Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Wednesday 18 March 2015

Harrison Koehli
Sott.net
2015-03-18 13:16:00

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Two days ago, on March 16th, a Ukrainian tank ran over a mother and her two children as they stood on a sidewalk in the Donetsk town of Konstantinovka, 55 km from Donetsk city. The girl, Polina, was killed instantly. The woman apparently died later in hospital. The Ukie soldiers driving the tank were apparently drunk. The girl's death prompted riots in the town - the first big revolt behind Kiev's front line since the Odessa massacre. Right Sektor thugs have been sent in to 'restore order'.

The rioters demanded the soldiers be brought to justice. That's unlikely. Justice is a foreign concept to the Ukrainian regime. Minister of Internal Affairs Anton Gerashenko responded by announcing that soldiers will 'shoot to kill':
If someone in Kostantinovka with arms in their hands will protest against the laws of the Ukrainian authorities, using this accident to instigate mass clashes, then first one warning shot will be made, and then they will shoot to kill. If there is no time to give a warning, they will be shooting to kill immediately. Nobody is allowed to undermine the Ukrainian government with arms on the territory of Ukraine.
Kiev forbade protests, but around 100 people gathered at the site of Polina's death with toys and flowers. Kiev called them "associates of the terrorists".


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Yu Shan
Club Orlov
2015-03-17 21:10:00

Comment: The following article is a very interesting take on the psychopathology destroying 'Western civilization' - and all those who identify with it - from within.



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A certain unhappy incident happened to my aunt in the summer of 1966. The Cultural Revolution—a political movement initiated by Mao Zedong—was beginning to engulf the country. That same year many American college students were protesting against the Vietnam War and Leonid Brezhnev was keeping his seat warm as the General Secretary of CPSU, having replaced the somewhat volatile Nikita Khrushchev two years earlier. My aunt was then a freshman studying literature at Fudan University in Shanghai.

It so happened that my aunt, then a sensitive and somewhat dreamy young woman, had stubbornly and haplessly clung to certain musical tastes which at that time in China came to be regarded as politically incorrect, being said, in the trendy ideological jargon of that time, to reflect "decadent bourgeois revisionist aesthetics." To wit, my aunt had kept in her record collection a rendition of "The Urals Mountain-Ash" (Уральская Рябинушка), a Russian folk song in which a young girl meets two nice boys under a mountain-ash tree and must choose between them, performed by the National Choir of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. It was an old-style LP spinning at 78 RPM. It had a red emblem in the middle emblazoned with "CCCP."

One of my aunt's roommates, who probably had always resented her for one reason or another, found out about it and reported her to the authorities. For this rather serious infraction, student members of the Red Guard made my aunt publicly smash her beloved record, then kneel upon the fragments and recite an apology to Chairman Mao while fellow-students threw trash at her face shouting "Down with Soviet revisionists!" This generation of Chinese young people, who once donned Red Guard uniforms, beat people up around the country and smashed various cultural artifacts, is now mostly living on government pensions or earning meagre profits from home businesses, but some have prospered and can be found among the upper crust of contemporary China's business, cultural, and political elites.
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Puppet Masters
RT
2015-03-18 22:30:00

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Moscow has called on Berlin and Paris to take action in regards to Kiev's non-compliance with the Minsk peace agreement, in what Russia's Foreign Minister has called a "glaring breach of the first steps of the Minsk package."

"I don't know how the political process will unfold now," Lavrov told a news conference on Wednesday."Yesterday I sent special notes to the foreign ministers of France and Germany, and drew their attention to the glaring breach of the first steps of the political part of the Minsk package by Kiev. I urged them to take a trilateral joint demarche in regards to our Ukrainian colleagues in order to encourage them to implement agreements which they signed, and what was supported by the leaders of Germany, France, Russia and Ukraine."

Kiev didn't even take an effort in an attempt to start dialogue with the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Lugansk on the modalities of elections there, Lavrov said after negotiations with his Gabonese counterpart, Emmanuel Issoze-Ngondet.

At the OSCE Permanent Council session on Thursday Russia is set to raise the question of the violation of the Minsk agreements when adopting laws on Donbass, RIA Novosti reported.


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RT
2015-03-17 18:19:00

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French lawmakers have given the green light to a law that will allow doctors the right to put terminally ill patients into a deep sleep until they die.

The vote passed by a huge majority with 436 in favor and 34 against, although the session was briefly interrupted by a group of protesters who threw bits of paper with slogans like "no to euthanasia" from the gallery.

A total of 83 lawmakers abstained. Of these, several from the left abstained because the law didn't go far enough. Around 20 MPs from the right wing UMP party also didn't take part because they thought the law went too far, which some said represented a drift towards euthanasia.

On Monday representatives of France's religious communities said they would try and appeal the bill.

"We are launching a joint appeal, anxious and pressing, [so] that this possible new law will not in any way violate this basic principle: all human life must be respected particularly at the moment when it is most fragile," they said in an open letter published in French daily Le Monde.
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Ted Bridis
Associated Press
2015-03-18 17:15:00

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The Obama administration set a new record again for more often than ever censoring government files or outright denying access to them last year under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, according to a new analysis of federal data by The Associated Press.

The government took longer to turn over files when it provided any, said more regularly that it couldn't find documents, and refused a record number of times to turn over files quickly that might be especially newsworthy.

It also acknowledged in nearly 1 in 3 cases that its initial decisions to withhold or censor records were improper under the law — but only when it was challenged.


Comment: It's ironic that the U.S. bellows about democracy and peoples' rights to other countries but yet it is getting more and more secretive and paranoid every year. Perhaps the U.S. should think twice about lecturing other countries and focus on their own growing lack of transparency in government.


Its backlog of unanswered requests at year's end grew remarkably by 55 percent to more than 200,000. It also cut by 375, or about 9 percent, the number of full-time employees across government paid to look for records. That was the fewest number of employees working on the issue in five years.

The government's new figures, published Tuesday, covered all requests to 100 federal agencies during fiscal 2014 under the Freedom of Information law, which is heralded globally as a model for transparent government. They showed that despite disappointments and failed promises by the White House to make meaningful improvements in the way it releases records, the law was more popular than ever. Citizens, journalists, businesses and others made a record 714,231 requests for information. The U.S. spent a record $434 million trying to keep up. It also spent about $28 million on lawyers' fees to keep records secret.
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RT
2015-03-17 18:34:00

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Gas supplies from Hungary to Ukraine have increased tenfold to a record 7.4 million cubic meters per day on Monday, up sharply from 720,000 cubic meters per day on March 7-12, the Ukrainian gas transportation network operator Ukrtransgaz said.

"As of 6:00 [04:00 GMT] on March 16, daily natural gas supplies to Ukraine from Hungary amounted to 7.4 million cubic meters. From March 7 to March 12, when gas supplies from Hungary were increased, the deliveries stood at 0.72 million cubic meters per day," Ukrtransgaz said in a statement on its website on Monday. Ukraine's has imported 52 million cubic meters from Hungary in the first half of March, the operator added. Last year, Ukraine imported 600 million cubic meters of gas from Hungary.

The statistics from Naftogaz come at a time when Ukraine is seeking to diversify away from Russian supplies. The new gas conflict with Moscow could trigger another cut-off. Meanwhile, Kiev says it's going to cut imports from Russia to zero and buy gas in reverse schemes from other western countries like Slovakia and Poland. Last week, President Petro Poroshenko blamed Russia for charging Ukraine 15 percent more for its gas than the countries in Europe and said he would get gas in reverse supplies from Europe at $245 per 1,000 cubic meters.

