 | |||||
 |  |  |  | ||
|
| No new articles. |
| No new articles. |
| Puppet Masters |
|
Fort Russ
2014-12-10 22:56:00
The head of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov named the suspect in the financing of the organizers of the terrorist attack in Grozny in his post on Instagram: On December 4, 2014, a group of unknown men, driving three vehicles, attacked the post of traffic patrol in Grozny. The militants entered the Printing House and a school. During the operation of the elimination of the extremists, 14 security officers were killed, 28 were injured. | |
 |
|
Ulson Gunnar
New Eastern Outlook 2014-12-08 18:49:00
After weeks of protests and growing suspicion, Dutch authorities overseeing the investigation of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 have finally included Malaysia as a member of its Joint Investigation Team (JIT). Malaysia had made it clear it was immensely displeased with its inexplicable exclusion from JITformed after the downing of MH17 over eastern Ukraine. Including NATO members (Belgium and the Netherlands), a defacto NATO collaborator (Australia) and a potential culprit in the air disaster (Ukraine), Malaysia's exclusion looked to be a part of an ongoing cover-up amid a larger attempt to use the disaster to frame Russia and advance NATO's agenda in Eastern Europe. The conflict amid which MH17 was shot down is perceived to be a proxy conflict between NATO and Russia. That the investigation includes exclusively pro-NATO members or NATO members themselves, both the conduct of the investigation and any conceivable outcome would be highly suspect. Malaysia, the only nation directly effected by the disaster and perceived of being beyond the direct influence of NATO, would have provided a much needed counterbalance. | |
Comment: It's probably too late for Malaysia's inclusion to have any real effect on the direction of the investigation. The past months have given plenty of time for the other JIT members to get their story straight and keep Malaysia in the dark about anything of any real importance. But we'll just have to wait and see. See also:
| |
|
|
RT
2014-12-09 00:00:00
The United States government recently argued in court filings that the state of Washington's request of $18 billion over 14 years to address the nation's most polluted nuclear weapons production site should be rejected based on expense. Comment: The United States spends 840 billion dollars every year (2.3 billion dollars a day) creating terror in Middle East and US, but it doesn't have money for the nuclear danger at home. How unsurprising. The US Department of Justice said in a court filing on Friday that the cost of the state's proposal for a hastened cleanup of the Hanford Nuclear Reservationwould cast into doubt other nuclear projects funded by the Department of Energy. Accordingto The Tri-City Herald, the filings in US District Court by the DOJ and the state of Washington were part of the state's lawsuit that seeks a more pressing timeline for Hanford's cleanup. Friday was the deadline for the parties to comment on new cleanup timelines, as the DOE said many of the existing timelines were at risk of being missed. Hanford, located along the Columbia River in south-central Washington, is the site of 177 massive underground nuclear waste storage tanks, making it the largest collection of nuclear waste in the US. For four decades, the site was home to plutonium development for use in the production of nuclear weapons. | |
Comment: Washington doesn't have any interest in protecting its citizens and yet will do everything to protect its corporate sponsors. It's good to know they've got their priorities straight!
| |
|
|
RT
2014-12-10 13:10:00
The settlement minister in the Palestinian Authority (PA), Ziad Abu Ein, died after a confrontation with Israeli soldiers during a West Bank protest, witnesses and medics said. President Mahmoud Abbas called Abu Ein's death a "brutal act". There are conflicting reports on how Abu Ein, a leading member of Abbas' Fatah movement and cabinet minister, died.
Several media outlets say he was reportedly struck in the chest with a tear gas canister fired by Israeli troops, after which he collapsed. Other reports say Israeli forces beat Abu Ein with the butts of their rifles and their helmets. Following the violent altercation, he was later rushed to the hospital in Ramallah by ambulance, but reportedly died en route.
