the visions of the future, she told him, was one of his own child - a yet- to-be conceived five-month-old granddaughter - whom she'd played with on her bedroom floor. It wasn't till Katharine got back home that my mother phoned to tell her Dad had just died. Suddenly, she knew the reason for the powerful surge of energy and joy she'd felt in her bedroom, the sense of someone there. 'I now know that it was my father,' she said. Now, my family isn't in the habit of channelling ghosts. Indeed, my first reaction to my sister's vision was close to hysterical laughter. But, almost immediately afterwards, the vision began to make profound sense, like puzzle pieces slipping perfectly into place. Without discussing it, we were convinced as a family that Dad had done something of great emotional elegance. | |
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Mike Adams
Natural News 2014-05-17 12:58:00
The phrase "conspiracy theorist" is a derogatory smear phrase thrown at someone in an attempt to paint them as a lunatic. It's a tactic frequently used by modern-day thought police in a desperate attempt to demand "Don't go there!" But let's step back for a rational moment and ask the commonsense question: Are there really NO conspiracies in our world? The Attorney General of South Carolina would surely disagree with such a blanket statement. After all, he sued five pharmaceutical companies for conducting a price-fixing conspiracy to defraud the state of Medicaid money. Similarly, in 2008, a federal judge ruled that three pharmaceutical companies artificially marked up their prices in order to defraud Medicare. In fact, dozens of U.S. states have filed suit against pharmaceutical companies for actions that are conspiracies: conspiracy to engage in price fixing, conspiracy to bribe doctors, conspiracy to defraud the state and so on. The massive drug company GlaxoSmithKline, even more, plead guilty to a massive criminal fraud case involving a global conspiracy to bribe doctors into prescribing more GSK drugs. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. A deeper look into the criminality of just the drug industry alone reveals a widespread pattern of conspiratorial behavior to defraud the public and commit felony crimes in the name of "medicine." What is a conspiracy, exactly?As any state or federal prosecutor will gladly tell you, a "conspiracy" is simply when two or more people plot to commit an act of deceit (or a crime). | |
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Jordan Taylor Sloan
PolicyMic 2014-05-14 20:22:00
In the music world, drummer jokes are always popular. Most of them have the same punchline: Drummers are idiots. Take, for example, the following: "How do you tell if the stage is level? The drummer is drooling from both sides of his mouth." Whether it's being ruthlessly mocked for their idiocy, repeatedly killed in This Is Spinal Tapor just lusted after less often than the lead guitarist (whom we've already studied), drummers walk a tough road. But it turns out science holds them in really high regard: They have a rare, innate ability to problem-solve and change those around them.
For starters, rock steady drummers can actually be smarter than their less rhythmically-focused bandmates. A study from the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm found a link between intelligence, good timing and the part of the brain used for problem-solving. Researchers had drummers play a variety of different beats and then tasked them with a simple 60-problem intelligence test. The drummers who scored the highest were also better able to keep a steady beat. Apparently figuring out how to play in time is just another form of problem-solving. At last, hard proof that John Bonham really was a genius. | ||
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| High Strangeness |
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Candace Sutton
Daily Mail 2014-05-19 14:43:00
Missing Flight MH370 did not crash and its current whereabouts may be known to the Central Intelligence Agency and the Boeing aircraft company, Malaysia's influential former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad has claimed. Dr Mahathir said the plane could have been switched onto autopilot remotely by the CIA if it had been hijacked. Comment: True, though not talked about much in the mainstream media. Such technology has been available for decades, and SOTT highly suspects it was employed during the 9/11 false flag. 'Remotely by radio or satellite links by government agencies like the Central Intelligence Agency, if terrorists attempt to gain control of the flight deck,' he wrote in an entry entitled 'What goes up must come down' on his blog, chedet. 'Airplanes don't just disappear,' he said. 'Certainly not these days with all the powerful communication systems, radio and satellite tracking and filmless cameras which operate almost indefinitely and possess huge storage capacities.' 'The plane is somewhere, maybe without MAS [Malaysia Airlines] markings,' he said, reports the Sydney Morning Herald. 'It is a waste of time and money to look for debris or oil slick or to listen for pings from the black box. "For some reason, the media will not print anything that involves Boeing or the CIA,' he said. | |
Comment: Dr. Mahathir is right about one thing: MH370 most likely did NOT crash. And its total disappearance IS a mystery that suggests there's something more to the story than we're being told. However, another possibility remains: Yes, Boeing would know how such things could be done to their own technology, but we think they're just as 'in the dark' as everyone else. There's one thing Dr. Mahathir is wrong about: planes DO just disappear. For example, Flight 19 and many others. But the circumstances surrounding such disappearances are usually just too strange to account for with our materialistic worldview. Journalist and author John Keel, for one, wasn't afraid to think deeply about the implications.
