| Puppet Masters |
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Luke Broadwater
The Baltimore Sun 2015-05-15 18:20:00
Baltimore officials, trying to collect some $40 million in long-unpaid water bills, have shut off service to more than 1,600 customers in the past six weeks. But records reviewed by The Baltimore Sun show the city's enforcement has been starkly uneven. While large commercial properties owe the biggest amounts, not one has been shut off. All of the service cuts so far have been to homes. And while the majority of homes with unpaid bills are in the city, nearly 90 percent of shut-offs have been in Baltimore County. Dundalk and Gwynn Oak have each had more service cuts than all of Baltimore. Baltimore County Councilman Todd Crandell, a Republican who represents Dundalk, said he found it "odd" that his community, with a population of less than 64,000, saw more enforcement than a city more than 10 times that size. He has asked officials to verify the accuracy of their data. "There have been a lot of billing errors and mistakes," he said. The numbers also trouble Charly Carter, director of the advocacy group Maryland Working Families. "If the city can shut off 1,600 working families from their water, but hasn't shut off even one commercial account, I think that speaks volumes about where their priorities are," she said. | |
Comment: The concentration of money and power is in the hands of powerful greedy corporations who consider the populace "useless eaters" who don't deserve water, a basic human right. As a result, the U.S. is descending into unimaginable poverty - a clear sign being that these people cannot afford to pay the smallest bill in their households.
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Joe Wolverton II, J.D.
The New American 2015-05-17 16:18:00
Despite the objections of millions of Americans and civil liberties advocates, the Department of Homeland Security refuses completely to abandon its license plate tracking program. And now, other government and industry agencies are joining in the surveillance. Comment: This represents a reversal. February 2014, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson ordered the cancellation of the ICE agency plan to develop a national license-plate tracking system after privacy advocates raised concern about the initiative. While there has been some slight scaling back of the scope of the surveillance, DHS will continue using the controversial technology in almost half of the United States, comprising most of the largest population centers. "The LPR [License Plate Reader] data service shall compile LPR from at least 25 states and 24 of the top 30 most populous metropolitan statistical areas to the extent authorized by law in those locations," a contract issued by DHS Immigration and Customs officials reports. There will be a corresponding decrease in the number of images gathered by the devices that are subsequently reported to DHS. One source indicates that the inventory will be reduced from 30 million images, as originally requested by DHS, to six million. Although that may seem like at least a small victory for privacy and liberty, that's not the whole story. Last year Bloomberg reported that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Forest Service (among others) awarded nearly half a million dollars to Vigilant Solutions,a California-based company that provides tools for tracking license plates and for accessing license plate databases. | |
Comment: Another realm of privacy gone with the snap of a camera shutter. Another example of sacrificing the rights and liberties of innocent citizens to Big Bro and the lock-down mentality of today's America. American citizens: you now stand in line behind sleazy debt collectors and repossessors thanks to the pathocratic institutions run amok with tyranny. Minute-by-minute knowledge of who and where you are? The door, dear sheeple, is locking on the virtual cage.
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Phil Butler
Russia Insider 2015-05-17 15:24:00
Just in time for the European Union's anti-trust case against search giant Google, the Mountain View company announced a groundbreaking (trust cohesive) media "assistance" program worth €150 million euros. According to Germany's Zeit (THE TIME), Google aims to put in place a so-called "Digital News Initiative" to work hand-in-hand with publishersZeit, and 7 other major European news players. The report from Zeit goes on to spell out just how Google will work with the German political magazine and others to create a more "sustainable model" for developing news.Zeit, along with the Financial Times, the Guardian, Les Echos in France, El Pais in Spain, and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung are the core of an Initiative Committee of eight founding members of the new Google news cadre, cohort, cartel, shoot!... group I mean. However Google and these founders frame the announcement, sane individuals have to be asking; "Are you serious?" | |
Comment: Yup, it's all about central control of the news, and the web for that matter.