| |||
Comment: Poll: 91% of Israelis love to kill
| |||
|
|
Cade Metz
Wired.com 2014-12-09 13:30:00
Let's say you're out drinking with your buddies, things get out of hand, you pull out your smartphone, you take a selfie in the middle of all this drunken revelry, then you take 30 or 40 more, and, without hesitation, you start uploading them to Facebook. It's a common thing to do. But Yann LeCun aims to stop such unbridled behavior - or at least warn people when they're about to do something they might regret. He wants to build a kind of Facebook digital assistant that will, say, recognize when you're uploading an embarrassingly candid photo of your late-night antics. In a virtual way, he explains, this assistant would tap you on the shoulder and say: "Uh, this is being posted publicly. Are you sure you want your boss and your mother to see this?" The idea is more than just an idle suggestion. LeCun is the New York University researcher and machine-learning guru who now oversees the Facebook Artificial Intelligence Research lab, a team of AI researchers inside the internet giant that spans offices in both California and New York, and this rapidly expanding operation is now laying the basic groundwork for his digital assistant. Fashioning such a tool is largely about building image recognition technology that can distinguish between your drunken self and your sober self, and using a red-hot form of artificial intelligence called "deep learning" - a technology bootstrapped by LeCun and other academics - Facebook has already reached a point where it can identify your face and your friends' faces in the photos you post to its social network, letting you more easily tag them with the right names. | |
Comment: More of the same indiscriminate invasion of privacy. High tech collection and retention of personal information under the guise of protecting you and controlling what you say. Big Brother is watching you! George Orwell would turn over in his grave.
| |
|
|
Diana Johnstone
Counter Punch 2014-12-09 09:39:00
For over a year, the United States has played out a scenario designed to (1) reassert U.S. control over Europe by blocking E.U. trade with Russia, (2) bankrupt Russia, and (3) get rid of Vladimir Putin and replace him with an American puppet, like the late drunk, Boris Yeltsin. The past few days have made crystal clear the perfidy of the economic side of this U.S. war against Russia. It all began at the important high-level international meeting on Ukraine's future held in Yalta in September 2013, where a major topic was the shale gas revolution which the United States hoped to use to weaken Russia. Former U.S. energy secretary Bill Richardson was there to make the pitch, applauded by Bill and Hillary Clinton. Washington hoped to use its fracking techniques to provide substitute sources for natural gas, driving Russia out of the market. This amounts to selling Europe a pig in a poke. But this trick could not be accomplished by relying on the sacrosanct "market", since fracking is more costly than Russian gas extraction. A major crisis was necessary in order to distort the market by political pressures. By the February 22 coup d'état, engineered by Victoria Nuland, the United States effectively took control of Ukraine, putting in power its agent "Yats" (Arseniy Yatsenyuk) who favors joining NATO. This direct threat to Russia's naval base in Crimea led to the referendum which peacefully returned the historically Russian peninsula to Russia. But the U.S.-led chorus condemned the orderly return of Crimea as "Russian military aggression". This defensive move is trumpeted by NATO as proof of Putin's intention to invade Russia's European neighbors for no reason at all. Meanwhile, the United States' economic invasion has gone largely unnoticed. Ukraine has some of the largest shale gas reserves in Europe. Like other Europeans, Ukrainians had demonstrated against the harmful environmental results of fracking on their lands, but unlike some other countries, Ukraine has no restrictive legislation. Chevron is already getting involved. As of last May, R. Hunter Biden, son of the U.S. Vice President, is on the Board of Directors of Burisma Holdings, Ukraine's largest private gas producer. The young Biden will be in charge of the Holdings' legal unit and contribute to its "international expansion". | |
Comment: See also: Economic warfare: The U.S. Empire of "Frack" versus Russia
| |
|
|
Pat Buchanan
Information Clearinghouse 2014-12-09 00:00:00
December 09, 2014 "ICH" - Hopefully, Russians realize that our House of Representatives often passes thunderous resolutions to pander to special interests, which have no bearing on the thinking or actions of the U.S. government. Last week, the House passed such a resolution 411-10. As ex-Rep. Ron Paul writes, House Resolution 758 is so "full of war propaganda that it rivals the rhetoric from the chilliest era of the Cold War." H. R. 758 is a Russophobic rant full of falsehoods and steeped in superpower hypocrisy. Among the 43 particulars in the House indictment is this gem: "The Russian Federation invaded the Republic of Georgia in August 2008." Bullhockey. On Aug. 7-8, 2008, Georgia invaded South Ossetia, a tiny province that had won its independence in the 1990s. Georgian artillery killed Russian peacekeepers, and the Georgian army poured in. Only then did the Russian army enter South Ossetia and chase the Georgians back into their own country. The aggressor of the Russo-Georgia war was not Vladimir Putin but President Mikheil Saakashvili, brought to power in 2004 in one of those color-coded revolutions we engineered in the Bush II decade. | |
Comment: Incredible. The U.S. is guilty of everything - everything - it accuses Russia of. Shameless hypocrisy at its very worst. It goes way beyond hypocrisy, actually, and reaches the phantasmagoric realms of mass delusion. But how? How has it come to this in the United States? After all, the U.S. doesn't have a charismatic leader hypnotizing its citizens on the level of a Hitler. The U.S. hasn't been subject to war reparation debt that left it resentful of neighboring countries. The U.S. doesn't even have an enemy that it didn't literally create itself. Where did the incentive to be so evil, for lack of a better term, come from? Can the simple fact of it be that those who have a will to political power are more likely than not to be psychopaths and happen to have an inordinate amount of influence over suggestible individuals? Dr. Andrew Lobaczewski, the author of 'Political Ponerology: A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes', seemed to think so. And so do we.