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Desiree Tresa Gasper
The Star Online, Malaysia 2014-05-17 08:03:00
Johor Baru - It's a strange sight indeed - three sets of muddy footprints, one set looking like it belonged to a tiger, another like it was an elephant's and the last resembling a human's but much bigger in size. The trail of footprints that stretched close to 1km near the Endau Rompin forest reserve have retirees Sia Chwee Khim, 64, and her husband Lim Teong Kheng, 66, puzzled and very excited. They believe the last set may be that of the mythical "Bigfoot". The couple, their daughter Joanna, 30, and a group of friends from Singapore decided to follow the tracks for more than 1km on May 10. "It was just astounding - the creature or creatures had walked in the damp red soil and onto the tar road, leaving clear footprints for us to see," said Sia, adding that the group took countless pictures and even measured the large footprints, which were about 48cm long and 11cm wide. "We tried to mimic the steps but could not stretch our legs to match the distance of the stride. | |
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Antonio Molloy
The Independent 2014-05-02 08:51:00
If you've always dreamed of owning a mansion but don't have the funds required to make it a reality, then this property on the market in Illinois could be just the ticket. The Hiram B Scutt Mansion, former home of the Civil War veteran and barbed wire tycoon who gave it its name, is up for sale for just $159,900 (£95,000). Built in 1882, the three-storey, red-brick building in Joliet covers 4,960 square-feet and is on the United States' National Register of Historic Places. But as the saying goes, if it sounds too good to be true, that's probably because it is - the sprawling residence is also said to be haunted, Patch.com reported. The house was bought by real estate broker Brian Kearney in 2004. Two years later football players from the University of St Francis rented out the building and threw a party. | |
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Marcel Woo
China Topix 2014-05-17 21:47:00
Residents in Mengchang village in the province of Heilongjiang were stirred Friday when three unidentified flying objects fell from the sky and landed into a vegetable garden. The Yi'an county government confirmed that unidentified objects - metallic balls half-covered by a layer of jagged edge - dropped from the sky. "Villagers in Mengchang heard a loud noise and then saw big ball of fire falling from the sky and into a vegetable garden," the county government said. "I saw a huge ball of fire, I thought it was a meteorite. I hid inside my house and waited until the object has landed," said one villager who lives near the vegetable farm. However, a report on Saturday said the unidenfied objects could be part of a Russian rocket, called Proton-M, that crashed outside of Kazakhstan's territory on Friday. | |
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| Don't Panic! Lighten Up! |
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The People's Cube
2014-05-19 14:11:00
Experts in the world's only settled science are up in arms today as a blunder committed by a staunch ally threatens their efforts to raise taxes and save the planet. On a recent visit to Washington DC, French foreign minister Laurent Fabius told President Obama and Secretary of Climate John Kerry, "we have 500 days to avoid climate chaos." The remarks came less than a week after the White House released its 829 page National Climate Assessment which introduced the term "climate disruption." "That French cretin wasn't supposed to use 'climate chaos' yet!" screamed a government-funded climate scientist at a leading research facility, as he was polishing his hockey stick. "We just started using 'climate disruption' last week and hadn't even come close to getting all the money and regulations we wanted from it yet. Dammit!" His colleague, a computer scientist, who was busy cooking fudge to mix with temperature data, concurred: "Fabius ruined our best new synonym by springing it far too early. The only good one we have left to use is 'catastrophe.' Good synonyms don't grow on trees, you know. Thanks to morons like him, nothing else will either!" | |
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