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John W. Whitehead
The Rutherford Institute 2015-05-19 02:49:00
Talk about poor timing. Then again, perhaps it's brilliant timing. Only now—after the Departments of Justice, Homeland Security (DHS) and Defense have passed off billions of dollars worth of military equipment to local police forces, after police agencies have been trained in the fine art of war, after SWAT team raids have swelled in number to more than 80,000 a year, after it has become second nature for local police to look and act like soldiers, after communities have become acclimated to the presence of militarized police patrolling their streets, after Americans have been taught compliance at the end of a police gun or taser, after lower income neighborhoods have been transformed into war zones, after hundreds if not thousands of unarmed Americans have lost their lives at the hands of police who shoot first and ask questions later, after awhole generation of young Americans has learned to march in lockstep with the government's dictates—only now does President Obama lift a hand to limit the number of military weapons being passed along to local police departments. Not all, mind you, just some. Talk about too little, too late. Months after the White House defended a federal program that distributed $18 billion worth of military equipment to local police, Obama has announced that he will ban the federal government from providing local police departments with tracked armored vehicles, weaponized aircraft and vehicles, bayonets, grenade launchers, camouflage uniforms and large-caliber firearms. Obama also indicated that less heavy-duty equipment (armored vehicles, tactical vehicles, riot gear and specialized firearms and ammunition) will reportedly be subject to more regulations such as local government approval, and police being required to undergo more training and collect data on the equipment's use. Perhaps hoping to sweeten the deal, the Obama administration is also offering $163 million in taxpayer-funded grants to "incentivize police departments to adopt the report's recommendations." | |
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Chris Hedges
Truthdig 2015-05-17 00:00:00
The pathology of the rich white family is the most dangerous pathology in America. The rich white family is cursed with too much money and privilege. It is devoid of empathy, the result of lifetimes of entitlement. It has little sense of loyalty and lacks the capacity for self-sacrifice. Its definition of friendship is reduced to "What can you do for me?" It is possessed by an insatiable lust to increase its fortunes and power. It believes that wealth and privilege confer to it a superior intelligence and virtue. It is infused with an unchecked hedonism and narcissism. And because of all this, it interprets reality through a lens of self-adulation and greed that renders it delusional. The rich white family is a menace. The pathologies of the poor, when set against the pathologies of rich white people, are like a candle set beside the sun. There are no shortages of acolytes and propagandists for rich white families. They dominate our airwaves. They blame poverty, societal breakdown, urban violence, drug use, domestic abuse and crime on the pathology of poor black families—not that they know any. They argue that poor black families disintegrate because of some inherent defect—here you can read between the lines that white people are better than black people—a defect that these poor families need to fix. | |
Comment: Stunning to think that Blacks and other minorities (and even whites for that matter) in the U.S. are still subject to a type of slavery. Only now the yoke of subjugation has gone 'underground,' is more covert, and even more dangerous for the fact that it is rarely recognized for what it is. And what is it? Nothing less than the virus of psychopathic thinking that would seek to fulfill its own desires at the catastrophic expense of others' life force, souls, and happiness.