| |
|
|
Justin King
The Anti Media 2014-12-09 00:21:00
Here are ten frightening facts about the police state that you need to know about:
| |
Comment: This is just the tip of the iceberg. It seems like every day we read about another case where a civilian is killed by a cop. Those situations inevitably end up with the cop getting away with murdering someone. All it takes is walking down the road, and apparently police have the right to shoot you. Make no mistake about it, America has become a police state.
| |
|
|
Chris Hedges
Truthdig 2014-12-09 23:52:00
Mayor Bill de Blasio's plans to launch a pilot program in New York City to place body cameras on police officers and conduct training seminars to help them reduce their adrenaline rushes and abusive language, along with the establishment of a less stringent marijuana policy, are merely cosmetic reforms. The killing of Eric Garner in Staten Island was, after all, captured on video. These proposed reforms, like those out of Washington, D.C., fail to address the underlying cause of poverty, state-sponsored murder and the obscene explosion of mass incarceration - the rise of the corporate state and the death of our democracy. Mass acts of civil disobedience, now being carried out across the country, are the only mechanism left that offers hope for systematic legal and judicial reform. We must defy the corporate state, not work with it. The legal system no longer functions to protect ordinary Americans. It serves our oligarchic, corporate elites. These elites have committed $26 billion in financial fraud. They loot the U.S. Treasury, escape taxation, drive down wages, break unions, pillage pension funds, gut regulation and oversight, destroy public institutions including public schools and social assistance programs, wage endless and illegal wars to swell the profits of arms merchants, and - yes - authorize police to murder unarmed black men. Police and national intelligence and security agencies, which carry out wholesale surveillance against the population and serve as the corporate elite's brutal enforcers, are omnipotent by intention. They are designed to impart fear, even terror, to keep the population under control. And until the courts and the legislative bodies give us back our rights - which they have no intention of doing - things will only get worse for the poor and the rest of us. We live in a post-constitutional era. Corporations have captured every major institution, including the judicial, legislative and executive branches of government, and deformed them to exclusively serve the demands of the market. They have, in the process, demolished civil society. Karl Polanyi in "The Great Transformation" warned that without heavy government regulation and oversight, unfettered and unregulated capitalism degenerates into a Mafia capitalism and a Mafia political system. A self-regulating market, Polanyi writes, turns human beings and the natural environment into commodities. This ensures the destruction of both society and the natural environment. The ecosystem and human beings become objects whose worth is determined solely by the market. They are exploited until exhaustion or collapse occurs. A society that no longer recognizes that the natural world and life have a sacred dimension, an intrinsic value beyond monetary value, commits collective suicide. Such societies cannibalize themselves. This is what we are undergoing. Literally. | |
Comment: To free ourselves from captivity, we have to overcome our greatest obstacle: psychopathy.
Ponerology 101: Lobaczewski and the origins of Political Ponerology | |
|
|
Activist Post
Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky laid into Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber at today's OGR Hearing in Congress, exposing him fully as an economic eugenicist.2014-12-09 23:07:00 Massie referred to Gruber's economic paper on how giving free abortions to the poor would reduce the population burden for the better people, and how he endorses rationing end-of-life care for the poor for the same reason. He even got Gruber to agree that he was "condescending" to the American people, that he lied to the public for their own good like they were children. Incredible exchange. |
|
| Society's Child |
|
RT
2014-12-09 21:42:00
A knife-wielding man who stabbed a student in a Brooklyn synagogue was shot dead by police after he lunged at officers. Police say they used lethal violence against the suspect after he refused to drop the weapon, AP reports. The incident occurred at the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic World Headquarters in Crown Heights at 1:40am on Tuesday. | |
Comment: Who benefits? Not only does it reinforce the lie about a new wave of violent anti-Semitism - which Israel and its lobby depend upon in order to cover up their genocide of the Palestinians. It also has to the potential to smear critics of police violence and brutality with charges of anti-Semitism. Two birds, one stone!
