 | |||||
 |  |  |  | ||
|
No new articles.
|
|
Pepe Escobar
Asia Times 2014-12-23 03:37:00
The Roman Empire did it. The British Empire copied it in style. The Empire of Chaos has always done it. They all do it. Divide et impera. Divide and rule - or divide and conquer. It's nasty, brutish and effective. Not forever though, like diamonds, because empires do crumble. A room with a view to the Pantheon may be a celebration of Venus - but also a glimpse on the works of Mars. I had been in Rome essentially for a symposium - Global WARning - organized by a very committed, talented group led by a former member of European Parliament, Giulietto Chiesa. Three days later, as the run on the rouble was unleashed, Chiesa was arrested and expelled from Estonia as persona non grata, yet another graphic illustration of the anti-Russia hysteria gripping the Baltic nations and the Orwellian grip NATO has on Europe's weak links.1 Dissent is simply not allowed. At the symposium, held in a divinely frescoed former 15th century Dominican refectory now part of the Italian parliament's library, Sergey Glazyev, on the phone from Moscow, gave a stark reading of Cold War 2.0. There's no real "government" in Kiev; the US ambassador is in charge. An anti-Russia doctrine has been hatched in Washington to foment war in Europe - and European politicians are its collaborators. Washington wants a war in Europe because it is losing the competition with China. Glazyev addressed the sanctions dementia: Russia is trying simultaneously to reorganize the politics of the International Monetary Fund, fight capital flight and minimize the effect of banks closing credit lines for many businessmen. Yet the end result of sanctions, he says, is that Europe will be the ultimate losers economically; bureaucracy in Europe has lost economic focus as American geopoliticians have taken over. Only three days before the run on the rouble, I asked Rosneft's Mikhail Leontyev (Press-Secretary - Director of the Information and Advertisement Department) about the growing rumors of the Russian government getting ready to apply currency controls. At the time, no one knew an attack on rouble would be so swift, and conceived as a checkmate to destroy the Russian economy. After sublime espressos at the Tazza d'Oro, right by the Pantheon, Leontyev told me that currency controls were indeed a possibility. But not yet. | |
Comment: The American Empire is dying a fast death, and Russia and China just may be able to pick up the pieces and create a system not based on cold, brutal, myopic psychopathy.
| |
 |
| Puppet Masters |
|
BBC
2014-12-24 22:52:00
The number of people seeking work in France has risen to a record high, official figures show. The jobless total rose by 27,400 in November to 3,488,300 - the highest level yet seen. That means the number looking for a job has risen by 5.8% in the past year. The claimant count rose in November for the third month in a row, and official government estimates suggest the economy will have grown by just 0.4% this past year. The jobless figures count the number of people claiming benefits and looking for work with the National Agency for Unemployment. The alternative international measure of unemployment, devised by the International Labour Organisation and based on a regular survey, says that unemployment in France rose to 2.84 million in the third quarter of the year, giving an unemployment rate of 9.9%. | |
Comment: Will Hollande even last until 2017?