For a look at how one single rich white family - the Bush's - have succeeded in only a few of their many sphere's of criminal activity see Professor Professor Michel Chossudovsky's new article: Jeb Bush, the Mexican Drug Cartel and "Free Trade". The Bush Family and Organized Crime | |
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| Puppet Masters |
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RT
2015-05-20 20:15:00
China may more than double its investment in the Russian economy to $10 billion within 5 years if conditions are favorable, said the Deputy Secretary-General of the China Overseas Development Association He Zhenwei. "Chinese investments abroad currently amount to $140 billion, with about $4 billion investment into Russia. This can be doubled at least to $8 billion, although not within one year. We can increase the investment to $10 billion step by step within five years, especially in terms of investment projects as road and railway construction requires large amounts," the Chinese official told TASS on Tuesday. Many Chinese enterprises are oriented to cooperate with Chile and Brazil because of the investment climate, although Russia's location is much better in terms of logistics, he added. There are no reasons for Chinese investors not to invest in Russia, especially due to the good interstate relations between Russia and China at the highest level, He Zhenwei was cited as saying by TASS. Russia-China economic cooperation has been booming, mostly in energy and finance. Moscow and Beijing have signed an impressive number of energy, trade and finance deals earlier this month during Chinese President Xi Jinping visit to Moscow for the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II. Beijing will invest around $6 billion in the construction of Russia's first high-speed rail line between Moscow and Kazan which is to be extended to China. The railway will become part of the grand Silk Road project. | |
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Slavyangrad
2015-05-19 18:43:00
With the coming of the evening, the situation in Donetsk sharply escalated. Information from the residents of Donetsk indicates that, as of 20:30, the Ukrainian Armed Forces ("UAF") was shelling the area of the Donetsk Airport from their positions in Peski(shells were landing in close proximity to the Railroad Depot). As of 20:47, artillery salvos could be heard throughout Makeevka, in all districts. From the direction of Novobakhmutovka, UAF was conducting artillery shelling of the positions of the Militia (Novorossiya Armed Forces, or "NAF") around the settlement of Spartak and the district of the First Square. Reports started coming in about a large number of Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles ("UAVs" or drones) in the air above the city and the activation of enemy Saboteur Reconnaissance Groups ("SRG") on the northern approaches to the city. At 20:58 Ukrainian forces started the shelling of the area of the Putilovka mine. The Kievsky district has also been hit. Heavy howitzer artillery could be heard. Large shells were incoming with a frequency of 2-3 minutes.
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Comment: Despite Poroshenko paying lip service to the Minsk agreements after Kerry's rejoinder in Sochi, it seems Kiev is hell-bent on continuing the destruction. In addition to the indiscriminate shelling of their own people, Ukrainian forces have also captured two Russian volunteers in the rebel militia. Predictably, guys like Klimkin triumphantly announced the capture of "Russian officers" (see? proof of Russian invasion!) and threatened to put them on open trial for 'war crimes'. In a bad imitation of the old KGB, Kiev's SBU released footage of the men reading what amount to their scripted 'confessions'. The Russian MOD is calling for their return. Maybe Kiev thinks capturing these two volunteers is good justification for resuming heavy shelling? If so, they're all kinds of stupid.
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RT
2015-05-19 16:35:00
The effect of sanctions is waning and its high time investors returned to Russia, said Vladimir Potanin the CEO and a principal owner of Norilsk Nickel. He adds that Russia and the US had great potential for rapprochement. "Nobody wants more sanctions. I think we reached a stable level in terms of tensions," Potanin told Bloomberg Television Monday. Potanin said Russia and the US had great potential to be friends, but something "has been broken" since Russia showed support for the US after September 11. It is hard to change the legacy of relations between Russia and the rest of the world, but relations could improve if the parties had a "challenge to overcome together," said Potanin adding that Russia wants to be friends, not pupils in the class. | |
Comment: The Western sanctions against Russia were impotent from the start. The U.S. simply does not understand how strong Russia is or how well they are able to survive on their own.