Ukraine, where the economy is in a full-blown crisis, now pays for Russian gas in small tranches. The last one - $15 million - was made on March 6 and is supposed to last through March 15, but since then, Gazprom has not received any new payments.
Comment: Kiev's problem here is that Russia continues to support the rebel Donetsk and Luhansk regions with additional gas deliveries for humanitarian reasons, but is reluctant to pay for that "unauthorized" gas:
Wall Street Journal, March 2nd
The agreement, following talks between the two ministers in Brussels, doesn't resolve the question of who will ultimately pay for gas delivered by Gazprom to the Donetsk and Luhansk regions but not authorized by Naftogaz. Russia has been backing the rebels in those regions. [..]

Naftogaz had complained in recent weeks that Gazprom had unilaterally cut deliveries and that damage to pipelines in territory controlled by pro-Russian rebels prevented it from verifying deliveries there. Gazprom, meanwhile, warned that a failure by Naftogaz to prepay for agreed volumes could leave Ukraine—and the EU—without fresh gas within days. It said that it had continued supplies to Donetsk and Luhansk for humanitarian reasons.


163.3 million cubic meters was pumped to Ukraine from Hungary in January and February. Gas from western markets - through Austria - is only transferred, if Ukraine pays for it. German leader Angela Merkel repeatedly thanked Hungarian PM Orban for these gas transits when she recently met him.
portfolio.hu, February 23rd
The Hungarian Prime Minister added that his country (western neighbor of Ukraine) can only sell gas to Ukraine that it has bought on the spot marketthrough Austria's gas hub. "This provision," according to the WSJ, he said, "ensures Hungary doesn't reap any profits from the difference between the lower price it pays to Russia and what gas costs on the spot market."

"Ukraine makes a political issue out of this, but this is a price issue," Orbán added.

Asked about the compatibility of this agreement with EU regulations, the spokeswoman responded: "There are currently gas reverse flow arrangements with Ukraine in Poland, Slovakia and Hungary. The Commission's opinion is that reverse flows in these countries are legally sound and in line with EU legislation."

Itkonen noted that the EC does not have all the details toHungary's new contract with Russia, under which it cannot re-sell gas received from Russia's Gazprom to Ukraine, but the EU executive will look into these "other contracts".


No, these are not 'legally sound' - they're illegal. But because they're screwing over Russia, double standards apply, so it's apparently ok to break all the rules they would otherwise impose on 'developing countries'.
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Sputnik
2015-03-18 15:04:00

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Ukraine's regime of Petro Poroshenko is shifting the goalposts on any given political matter, brazenly violating the Minsk deal, while the West is turning a blind eye to Kiev's actions, a UK expert notes.

The Ukrainian regime of Petro Poroshenko backed by the West has become a sort of "star team" in shifting the goalposts on any given political matter, especially on the Minsk ceasefire deal, noted a UK expert.

"Poroshenko and his reactionary Kiev regime - which seized power in February last year in a Western-backed violent coup against a constitutionally elected government - have shown themselves to be shameless purveyors of the most outlandish claims over the Ukraine crisis,"noted Finian Cunningham, an author and prominent expert in international affairs.

Petro Poroshenko, greeted in Berlin with open arms by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Joachim Gauck, called upon his Western allies to boycott the 2018 World Cup Finals in Russia and claimed again - without the slightest evidence - that Russia was "waging war against Ukraine." However, these ludicrous and reckless assertions "are gladly broadcast by the US-led NATO military alliance, Western governments and Western news media," noted the author.Even though Berlin has recently adopted a more cautious approach to Ukrainian propaganda and they continue indulging Kiev's dangerous warmongering. 

So far, enjoying this whole-hearted support of the West, the Kiev regime is moving goalposts on any given political matter with total impunity. For instance, while declaring that "there was no alternative to the Minsk ceasefire," Poroshenko's regime is violating the deal at every turn, the expert underscored. Sporadic fire of Ukrainian military forces on militia's positions in eastern Ukraine has never ceased since February 15. At least 20 percent of Kiev's heavy artillery still remains in the conflict zone. Moreover, Kiev's remaining forces have been conducting live-fire drills near the Contact Line, psychologically terrorizing peaceful civilians.
Comment: Porky is just following the dictates of his Western masters. The longer the conflict drags on the more they hope Russia will overtly step in, giving NATO the excuse for the war they've wanted all along.
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Jodi Rudoren
New York Times
2015-03-18 13:36:00

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Tel Aviv — After a bruising campaign focused on his failings, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel won a clear victory in Tuesday's elections and seemed all but certain to form a new government and serve a fourth term, though he offended many voters and alienated allies in the process.

With 99.5 percent of the ballots counted, the YNet news site reported Wednesday morning that Mr. Netanyahu's Likud Party had captured 29 or 30 of the 120 seats in Parliament, sweeping past his chief rival, the center-left Zionist Union alliance, which got 24 seats.

Mr. Netanyahu and his allies had seized on earlier exit polls that showed a slimmer Likud lead to create an aura of inevitability, and celebrated with singing and dancing. While his opponents vowed a fight, Israeli political analysts agreed even before most of the ballots were counted that he had the advantage, with more seats having gone to the right-leaning parties likely to support him.
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Sputnik
2015-03-18 13:04:00

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In a sign of the European Union's diminishing appetite for sanctions against Russia, seven EU member states are expected to reject any prolongation of the current western sanctions against Russia for its alleged role in the Ukrainian crisis.

The list of no-backers includes Cyprus, whose President Nicos Anastasiades visited Moscow in February, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, who met with Vladimir Putin earlier this month, andGreek Premier Alexis Tsipras, who is due in Moscow in April.

Along with Hungary, Slovakia, Austria and Spain, these three countries are reluctant backers of economic curbs against Russia and, as long as the shaky truce holds in eastern Ukraine, the anti-sanctions bloc will lay down a marker at an EU summit starting Thursday in Brussels, Bloomberg reported.

"The likeliest outcome is that they will not agree to roll over the sanctions now and they will put off a decision until the last possible moment before the sanctions expire," Ian Bond, a former British diplomat now with the Center for European Reform in London, said by phone.
Comment: These countries would do well to follow through with this. Russia remembers who its friends are. The U.S. simply leaves them for the dogs: Hungary, Cyprus and Greece may be first to return to Russian market if sanctions lifted
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Nick Beams
World Socialist Web Site
2015-03-17 04:16:00

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A significant rift has opened up between the UK and the US following the decision by the Cameron government last week to defy the wishes of the Obama administration and become a founding member of the $50 billion China-backed Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.

In a sharp rebuke, an unnamed White House official told the Financial Times the British government had been engaged in a "constant accommodation" of China.

The decision came after the US earlier had applied great pressure to its allies in the region—South Korea, Japan and Australia—not to become members, out of concern the bank would undermine the influence of the US-dominated World Bank and cut across US plans for the diplomatic and military encirclement of China under the Obama administration's "pivot to Asia."

Last October, intense lobbying by the Obama administration saw the Australian Liberal government of Prime Minister Tony Abbott overturn a previous decision to take part in the establishment of the AIIB.
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Pepe Escobar
RT.com
2015-03-18 03:37:00

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US Secretary of State John Kerry may be starting to enjoy the brinkmanship, as he says it's "unclear" whether the US and Iran would reach a political framework nuclear deal before the end of this month.

Loud applause may be heard in corridors ranging from Tel Aviv to Riyadh.

As negotiations resume in Lausanne, the fact is a potential nuclear agreement between Iran and the P5+1 (US, UK, France, BRICS members Russia and China, and Germany) is bound to open the possibility of more Iranian oil exports - thus leading oil prices to fall even further. As of early this week, Brent crude was trading at $54.26 a barrel.

Assuming the US and the EU nations that are part of P5+1 really agree to implement the suspension of UN sanctions by the summer (Russia and China already agree), not only will Iran be exporting more energy - that should take a few months - but also OPEC as a whole will be increasing its oversupply.

The EU badly wants to buy loads of Iranian energy - and invest in Iranian energy infrastructure. Beijing, a key yet discreet member of the P5+1, is also watching these developments very carefully.