| |
|
|
Daniele Pozzati
Russia Insider 2014-12-24 18:48:00
Over the weekend Der Spiegel interviewed Ukraine's prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk or "Yats" as Victoria Nuland nicknamed him during her infamous "Eff-the-EU" phone call to the US Ambassador in Kiev. It is important to keep that phone call in mind because it proves,
Had the US not gone so far as to impose an unelected, openly anti-Russian government, Russia could have perhaps - perhaps that is - remained passive. | |
Comment: Coming from the guy that called east Ukrainians 'subhumans', there can only be one correct interpretation of what he meant by "winning the hearts" of Novorussians:
| |
|
|
RT
2014-12-24 18:27:00
Government and corporate entities have far too much leeway to hack into webcams in order to conduct surveillance, and laws supposedly designed to protect victims of such an intrusion are inadequate, according to a new report. The report, titled 'Digital Peepholes,' highlights how easy it is for law enforcement and other government agencies, as well as corporations, to violate Americans' Third and Fourth Amendment rights. Constitutional "guarantees should preclude the government from remotely activating webcams, given that webcams are frequently located in the home, where privacy rights are at their strongest," wrote the report's authors, all of the Institute for Science, Law and Technology at the IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law. "Yet because the existing laws on government electronic surveillance allow secret proceedings and provide few opportunities for public oversight, there is no way of knowing how many times remote webcam activation has been approved by a judge, or been used without any judicial authorization." As underscored by The District Sentinel, there is no outright ban on the federal government hacking into a webcam. The capabilities are often exploited, as exhibited by the classified National Security Agency documents released by former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden. | |
|
|
RT
2014-12-24 17:21:00
Anti-police social media postings have spawned a wave of arrests across the United States in recent days, after the double murder of two New York Police Department officers on Saturday was revealed to be predated by an ominous internet threat. Individuals in New York, New Jersey, and Colorado were apprehended by law enforcement on Monday this week for making web postings purported to advocate killing cops, local networks reported. That same day, police in Massachusetts announced they are pursuing criminal charges against a man who wrote the term "put wings on pigs" on his personal Facebook page - a reference to a social media post that prefaced Saturday's double homicide. Devon Coley, 18, was arrested by police in Brooklyn on Monday and arraigned on a charge of making a terroristic threat after posting on Facebook a cartoon of a gunman opening fire at a patrol car alongside the phrase "73Nextt," believed to be in reference to a nearby police precinct. Thirty miles away, authorities in Tinton Falls, NJ arrested Matthew Reardon, 29, and charged him with threats against police for writing on his own profile: "Don't wanna get clipped while sitting in your squad car?? Don't be a (expletives deleted) pig who's looking to get killed...Everyone who goes out of their way to (expletive deleted) with other people should get executed in cold blood." In Colorado Springs, CO, 33-year-old military vet Jeremiah M. Perez was caught by police and later arraigned for posting online, among other threats, "VETERANS WILL KILL RETIRED HELPLESS COPS." | |
Comment: Say goodbye to the First Amendment. Once the authorities start suppressing free speech, in whatever form, it's not long before they find excuses to muzzle it in other instances. Since judges and courts walk in step with police enforcement, you can't expect them to side with the rights of the people either. There's also the creepy fact that authorities are monitoring social media and investigating those who are expressing their free speech rights. People need to be very careful about what they say, online or to anyone in person.
| |
|
|
RT
2014-12-25 17:24:00
Israeli police have fired a rubber bullet at a five-year-old Palestinian boy's face as he was getting out of a school bus on his way home, the child's family told Palestinian media. He sustained a skull fracture under his eye. The incident happened when Muhammad Jamal Ubeid and his 14-year-old sister stepped out of the school bus and started walking home in al-Issawiya, an Arab village and neighborhood in East Jerusalem, on Wednesday. "An Israeli soldier fired a black rubber-coated bullet at the child from a close distance, injuring him under the eye," Muhammad's uncle told the Palestinian Ma'an News Agency. | |
Comment: Simply unconscionable! What possible threat does a 5 year old boy pose to an adult Israeli police officer?
| |
|
|
RT
2014-12-25 17:00:00
The protests in the US are not about individual and isolated events, but a reaction against racial bias, discrimination and race hatred that lies at the foundation of what the US is in the modern world, geopolitical analyst Eric Draitser told RT. Berkeley is still wrapped in protests and clashes after police shot dead an armed Black teenager on December 24. 18-year-old Antonio Martin was shot after he pointed a gun at a police officer at a gas station. It's not the first incident when police have been seen to be extremely violent and overreacting. RT: We now know that the man killed was armed but it still sparked major clashes. So what does that tell us about the mood of the protests in US? Eric Draitser: It tells us that the protests are not about individuals and isolated events or incidents, that rather the protester reaction is against what the people perceive to be deeply rooted and deeply embedded institutionalized racism in the US, the kind of racism that is not simply the overt form practiced by Ku Klux Klan or by no-Nazis or whomever other. It's rather a form of racism that is deeply embedded in the very fabric of the society in this country. I think even a cursory look at American history proves that fully - that in fact racial bias, racial discrimination and race hatred really lies at the foundation of what the US is in the modern world. | |
Comment: The elite psychopaths have created a police state to control the population and crush dissent. Racial profiling is an integral part of that, and without racism being culturally embedded within society it wouldn't be as effective.