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ITAR-TASS
2015-05-17 15:10:00
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland will visit Moscow on May 17-18 to discuss with Russia's representatives the implementation of the Minsk agreements, says a statement released by the U.S. Department of State on Saturday. Nuland is expected to meet with senior Russian government officials to discuss the next steps aimed at implementing the Minsk agreements following her visit to Kiev on May 14-16 and also the meetings held by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in Sochi. She will also discuss bilateral issues with Russian officials and meet with civil society representatives, the U.S. Department of State says. | |
Comment: It is interesting to see the US increase it's participation on the Minsk Agreements implementation. Something must have gone wrong with their original plan.
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Sputnik News
2015-05-17 15:00:00
Iran has reportedly signaled its readiness to start supplying crude oil to Europe after sanctions are lifted against it. Tehran said on Sunday that it is ready to start exports of crude oil to Europe as soon as the economic sanctions against Iran are lifted, sources said. In an interview with the Iranian news agency IRNA, Mohsen Qamsari, the director for international affairs of the National Iranian Oil Company, said that Iran can ship almost half of the supplies of crude previously consumed by the European market. | |
Comment: Normalized relations between Iran and the rest of the world could spell trouble, since Israel has been whipping up anti-Iranian hysteria for quite some time. Don't forget what happened when France began voicing displeasure with the anti-Russian sanctions. Psychopaths kill, lie, torture, and cheat to get their way. Check out:
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Finian Cunningham
Sputnik 2015-05-14 14:54:00
French President Francois Hollande touched down in Havana this week proclaiming it a historic moment as the first Western leader to visit isolated Communist Cuba. Hollande said it was an "emotional occasion" to witness the "opening up of Cuba". His visit, which will include meetings with Cuban President Raul Castro, follows a "historic handshake" last month between America's Barack Obama and the Cuban leader in neighbouring Panama. That meeting with Obama was hailed as the moment that Cuba "came in from the cold". It was reported as marking the end of decades of economic isolation imposed by Washington on the Caribbean socialist state. The American president followed through on promises to remove Cuba from America's terror blacklist. He has also overseen the partial lifting of travel and financial restrictions. | |
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RT
2015-05-17 14:45:00
Bill and Hillary Clinton earned roughly $30 million since January 2014, mostly from giving speeches on the lecture circuit to corporations, banks and other organizations, according to disclosures filed with federal elections officials. While Hillary Clinton recently announced her run for president in 2016, Bill Clinton has given three speeches this week for the American Institute of Architects, Univision Management and Apollo Management Holdings, the New York Times reported. Currently, the average fee for the former president is $250,000, whereas records show Hillary Clinton earns $235,000 on average. | |
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Pepe Escobar
RT 2015-05-16 14:32:00
US President Barack Obama's GCC summit at Camp David this week looked like a better fit for the annals of surrealism than geopolitics. The GCC petrodollar racket - Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman - was screaming for a "security deal" with Washington similar to the "special relationship" with Israel. Well, that won't happen because it would require US congressional approval, a no-no considering the Israel lobby runs the overwhelming majority of the US Congress. So their next best option was to scream to get a kind of formal NATO alliance; well, that is almost the case, as in the war on Libya, which was a de facto NATO-GCC operation. Call it Wahhabi-Atlanticism. | |
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Sputnik News
2015-05-17 13:45:00
Russian and Chinese warships have arrived in the sea area allocated for the "Naval Cooperation 2015" military drills, they have replenished their stocks and currently hove to at their set locations. Russia and China has kicked off the active phase of their naval drill in the Mediterranean Sea. "Russian and Chinese warships have arrived in the sea area allocated for the "Naval Cooperation 2015" military drills," Deputy Commander in Chief of the Russian Navy Vice Admiral Alexandr Fedotenkov said on Sunday. | |
Comment: These exercises are defense against a third party. This third party just happens to be pointing a "missile shield" in Russia's face, whipping up color revolutions in China, sabotaging Russia's pipeline projects (and shooting their EU partners in the foot in the process), and attempting a complete ethnic cleansing in Ukraine.This is just a handful of the atrocities committed by the regime in Washington in the past few years. Also see:
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Sputnik News
2015-05-17 12:32:00