Whatever happens, for China this is a win-win situation, as Beijing keeps actively building up its strategic petroleum reserves profiting from low prices. And even as oil prices also remain under pressure from the strong US dollar - which makes oil way more expensive if you are paying with a different currency - that's certainly no problem for China, with its mammoth US dollar reserves.

The oil price war essentially unleashed by Saudi Arabia has hit Iran with a bang. The country may be down, but not out. There were no good options for Tehran except to try to keep its market share by offering the same discounts - especially to Asia - the Saudis are offering.

Tehran has been under a tsunami of nasty Western sanctions for years, which limit its ability to export oil and increase production. It's extremely difficult for the Iranian governments to reduce the gap of the expected revenue based on previous high oil prices.

Now the name of the game among major oil producers is to keep market share at all costs. Iran can't escape it - as it needs to keep in check at all times the fear of oversupply and its desire to increase production. Some oil producing countries are definitely keeping upcoming oil supplies out of the market. The result is Iran will have serious trouble going for more production and more exports while trying to regain its pre-sanctions market share.
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RT
2015-03-17 02:58:00

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The Russian president has again denounced attempts to rewrite WWII history, noting that the authors seek to sow strife between peoples and nations for their own geopolitical purposes.

Putin said the cynical lies about the Great Patriotic War and the attempts to blacken the reputation of the Soviet people and the Red Army have nothing to do with the truth. The president's comments came at the Tuesday session of the committee preparing the May 9 celebrations of the 70th anniversary of the Soviet Union's victory over Nazi Germany in the Second World War. The Great Patriotic war is the traditional Russian title for the 1941-45 campaign against Germany and its allies.

"I reject these shameless conclusions and so called observations that have nothing to do with the truth. Their objective is clear - they want to undermine the power and moral authority of modern Russia and deprive it of the winner nation status with all consequences that would follow in international law," Putin told the committee members. "They want to divide peoples and instigate conflicts among them, to use historical lies in geopolitical games."

The president urged all committee members to maintain their efforts in upholding the truth about the war and the Soviet Union's input in repelling the Nazi threat.
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Prof. Tim Anderson
Global Research
2015-03-16 02:39:00

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A multi-million dollar Australian Government funded project at the University of Sydney, linked to spin doctors in Washington, is using a biased and secretive method to help discredit elections in a range of 'enemy' countries. The Electoral Integrity Project (EIP) joins the United States Studies Centre (USSC), established in 2007, as another heavily politicised initiative which compromises the independence of Australia's oldest university (see Anderson 2010).

A key target is socialist Venezuela, which is facing yet another destabilisation campaign, backed by Washington. The recent rounds of violence began in early 2014 and recently led to the arrest of several opposition figures for murder and coup plotting. The pretext for the violence has been that the government of President Nicolas Maduro is somehow democratically illegitimate.

However the radical, popular 'Bolivarian' governments have won 12 of Venezuela's last 13 elections. Further, 80% of the voting age population participated in the 2013 election, won by Maduro (International IDEA 2015). That is a massive increase on 1990s levels, when the Chavez phenomenon effectively sidelined the old and moribund two party system. And the electoral system is secure. Even the political journalist for anti-government paper El Universal described Venezuela's electoral system as 'one of the most technologically advanced verifiable voting systems in the world', with protections against fraud and tampering and scrutineered random recount mechanisms (Martinez 2013).

Sydney University's 'Electoral Integrity Project' tells a very different story. According to their 2015 report, Venezuela's Presidential election in 2013 was one of the worst in the world, ranking 110 out of 127. They corroborate their data with a survey claiming President Maduro only had a 24% popularity rating, with '85% believing that the country was heading in the wrong direction' (Norris et al 2015: 31). The EIP did not mention the Hinterlaces Polls, which have had Maduro's popularity (during the recent crisis) ranging from 39% to 52%; nor do they cite polls showing overwhelming rejection of the opposition's violent attempts to remove the elected president (Dutka 2014).
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Society's Child
RT
2015-03-18 22:25:00

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Three people have been wounded in a Copenhagen shopping center shooting incident, according to Danish media quoting the police.
#breaking Vagthavende ved Københavns Politi bekræfter overfor TV 2, at der er affyret skud i shoppingcenteret FIELDS i København.

— TV 2 Breaking | LIVE (@tv2breaking) March 18, 2015
Local TV 2 spoke to a witness who said security forces were in the building, with weapons drawn. "The guards shouted at us to get to safety, because there was shooting," the witness said.

The shooting was reported to have happened in the shopping center's car park at around noon local time.

Eight people were responsible for the violence at the Fields shopping mall, and they appear to be"two groups who clashed," Michael Andersen of the Copenhagen police told the Rittzau news agency.

Fields is in the Danish capital's Amager district and is not only the largest shopping center in Denmark, but one of the biggest in Scandinavia.
Comment: This is the second active shooter in Copenhagen in the last 2 months:
  • More terrorism circus? Two dead, five injured in Copenhagen shootings
Is there a concerted effort to spread fear in Europe with these incidents?
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RT
2015-03-18 22:15:00

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A US citizen, who was put on a no-fly list, declared a threat to national security and tortured in an UAE prison after refusing to become an FBI informant, is having a hard time proving it happened at the behest of the US authorities, his lawyer told RT.

Yonas Fikre is an Eritrean born American citizen who immigrated as a refugee to the US when he was 13 from neighboring Sudan. He became a US citizen and in 2006 settled in Portland, Oregon. His problems began soon after 2010 when he went back to Khartoum, where he still had relatives, to start an electronics import business.

In Sudan he was summoned to the US Embassy on false pretenses and was told by two FBI agents from Oregon that they wanted to ask him a few questions about his mosque in Portland. When Fikre demanded a lawyer and hesitated to answer questions about people he had prayed at the mosque with but barely knew - the agents told him he was placed on a no-fly list. Although there was "absolutely no factual justification" for that, his lawyer, Thomas Nelson, told RT.

Fikre was told he would be taken off the list if he agreed to work for the FBI as an informant. He eventually agreed to answer their questions, but not work for the feds. A couple of weeks later, Fikre says he received a letter from one of the FBI agents, telling him threateningly: "While we hope to get your side of issues we keep hearing about, the choice is yours to make. The time to help yourself is now."


View on Sott.net
Comment: Welcome to the land of the free and home of the brave! Where being a Muslim and attending a mosque is good enough to be tortured for over 100 days and then released as though nothing happened.
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RT
2015-03-18 22:11:00

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Police say they have captured the gunman responsible for shooting at least six people at multiple locations in Mesa, Arizona. One person died, and another is in critical condition. The suspect was captured in the Phoenix suburb.

There are at least four confirmed shooting scenes in Mesa, though there could be as many as five or six locations, Mesa Police Department Detective Estaban Florez told reporters. Mesa PD and the Arizona State University Police Department have said that the suspect was captured about one mile west southwest of the first scene without any shots fired.
Comment: Surprised the suspect is not dead.
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RT
2015-03-18 08:52:00

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A suspicious envelope received by the White House earlier this week has tested positive for cyanide, the US Secret Service has confirmed, adding that another test will be conducted to confirm the results.

"On Monday 3/16/15, an envelope was received at the White House Mail Screening Facility. Initial Biological testing was negative; however, on 03/17/15, the chemical testing returned a presumptive positive for cyanide," Secret Service spokesman Brian Leary said in a statement. "The sample was transported to another facility to confirm the results."

According to US Environmental Protection Agency cyanide, which is used in a number of industries, is "extremely" toxic to humans.

"Chronic (long-term) inhalation exposure of humans to cyanide results primarily in effects on the central nervous system (CNS)," the EPA warns.

Other effects include cardiovascular and respiratory, as well as an enlarged thyroid gland, and irritation to the eyes and skin.
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RT
2015-03-18 05:34:00

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Two veteran New York City cops discovered to have altered Wikipedia entries related to high-profile police brutality cases from police headquarters won't be punished, according to the commissioner.