| |
|
|
Tony Cartalucci
New Eastern Outlook 2014-12-24 23:33:00
The Western media has attempted to portray Mark Zuckerberg's ambitious plan to get every human being online as altruistic at first, but later revealed as simply what could be called "profitable empathy." In reality however, the truth is much more sinister, with Facebook already revealed to be much more than a mere corporation run by Zuckerberg and his "ideas" Facebook is the pinnacle of social engineering, an online operant conditioning chamber - also known as a Skinner box - that is being used to track, trace, document, and manipulate half of the entire online population. Despite users attempting to utilize Facebook to connect and communicate with individuals and organizations of interest, Facebook has turned its features against users, insidiously manipulating their timelines to show selected posts and updateswhile "soft censoring" others to manage public perception. "Studies" have even been published proving the effectiveness of Facebook's unethical social engineering. In one study, the emotions of users were successfully manipulated by selectively posting only negative or only positive posts from individuals or organizations on users' contact lists. A report published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) titled, "Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks," stated in its abstract that (emphasis added): We show, via a massive (N = 689,003) experiment on Facebook, that emotional states can be transferred to others via emotional contagion, leading people to experience the same emotions without their awareness. We provide experimental evidence that emotional contagion occurs without direct interaction between people (exposure to a friend expressing an emotion is sufficient), and in the complete absence of nonverbal cues. Not only are the findings troubling - illustrating that Facebook possesses the ability to influence the emotions of its users unwittingly through careful manipulation of their news feeds - but the invasive, unethical methods by which Facebook conducted the experiment are troubling as well.In another experiment Facebook manipulated the news feed of some 2 million Americans in 2012 in order to increase public participation during that year's US presidential election. | |
|
| Society's Child |
|
RT
2014-12-25 06:40:00
Walmart, America's largest private employer, is being forced to raise its minimum wage payments for workers. The move could improve the lives of roughly one-third of its 1.3 million employees and reduce the burden on the government. Since 21 states have adopted minimum wage increases either via legislative pressure or ballot initiatives, Walmart must now adjust base salaries at a third of its locations, according to an internal memo seen by Reuters. The memo sent to store managers this month said the wage hikes are due to come into effect on January 1. Walmart spokeswoman Brooke Buchanan told Reuters that the company is making the changes to "ensure our stores in the 21 states comply with the law." Thirteen states lifted the minimum wage in 2014, up from 10 states in 2013 and eight in 2012. The minimum wage increased 17 percent in South Dakota, to $8.50, and rose two percent in Arizona, to $8.05. | |
Comment: A recent legislative ruling has forced Walmart to recompense employees for lost wages, and another judge has ruled in favor of employees who were unlawfully intimidated for striking to protest low wages. Hopefully the tide is turning against Walmart's egregious labor policies, it's way past time!
| |
|
|
RT
2014-12-25 20:12:00
An arsonist has set a mosque ablaze in the southeastern Swedish town of Eskilstuna. TheChristmas Day attack comes amidst heightened anti-immigration sentiment in the country. Up to 20 people, including children, were in the mosque at the time of the attack, which occurred in a residential area of the medium-sized town on Thursday. The fire erupted after 1 p.m. local time, in a prayer room which was housed on the ground floor of a tower block, after an attacker threw an incendiary device through the window. The space was reportedly used by the city's Somali association. | |
Comment: It is a disgrace to see people channel their anger against innocent people where they should be looking at their own governments for creating these situations where Muslims need to seek asylum in the first place.