Mikhail Ulyanov, the Director of the Department for Non-Proliferation and Arms Control at the Russian Foreign Ministry, warned that US measures undermining global strategic stability may force Russia to grow its nuclear arsenal instead of carrying out further disarmament. Speaking at the Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons in New York on Friday, Ulyanov stated that the US proposal to reduce the total number of deployed warheads by a third is based on their understanding that they will remain able to adequately defend themselves and their allies. Unfortunately, the official noted, "US actions have led to the appearance of completely contradictory factors which, in some circumstances, may even push Russia to begin increasing [its nuclear arsenal]." Ulyanov clarified that "at the moment, we are not planning to do so, but what is being done by the Americans makes it very difficult, and maybe impossible, to see real prospects for further steps toward nuclear disarmament." | |
Comment: Washington is pathologically persistent in its financial/proxy wars against Russia, but Russia is not playing around. Check out:
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James Bamford
Reuters 2015-05-11 00:00:00
Comment: Interesting to note that establishment media outlet Reuters published this article. Last summer, after months of encrypted emails, I spent three days in Moscow hanging out with Edward Snowden for a Wired cover story. Over pepperoni pizza, he told me that what finally drove him to leave his country and become a whistleblower was his conviction that the National Security Agency was conducting illegal surveillance on every American. Thursday, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York agreed with him. In a long-awaited opinion, the three-judge panel ruled that the NSA program that secretly intercepts the telephone metadata of every American — who calls whom and when — was illegal. As a plaintiff with Christopher Hitchens and several others in the original ACLU lawsuit against the NSA, dismissed by another appeals court on a technicality, I had a great deal of personal satisfaction. It's now up to Congress to vote on whether or not to modify the law and continue the program, or let it die once and for all. Lawmakers must vote on this matter by June 1, when they need to reauthorize the Patriot Act. Comment: Even if lawmakers actually vote to modify what the NSA is doing - which they most likely won't because they are likely already blackmailed or want to appear "strong" on issues of "national security" - the NSA is, with few exceptions, super-secretive and practically an entity unto itself; it would never allow its goals of profit and totalitarian awareness be curtailed. It is a behemoth bureaucracy of malevolent intent that serves no one but the few within the 1% who are the real movers and shakers on the planet. And few of those interested parties have anything in common with normal and healthy-minded humans. | |
Comment: The NSA is a technocratic beast; a runaway train with a gaping maw that would seek to label every man, woman and child on the planet as either a threat or a sheep to the very apparatus it seeks to serve. Its power and intent are largely unknown and unimaginable to most because information about it, until only the last few years, has been scarce. It also didn't have the name recognition of the CIA though it is several times larger! And is the stuff of dystopian science fiction novels.
Though presented with a decidedly fundamentalist Christian point of view, the bookProject L. U. C. I. D.: The Beast 666 Universal Human Control System by Texe Marrs is well researched and points to what the NSA has been doing for quite a while now. It is all the more interesting since the book was written nearly twenty years ago, and well marks the NSA's development and the growing fruition of its true purpose. | |
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| Society's Child |
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Health Impact News/MedicalKidnap.com
2015-05-17 19:02:00
Amber is one of those free-spirited people who takes even incredible hardships and turns them into adventures, inspiring others in the process. When her young family wound up homeless, through no fault of their own, she and her husband Krishna Mehta made the best of it. Their children didn't even know that they were homeless; they thought that they were having great adventures and making lots of friends. This latest chapter in their saga, however, is a nightmare, and the rainbow is really hard to find in the storm that Child Protective Services has allegedly brought into their lives. Their children, ages 6, almost 2, and 9 months, have been seized by CPS and placed into 3 different foster homes. The two babies were still being breastfed. Social services has gone so far as to accuse Amber of having a mental disorder because she is "homeless." Their homelessness was not by choice. Last spring the family was living in a small town in Missouri. Krishna was working, and Amber was a stay-at-home mom and childbirth doula. They were expecting baby Mira to make her appearance soon by mid-summer. Emergency Trip to Oregon for Dying Mother Then, they got a call that changed everything. Krishna's mother's cancer had come back with a vengeance. The doctors gave her just weeks to live. Krishna, a dual Irish-American citizen, and Amber scrambled to pull resources together to get to Oregon, hoping to see her before she died, and let her see the children. They drove cross-country, but arrived too late. She was gone. The plan had been to stay at her house, have an unassisted homebirth, or "freebirth" in Oregon, and go back to the midwest when they got back on their feet. But life didn't work out that way. Mira was born peacefully at the end of July, at home with her family. But shortly after that, they found themselves with no place to live.