| |
|
|
RT
2014-12-09 00:00:00
British households could be saving £250 a year each if services such as railways and water were publicly owned rather than privatized, according to a new report. Research conducted by Corporate Watch and We Own It reveals Britons could be saving hundreds of pounds if such services were taken out of private hands. In the long run, the British government, too, would save billions if services were renationalized. Additionally, the investigation found that utility companies were paying out £12.7 billion a year in interest and dividends to their shareholders, while passing the cost burden to their customers. | |
Comment: Corporations fund the policy makers and it is improbable that trend will change. The UK needs its own Putin to reverse the damage Iron lady Margaret Thatcher (aka 'the witch') initiated.
| |
|
|
Katy Daigle
Yahoo! Tech 2014-12-09 00:00:00
Indian police questioned an Uber executive Tuesday about the company's claim it conducts comprehensive background checks and a top official called for the taxi-booking service to be banned nationwide after one of its New Delhi drivers was accused of rape. New Delhi police official Brijendra Kumar Yadav said there is a possibility of criminal charges against the company if police find evidence the taxi-hailing app misrepresented the safety of its service. The driver, 32-year-old Shiv Kumar Yadav, is being held by police and will appear again in a New Delhi court on Thursday. A 26-year-old woman who hired Yadav for a ride home from a dinner engagement Friday night accused him of rape. Comment: What is Uber? | |
Comment: Uber is not new to controversy and protests:
| |
|
|
Rob Pegoraro
Yahoo! Tech 2014-12-09 19:00:00
Two weeks ago, many of us were sure that if only Darren Wilson had had a body camera, justice would have been more easily served in Ferguson, Missouri - that a video record would have cleared the confusion over Officer Wilson's fatal shooting of Michael Brown. Then, a week ago - only two days after President Obama proposed putting 50,000 more police body cameras into service - things didn't look so clear. Video taken by a passerby of Eric Garner's fatal chokehold arrest did not stop a grand jury from declining to bring an indictment. It's not the first time a promised technological solution has looked less shiny upon closer inspection, but the stakes for this technology are extraordinarily high. Before we follow our habit of attaching a camera to anything that moves - if we can put them on our dashboards and on our drones, why not our cops? - we need to ask a few questions, and get some good answers. "Any police department that wants to use body cameras, it's a good decision," said Electronic Frontier Foundation staff attorney Hanni Fakhoury. "But you can't just throw the cameras out there and let the details sort themselves out." | |
|
|
Pam Martens and Russ Martens
Wall Street on Parade 2014-12-08 00:00:00
On Thursday, November 20, 2014, the body of 54-year old Melissa Millan, a divorced mother of two school-age children, was found at approximately 8 p.m. along a jogging path running parallel to Iron Horse Boulevard in Simsbury, Connecticut. A motorist had spotted the body and called the police. According to the coroner's report, it was determined that Millan's death was attributable to a stab wound to the chest with an "edged weapon." Police ruled the death a homicide, a rarity for this town where residents feel safe enough to routinely jog by themselves on the same path used by Millan. Information has now emerged that Millan had access to highly sensitive data on bank profits resulting from the collection of life insurance proceeds from her insurance company employer on the death of bank workers - data that a Federal regulator of banks has characterized as "trade secrets." | |
Comment: Considering the amounts of money involved and the growing number of mysterious deaths of bankers, the connection to Bank Owned Life Insurance policies does warrant investigation:
Death a trade secret? Suspicious deaths of bankers are now classified as "Trade Secrets", according to Federal regulator | |
|
|
John W. Whitehead
The Rutherford Institute 2014-12-10 03:31:00
My 7-year-old granddaughter has suddenly developed a keen interest in card games: Go Fish, Crazy Eights, Old Maid, Blackjack, and War. We've fallen into a set pattern now: every time we play, she deals the cards, and I pretend not to see her stacking the deck in her favor. And of course, I always lose. I don't mind losing to my granddaughter at Old Maid, knowing full well the game is rigged. For now, it's fun and games, and she's winning. Where the rub comes in is in knowing that someday she'll be old enough to realize that being a citizen in the American police state is much like playing against a stacked deck: you're always going to lose. The game is rigged, and "we the people" keep getting dealt the same losing hand. Even so, we stay in the game, against all odds, trusting that our luck will change. The problem, of course, is that luck will not save us. The people dealing the cards - the politicians, the corporations, the judges, the prosecutors, the police, the bureaucrats, the military, the media, etc. - have only one prevailing concern, and that is to maintain their power and control over the country and us. It really doesn't matter what you call them - the 1%, the elite, the controllers, the masterminds, the shadow government, the police state, the surveillance state, the military industrial complex - so long as you understand that while they are dealing the cards, the deck will always be stacked in their favor. Incredibly, no matter how many times we see this played out, Americans continue to naively buy into the idea that it's our politics that divide us as a nation. As if there were really a difference between the Democrats and Republicans. As if the policies of George W. Bush were any different from those of Barack Obama. As if we weren't a nation of sheep being fattened for the kill by a ravenous government of wolves. We're in trouble, folks, and changing the dealer won't save us: it's time to get out of the game We have relinquished control of our government to overlords who care nothing for our rights, our dignity or our humanity, and now we're saddled with an authoritarian regime that is deaf to our cries, dumb to our troubles, blind to our needs, and accountable to no one. Even revelations of wrongdoing amount to little in the way of changes for the better. | |