| |
|
|
Stephen Lendman
Global Research 2014-12-25 20:05:00
Washington is the grinch that stole Christmas. Bah Humbug defines its agenda. Unprecedented in modern times. Privileged Americans never had it better. Ordinary ones face lump of coal harshness. Hard times keep getting harder. Reflected in institutionalized inequality. Growing poverty. High unemployment. Multiples higher than phony Labor Department numbers. An epidemic of underemployment persists. Jobs paying poverty or sub-poverty wages. With few or no benefits. Households need two or three to get by. Growing millions face "one impossible choice after another," according to Poverty USA. "(B)etween food and medicine(s), getting to work or paying the heating bill." Census data show around half the population living in poverty or bordering it. In the world's richest country. Affecting nearly 60% of children. America has a higher percent of working poor than any other industrialized country. Human suffering is real. Neoliberal harshness is official policy. Force-fed austerity reflects it. Social injustice is rife. Bipartisan complicity supports it. Ordinary people are increasingly on their own out of luck. America's social contact is targeted for elimination. Disappearing when most needed. Monied interests alone are served. Inequality is appalling. A race to the bottom persists. Class warfare defines it. Most working Americans get by from paycheck to paycheck. One missed one away from possible homelessness, hunger and despair. Inflation adjusted median household income keeps dropping. Americans have less to spend on increasingly more expensive goods and services. People who eat. Drive cars. Pay rent. Service mortgages. Have medical expenses. Heat and/or air-condition residences. | |
|
|
Dawn Papple
The Inquisitr 2014-12-23 19:40:00
Five years ago, a busted old swimming pool sat out of commission on the property of a foreclosed home in Mesa, Arizona, and from that damaged amenity, the Garden Pool movement was cultivated. In 2009, Dennis and Danielle McClung bought that foreclosed home and empty swimming pool in need of expensive repairs. Instead of fixing up the swimming pool, McClung transformed the swimming pool into a self-sufficient, mini ecosystem. McClung built a plastic cap over the old swimming pool and began cultivating food where people once swam. The Garden Pool featured a closed-loop ecosystem where tilapia, algae, and duckweed flourished alongside broccoli and sweet potatoes. McClung's goal was to feed a family of five and within a calendar year, their Garden Pool saved the family 75 percent on their grocery bills. Before long, the idea grew into a movement and Garden Pool, the 501(c)3 non-profit organization, was formed. Today, according to the Garden Pool website, Garden Pools are being built around the globe as a sustainable solution to modern "food production challenges." Grist featured the Garden Pool in an article late last summer and praised the growth of the Garden Pool. | |
|
|
RT.com
2014-12-24 18:31:00
A shop worker has allegedly hosed homeless people seeking shelter outside a shop front with ice cold water to prevent them sleeping there. Police investigated the incident after a local woman reported the alleged assault on social media. Tammi-Lee Connor, who lives in Canterbury, says she saw a shop worker at the local Wilkinsons using a hosepipe in an attempt to remove a group of homeless people. The force of the hose reportedly caused one man to fall over and hit his head. | |
Comment: Such a shame that some people view the homeless as less than human. Further, they never seem to think that they could ever find themselves in the same situation. Unfortunately, homelessness is quickly becoming a reality for many in this world.
Hunger and homelessness rise in the U.S. 36 Statistics Which Prove That The American Dream Is Turning Into An Absolute Nightmare For The Middle Class US: Child Homelessness Up 33% in 3 Years | |
|
What took place in Washington over the past two weeks with the repeal of Dodd Frank and then the effective repeal of the Volcker Rule sounds strikingly familiar to at least three previous periods in American History that led to total disaster. There were of course the Northern "carpetbaggers", whom many in the South viewed as opportunists looking to exploit and profit from the region's misfortunes following the Civil War.The "carpetbaggers" would play a central role in shaping new southern governments during Reconstruction period who were joined by Southerners who saw economic gain in joining the Northerners in the exploitation of the South. There were called "scalawags". | |
|
|
RT
2014-12-25 18:19:00
Over 100 descendants of the Russian nobility residing outside the country have addressed European nations with a call to stop irrationally alienating Russia and give an unbiased appraisal to the current Ukrainian crisis. The open letter written by Prince Dmitry Shakhovskoy and his wife, Princess Tamara, and signed by over 100 people representing the diaspora of the so-called first-wave emigration, was published byRossiiskaya Gazeta on Thursday. "The aggressive hostility that Russia is facing right now is lacking any rationality and the double standard policy is simply exceeding any limits," claim the authors of the message. "Russia is being accused of all crimes, it is pronounced guilty a priori and without any evidence, while other countries are shown surprising leniency, in particular when Human Rights are concerned," they letter reads. "We cannot put up with daily slander targeting modern Russia, its leaders and its president, who are slapped with sanctions and smeared with dirt, in contradiction to basic reason." | |
Comment: Overcoming the psychopathic mindset of the EU/NATO/US and start thinking with reason and impartiality will indeed be the challenge for the coming new year.