Making the Best of a Tough Situation They sank what money they had left into an RV and made the best of their situation. Amber says: Winter was coming on fast, and it was expected to be a cold one. An RV in Oregon was no place to live. They headed south, stopping in various places, "helping others where we could," says Amber, "which is more often than one might think, considering all it often takes to HELP someone is to CARE." | ||
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RT
2015-05-17 15:30:00
A small community near St. Petersburg has revealed a bust of President Vladimir Putin depicted as a Roman emperor - sans laurel crown. The man behind the monument is a controversial Cossack leader, who earlier advocated taking Alaska from the US. The bust of a patrician-style Putin was erected in a Cossack settlement near the village of Agalatovo, the Nevskye Novosty newspaper reported. It's made of synthetic material mimicking bronze and has the president wearing a toga and a medallion adorned with the Russian crest. "There was this contest of statue projects, some had him wearing the Monomakh's Cap [the old relic of Russian tsars]. I tried those too and also had Putin 'try on' a suit of medieval armor. Why not?" sculptor Pavel Greshnikov, the author of the bust, told the newspaper. "I am attracted to antiquity, and he is an important historical figure, so why not a Roman emperor?" The laurel crown, a key feature in original Roman busts, was removed on the insistence of Andrey Polyakov, the Cossack leader who commissioned the statue. "He is Russian, and with a crown he would look too Roman," he explained. The bust is a temporary feature, according to Polyakov, and will eventually be replaced with a permanent version twice the size and cast in real bronze. Polyakov is no stranger to publicity stunts. Last May, he suggested giving Russian citizenship to all descendants of Cossacks living in Alaska, saying it would help with an eventual return of the US state to Russian jurisdiction, reported Fontanka, one of St. Petersburg's major newspapers.
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Janet Phelan
Near Eastern Outlook 2015-05-17 00:00:00
When the Elder Justice Initiative was recently funded by Congress for $4 million for the fiscal year 2015 - at a mere fraction of the $25 million requested by President Obama—consumer advocates were ecstatic. The funds are earmarked for Adult Protective Services (APS), which has a national mandate to protect the elderly from abuse. America's dirty little secret (well, one of them, anyway) is the reality of elder abuse. As reported by ElderJusticeAction.com, 14% of older adults have experienced abuse since turning 60. As far as the financial cost of elder abuse, EJA reports that those who have been financially abused have lost an estimated 2.9 billion dollars per year and that the medical costs associated with elder abuse are greater than $5 billion.Furthermore, those who had confirmed cases of elder abuse, according to EJA, had twice the chance of ending up dead than those who had not been abused. | |
Comment: It appears that APS is similar in many ways to CPS. Yet another government agency in control of the most vulnerable in society is so corrupted by pathologicals that those in 'care' are far more likely to suffer abuse and financial malfeasance from their so-called guardians than from family members.