|
|
David Edwards
Raw Story 2014-12-09 02:34:00
Fox News analysts, hosts and reporters on Tuesday wasted no time in blasting Democrats after Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) released a report condemning the CIA's use of torture and other enhanced interrogation techniques. Just moments after Feinstein announced on the floor of the Senate that the Intelligence Committee had made the long-delayed torture report public, Fox News National Security Analyst K.T. McFarland insisted that Democrats were going to "do harm" to the country by angering terrorists. Comment: If people truly cared about angering terrorists, maybe they should start complaining about all the bombing of innocent civilians done by the U.S. military instead of doing what democracies should be doing by disclosing their illegal acts. McFarland, who said that torture techniques were both legal and justified by the horrific terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, argued that Democrats were only releasing the report for political reasons. "Why go after it now unless the motivation is completely political?" she remarked. "Congress is changing hands, the Senate is going from Democrat to Republican hands. And are the Democrats in the Senate just - they've been evicted from the house, are they just trashing the place before they leave?" Fox News correspondent Jesse Watters told the hosts of Out Numbered that the American people did not need to know about torture at the CIA because "people do nasty things in the dark especially after a terrorist attack." Comment: That's right, this person who is supposed to report on what our government is doing is saying that we should just stick our heads in the sand and let our government illegally torture people because we were attacked (by elements within our own government, don't forget!) by "terrorists". These people have completely stopped functioning as journalists. They are just mouthpieces for the empire, justifying horrific acts deemed illegal long ago because of their barbarity all in the name of protection. | |
|
|
Joshua Krause
The Daily Sheeple 2014-12-08 18:51:00
The decision to leave the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown unpunished has students and locals outraged in Berkeley, as they came together yesterday evening to protest what they view as an unjust court system. However, chaos erupted for the second night in a row, as demonstrators squared off against police and challenged looters that are taking advantage of the unrest. So far 5 police officers have suffered minor injuries, and at least a dozen protesters have been arrested since the unrest began on Saturday night. While it appears that most of demonstrators have been peaceful, a small minority of agitators have been using the protest as cover for looting and mayhem. | |
Comment: See also: Thousands protest police violence in New York, call for justice in Eric Garnerdeath
Americans, fed up with blatant injustice, are taking to the streets in large numbers to protest. It's just a shame that peaceful protests descend into madness and looting. Never discount the influence of agents provocateurs in such cases. | |
|
| Secret History |
| No new articles. |
| Science & Technology |
|
RT
2014-12-09 00:00:00
For once being disruptive is a good thing. Forbes magazine describes the new Russian designed YotaPhone 2 as 2014's Most Disruptive Smartphone. The review calls it exciting and innovative and is "a rare beast" with both a radical and conformist design. Comment: Reviewer Ewan Spence failed to provide any real reasons for using the word 'disruptive' in the article title. According to reviewer Ewan Spence, the developers created a product which combines features which makes it stand out among other smartphones. They are modern and innovative designs; the second e-Ink display on the back of the device and its unique software. The model features a power-saving electronic paper-like screen on the back that displays basic information like a clock and message alerts and can also be used to read books. There are special apps just for the display and games are available too. A second regular display lights on only when needed for more complex tasks. | |
Comment: Yes, there is a learning curve for using the product, as well as distinct advantages when compared to the products of established market leaders like Samsung and Apple. Every company faces challenges when they release their products. In fact, YotaPhone 2 did extraordinarily well considering the fact that it is a new product and it is competing with established global leaders. This is not 'disruptive' as Forbes claims. It is disruptive to the sales of Samsung and Apple.It has become normal for Western leaders and their authoritarian followers to criticize anything Putin promotes.