| |
|
| Secret History |
|
Valerie Tarico
Huffington Post 2011-11-17 20:52:00
Valerie Tarico interviews Dr. Tony Nugent, scholar of world religions. Dr. Nugent is a symbologist, an expert in ancient symbols. He taught at Seattle University for fifteen years in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies and is an ordained Presbyterian minister. Most Americans know how Christmas came to be celebrated on December 25: The Emperor Constantine chose the date because it was winter solstice in the Julian Calendar, the birthday of dying and rising gods like Mithra and Sol. Some people also know that our delightful mélange of Christmas festivities originated in ancient Norse, Sumerian, Roman and Druid traditions - or, in the case of Rudolph, on Madison Avenue. But where does the Christmas story itself come from: Jesus in the manger, the angels and wise men? The familiar Christmas story, including the virgin conception and birth of Jesus, is found in the gospels of Matthew and Luke. Scholars have pointed out that these stories are somewhat disconnected from other parts of these Gospels and the rest of the New Testament. In fact, by the time he is a young boy in the temple, Jesus's parents seem to have forgotten the virgin birth. They act surprised by his odd behavior. There is never any other mention in the New Testament of these incredible events! These stories seem to be an afterthought, written later than the rest of the gospels that contain them. Comment: Indeed. The other two gospels, Mark (which was used as a source for Matthew and Luke) and John, totally lack a birth story for Jesus. And the earliest known form of the gospel of Luke (included in the first New Testament canon by Marcion) also lacked the birth story. They are fictions written generations after the events they presume to relate. | |
|
|
Mark Lane
Lew Rockwell Show 2014-12-25 18:36:00
A transcript of the Lew Rockwell Show episode 385 with Mark Lane. ROCKWELL: Well, good morning. This is the Lew Rockwell Show. And what an honor it is to have as our guest this morning, Mr. Mark Lane. Mark has been the champion of peace and of justice his entire legal career. I could spend the entire show talking about his achievements. I remember his beating CIA agent, E. Howard Hunt, and the CIA in a legal victory. I remember him defeating CIA agent or "ex-CIA agent," Bill Buckley. And I was so influenced by his great book Rush to Judgment. This is the first work of Kennedy assassination revisionism, for which he was targeted by the CIA and the rest of the regime. Mark has told the truth his whole life about the Kennedy assassination and the CIA and many other topics. | |
Comment: For more background info on this subject, we can recommend three books:
The Secret Team: The CIA and Its Allies in Control of the United States and the World by Fletcher Prouty JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy by Fletcher Prouty JFK: The Assassination of America by Laura Knight-Jadczyk | |
|
|
ScienceDaily
2014-12-23 00:00:00
Scientists have discovered the oldest recorded stone tool ever to be found in Turkey, revealing that humans passed through the gateway from Asia to Europe much earlier than previously thought, approximately 1.2 million years ago. According to research published in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews, the chance find of a humanly-worked quartzite flake, in ancient deposits of the river Gediz, in western Turkey, provides a major new insight into when and how early humans dispersed out of Africa and Asia. Researchers from Royal Holloway, University of London, together with an international team from the UK, Turkey and the Netherlands, used high-precision equipment to date the deposits of the ancient river meander, giving the first accurate time-frame for when humans occupied the area. | |
Comment: Scientists have been finding other tools that challenge the established timelines of human history:
| |
|
| Science & Technology |
|
Eric Hopton
RedOrbit 2014-12-24 19:09:00
Forget those hi-tech apps and widgets. Forget your anachronistic lo-tech paper calendars with cutesy pictures of animals or romantic misty landscapes. You might react to these artificial cues and bring some semblance of order to your life, but physiologically, your body dances to a different tune - the hard-wired circadian rhythms that drive many biological processes to cycle every 24 hours. From the very beginnings of life on earth, in the earliest cells of the most primitive organisms, this fundamental process of life has been essential for survival. To protect the all-important replicating DNA of the first living beings from high ultraviolet radiation during the daytime, those organisms developed photosensitive proteins and circadian rhythms. Surviving to this day, for instance, the fungus Neurospora retains this clock-regulated mechanism. When the natural function of circadian rhythm is disrupted, the human body can succumb to many related health problems, including metabolic disease and neuropsychiatric illnesses such as bipolar disorder, anxiety, depression, schizophrenia, as well as sleep and anxiety disorders. You mess with that pre-fungal bio-app, the circadian clock, at your peril. But some intriguing work by Thomas Burris, Ph.D., chair of pharmacological and physiological science at Saint Louis University (SLU) and his colleagues brings promise of new ways to treat problems that are associated with circadian dysfunction. | |