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The Connexion
2015-05-14 15:35:00
French people consider the English accent to be the most attractive - while the rest of the world considers the French language to be the most seductive, a new study has found. The poll of 14,000 people worldwide who use the language learning app Babbel puts French at the top with 34% of the vote, followed by Italian and Spanish. French was also the most attractive accent when speaking another language. However, for the French people who were surveyed, the language of love was Italian and the most attractive accent to hear someone speaking French was the English one, taking 39% of the vote. Nearly 95% of respondents worldwide said they would be ready to learn a new language for a relationship. | |
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Karl Denninger
Market Ticker 2015-05-15 14:49:00
Amazing, really. Police throughout the nation say they fear a growing anti-cop sentiment driven by a handful of racially-charged incidents is making their jobs more dangerous on the streets, where the number of officers killed in the line of duty is rising sharply.So let me see if I get this right. Cops have, for decades, embraced this "thin blue line" where they actively abuse certain suspects, harass, detain and arrest people without any sort of probable cause, fabricate evidence (such as having "drop guns" to plant on someone who doesn't have one or "convenient" narcotics when they can't find any that the suspect actually has), lie about how they collected evidence (which got a drug case thrown out down here in Florida not long ago), beat non-resisting suspects for grins and giggles, shoot people without legal justification and worst of all, cover up the acts of others in the department that they know damn well are unlawful. | |
Comment: Cops want the right to be able to brutalize, maim and kill with a whistle on their lips and a spring in their steps. They don't want anyone's complaints and protests to get in the way of their fun.
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news.yahoo.com
2015-05-17 11:57:00
Thousands of people rallied in Okinawa in southern Japan on Sunday in protest against a controversial US airbase on the island, as a two-decade-old bitter row over the relocation of the site drags on. Okinawa is home to more than half of the 47,000 US service personnel stationed in Japan as part of a defence alliance, a proportion many islanders say is too high. Futenma airbase has become emblematic of that ill-will since Washington announced plans to move it in 1996, hoping to ease tensions with the host community after the gang-rape of a schoolgirl by servicemen. But locals have blocked the move to relocate the base, insisting the facility should go off-island instead, queering relations between Tokyo and Okinawa -- a once independent kingdom that was annexed by Japan in the 19th century. "The government says we are to blame that the issue has stalled for 19 years and they tell us to find an alternative place (for the base relocation). That's outrageous," shouted the anti-US base mayor of Nago, Susumu Inamine. "The government is thrusting their responsibility on us," Inamine told a packed 15,000-seat baseball stadium. | |
Comment: Notice the blatant 'positive' spin at the end of the article. Do the majority of Japanese really 'value' the American military occupation of their country (for that's what it is) for the last 70 years?
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Thomas Gallick
Olentangy Valley News 2015-05-14 22:23:00
Glen Oak Elementary School teacher told the Olentangy school board she'd fight to keep her job after a split board voted Thursday, May 14, to terminate her contract over bullying accusations. Board members Roger Bartz, Dave King and Kevin O'Brien voted to suspend fifth-grade teacher Nicole LeMire without pay pending the final termination of her contract. Board member Julie Wagner Feasel voted against the measure, and board member Adam White was absent. The board's action led to tears from parents and students who supported LeMire, along with shouts demanding answers about the decision. According to the resolution the board passed, LeMire on April 14 asked students in her class to take turns saying how another student had misbehaved "and/or why (the student) was annoying or had no friends." The resolution also states that LeMire disclosed confidential information about the student to a latchkey program employee. According to the document, LeMire received previous unpaid suspensions in June and December 2014 for "missed deadlines" and "poor communication." LeMire, who has hired an attorney, said the district's accusations were "100 percent false." | |
Comment: It is sad to see another teacher being punished and publicly humiliated for standing up to a bully.