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Kashmira Gander
The Independent 2015-05-19 16:56:00
Governments around the world will subsidise the cost of gas, coal and oil with a "shocking" $10million (£6million) a minute this year, a new study by economic experts has revealed. The estimated figure, which the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has described as "extremely robust", suggests that firms benefit from $5.3 trillion (£3.4 trillion) a year. That is more than the annual total worldwide governments spend on health care, according to World Health Organisation (WHO) statistics. Researchers defined energy subsidies as the difference between what consumers pay for energy and its "true costs", as firms do not pay the costs levied against governments by burning fossil fuels. This sum factors in supply costs and the damage that energy consumption inflicts on people's health and the environment, two senior IMF officials wrote in a blog post, entitled "Act Local, Save Global", launching the study on Monday. China will spend the most this year, and was responsible for over 40 per cent of the total amount as it relies heavily on coal, followed by the US at 13 per cent, while the EU will account for 6 per cent. "These estimates are shocking," experts Benedict Clements and Vitor Gaspar wrote in the post. "Energy subsidies are both large and widespread. They are pervasive across advanced and developing countries," the added. | |
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James Risen
NY Times 2015-04-30 19:35:00
The American Psychological Association secretly collaborated with the administration of President George W. Bush to bolster a legal and ethical justification for the torture of prisoners swept up in the post-Sept. 11 war on terror, according to a new report by a group of dissident health professionals and human rights activists. The report is the first to examine the association's role in the interrogation program. It contends, using newly disclosed emails, that the group's actions to keep psychologists involved in the interrogation program coincided closely with efforts by senior Bush administration officials to salvage the program after the public disclosure in 2004 of graphic photos of prisoner abuse by American military personnel at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. "The A.P.A. secretly coordinated with officials from the C.I.A., White House and the Department of Defense to create an A.P.A. ethics policy on national security interrogations which comported with then-classified legal guidance authorizing the C.I.A. torture program," the report's authors conclude. The involvement of health professionals in the Bush-era interrogation program was significant because it enabled the Justice Department to argue in secret opinions that the program was legal and did not constitute torture, since the interrogations were being monitored by health professionals to make sure they were safe. The interrogation program has since been shut down, and last year the Senate Intelligence Committee issued a detailed report that described the program as both ineffective and abusive. | |
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RT
2015-05-18 16:46:00
State Duma Speaker Sergey Naryshkin has urged European politicians to stop listening to US propaganda and start working on common Eurasian economic interests with Russia. Naryshkin expressed his views on the best possible course for European politics in an article entitled "Natural Allies", published on Monday in the Russian government dailyRossiiskaya Gazeta. He wrote that the foundations of the European Union or "Big Europe" had been laid by people who remembered the lessons of the First and Second World Wars and these people still assert NATO's eastward expansion was a mistake. Europe is taking great risks if it remains in the political wake of a nation located thousands of miles from the European continent. The Ukrainian crisis is yet another confirmation of the fact that EU member countries must decide on their foreign policies without any foreign interference, he noted. If this doesn't happen, Washington will eventually destroy the EU's economic sovereignty by skillful manipulation of WTO mechanisms, Naryshkin wrote. Large-scale, rigid deals the United States is pushing through, under the guise of liberalization of trade, are in reality bringing the European economy under US control, he noted. | |
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Greg Hunter
USAWatchdog 2015-05-20 00:00:00
Gold expert Rob Kirby arranges deliveries of the yellow metal to his clients measured by the ton. Kirby says news that China may disclose it has 30,000 tons of gold will be devastating for the West. Kirby contends, "We could be fast approaching the moment when the tide is going to turn and go out, and we are going to find out who's wearing a bathing suit. I think that time is fast approaching, if it is not here already." Kirby also says, "I think the implied message is we are going to show you how much we have, and then you are going to have to show us how much you have. . . . America, very likely doesn't have, in my view, doesn't have the gold they claim to have. They also probably spent a lot of other people's gold in safe keeping." What would happen to the U.S. dollar if China revealed a vast holding of physical gold? Kirby contends, | |
Comment: Kirby paints an excellent big picture around the inevitable collapse of the Western dollar-based financial system. In his words: "This sort of activity is not tolerated in Nature forever".