|
| Earth Changes |
|
Ceylon Today
2014-12-22 21:21:00
An individual has been killed yesterday (21st) in a wild elephant attack in Uhana area. The remains of the victim are lying at Ampara Hospital. The post-mortem is yet to be conducted. Uhana Police are conducting further investigations in to the incident. | |
Comment: Since August elephants on the island of Sri Lanka seems to be going berserk for some reason: Wild elephant kills yet another person in Sri Lanka
Third elephant attack within 3 days in Sri Lanka: Two killed in jumbo attack Father and son killed in elephant attack, Sri Lanka 2 people killed in another elephant attack in Sri Lanka Wild elephant attacks kills two in Sri Lanka One person killed in wild elephant attack in Sri Lanka Fourth elephant attack within four weeks in Sri Lanka Two killed in a wild elephant attack in Maankulam, Sri Lanka | |
|
|
Viet Nam News
2014-12-25 21:11:00
A 12-year-old boy was killed by an elephant from a travelling circus troupe on Tuesday in Dak Mil district's Duc Manh commune. Nguyen Van Luat was feeding the elephant while it was chained up in preparation for that evening's show when the 40-year-old animal grabbed him with its trunk and crushed it under its foot, according to chairman of the communal people's committee Du Van The. The elephant keeper rushed out to save the boy, but it was too late. Binh Minh circus troupe, which comes from northern Thai Binh Province, arrived in the commune on Monday during its tour of Viet Nam. Pham Thanh Cao, deputy head of the troupe, said the boy and his friend were annoying the elephant. He admitted that the troupe had not taken any protective measures. The case is currently under investigation. | |
|
Virginia Aquarium responders found a stranded whale in Virginia Beach Wednesday morning. The female Minke whale was dead when the aquarium's stranding response team arrived near Dam Neck Naval base. It was about 14 feet long. Heavy equipment on the base is assisting moving the animal above the high tide line and the stranding team will conduct a necropsy Friday morning. The program is supported by the Virginia Aquarium Foundation through donations from the community, and grant-making organizations. To report a dead or live stranded marine mammal or sea turtle call the Virginia Aquarium Stranding Response Program 24-hour hotline at (757) 437-6159. | |
|
|
Ian Sample
The Guardian 2014-12-25 19:25:00
The voyage was meant to retrace the steps of Douglas Mawson, the great polar explorer and scientist who led the Australasian Antarctic Expedition of 1911. What happened instead captured the world's attention, something none of the scientists, journalists and paying public aboard could have foreseen. The Akademik Shokalskiy got stuck in ice on Christmas Day 2013 only two weeks after leaving New Zealand. A rescue mission swung into operation. Chinese, French and Australian icebreakers hurried to the scene only to be defeated by the ice floes themselves. News editors around the world must have thanked their chosen gods. Into the seasonal dead zone, a real story had dropped. Stranded far from home, those aboard the Shokalskiy faced danger amidst the spectacular ice. That New Year's Eve an interview with expedition leader Chris Turney was beamed live to Times Square in New York. Two days later, the rescue effort entered a new phase. With no icebreaker able to smash way through, a Chinese helicopter, Xue Ying, or "Snow Eagle", rose into the air for the first of five flights to ferry passengers from the stricken ship to the Aurora Australis. A core crew remained behind to sail vessel home once conditions allowed. | |
Comment: Note how Turney still claims the wind is causing more sea ice. After a year they are still crunching the measurement data to reveal how and when the ice expanded. Could it be the data doesn't fit their preconceived notion of global warming?
| |
|
|
P. Gosselin
So far it's been a very mild winter across Central Europe. Just days ago, with temperatures in the double-digit Celsius range, meteorologists and media wrote off the possibility of a white Christmas. Gradually all the snow being a "thing of the past" talk was starting up.NoTricksZone 2014-12-25 19:19:00 Wrong again. So unpredictable can chaotic systems like weather and climate be.