| |
|
|
Fred Weir
In a video posted online Sunday, astrophysicist Vladimir Lipunov says the newly discovered asteroid could collide with Earth during its three-year orbital cycle. A giant meteor exploded over a Russian city in 2013.The Christian Monitor 2014-12-09 16:35:00
| |
Comment: What is NASA doing other than making self-calming statements like 'one-in-a-thousand-years' and 'there is no threat'? The NASA "gorilla" consumes 16 billion American tax dollars every year. And yet they're doing nothing to inform the public, or protect them, against what is probably humanity's biggest existential threat.
| |
|
| Earth Changes |
|
US Geological Survey
2014-12-10 23:00:00
Event Time 2014-12-10 21:03:39 UTC 2014-12-11 05:03:39 UTC+08:00 at epicenter Location 25.568°N 122.448°E depth=254.4km (158.1mi) Nearby Cities 86km (53mi) NE of Keelung, Taiwan 108km (67mi) ENE of Taipei, Taiwan 113km (70mi) NE of Yilan, Taiwan 116km (72mi) ENE of Banqiao, Taiwan 918km (570mi) ENE of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Scientific Data | |
|
|
japantoday.com
2014-12-10 22:13:00
Two men were injured by a wild boar in Kakegawa, Shizuoka Prefecture, on Tuesday. According to police, a 63-year-old man was attacked at around 11:30 a.m. in a field. NTV reported that he suffered injuries to his face, neck, hands and legs. About 20 minutes later, a 64-year-old man was attacked by the same boar a few hundred meters away. He suffered injuries to his stomach and legs. Police said neither man's injuries are life-threatening. Members of a local hunting association captured the 1-meter-long boar about an hour later on a riverbank and disposed of it. | |
|
|
Daily Mirror, UK
2014-12-10 21:20:00
Police who opened a murder enquiry after a man died from more than 20 stab wounds have found the killer - a male stag that had speared him with its antlers. Plumber Vladimir Kostur, 59, was installing a new watering system at a farm in the village of Surovce, Slovakia, when the 660lb beast charged, knocking him to the ground. The raging stag, one of many deer being kept at the farm, then attacked stunned Kostur with its antlers, puncturing his body 20 times as he lay on the ground. Pal Frantisek Cerny, 54, said: "I was just arriving to give Vlad a hand when I saw the stag appear out of nowhere and attack him. | |
|
What remained of a badly decomposed juvenile humpback whale washed up off Corolla on Friday, then was swept away by the nor'easter, only to turn up Monday five miles to the south in Duck. The Outer Banks Marine Mammal Stranding Network received a phone call Friday about a large dead whale floating off the sand bar in Pine Island, according to N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission program coordinator Karen Clark. "On Saturday the team measured a 34-foot juvenile male humpback whale with severe scavenging," Clark said. "Externally there was nothing indicative for cause of death." | |
|
|
Phys.org
2014-12-10 00:00:00
In the depths of the Arctic Ocean, buried deep in the sediment, an ancient creature waited for over a million years to be discovered. Paul Valentich-Scott, from the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History (California), and three scientists from the United States Geological Survey (USGS, Menlo Park, California), Charles L. Powell, Brian D. Edwards, and Thomas D. Lorenson were up to the challenge. Each with different expertise, they were able to collect, analyze, and identify a new genus and new species of bivalve mollusk. The path to discovery is seldom simple or easy. This discovery is no exception. Brian Edwards was the chief scientist on a joint US-Canadian ice breaker expedition aboard the US Coast Guard Cutter Healy in the summer of 2010. The primary purpose of the expedition was to map the Arctic seafloor and the sediments beneath. Dr. Edwards took deep sediment core samples to further understand the geology of the region including the unusual seafloor mound where these samples were collected. In several of these cores he uncovered bivalve seashells buried nearly 15 feet (4.5 m) below the seafloor surface. Upon returning to his USGS laboratory in Menlo Park, California, Brian worked with Tom Lorenson on sampling the cores and extracting the shells. The recovered shells were then taken to USGS paleontologist Chuck Powell, for identification. While Chuck was able to ascertain the higher level classification of the clam shells (Family Thyasiridae), he was unable to determine the genus orspecies. Chuck contacted Paul Valentich-Scott, a clam specialist from the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History in California. | |
Comment: For news of other recently discovered species of flora and fauna see:
New species of deep-sea coral discovered off California coast Two new species of venomous jellyfish found off Australia coast New species of dinosaur discovered lying forgotten in a museum | |