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RT
2015-05-20 14:37:00
Tokyo has signaled it would like Vladimir Putin to finally resolve a territorial dispute and sign a peace treaty 70 years after the end of World War II. The Kremlin said it would welcome dialogue. Moscow is willing to restart peaceful dialogue with Tokyo to finally sign a WWII peace treaty, but Russian FM Sergey Lavrov said that claiming sovereignty over Kuril Islands makes Japan the only country that questions the results of WWII. Masahiko Komura, the current vice president of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party of Japan and a former foreign minister, met in Tokyo with the Chairman of the Russian State Duma, Sergey Naryshkin, on Wednesday. During the meeting, Komura said that Tokyo would like to settle the issue of the four southern Kuril Islands. | |
Comment: Japan just keeps stirring up the Kuril Island issue. What can they offer Russia for the islands?
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Dmitry Orlov
ClubOrlov 2015-05-19 12:48:00
One of the fake stories kept alive by certain American politicians, with the help of western media, is that Vladimir Putin (who, they vacuously claim, is a dictator and a tyrant) wants to reconstitute the USSR, with the annexation of Crimea as the first step. Instead of listening to their gossip, let's lay out the facts. The USSR was officially dissolved on December 26, 1991 by declaration №142-H of the Supreme Soviet. It acknowledged the independence of the 15 Soviet republics, and in the place of the USSR created a Commonwealth of Independent States, which hasn't amounted to much. In the west, there was much rejoicing, and everyone assumed that in the east everyone was rejoicing as well. Well, that's a funny thing, actually, because a union-wide referendum held on March 17, 1991, produced a stunning result: with over 80% turnout, of the 185,647,355 people who voted 113,512,812 voted to preserve the USSR. That's 77.85% - not exactly a slim majority. Their wishes were disregarded. | |
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Sputnik News
2015-05-20 12:48:00
The feeling of patriotism is rapidly growing in the Russian society. The US and EU policy towards Russia makes many people believe that Western countries are trying "to force Russia into a box" and that this is "a time of great opportunity" for the country, the Christian Science Monitor wrote. Patriotism among Russian citizens is growing every day and an understanding that Western states are not friends of their country make Russians more consolidated than ever before, Christian Science Monitor correspondent Fred Weir wrote in his article. The majority of Russian citizens approve of Crimea's entry into the Russian Federation and the protection of the interests of Russian-speaking population in Donbass by the Moscow government. The aggressive rhetoric of the West against Russia with regard to Ukrainian events revealed a huge gap between Russian and Western perceptions. | |
Comment: And check out what happened after the Victory Day celebrations:
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Jamie Grierson and Sandra Laville
The Guardian 2015-05-20 12:21:00
More than 1,400 suspects have been investigated by police looking into child sex abuse allegations against VIPs including politicians, celebrities and institutions. A national police group, known as Operation Hydrant, released the figures at a briefing on its inquiry into possible links between child sex abuse investigations involving public figures currently being run by different forces across the country. Chief Constable Simon Bailey, chair of the group, told the briefing that out of 1,433 alleged offenders identified nationwide, 76 were politicians, 43 were from the music industry, seven were from sport and 135 were from the TV, film or radio industries. Some 216 are now dead. | |
Comment: This disgusting rabbit hole is getting deeper and deeper!
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Sputnik
2015-05-20 12:07:00
Lavrov said that outside pressure is being put on current Macedonian Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski for not agreeing to follow Western-backed sanctions against Russia and is being blamed for incompetency. Moscow is concerned over the situation in Macedonia, Lavrov said during a speech before the Russian upper house of parliament. | |
Comment: Since Ukraine didn't work out well for the Western powers, how about creating a 'new' hotspot? The West are really getting desperate but people are seeing through these games.
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Pepe Escobar
Sputnik 2015-05-19 11:50:00
So a woman walks into a room... That's how quite a few jokes usually start. In our case, self-appointed Queen of Nulandistan Victoria "F**k the EU" walks into a room in Moscow to talk to Russian deputy foreign ministers Sergei Ryabkov and Grigory Karasin. A joke? Oh no; that really happened. Why? Let's start with the official reactions. Karasin qualified the talks as "fruitful", while stressingMoscow does not approve of Washington becoming part of the Normandy-style (Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France) negotiations on Ukraine. Not after the relentless demonization not only of the Kremlin but also of Russia as a whole since the Maidan coup. | |
Comment: The Russia and US situation is getting pretty messy with an "accident" waiting to happen.