Suddenly the picture has reversed 180°. | |
|
A significant increase has been noticed in the tendency of Asian black bear entering human settlements, damaging crops and attacking humans in Annapurna Conservation Area which is said to be a suitable habitat for the animal, according to a survey conducted by the Annapurna Conservation Area Project (ACAP). The study carried out a year ago has shown an increase in the incident of bear attacks, raising questions about security of local residents in the area. Local people who enter nearby forests in the region to collect fodder are falling victim to bear attacks. Bhadra Bir Nepali, 41, of Parche was attacked last August when he went to collect fodder for his livestock. Likewise, Bal Bahadur Gurung of Dhampus was also seriously injured in a bear attack in the same month. | |
|
|
sbs.com.au
2014-12-16 11:31:00
Residents in a Melbourne suburb woke today to find a massive sinkhole that swallowed cars and trees. Firefighters were called to Port Melbourne early on Tuesday after a 350mm cast iron water main ruptured under Liardet Street. Witness Vanessa says she thought a tsunami had hit the waterside suburb. "I heard car horns, car alarms going off erratically. I thought someone had broken into my car," she told Fairfax radio. "I went out there, opened up my front door and saw two cars swallowed up in the street right outside my front door and all this water gushing down the street in front of me.
| ||
Comment: See also: Woman falls into three metre deep sinkhole in Melbourne, Australia
| ||
|
|
news24.com
2014-12-23 11:17:00
Jessica the tame hippopotamus would never intentionally hurt a person, a man who was reportedly attacked by the animal said on Tuesday. "I worked with her for two years, she knows me and I did the tours with the people," Stephen Jansen van Rensburg said. "There is no way that she will hurt anybody intentionally, maybe by accident, I mean look at my hand but never intentionally. Wish these people will stop sensationalising it." Jansen van Rensburg said a report in the Beeld newspaper on Tuesday was sensationalising the incident that happened on Saturday when he put his hand in the 14-year-old hippopotamus's mouth. Beeld reported that paramedics on the scene said Jansen van Rensburg was swimming with his girlfriend and friends when Jessica made a dash for them. His hand was bitten while he wrestled with Jessica and tried to stop her. Paramedic Pieter Papdorf was quoted as saying Jessica's owners were more worried about the traumatised Jessica than the bleeding Jansen van Rensburg and took her to a quiet place where they massaged her to calm her down. "He bled a lot. His left thumb was hanging on skin. The muscle was torn and the rest of his hand was badly injured," he was quoted as saying. However, Jansen van Rensburg said it looked worse than it was. He said he put his hand in Jessica's mouth and she closed her mouth and a small tusk pierced the webbed part of his left hand between his thumb and index finger. "My thumb is definitely not hanging. A small piece of skin is the only thing that is missing, it is not that serious at all. It looked way more serious," he said. | |
|
| Fire in the Sky |
No new articles.