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Parents knows it can be difficult to get kids to eat their greens, but after an incident at a Texas high school some students may never eat vegetables again. "There's no way they could've missed (them), picking up a handful of broccoli like they do with their gloves on and not seen these ginormous bugs," Melissa Evans, mother of Caney Creek High School junior Falyn Evans, told Click2Houston. Falyn Evans and her friend were served the bug-infested broccoli for lunch Monday and the two almost ate the insects before they realized they were there. "It was kind of strange and gross that we had actually seen it and that it happened to us," she said. KFOR reports school officials acknowledged the problem in an email to parents that provided very few details. Officials were "notified this morning of complaints regarding food in the cafeteria," according to the statement Monday. "Any concerns are taken very seriously and Conroe (Independent School District's) Child Nutrition Department is addressing the situation." Food inspectors went through the cafeteria food Tuesday and discovered more bugs - the district contends they're aphids - in a batch of frozen broccoli, and believe the infestation was limited to the one batch, KFOR reports. | |
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RT
2015-05-15 12:44:00
Housing campaigners are calling for a drastic intervention in the housing market as the number of individuals being evicted from rental properties is at its highest level since records began. The latest government figures show the number of evictions in the first quarter of this year rose to 11,307, an increase of 8 percent on the same period in 2014 and the highest level in a single quarter since records began in 2000. The figures show the level has risen owing to a peak in the number of repossession claims made by landlords in 2014, followed by a lag time while the authorities processed the claims, of which there were 47,000 according to the Ministry of Justice. Claims have since fallen, with roughly 42,000 during the first quarter of 2015, which suggest a trend that evictions will follow suit next year. Homelessness charity Shelter said the results were a "glaring reminder" that the price of houses and "welfare cuts are leaving thousands of people battling to keep a roof over their heads." "Every day at Shelter we see the devastating impact of a housing market at boiling point,with the cost of renting so high that many families are living in fear that just one thing like losing their job or becoming ill could leave them with the bailiffs knocking at the door," Chief Executive Campbell Robb said. | |
Comment: As the mega-rich mortgage lenders continue to line their pockets, those at the bottom of the food chain suffer.
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Matt Agorist
The Free Thought Project 2015-05-16 23:08:00
The CHP is under fire this week after one of their finest pulled over an entire funeral procession for driving too slow. In an ostensible attempt to prevent a traffic problem caused by the procession, the CHP officer caused a far worse problem after having 100 cars stopped along the freeway. The incident was captured on cell phone video as the family members were embarrassingly detained on the roadside during this somber time. A uniformed officer was acting as an escort for the procession as the cars drove to Forest Lawn Cemetery when they were stopped by another officer, apparently drunk on power. "I'm looking and I'm seeing the car my mom was in on the side of the freeway too. That was embarrassing," said Rachel Behn-Humphrey. Behn-Humphrey said the actions of the CHP cop were outrageous, and he showed no compassion. "A lot of the family members did not make it to the gravesite," Behn-Humphrey said. "We sat on the side of the freeway so long, they had to go on. I saw some of them drive past." According to KTLA,
What exactly was this officer thinking? Here we have a funeral procession, headed up by a uniformed officer and this other officer felt it was necessary to pull over 100 people for driving too slow. In what world would that be okay? Police officers pulling people over during the most inopportune of times is certainly not isolated. The Free Thought Project has reported on everything from pregnant women on the way to the hospital being held at gunpoint, to asthmatics in distress dying on the roadside as police ignore their pleas for help. | |
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| Secret History |
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Rossella Lorenzi
Discovery News 2015-05-17 10:35:00
Remains of the long lost temple of Kheny have been unearthed at Gebel el Silsila, north of Aswan, Egypt's Minister of Antiquities announced today. Revealing the foundations and blockwork of the temple, the ruins are one of the few remnants of the settlement of Kheny or Khenu, which is the ancient Egyptian name — meaning "Rowing Place" — for Gebel el-Silsila. The site, located on both banks of the Nile between Edfu and Kom Ombo, was extensively used as a quarry from the New Kingdom until Roman times. "We know that huge quantities of sandstone for temple building were quarried there," Lund University archaeologist Maria Nilsson, director of the Gebel el Silsila Survey Project, told Discovery News. Indeed, virtually all of Egypt's great temples, including those at Karnak and Luxor, were built with sandstone from Gebel el Silsila. "Now this finding changes the history of the site, and it firmly establishes Gebel el Silsila as not only a quarry, but also a sacred location," she added. While cult activities at the site were mainly associated with the Nile and its inundation, the principal deity was Sobek, the god of crocodiles who controlled the waters. "At the moment we do not know to whom the temple was dedicated," Nilsson said. "We believe it marked the beginning of the east bank quarries. We hope further archaeological work and research will reveal more," she added. | |
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Sarah Ridley
Daily Mirror, UK 2015-05-17 11:21:00
Graham Hancock argues an ancient culture in Antarctica was obliterated - but subjects such as astronomy and mathematics were passed to later civilisations. The author of a controversial new book claims a comet struck the Earth nearly 13,000 years ago and wiped out a highly advanced ancient civilisation. When Graham Hancock wrote Fingerprints of the Gods, it was derided by academics but became a commercial sensation. He argued an ancient culture in Antarctica was obliterated - but subjects such as astronomy and mathematics were passed to later civilisations. Despite selling an estimated 3m copies, a BBC Horizon programme sought to demolish his theory. Paul V Heinrich, a US geologist, wrote: "Rather than stumbling upon an archaeological mystery, he has merely created one." | |
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| Science & Technology |
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| Earth Changes |
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traveller24.news24.com
2015-05-12 16:44:00
Warnings of a bitterly cold winter this year is fast becoming a reality for South Africans, as snow fall was reported again this weekend in the higher parts of the country and Lesotho on Sunday, 10 May. Snow fall was reported to Snow Report SA's Facebook page by travellers on the Sani Pass in KwaZulu-Natal, and from Lesotho's AfriSki Mountain Resort.