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Michael Snyder
The Economic Collapse Blog 2015-05-17 02:11:00
Did you know that there is more than $28,000 of debt for every man, woman and child on the entire planet? And since close to 3 billion of those people survive on less than 2 dollars a day, your share of that debt is going to be much larger than that. If we took everything that the global economy produced this year and everything that the global economy produced next year and used it to pay all of this debt, it still would not be enough. According to a recent report put out by the McKinsey Global Institute entitled "Debt and (not much) deleveraging", the total amount of debt on our planet has grown from 142 trillion dollars at the end of 2007 to 199 trillion dollars today. This is the largest mountain of debt in the history of the world, and those numbers mean that we are in substantially worse condition than we were just prior to the last financial crisis. When it comes to debt, a lot of fingers get pointed at the United States, and rightly so. Just prior to the last recession, the U.S. national debt was sitting at about 9 trillion dollars. Today, it has crossed the 18 trillion dollar mark. But of course the U.S. is not the only one that is guilty. In fact, the McKinsey Global Institute says that debt levels have grown in all major economies since 2007. The following is an excerpt from the report... What is surprising is that debt has actually grown the most in China. If you can believe it, total Chinese debt has grown from 7 trillion dollars in 2007 to 28 trillion dollars today. Needless to say, that is absolutely insane... | |
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RT
2015-05-19 00:04:00
Senators in North Carolina passed a bill penalizing all video and audio recording in restricted workplace areas. Critics say it unfairly targets whistleblowers. Previously passed by the House, the bill is now headed to the governor for signature. The state Senate passed House Bill 405, titled the "Property Protection Act," by a vote of 32-13 on Monday night. The bill would allow business or property owners to press charges against employees who intentionally enter restricted areas to record sound or video,reported Raleigh television station WRAL. North Carolina governor Pat McCrory is expected to sign the bill into law. | |
Comment: Yup, can't have anyone exposing what psychopaths do.
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| Society's Child |
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RT
2015-05-20 20:48:00
The FBI has paid a visit to a New Jersey high school, warning students about the online recruitment tactics of ISIS. The agency told the teens not to believe the terror group's propaganda, as it is trawling the internet to recruit vulnerable young people. The Tuesday event, held at Bergen Arts and Science Charter School in Hackensack, NJ, was led by a senior FBI intelligence analyst who did not want to be named for security reasons. During the talk, he told students that Islamic State (formerly ISIS/ISIL) was using social media and glossy magazines to train terrorists and make its mission seem appealing. One of the tactics mentioned was a sophisticated recruitment video, aimed at luring young people into joining the terror group. | |
Comment: It's one thing to teach kids about IS but another to demonize all Muslims through fear tactics. This appears to be a setup for some future event.
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Intellihub
2015-05-20 05:48:00
Protesters paid by groups funded by leftist billionaire George Soros A list released after a group of #BlackLivesMatter activists publicly protested not being paid to protest has revealed that the group Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment (MORE) has paid at least 80 people to protest in Ferguson, Missouri and other hotspots around the country. This startling information was revealed after activists held a protest on May 14th at the offices of MORE to openly complain about not being paid the money they were promised. The blog Weasel Zippers took screenshots of tweets from activists at the sit in protest as well as from those supporting their demand for money. | |
Comment: What could be more cynical, more devious, and more psychopathic than riding on the coattails and seeking to influence legitimate moral grievances, societal issues and social movements as George Soros has? But the word is spreading. And when even more catch on to his works, he'd better watch out - because in many ways what he does is far worse than the oppressing forces inflicting the injurious acts to begin with.