New York Police Department Commissioner Bill Bratton made the announcement Monday and said the two officers - whose names will not be released - do not currently work in the police headquarters, and are assigned to two different units.

"Two officers, who have been identified, were using department equipment to access Wikipedia and make entries," NYPD commissioner Bill Bratton told reporters. "I don't anticipate any punishment, quite frankly."
Bill Bratton: No penalty for NYPD cops who edited Wikipedia page about#EricGarnerhttp://t.co/e87Or9ZjZcpic.twitter.com/izh2aa0CNY

— Occupy Wall Street (@OccupyWallStNYC) March 17, 2015
Comment: Comment: " NYPD commissioner Bill Bratton told reporters. "I don't anticipate any punishment, quite frankly."" Of course not. If officers can get away with cold-blooded murder without so much as a slap on the wrist they can surely get away with attempts to re-write history.
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Tarek Amara
Yahoo
2015-03-18 17:33:00

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Gunmen in military uniforms stormed Tunisia's national museum, killing 17 foreign tourists and two Tunisians on Wednesday in one of the worst militant attacks in a country that has largely escaped the region's "Arab Spring" turmoil.

Visitors from Italy, Germany, Poland and Spain were among the dead in the noon assault on the Bardo museum near parliament in central Tunis, Prime Minister Habib Essid said.

Security forces stormed the former palace around two hours later, killed two militants and freed other tourists held hostage inside, a government spokesman said. One policeman was killed in the police operation.

European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said Islamic State militants, who have become particularly active in neighboring Libya, were behind the attack. "The EU is determined to mobilize all the tools it has to fully support Tunisia in the fight against terrorism," she added.

Prime Minister Essid declared in a national address:

"All Tunisians should be united after this attack which was aimed at destroying the Tunisian economy."
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Paul Gottinger
CounterPunch
2015-03-18 16:27:00

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Last Saturday over 1,000 people gathered for the funeral of Tony Robinson on Madison's East side. Robinson, an unarmed, biracial, teenager was shot and killed on March 6 by Madison police officer Matt Kenny. Officer Kenny shot Robinson in the head and multiple times in the torso after he responded to a call that Robinson was acting "erratically".

According to friends of Robinson, he was tripping on hallucinogenic drugs the night he was shot. One of the calls to the police came from friends wanting help for Robinson.

Unfortunately, we don't live in a world where the police exist to offer help. And officer Kenny is no exception. He responded to a teen in need of help with the cold compassion of multiple gunshots. Moreover, Kenny's murder of Robinson was not his first.

In 2007 Kenny shot and killed a drunk man holding a pellet gun. His punishment? He earned the Medal of Valor, the department's highest honor.
Comment: America has become a police state where the cops shoot first and ask questions later. Will the Black Lives Matter protests have the strength to put this monster back into its cage or has the psychopathic devolution of the US gone too far to be stopped?
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David Edwards
Raw Story
2015-03-15 16:47:00

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Fox News host Greta Van Susteren on Sunday blasted Republican senators for sending a "horrific" letter to Iran, and attempting an "end run" around the president.

David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, told an ABC News panel that the 46 senators who joined Sen. Tom Cotton's (R-AR) letter undermine President Barack Obama's negotiations with Iran had made a "horrendous" mistake.

"If you read the text of the letter, it is the most condescending, infantile text assuming that the leaders of Iran — whatever you may think of them, and there's a lot on the record to think terribly of them — that somehow, that they have no idea what the American system is all about," Remnick explained. "It's an absurd comical exercise."

Susteren agreed: "I think that letter was horrific."

"It end runs the president, which I think is terrible," she said. "I think they could have achieved the same goal without sending a letter becoming pen pals with the leadership of Iran."

The Fox News host also condemned President Obama for trying to "end run the United States Senate and not calling this a treaty."

Watch the video below from ABC's This Week, broadcast March 15, 2015.


View on Sott.net
Comment: It's pretty funny to see Fox News slamming Republicans for anything. They are usually working together to spread neocon policy, but now it looks like there might be a break in the ranks.
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RT
2015-03-17 16:41:00

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Around 40 New Black Panther Party members took to the streets of Austin, Texas to condemn recent killings of black civilians. Armed with high caliber weapons, they said they aimed to patrol their own communities and encourage the taking up of arms.

The protest in the state capital of Texas on Monday coincided with the SXSW (South by Southwest) festival, which celebrates music and film. However the heavily-armed New Black Panther members, who were carrying Kalashnikov rifles and AR-15's caught the attention of many, as they chanted songs in their display of force.

Showing off their weapons was not the main reason for them marching along the streets. The movement was protesting the deaths of a number of unarmed black people, such as teenager Michael Brown and Eric Garner, whom they believe were the results of police brutality.

"We are here to show support for the families and the victims who got murdered throughout the United States," said New Black Panther Party member, Darren X, who was speaking to Ruptly video news agency.

The deaths of Brown and Garner caused mass protests across the US, while the fact that no police officer was charged in either instance has only increased the feeling amongst the black community that they are being victimized.


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Daisy Luther
The Organic Prepper
2015-03-17 15:58:00

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Houston, we have a problem.

Did you ever wonder why America is in trouble? Maybe it is because people like this vote and select political leaders. This video brings up a valid argument for voters to be tested before they are allowed at the polls.
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Matt Agorist
The Free Thought Project
2015-03-17 16:50:00

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Lakewood, WA — Students are speaking out against what they believe to be a case of excessive force at their high school.

An officer at Clover Park High School is now being investigated for using excessive force after arresting a student.

The student is facing a charge of resisting arrest, and a teacher is also facing possible charges of obstruction for trying to help the student. The case has been referred to the city attorney who will determine if charges will be filed.

According to KIRO 7,


The incident happened a week and a half ago near the pool on campus.

Reports of a fight prompted the on duty school resource officer, Lakewood Police Detective Rey Punzalan, to respond.

Witnesses say the officer hit one of the students, a 14-year-old, with his car door.

Because he failed to put it in park, the door kept hitting the student.


Police are claiming that the negligent actions of the officer using his car door as a weapon did not injure the child at all. Lakewood Police Lieutenant Chris Lawler says the student wasn't hurt. "It didn't knock him down," Lt Lawler explained. "It didn't cause any injuries."

When the officer told the student to go to the office, the student, who had just been struck by the officer's car door, allegedly responded with profanity.

"So he goes to grab the student, who is 6-foot-1, 210 pounds, and the kids immediately tenses up and starts to fight with the officer," says Lawler, in an attempt to paint the student as some monstrous villain.

However, the eyewitnesses say that's not the case at all. They say the student was not fighting back, and the officer placed him in a chokehold.

Predictably, police are claiming that it wasn't a chokehold, the officer merely "grabbed the child by the neck."
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Secret History
Anna Salleh
ABC Science, Australia
2015-03-18 22:08:00

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Ancient Britons were not overrun by invading Saxons in the Dark Ages, suggests a new map based on the DNA of people from the UK and Europe.

The study, published today in Nature, provides the first strong genetic evidence of the Saxon invasion, and shows how much they interbred with the locals once they got there.

"When I first made this map I nearly fell out of my chair because what came up was this incredible pattern, and I could see that it matched lots of things that I already knew about British history, says lead author Dr Stephen Leslie, a statistical geneticist at the Murdoch Childrens Research Institute

Leslie and colleagues used a sophisticated statistical technique to analyse subtle genetic differences between over 8000 individual people across the United Kingdom and Europe.

They used protocols to make sure they were only studying DNA that was local to the area, by, for example, only taking the UK samples from people whose four grandparents were all born in the same rural area.

The researchers then clustered individuals into colour-coded groups, based only on their genetics, and were amazed to find that when they plotted the results on a map, the clusters corresponded to specific areas of the UK. The clustering showed northern and southern English people were genetically distinct, and in some cases clusters very accurately reflected geographical borders.