|
| Health & Wellness |
|
Lena H. Sun and Joel Achenbach
Washington Post 2014-12-24 16:26:00
Researchers studying Ebola in a highly secure laboratory mistakenly allowed potentially lethal samples of the virus to be handled in a much less secure laboratory at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, agency officials said Wednesday. One technician in the second laboratory may have been exposed to the virus and about a dozen other people have been assessed after entering the facility unaware that potentially hazardous samples of Ebola had been handled there. The technician has no symptoms of illness and is being monitored for 21 days. Agency officials said it is unlikely that any of the others who entered the lab face potential exposure. Some entered the lab after it had been decontaminated. Officials said there is no possible exposure outside the secure laboratory at CDC and no exposure or risk to the public. | |
|
|
Lecia Bushak
Medical Daily 2014-12-23 18:05:00
You've most likely seen X-rays of the human body to get a view of what our interior looks like, or illustrations of organs in text books - but you probably haven't seen what the entire body looks like in cross-section. The GIF below offers a new view on how we see the human body in three dimensions. Using images from the Visible Human Project, it's strange and rather disturbing, making the human body look more like chopped meat than how we see it as a whole. | |
|
|
Russell Saunders
What kind of doctor would participate in an inmate's execution, only to 'joke' about getting blood on his jacket? The medical field employs more than a few of his kind. The Daily Beast 2014-12-17 11:07:00
I have never inserted a catheter into a patient's femoral vein. In the unlikely event I ever have to perform this procedure, I hope I don't screw it up as epically as the unnamed doctor assisting with Clayton D. Lockett's execution last April. What's notable about this doctor's dismal failure, described by the warden who witnessed it as a "bloody mess," isn't just that he hit the nearby femoral artery instead of the vein. Nor is it that his misdirected first attempt caused the fatal drugs to leak into the surrounding tissue instead of traveling through the bloodstream to kill the prisoner. What makes the whole sordid affair all the more appalling is that during the process of botching the execution and inflicting undue suffering, the doctor in question got blood on his jacket and then complained that he'd better get paid enough to buy a new one. | |
Comment: What defines a good doctor or surgeon? One who practices ethically and empathically with true knowledge that alleviates suffering and leads to increased health?
| |
|
| Science of the Spirit |
No new articles.
|
| High Strangeness |
|
April Holloway
The Epoch Times 2014-12-24 18:32:00
The universe is full of mysteries that challenge our current knowledge. In "Beyond Science" Epoch Times collects stories about these strange phenomena to stimulate the imagination and open up previously undreamed of possibilities. Are they true? You decide. Throughout history, there have been numerous recorded instances of strange objects falling from the sky - fish, frogs, candy, jellyfish, beans, nuts, seeds, and all manner of bizarre and unlikely objects. A popular theory explains these events as being caused by strong winds that whisk things up from the ground or water and hurl them towards an unsuspecting town many miles away. But can this theory also explain showers of heavy stones that have been known to damage houses and even kill people and livestock? A Long History of Raining Objects One of the first recorded instances of "raining" objects comes from the writings of Roman philosopher and naturalist Pliny the Elder, who documented storms of frogs and fish in the 1st century A.D. in what is now Italy. | |
Comment: What about a possibility of raining stones and other similar phenomena being of hyperdimentional nature? Read the following artcile and listen to the SOTT radio show for more clues:
The invisible hand of the Cosmic Trickster: High strangeness and the paranormal nature of the UFO phenomenon
| |
|
| Don't Panic! Lighten Up! |
|
Vsevolod Pulya
Russia Beyond the Headlines 2014-12-20 19:20:00
No matter the stormy geopolitics that this year brought, Russia still remained one of the key exporters of viral, unusual, weird, and simply funny videos. Cats, gophers, police officers, bikers, and cosmonauts - here RBTH presents a selection of 10 of the most interesting Russian video hits of 2014. 1. Cartoon characters attack a driver
231,292 views Videos of showdowns between angry drivers are frequently uploaded to the internet, but have you ever seen attackers dressed as cartoon characters? | ||
Comment: The world may be crazy, but don't forget to laugh once in a while!
| ||
|
|
FOX News
2014-12-23 18:01:00
Talk about a nightmare before Christmas. An Ohio homeowner was ordered by town officials to remove a Nativity scene in front of his house that featured zombies instead of wise men and a baby Jesus. "I wanted a Nativity and I worked with what I had," Jasen Dixon, who manages a nearby haunted house, told Fox 19. "The neighbors don't like it. My father hates it and anything bad that happens he blames it on that." The Nativity scene features life-size figures and a zombie baby Jesus, with pale skin and pure white eyes. At night, the figures are illuminated by red and green lights. | |
|
|
RT
2014-12-24 23:13:00
The BBC's Middle East correspondent Quentin Sommerville was unable to finish a video broadcast after inhaling fumes from a pile of burning drugs. In the video, Sommerville attempts to deliver a serious opener only to fall into a giggle fit, overcome by the potent narcotic fumes. "Burning behind me is eight tones of heroin, opium, hash and other narcotics," Sommerville begins, but after pausing for breath he starts to laugh and is unable to continue. |