See also: US: Soros Is Attempting to Take Over "Occupy America" Movement "Color Revolution" in the U.S.? Many questions about the handling of the Baltimore riots George Soros: The hidden hand behind 'color revolutions' | |
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RT
2015-05-18 21:38:00
In 2012, active-duty soldier James Brown reported to the El Paso County Jail to serve a two-day DWI sentence. New video of his time in custody has revealed aggressive force being used on him by officers, who ignored his repeated pleas for breath. KFOX14 obtained video recorded during Sergeant James Brown's custody, which finally sheds some light on a death the county sheriff's department claims was caused by a "pre-existing medical condition." Brown, 26, was an active-duty soldier at Fort Bliss in Texas who has served two tours of combat duty in Iraq. He had no previous criminal record. When he self-reported to the El Paso County Jail in July 2012 to serve a short sentence for driving while intoxicated, he said in writing that he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, according to jail records. Shortly after checking in, he spoke by phone to his mother, Dinette Robinson-Scott. "He said they're trying to make me stay seven days instead of two days, so i just want to pay the court fine and get out of here," she told KFOX14. Robinson-Scott said she sent the money the next morning. Yet at some point overnight Brown had an apparent episode that caused him to start bleeding. When he stopped communicating with the jail guard outside his cell, a team of officers in riot gear were sent in. They confronted Brown and pinned him to the ground. Brown can be heard in the video repeatedly stating that he could not breathe. He claimed he was choking on his own blood. His health appears to wane as the video goes on. He pleaded with the guards to remove a spit guard that restricted his breathing. He begged for water and was given only a small amount. He was at some point laid out on the floor of his cell with shallow breathing and no signs of responsiveness. His family's attorney say the jail didn't called for an ambulance during this period. | |
Comment: In the name of law and order, these goons do far more damage to citizens than criminals or 'terrorists' ever could. A cold, hard snapshot of what America is today. The level of unaccountability is just staggering and eerily similar to Nazi, Germany.
The path to tyranny: The Nazi Gestapo and the US police state | |
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Asa Jay
Cop Block 2015-05-19 02:58:00
An eight months pregnant Chicago woman says an unidentified city police officer punched her in the stomach after she laughed at him for letting a suspect get away. Nicola Robinson said she was standing outside with neighbors on Friday evening when three officers ran past in pursuit of a suspected drug dealer. After the officers failed to catch the suspect, the group laughed at the officers, the woman says. That's when Robinson says a plainclothes officer approached and then shoved her while she was holding her 1-year-old son and then punched her in the right side of her stomach. "As I got ready to walk in my building, he punched me on my right side as hard as he [could,] Robinson said. "After he punched me, he [said,] 'You black bitch, you better be glad I didn't hit you hard enough to make you lose your fucking baby.' " Robinson's sister claims she witnessed the attack and the racist outburst, which she said shocked the other officers. "The other two officers who [were] with him were standing there, and they're looking like,'What are you doing?' But I guess they didn't want to say anything," Monique Dickerson said. Robinson said the officer changed his demeanor when she pointed out that nearby apartment buildings are equip with surveillance cameras. "Then that's when the attitude about him started changing, and he got real quiet,"Robinson said. "You could tell in his face that he knew that, 'Man I have messed up.' " Robinson said a building manager told her surveillance video clearly shows the officer punch her but the management company did not respond to media requests for comment. Hospital records shows that Robinson spent five hours under observation before doctors cleared her to return home. | |
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RT.com
2015-05-19 19:21:00
Government regulators have cracked down on four cancer charities, accusing the Cancer Fund of America, Cancer Support Services, the Children's Cancer Fund of America, and the Breast Cancer Society of cheating donors out of $187 million. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), all 50 states, and the District of Columbia claimthat the four foundations fraudulently told donors their money would help cancer patients. Instead, money from the donations overwhelmingly went into the pockets of charity operators, their families and friends, and professional fundraisers. According to the complaint filed by authorities, the charities "operated as personal fiefdoms characterized by rampant nepotism, flagrant conflicts of interest, and excessive insider compensation, with none of the financial and governance controls that any bona fide charity would have adopted." | |
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Sputnik
2015-05-16 23:45:00
The water treatment chemicals - mainly aluminium sulphate — will provide 3.5 million people on both sides of the contact line with clean drinking water, according to Swiss authorities. The convoy is allegedly the largest to have crossed the line of contact between Kiev-led forces and Donetsk militia since an armed conflict broke out in eastern Ukraine in April 2014. "A 15-truck convoy organized by Swiss Humanitarian Aid reached the city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine today. After a journey of several hours from Dnipropetrovsk through areas on both sides of the contact line, the convoy delivered approximately 300 tonnes of chemicals to the Donetsk water company," the statement, published Friday, reads. | |
Comment: Some good news for Ukraine for a change but too bad this is needed.