"For example you could see Cornwall was separate from Devon and that that separation was almost perfectly along the county boundary," says Leslie.

While past studies of this type have been able to use genetics to tell what continent or country people come from, this is the first study to be able to pinpoint people to regions within countries, says Leslie.

"Nobody has been able to see differences on this scale before," he says.

Despite some distinct groupings, however, the researchers found most of England was genetically very similar.

"Central and southern England, along with the north-eastern coast was relatively homogenous compared to everything else," says Leslie.

"It's pretty striking we can't separate out places like East Anglia and Kent."
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Science & Technology
SciTechDaily
2015-03-13 14:07:00


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Researchers at MIT have developed a method to stimulate brain tissue using external magnetic fields and injected magnetic nanoparticles — a technique allowing direct stimulation of neurons, which could be an effective treatment for a variety of neurological diseases, without the need for implants or external connections.

The research, conducted by Polina Anikeeva, an assistant professor of materials science and engineering, graduate student Ritchie Chen, and three others, has been published in the journal Science.
Comment: These experiments seem eerily similar to José Manuel Rodriguez Delgado's work. It only takes a slight nudge of the imagination to conceive of other, more insidious, motives that could arise from experiments such as these.
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RT
2015-03-18 15:41:00

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NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has revealed images of the lunar surface before and after the largest recorded explosion detected on the surface. The luminous flash was recorded by researchers at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville.

An object the size of a small boulder hit the surface in Mare Imbrium two years ago, and exploded in a flash of light "nearly 10 times as bright as anything ever recorded before," NASA said. Since 2005 the Marshall group recorded over 300 flashes, assumed to be meteoroid impacts. The brightest recorded flash occurred on March 17, 2013.

The Lunar Reconnaissance Camera (LROC) scientists managed to obtain observations before and after the impact. The US space agency explained in a statement that comparing the actual size of the crater to the brightness of the flash helps to validate impact models.
Comment: Expect more meteors coming to a planet near you.
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Clare Skelly
Phys.org
2015-03-18 14:35:00

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NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, captured this solar image on March 16, 2015, which clearly shows two dark patches, known as coronal holes. The larger coronal hole of the two, near the southern pole, covers an estimated 6- to 8-percent of the total solar surface. While that may not sound significant, it is one of the largest polar holes scientists have observed in decades. The smaller coronal hole, towards the opposite pole, is long and narrow. It covers about 3.8 billion square miles on the sun - only about 0.16-percent of the solar surface.
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Earth Changes
Shelby Brown
WVTR.com
2015-03-16 23:40:00

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Here is a heads up for bikers and drivers traveling along North Belmont Avenue in the city. There are bright orange cones and barrels are surrounding a sinkhole.

Neighbor Judy Dart did not realize how bad it was until Sunday when she spotted a biker stopped in the area.

She went over because she thought he had been hurt.

"He said he was putting a cone there because there was a big hole, so I went over to see" Dart explained.

That's why she contacted the city.

Dart says like that biker, her husband also placed cones around the sinkhole to alert others.

"My concern is traffic coming down the street and someone hitting it and that could possibly hurt somebody" Dart said.

Treyvon Miller works at a nearby restaurant and tells us he has heard customers talking about the sinkhole.

"I don't really drive but I have noticed it. It's bad. I think they need to fix something like that immediately" Miller said.

CBS 6 contacted Richmond's Department of Public utilities to find out when the work will be done. No one responded to our calls.
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Alex Sosnowski
Accuweather.com
2015-03-18 09:55:00

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A storm spreading rain across the South this week will take a northward jog and spread snow to part of the Interstate-95 and I-81 corridors of the Northeast on Friday.

Spring officially arrives on Friday, March 20, at 6:45 p.m. EDT, but Old Man Winter may have the last laugh.

Colder air will invade the Northeast during the middle days of the week, and the atmosphere is likely to remain just cold enough for some wet snow before the week draws to a close.

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Despite the colder air, temperatures will be marginal for the storm with a close call between rain and snow along the I-95 corridor in the mid-Atlantic, Long Island and along the southern coast of New England. Much of the snow that falls in this area may melt on roads. However, there will be some exceptions.

A wintry mix of rain and snow is most likely in Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Wilmington, Delaware, and Trenton, New Jersey. The storm is likely to impact travel in this area, including the potential for flight delays due to poor visibility and deicing operations. Motorists and pedestrians should be prepared for delays on Friday.

Areas farther north such as Harrisburg, Allentown and Scranton, Pennsylvania; New York City and White Plains, New York; Hartford, Connecticut; and Boston are likely to be cold enough for all or mostly snow. Airline delays due to deicing and poor visibility are likely in the New York City area and perhaps as far north as Boston. Most areas within this swath will receive 1-3 inches of snow with the greatest amount on non-paved surfaces.
Comment: See the latest SOTT video summary on the extreme weather we are having on the planet.


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Andrew Freedman
mashable.com
2015-03-18 20:07:00

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While the all-time snowfall record in Boston may have received most of the media attention in the U.S., Canada has had its fair share of unusually severe winter weather this season as well.

Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland have been slammed by back-to-back-to-back-to-back (you get the point) severe winter storms, producing a broad area of sea ice cover and mountainous snowbanks along the streets of cities such as Charlottetown and Saint John.

A Marine Atlantic passenger ferry with 190 people aboard was stuck in pack ice off Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, on Tuesday, with Canadian Coast Guard ships trying to free the vessel.According to the Canadian Press, the MV Highlanders ran into heavy ice on Monday night, after leaving North Sydney, Nova Scotia, for Port aux Basques, Newfoundland.
#CCG Louis S St-Laurent assisting MV Highlanders and Blue Puttees in Cabot Strait. Slow progress in very thick #ice. pic.twitter.com/Do2HeFWiVW

— DFO_NL (@DFO_NL) March 17, 2015

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In a statement to passengers, Marine Atlantic warned of travel delays.
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US Geological Survey
2015-03-18 20:12:00

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Event Time
  1. 2015-03-18 18:27:28 (UTC)
  2. Times in other timezones
Nearby Cities
  1. 82km (51mi) NNW of Talcahuano, Chile
  2. 83km (52mi) NW of Tome, Chile
  3. 91km (57mi) NW of Penco, Chile
  4. 96km (60mi) NNW of Concepcion, Chile
  5. 400km (249mi) SW of Santiago, Chile
Scientific Data
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Becca Mitchell and Todd Corillo
wtkr.com
2015-03-18 19:31:00

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A large number of dead fish and a dead dolphin have washed up on the beaches of the Outer Banks over the past few days.

Locals have reported that the stretch of dead fish runs for approximately three miles in the Corolla area.

The North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources, Division of Water Resources manages fish kill activity in the state.

Environmental Senior Specialist Jill Paxson with the Division of Water Resources says she hasn't seen the fish kill nor gotten reports of it, but says they are typically caused by one of two factors.
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Richard Emblin
The City Paper
2015-03-18 19:15:00

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Conservationists Carlos Julio Rojas and Cristian Vásquez were trekking through the high altitude wetlands of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta when they were stopped in their tracks by a rare and beautiful find.

Given their location in the coastal range home to the "Lost City" (and many yet to be discovered archeological sites), these biologists working at the Reserva Natural de Aves 'El Dorado,' a scientific research station of the ProAves Foundation, managed to capture with a camera the Colibrí Barbudito Azul, or Blue-bearded Helmetcrest.

For bird lovers around the world, the spotting of a Blue-bearded Helmetcrest is important news, as the last time this hummingbird was seen by humans, was back in 1946.

"I saw the flash of a bird screeching past me and it perched on a bush nearby. I managed to take a quick photo of it before it flew off. I then reviewed the photo in the camera and immediately recognized the strikingly-patterned hummingbird as the long-lost Blue-bearded Helmetcrest," explains Cristian.
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Tegan Osborne and Ruby Cornish
ABC News
2015-03-18 02:57:00

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A man has escaped serious injury after his car burst into flames following a freak lightning strike near a gas main in Canberra's north.