|
|
David Rothery
Phys.org 2014-12-10 00:00:00
Around 60 volcanoes erupt in the average year. On any particular day, there are usually about 20 volcanoes erupting somewhere in the world. Naturally, they can't all make headlines. But when there are human tragedies involved, we need to question the priorities of the news media. Contrast the fuss about eruption warnings in Iceland with the vanishingly low media profile of the current eruption on Fogo, one of the islands in the Cape Verde archipelago off the coast of West Africa. In Iceland, great fears of an ash cloud eruption that could down or ground aircraft subsided as the magma broke surface beyond the ice and fed a large and spectacular but pretty harmless fissure eruption across a remote and uninhabited region. On the other hand, since Fogo's eruption began on November 23 it has so far destroyed two villages and the homes of more than 1,000 people. | |
|
|
Phyllis M Daugherty
Opposing Views 2014-12-10 00:00:00
A 70-pound female Pit Bull, who appeared to have recently had puppies, viciously attacked a beagle being walked by his owners and then bit the owner in the face on Sunday. The incident occurred near the intersection of 40th and Myrtle in City Heights, California, around 4 p.m., according to 10News. Craig Moreno, who lives nearby, said he had just come home when he saw the woman on the corner in a position that looked like she was a hugging a dog. Then he heard her scream for help and realized she was trying to pull a beagle out of the jaws of the huge Pit Bull. Several other people were also trying to help, Moreno said, so he just jumped right in and also held onto the beagle. But the Pit Bull did not let loose - not even when a neighbor hit it with a golf club. It continued until someone found the woman's water bottle and began pouring water onto the dog's face. Moreno described to 10News how they pulled harder as they poured the rest of the water into the dog's face and it finally let go. | |
Comment: Canine attacks by pit bulls as well as other breeds are becoming all too common recently. However, it is not only dogs that are behaving strangely as there have been reports of wild animal attacks by numerous diverse species across the globe.
SOTT EXCLUSIVE: Global canine insurrection? Another week of savage dog attack reports | |
|
|
BBC
2014-12-10 15:38:00
High winds and huge waves are affecting north-western parts of the UK as bad weather hits power supplies and travel. The "weather bomb" has brought hundreds of lightning strikes, temporarily cutting power across the Western Isles, affecting 17,000 homes. The Met Office has warned parts of Scotland and Northern Ireland to "be prepared" as the rapidly developing storm threatens gusts of up to 80mph. Wind speeds are expected to peak on Wednesday afternoon and early evening. | |
Comment: The UK was battered only 2 weeks ago from another huge storm bringing high winds and floods and is expecting one of the worst winters in decades, but the severe weather has been besieging the entire globe. Watch the most recent SOTT Earth Changes Summary for a glimpse of nature's ferocity:
| |
|
|
Falmouth Packet
2014-12-09 16:46:00
Huge numbers of dead seals have been found stranded on Cornish beaches recently, and wildlife experts admit they are baffled. Cornwall Wildlife Trust says it has attended almost twice as many strandings of seals as would normally be expected for this time of year adding that, throughout October and November, 35 dead seals have washed up along the Cornish coastline, and over the same period a further 37 seals have been rescued alive from Cornish beaches by British Divers Marine Life Rescue. Caz Waddell, from Cornwall Wildlife Trust said: "While bad weather will undoubtedly have been the cause of some of these strandings, the sheer number of cases has left us slightly baffled. We don't yet have any answers as to why this is happening, but it shows just how important it is for people to tell us about any stranded marine animal they see. The more animals we can study, the more we can try to get to the bottom of what might be going on." | |
|
|
Maya Rodriguez
USA Today 2014-05-20 11:06:00
A moose on the rampage attacked two women walking with their dogs, injuring both severely. The animals can weigh a half ton or more. "We were just moseying along, hiking, enjoying our hike, and then all of a sudden, I looked up and he was looking right at me,"said Jacquie Boron, 50, who was hiking with her neighbor Ellen Marie Divis, 57, near their homes in Black Hawk, Colo., about 35 miles northwest of Denver. Boron said the moose grunted and immediately charged toward her, hitting her squarely in the chest and knocking her off her feet. "I knew that they were aggressive, and I knew that I should be very careful with them," she said. "But I didn't expect them just to charge me."