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| Secret History |
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Jennifer Viegas
Discovery News 2015-05-20 17:00:00
A recently unearthed stone tool kit consisting of hammer stones, anvils, worked cobblestones and other items dates to 3.3 million years ago, predating our genus Homo by over half a million years, according to a new study. The items, described in the latest issue of the journal Nature, are now the oldest stone tools ever found. They "show that early humans (essentially proto-humans) used and made stone tools 3.3 million years ago, which is about 700,000 years earlier than the previously earliest known date for early stone tools," Erella Hovers, who authored an accompanying "News & Views" article, told Discovery News. Play Video Did We Eat All the Neanderthals? Did neanderthals go extinct because they were hunted and eaten by early humans? It's a grizzly, but possible explanation for their demise. DNews Video Hovers, who is a senior member of the Institute of Archaeology at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, added that the other more recent tools were attributed to Homo habilis, aka "Handy Man," whose culture is called the Oldowan. Now it looks like there was a much earlier culture--as of yet unnamed--and that stone tool making was not unique to our genus. The approximately 149 stone artifacts tied to tool making were found at a site called Lomekwi 3 next to Lake Turkana in Kenya. | |
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Myles Gough
BBC 2015-05-19 05:36:00
Scientists are beginning to tap into a wellspring of knowledge buried in the ancient stories of Australia's Aboriginal peoples. But the loss of indigenous languages could mean it is too late to learn from them. The Luritja people, native to the remote deserts of central Australia, once told stories about a fire devil coming down from the Sun, crashing into Earth and killing everything in the vicinity. The local people feared if they strayed too close to this land they might reignite some otherworldly creature. The legend describes the crash landing of a meteor in Australia's Central Desert about 4,700 years ago, says University of New South Wales (UNSW) astrophysicist Duane Hamacher. It would have been a dramatic and fiery event, with the meteor blazing across the sky. As it broke apart, large fragments of metal-rich rock would have crashed to Earth with explosive force, creating a dozen giant craters. The Northern Territory site, which was discovered in the 1930s by white prospectors with the help of Luritja guides, is today known as the Henbury Meteorites Conservation Reserve. | |
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| Science & Technology |
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Jeff Roberts
Collective Evolution 2015-05-20 16:33:00
Elon Musk is at it again. Next year the construction of an innovative, ultra-speed transportation system called 'Hyperloop' will commence in central California. It is the world's first supersonic overland transport system, with the ability to reach speeds up to800 mph. Like most other Musk-inspired creations, the Hyperloop concept seems like something straight out of the future. "We feel now that we're at a stage where questions are answered on a theoretical level so now we're moving on to prototyping," Dirk Ahlborn, CEO of Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT), told IBTimes UK. To begin, the first 5-mile stretch Hyperloop system will begin construction in 2016 in a brand-new sustainable community called Quay Valley, located between Los Angeles and San Francisco. "This five-mile stretch will allow us to completely test the technology, from the boarding process to the safety procedures - really everything except top speed," Ahlborn said. | |
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Anna Salleh
ABC Science, Australia 2015-05-19 23:56:00