The fire began after lightning struck on Dryandra Street in Canberra's north during a short thunderstorm over the ACT about 8:00am.

Shortly after the lightning strike a car on the street burst into flames.

Firefighter Danny Brighenti said crews at the scene were initially puzzled by the blaze, which kept reigniting.

"They believed there was a ruptured fuel tank which was causing the car to reignite," he said.

He said on closer inspection, once the fire died down, it was revealed a gas main had ruptured near the car.

Nearby resident Sarah Groubes: "As we turned around the corner onto Dryandra Street we just saw this fireball on the side of the road."

Commander Brighenti said the cause of the gas leak was unclear.

He said scenarios in which cars were struck by lightning were rare, and it was possible a tree nearby was actually struck.

He said it was also unclear whether the car that caught fire was parked or moving along the road at the time of the lightning strike.

"On arrival the person had got out of the vehicle, but the car was heavily involved in fire with the surrounding trees and bushes," Commander Brighenti said.

"They're not injured ... but the car is totally destroyed."

A mountain bike and an iPhone inside the car were also destroyed.
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RT
2015-03-18 12:29:00

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An abnormal atmospheric phenomenon was visible throughout the relevantly low latitude of central Russia, including Moscow and St. Petersburg on Tuesday. A powerful geomagnetic storm promises to continue for a second day, also including an aurora.

Witnesses and amateur astronomers have been busily posting photos and videos of this atmospheric event - so rarely seen in Central Russia - on blogs and social media.

As a rule, the aurora borealis is visible in regions close or above the Polar Circle, for example in Russia's Arctic city of Murmansk.

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But sometimes extremely powerful solar flares cause this atmospheric phenomenon to be visible in much lower altitudes, as is the case now.


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WOODTV.com
2015-03-16 14:50:00

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A section of a road west of Greenville will remain closed until mid-summer after a pipe collapsed and caused a large sinkhole.

Podunk Avenue was shut down between 13 Mile Road and 14 Mile Road over Wabasis Creek in Oakfield Township Friday after this sinkhole appeared, according to Jerry Byrne, who is the Kent County Road Commission's deputy managing director of operations.

Byrne told 24 Hour News 8 a large, corrugated metal pipe rusted through and collapsed. It will be replaced by a concrete culvert, which should last longer than the metal pipe.

The section of Podunk Avenue will remain closed until mid-summer because the Kent County Road Commission needs permits from the Department of Environmental Quality. They also have to wait for water levels on Wabasis Creek to recede, Byrne said.

The collapsed culvert was inspected with in the last few years, Byrne said, however - while some issues were noted - inspectors did not expect it to collapse.
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Kurtis Alexander
San Francisco Chronicle
2015-03-17 17:47:00

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California officials approved a package of far-reaching water restrictions Tuesday, limiting homes and businesses in much of the Bay Area and elsewhere to just two days of outdoor watering per week while cracking down on the way restaurants and hotels use water.

The rules mark unprecedented territory for the state, which has historically let local water agencies, with their unique supplies and demands, manage how customers use water. But with California poised for a fourth year of drought and conservation lagging, officials opted for statewide action.

The regulations, carrying fines up to $500, add to restrictions put in place last year that rein in outdoor water use — for example, barring people from hosing down driveways. The new terms tread deeper into homes, businesses and the lives of most Californians, and are indicative of the state's worsening water woes.

"We are not seeing the stepping up and the ringing of alarm bells that the situation warrants," said Felicia Marcus, chair of the State Water Resources Control Board, which voted unanimously for Tuesday's conservation mandates.

The regulations require local water agencies that don't already limit outdoor watering to certain days of the week to adopt a two-day-a-week policy. Among the Bay Area agencies that would have to impose the two-day limit are the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, serving the city's more than 800,000 residents, as well as the Marin Municipal Water District and Contra Costa Water District. Agencies outside San Francisco that buy water from the SFPUC — including on the Peninsula and in parts of the East Bay — are affected only if they do not already impose watering limits.
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Kendra Nichols
ABC27.com
2015-03-18 17:49:00
A sinkhole has unearthed a mystery in Lebanon.

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From above, the sinkhole looks about 10 feet long, four feet wide, and about seven feet deep, but look down inside and you will find there is much more. Stone walls make what appears to be some type of circular room with metal beams supporting a metal ceiling.

"I thought 'oh, my God.' I did not know what to think," Sandra Norton said.

Norton lives at the home in the 100 block of Canal Street with her granddaughter, Ashley Norton. She discovered the hole Saturday afternoon when she let the dogs out in the backyard.

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Since then, the family has learned a little bit about the history of the property.

"There was an auto body shop in 1925, but in 1875 there was a brick manufacturing," she said.

Norton says her granddaughter has reached out to a contractor to see how much it will cost to fill in the hole. She also hopes to learn more about the property with the help of the Lebanon County Historical Society.
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Richard Davies
floodlist.com
2015-03-18 17:35:00

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More than 20,000 people have been affected by flooding caused by the swollen Purus River in Boca do Acre in Amazonas State, Brazil.

Defesa Civil Amazonas (Amazonas state civil defense) have distributed more than 36 tons of humanitarian aid to flood victims, which includes food, medicine, bedding, mosquito nets, drinking water, and water filters.

"We ... are working on the needs of the population and municipal deficiencies caused by this natural disaster," said the Secretary of Defesa Civil Amazonas, Colonel Roberto Rocha.

At least 70 families have been forced from their homes and are being housed in emergency tents. Authorities say that 8 out of the 9 local districts have been affected. Defesa Civil Amazonas reported that the city's water treatment plant has been damaged in the floods. Maize and banana crops have also been flooded.


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Andy Ouriel
Sandusky Register
2015-03-18 17:38:00

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An emerging sinkhole on McIntyre Road near Edison High School forced local officials to shut down a portion of the corridor until further notice.

On Tuesday, after finding a depression caving several inches deep into the pavement, Milan Township officials closed a half-mile stretch of roadway.

Among the areas where a worker blocked off the road to all traffic, including emergency vehicles:

- Heading south, turning off Ohio 113: Vehicles can travel on McIntyre Road up until a driveway leading to a private residence.

- Heading north, turning off Seminary Road: Vehicles can only access a small portion of McIntyre Road.

No homes, businesses or points of interest are located within the barricaded area.

"We're not too sure how it happened," township road employee Dave Fox said. "We can't fill it like a pothole. We have really never dealt with anything (in the Milan area) like this before. If a car hit that spot just right, it would tear up the undercarriage and could possibly cause the vehicle to crash."
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Jon Herskovitz
Yahoo
2015-03-18 17:40:00

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Fault lines dating back hundreds of millions of years in Oklahoma that have been recently reactivated could lead to a devastating quake in the state where many structures were not built to withstand major seismic activity, a report said.

The state, which has seen several hundred seismic events over the past five years, has "a high degree of potential earthquake hazards," according to the study accepted for publication this month whose authors include researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

"The majority of the recent earthquakes in central Oklahoma define reactivated ancient faults at shallow depths in the crust" of less than 3.7 miles (6 km), said the report for the American Geophysical Union.

The report did not look at whether the reactivation of the faults was linked to the energy extraction technique known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.
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Eric Veronikis
Pennlive.com
2015-03-17 20:20:00

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A large sinkhole closed South 15th Street, between Drummond and Swatara streets, in the city's South Allison Hill neighborhood on Tuesday night.

It wasn't immediately clear when or why the sinkhole, just north of Swatara Street, opened. But a Capital Region Water crew was at the scene assessing the cause as of 6 p.m.

Crews hope to pinpoint whether a water leak exists in the area, repair it and refill the hole, which appears to be about 3 feet deep, as soon as possible, said Andrew Bliss, spokesman for the water company.