| ||
|
| Fire in the Sky |
| No new articles. |
| Health & Wellness |
|
Ethan A. Huff
Natural News 2014-12-09 00:05:00
Unvaccinated children are supposedly the cause, according to state health officials, of a recent whooping cough outbreak that occurred in the posh Cape Cod area of Massachusetts. But asreported by CBS Boston, all of the children affected by the outbreak were already vaccinated,proving once again that vaccines don't really work. Some 15 children at Falmouth High School reportedly came down with the respiratory illness, which also goes by the name pertussis, sparking a wave of panic about a corresponding increase in vaccine exemptions. But as usual, nobody affected by the outbreak was unvaccinated, and no matter how hard the media tries to spin the issue, those who were vaccinated were not protected. Mainstream media clouds issue of vaccinations and exemptions Reporting for CBS Boston, I-Team correspondent Lauren Leamanczyk towed the pro-vaccine line with accusations that vaccine exemptions triggered the outbreak. Undisclosed data she apparently found reveals that vaccine exemptions have increased fourfold over the past 25 years, which public health officials say increases the risk of an outbreak. This supposed correlation proves nothing, of course, as correlation does not imply causation. But when vaccines are involved, any deviation from the standard vaccine protocol, which is basically to take whatever the government says is good for you, becomes the automatic scapegoat when an outbreak occurs. In her story, Leamanczyk quotes the words of Dr. Sharon Daly, Chief of Pediatrics at Cape Cod Hospital, who declares that outbreaks increase when vaccination rates decrease. The implication, naturally, is that the Falmouth outbreak was triggered by unvaccinated children. | |
|
|
Christina Sarich
Natural Society 2014-12-07 22:25:00
China has zero tolerance for many GMOs. They've made this clear by refusing US exports that contain genetically modified ingredients - not even in the parts per million range. Due to the recent contamination of hay from RoundUp ready GMO alfalfa, the Chinese government has now blacklisted hay from the US, and they are looking at Canada's exports closely to determine if they will also need to be blacklisted. One exporter of hay to China and other places around the world, Ed Shaw, said three American hay exporters have been blacklisted from exporting China, and hundreds of container loads of hay have been turned away after GMO alfalfa was found in the loads. Hay exported to the country from the U.S. was in quarantine due to the detection of GMO traits, specifically of genetically modified alfalfa. And this isn't a singular occurrence, either. Last year, a Washington State grower's hay was rejected after it tested positive for GMO alfalfa. This doesn't sit well with China, since all imported hay is supposed to be GMO-free. Needless to say, the trend continued, leading China to boycott all US grown-hay completely. | |
|
|
Heather Callaghan
Activist Post 2014-12-09 23:27:00
New research reported in the American Heart Association's journal Hypertension, points to cans and bottles lined with Bisphenol A (BPA) as a precursor to raised blood pressure - but the problem goes beyond that. When the chemical used as an epoxy lining for cans and plastics entered the market it was deemed safe. Although there were claims that small amounts ingested from food and beverages wouldn't be harmful - low levels are indeed harmful. In fact, research shows that BPA causes 100 times the amount of damage previously claimed. So are you extra stressed? Fatigued? Under pressure and feeling dizzy? Is it a random blood pressure problem or is the BPA? |