High levels of iron in the brain indicates you are more likely to develop Alzheimer's, say researchers. The findings, published in in Nature Communications, suggest it might be possible to arrest the disease using drugs that remove iron from the brain. "We think that iron is contributing to the disease progression of Alzheimer's disease," says neuroscientist Dr Scott Ayton from the University of Melbourne. "This is strong evidence to base a clinical trial on lowering iron content in the brain to see if that would impart a cognitive benefit." Ayton says iron was first implicated in Alzheimer's disease in the 1950s, following post mortem studies showing higher iron levels in the brains of those with the disease. "But there has been debate for a long period of time whether this is important or whether it's just a coincidence," says Ayton. To help settle this question, Ayton and colleagues studied the link between iron and Alzheimer's disease in three groups of people: 91 people with normal cognition; 144 people with mild cognitive impairment; and 67 people with Alzheimer's disease. At the beginning of the study, the researchers measured the iron binding protein, ferritin, in cerebrospinal fluid that surrounds the brain, as a proxy for iron levels in the brain. Over the next seven years they carried out regular cognitive tests and took MRI brain scans to look for degeneration in the brain. | |
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Becky Oskin
Live Science 2015-05-19 04:38:00
Four giant craters were found by accident in the muddy floor of one of Switzerland's largest lakes, a new study reports. Researchers surveying Lake Neuchâtel for evidence of past earthquakes spotted the craters near the lake's northwestern shore near the Jura Mountains. The biggest crater is 525 feet (160 meters) wide and almost 100 feet (30 m) deep. The pits are among the largest and deepest pockmarks ever found in Earth's lakes, the researchers said. The giant craters are similar in size to seafloor pockmarks created by methane-gas explosions. However, the researchers think that erupting groundwater excavated these "crazy craters." "These craters are, in fact, springs," lead study author Anna Reusch, a doctoral student at the ETH Zurich Geological Institute, said in a statement. Reusch and her co-authors found the craters at water depths of 328 feet (100 m) or more. The team was using ship-based sonar to search for sediment that had been disturbed by earthquakes. The Swiss Alps occasionally shake from earthquakes of up to magnitude 6, studies have shown. Scientists are also investigating the risk of earthquake- and landslide-triggered tsunamis in Alpine lakes. In the past decade, researchers have discovered that tsunamis wiped out villages along the shores of both Lake Geneva and Lake Lucerne in the past 1,500 years. But instead of ancient quake or tsunami deposits, Reusch and her colleagues stumbled upon an enormous feature they dubbed Chez-le-Bart crater ("Crazy crater"). "I never expected anything like this," Reusch said. "The craters were so interesting that we simply had to take a closer look at this phenomenon," she added. | |
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| Earth Changes |
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hindustantimes
2015-05-20 12:29:00
A severe dust storm and light rain hit vast swathes of north India, leaving seven people dead and damaging houses in Rajasthan and affecting Metro rail services in the national capital. A minor girl and a woman were among those killed in Rajasthan by Tuesday's freak storm, which left a trail of destruction across the state, damaging buildings, uprooting trees and electricity poles and disrupting power supply in many districts. Five people were killed and 10 more injured in Bharatpur district in Rajasthan. Two people were killed in Bikaner while six others were injured, officials said. While many parts of the state were hit by a massive sand storm followed by thunder squalls, there were reports of hailstorms in some areas where unseasonal rains in March had left many dead and damaged crops, triggering one of the worst agrarian crises in Rajasthan.
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The decomposing whale was spotted by a hiker on the Wild Side trail, who thought it might have been a killer whale. Marcie Callewaert, a photographer and Grade 6 teacher who reported the whale to Fisheries and Oceans Canada, took a boat to get a closer look and was relieved the hiker was wrong. "I was really concerned considering all the recent strandings and the status of our orca population around here. So I was really happy it wasn't an orca," said Callewaert. No officials have visited the remot |
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