Bliss could not immediately say when he expects the road to reopen.
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Fire in the Sky
RT.com
2015-03-18 01:21:00

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An inexplicable white-and-blue flash was spotted lighting up the sky over the southern Russian city of Stavropol. A dashcam video has since triggered a heated debate over the origins of the mysterious sight.

Stavropol's horizon offered a jaw-dropping view to those who weren't asleep at around 00:39 local time (21.39 GMT on Monday). The soundless flash of light scared several people, as it made some streetlights in the city go out, while being accompanied by the flickering of lights inside apartments and houses.
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Health & Wellness
RT
2015-03-18 21:20:00

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It took eight customers complaining about finding mental pieces in their macaroni and cheese before Kraft recalled 6.5 million boxes that had been distributed through the United States, Puerto Rico, the Caribbean and to some South American nations.

According to Kraft, the eight customers who contacted the company after finding metal pieces in their macaroni and cheese reported no injuries.

"Consumers who purchased this product should not eat it," Kraft said in a statement Tuesday. "They should return it to the store where purchased for an exchange or full refund."

The company has warned customers not to prepare and eat macaroni that comes in the original flavor. Its 7.25-ounce-sized box sizes carrying a "best when used by" date ranging from between September 18 to October 11. They also have a code marked "C2' below the expiration dates. The code shows the specific factory line where the potentially tainted boxes were produced.

"We deeply regret this situation and apologize to any consumers we have disappointed," Kraft's statement read.

Kraft's macaroni and cheese products have generated more than $500 million in annual sales, with the company posting a net revenue of $18 billion in 2013, Reuters reported.

The item is not on the Food and Drug Administration's list of recalls and food safety alerts. The agency did not immediately respond with a comment.
Comment: Mac & cheese, while tasty and cheap, is very unhealthy.Eating processed food will lead to a variety of health problems, including auto immune issues and damage to your brain. See:
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Science Daily
2015-03-18 00:00:00

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Researchers at UC San Diego and Creighton University have challenged the intake of vitamin D recommended by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) Institute of Medicine (IOM), stating that their Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) for vitamin D underestimates the need by a factor of ten.

In a letter published last week in the journal Nutrients the scientists confirmed a calculation error noted by other investigators, by using a data set from a different population. Dr. Cedric F. Garland, Dr.P.H., adjunct professor at UC San Diego's Department of Family Medicine and Public Health said his group was able to confirm findings published by Dr. Paul Veugelers from the University of Alberta School of Public Health that were reported last October in the same journal.

"Both these studies suggest that the IOM underestimated the requirement substantially," said Garland. "The error has broad implications for public health regarding disease prevention and achieving the stated goal of ensuring that the whole population has enough vitamin D to maintain bone health."
Comment: Earlier research has shown that over a billion people worldwide are vitamin D deficient. Vitamin D3 deficiency can lead to obesity, diabetes, hypertension, depression, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, osteoporosis, and neuro-degenerative diseases like Alzheimer's, in addition to some types of cancers like breast, prostate, and colon. Vitamin D3 also assists in maintaining the immune system, keeping your mood stable, and protecting the brain. While sunshine is helpful, it is not always possible to get enough to optimize our levels, so taking supplemental Vitamin D3 may be necessary. It is also important to know that if you have a low vitamin D level in spite of taking vitamin D supplements, a magnesium deficiency can be one of the reasons you can't correct it. Be aware that it is quite difficult to obtain enough magnesium from food sources as our soils have been deficient in magnesium for decades, so supplementation may be necessary.

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Valerie Richardson
The Washington Times
2015-03-16 00:00:00

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Supporters of state legislation to tighten vaccine exemptions appeared poised for success this year after the Disneyland measles outbreak, but opponents are hoping the Kennedy magic proves equally contagious.

Longtime vaccination critic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. notched a victory last week with the defeat of a bill in Oregon, one of his first stops on a national barnstorming tour of states considering measures to make it tougher to opt out of childhood immunizations.

Mr. Kennedy met with lawmakers and hosted a screening of the film Trace Amounts, which ties a mercury-based preservative in some childhood vaccines to autism. He urged lawmakers to kill Senate Bill 442, which would have eliminated the nonmedical exemption in Oregon, the nation's leading state for religious and philosophical exemptions at the kindergarten level, with 7.1 percent of parents opting out of child vaccinations.
"I don't think it's appropriate to force people to undergo, to have their children undergo a medical procedure in this country," Mr. Kennedy said in a segment on KOIN-TV in Salem. "I think it's against the tenets of our country."
Mr. Kennedy's star power, combined with a huge push from the "medical freedom" movement,proved too much for the coalition of state Sen. Elizabeth Steiner Hayward. The Democrat, physician and sponsor of S.B. 442 pulled the bill Thursday amid crumbling support, saying she no longer had the votes despite the backing of the Oregon Health Policy Board.

"Some of my colleagues changed their minds," she told the Salem Statesman Journal. "They got a lot of pressure one way or another. This is an issue that really mobilizes a very small minority of people, but it makes them very loud. I get that. That's their right. But there were a bunch of people who weren't prepared to take on this controversial of a topic at this point."
Comment: Parents want to protect their children from life-threatening or debilitating diseases. They are, likewise, not willing to submit their children to remedial measures that increase or guarantee a life-long and unnecessary medical consequence. There is a stigma campaign afoot to demonize parents who think for themselves, do the research, and realize the CDC and its "protections" are based on something other than health and safety for the individual. If the CDC and the medical community were only and completely responsible to public safety and well-being, the poisons common in all vaccines would be eliminated immediately. There are safe alternatives. Mercury in all its forms is a potent toxin that harms the brain, heart, kidneys, immune and gastric systems. Where are the decisions based on truthful, verifiable hard science? And, thimerosal is only one of many questionably dangerous additives to vaccines that may never be detoxed out of the body, continuing to affect health daily.

FYI: More and more there are reports of schools robo-vaccinating children and notifying the parents afterwards. This should be a crime.
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Saraj Boseley
The Guardian
2015-03-17 20:01:00

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Brazilian study of 6,000 babies from all backgrounds since 1982 finds those who breastfed were more intelligent, spent longer in education and earned more

Breastfed babies are more likely to turn into well-educated and higher-earning adults, according to a major long-term study.

Researchers in Brazil have followed nearly 6,000 babies from birth for the past three decades, enabling them for the first time to get an idea of the long-term effects of breastfeeding. Nearly 3,500 of them, now 30-year-old adults, accepted an invitation to be interviewed and sit IQ tests for the purpose of the study. Those who had been breastfed proved to be more intelligent, had spent longer at school and earned more than those who had not been. And the longer they were breastfed as a baby, the better they tended to be doing.

It is already known that breastfeeding can increase a child's IQ by a small amount. The question that Dr Bernardo Lessa Horta from the Federal University of Pelotas in Brazil wanted to answer was whether this translated into greater intelligence and better prospects as an adult.

"Our study provides the first evidence that prolonged breastfeeding not only increases intelligence until at least the age of 30 years but also has an impact both at an individual and societal level by improving educational attainment and earning ability," he said.

It is not just the age of the participants that makes this study unusual. Horta says it is free of the major complication of most breastfeeding studies because, when it began in 1982, it was not just the more affluent and educated mothers who breastfed in Brazil. Breastfeeding was not limited to one socio-economic group. It was, he says, evenly distributed across the social classes. So the higher achievers at the age of 30 did not come from better-off homes.
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Sayer Ji
GreenMedInfo.com
2015-03-11 12:15:00
If listening to your body has lead you to identify gluten as a health problem and you feel better after removing it, a new study adds to an already extensive body of research that the rapidly expanding gluten free movement is not a fad as critics claim. 

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The gluten free (GF) movement has taken on powerful momentum in the past few years, with GF labeled products estimated to balloon to about 7 billion dollars globally by 2019. And so, with any popular dietary pattern promising beneficial changes in health and well-being, as well as challenging both centuries old beliefs in the value of wheat and their producer's and manufacturer's bottom line, the growing popularity and perceive health benefits of the GF diet is destined to cause controversy and backlash, as evidenced by recent mainstream reporting:
A new study, however, provides sound evidence that one does not need to have classically defined celiac disease (i.e. validated by HLA DQ2/8 gene tests and intestinal biopsy) in order to benefit from going gluten free. In fact, this is why the gluten free movement is so popular: most people who opt out of eating gluten feel better when they abstain, worse when they partake. But medical professionals, wheat industry spokespersons and even some friendly to advocating for natural, evidence-based alternatives like Dr. Greger, think the case against eating wheat is overblown, if not downright fraudulent.

What the new gluten study revealed

The new study published in the journal Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology titled, "Small Amounts of Gluten in Subjects with Suspected Nonceliac Gluten Sensitivity: a Randomized, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled, Cross-Over Trial," aimed to add insight into the "debate over the existence of nonceliac gluten sensitivity (NCGS) -intestinal and extra-intestinal symptoms in response to ingestion of gluten-containing foods by people without celiac disease or wheat allergy."
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Harvey Wasserman
Counterpunch
2015-03-17 03:52:00

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Four years after the multiple explosions and melt-downs at Fukushima, it seems the scary stories have only just begun to surface.

Given that Japan's authoritarian regime of Shinzo Abe has cracked down on the information flow from Fukushima with a repressive state secrets act, we cannot know for certain what's happening at the site.

According to the New York Times, a sample of powdered tea imported from the Japanese prefecture of Chiba, just southeast of Tokyo, contained traces of radioactive cesium 137.

We do know that 300 tons of radioactive water have been pouring into the Pacific every day. And that spent fuel rods are littered around the site. Tokyo Electric power may or may not have brought down all the fuel rods from Unit Four, but many hundreds almost certainly remain suspended in the air over Units One, Two and Three.

We also know that Abe is pushing refugees to move back into the Fukushima region. Thyroid damage rates—including cancer—have skyrocketed among children in the region. Radiation "hot spots" have been found as far away as Tokyo. According to scientific sources, more than 30 times as much radioactive Cesium was released at Fukushima as was created at the bombing of Hiroshima.
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Vote No On SB-422
Medium
2015-03-06 10:24:00

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NACCHO?

It sounds like a bad acronym from an Austin Powers movie.

What/who the heck is NACCHO?

NACCHO is The National Association of County and City Health Officials. If you briefly perused their website, you might be confused into thinking that they were a federal agency of sorts. First off, there's the name. Many people associate "National Association" with something sort of official. The next thing that might throw you off is the way NACCHO describes themselves:
NACCHO's members are the 2700 local health departments across the United States. NACCHO's vision is health, equity, and security for all people in their communities through public health policies and services. NACCHO's mission is to be a leader, partner, catalyst, and voice for local health departments in order to ensure the conditions that promote health and equity, combat disease, and improve the quality and length of all lives.
Comment: The push for mandatory vaccination may have started in Oregon but it certainly won't stop there.
California, Maine, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Vermont all have bills already filed or press announcements of bills about to be filed to remove philosophical/conscientious exemptions. Maine, Minnesota and Texas have bills to substantially restrict philosophical/conscientious exemptions. Religious exemptions are also under attack. Maryland, New Jersey, Texas and Vermont have bills filed or announced to eliminate religious exemptions, and Illinois, New Mexico and Texas have bills filed or announced to unconstitutionally restrict religious exemptions.

In addition, Connecticut, Florida, Indiana, Maine, Maryland, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania,Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, and West Virginia all have legislation underway to expand vaccine mandates.
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Health Impact News
2015-03-17 21:02:00

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Dr. MaryAnne Demasi's documentary on the criminal activity of the pharmaceutical industry regarding cholesterol-lowering statin drugs sent shock waves through the mainstream media in Australia last year. Published in two parts on the popular news show The Catalyst, the pharmaceutical industry complained loudly after the first show, and requested the network not air the second episode, "Heart of the Matter Part 2 - Cholesterol Drug War."

ABC Australia aired it anyway, but the pharmaceutical influence is apparently too strong, as it was announced that the network would remove the videos from their website because "they breached its impartiality standards." They also removed them from YouTube.

These two episodes were among the most watched videos on Health Impact News in 2013, with tens of thousands of "likes" on Facebook alone, helping the videos go viral outside of Australia.

We found other copies on YouTube for now, but it may only be a matter of time before YouTube bans these altogether. If you or anyone you know have been prescribed cholesterol-lowering statin drugs, then you need to watch this documentary. It could save your life.
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Science of the Spirit
No new articles.
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High Strangeness
buttadee
Sott.net
2015-03-18 22:04:00
People in Philadelphia heard some strange sounds earlier this month. Several have uploaded recordings onto YouTube. Here's one from YT user 'buttadee':


View on Sott.net


Here's what he or she wrote about the experience:
This is the strange noise I've been hearing periodically over the past couple of years. Occurrences have been frequent lately, and I notice it tends to happen before and/or during rain and other impending weather warnings like snow storms. This video was taken outside my front door after 2am on March 4th. I starting hearing it tonight around 6 or 7pm and thought it was just helicopters,but the sound never faded. It's hard to pinpoint where the noise is coming from. No aircraft in sight. Doesn't help that it was overcast.

thundersnow_arctic_2015.jpg

The possible correlation with extreme weather fronts is interesting. We wonder if this is related to changes in the way weather systems (specifically, the cycle of water, from evaporation to precipitation) are generally becoming more 'extreme'? Rather than being spread evenly in space and time, increased precipitation (from warming oceans and a cooling atmosphere) is coming down in torrents as increased comet/volcanic dust in the atmosphere accentuates electric charge build-up, which is then released as 'sheets of rain' and 'stories-deep thundersnow'.

Of course, that's not the only thing to consider. The fact that observers can never identify the general direction in which such sounds are coming from - above or below - suggests an electrophonic EM effect (literally, electromagnetic waves that would not normally be audible) resulting from unusual seismic activity. And then we need to consider that the seismic activity (below) and the changing composition of the atmosphere (above) may be contemporaneous - both have a strong electrical component, and so both are probably working in tandem.

Interesting times...
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Don't Panic! Lighten Up!
waterfordwhispersnews.com
2015-03-18 18:43:00

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An absolute fucking lunatic has won an election today in Israel, keeping him in the role as Prime Minister of the middle-eastern country.

Benjamin Netanyahu, who ordered the bombings of thousands of innocent men, women and children since taking office, secured victory in the Israeli election after a last-minute push to shore up his party's vote enabled him to close the gap with the opposition Zionist Union and put him back on track to be re-elected.

While vowing to continue the country's eradication of Palestine, the complete mad man had bombarded the Israeli media for the past few weeks in an intense campaign, which fear-mongered citizens into believing that Israel's security would be put at risk if voters put social and economic issues ahead of their country's survival.

"You will all die if you don't re-elect me," he told viewers on nine different TV stations. "Concentration camps. Holocaust. Arabs. Nuclear bombs. Iran. Jews dead. Boom! Capiche?" Netanyahu added while shrugging his shoulders in a gesture of 'need I say more'.

The lunatic's party narrowly won the election in what was almost a dead heat, despite openly accusing 'Arab voters' of trying to sabotage his campaign by voting democratically against him 'on purpose'.

"I would advise the Arab community in Israel to stop voting against me," Netanyahu said on his Facebook page. "As I am Jewish, this can be classed as antisemitic behaviour and you could go to prison for such an attack on our democracy and people".

Shortly after being reelected, the Israeli prime minister requested another four billion dollars worth of military hardware from the United States for 'defence purposes', and ordered his army to reclaim some more land from the Palestinian people to celebrate.