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RT
2015-05-17 11:38:00
A rampaging bull has injured at least 11 people, one of them seriously, after breaking loose from a festival in the Spanish town of Talavera de la Reina. Its mad dash for freedom was halted by police officials. Ruptly video shows the wild animal hitting a person in a wheelchair, with frightened passers-by trying to escape. A 30-year-old man was gored and had to undergo surgery, reported Spanish media. He is now recovering in hospital. Also a nine-year-old boy received facial injuries, while the rest of the wounded received bruises. | |
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Spacecoastdaily.com
A local Melbourne resident, Adam Charette, caught a unique glimpse of a waterspout near Melbourne Beach Saturday afternoon.2015-05-17 14:49:00
According to the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), waterspouts fall into two categories: fair weather waterspouts and tornadic waterspouts. Tornadic waterspouts are tornadoes that form over water, or move from land to water. They have the same characteristics as a land tornado. They are associated with severe thunderstorms, and are often accompanied by high winds and seas, large hail, and frequent dangerous lightning. Fair weather waterspouts usually form along the dark flat base of a line of developing cumulus clouds. This type of waterspout is generally not associated with thunderstorms. While tornadic waterspouts develop downward in a thunderstorm, a fair weather waterspout develops on the surface of the water and works its way upward. By the time the funnel is visible, a fair weather waterspout is near maturity. | |
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Cathy Bussewitz
Yahoo! News 2015-05-16 22:38:00
A series of earthquakes and shifting ground on the slopes of Kilauea have scientists wondering what will happen next at one of the world's most active volcanos. A lake of lava near the summit of Kilauea on Hawaii's Big Island had risen to a record-high level after a recent explosion. But in the past few days, the pool of molten rock began sinking, and the surface of the lava lake fell nearly 500 feet. Meanwhile, a rash of earthquakes rattled the volcano with as many as 20 to 25 quakes per hour, and scientists' tilt meters detected that the ground was deforming. "Clearly the lava, by dropping out of sight, it has to be going somewhere," said Steven Brantley, deputy scientist in charge of Hawaiian Volcano Observatory of the U.S. Geological Survey. One possibility is that a new lava eruption could break through the surface of the mountain, Brantley said. Right now, there are two active eruptions on Kilauea. One is the eruption spewing into the lava lake in the Halemaumau Crater, which is visible in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. The other is Puu Oo vent, in Kilauea's east rift zone, which sent fingers of lava toward the town of Pahoa before stopping outside a shopping center last year. | |
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A severe weather outbreak will continue in the Midwest on Sunday.Weather.com 2015-05-17 06:49:00
Since Saturday afternoon, there have been 28 reports of tornadoes across nine states, including Minnesota, Oklahoma, Texas, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Iowa and Louisiana. Sunday's severe weather and flash flooding potential will extend from Minnesota, Wisconsin and western Upper Michigan to portions of Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, eastern Oklahoma and Texas.
Below are the most notable storm reports so far from Saturday afternoon through early Sunday morning. | |||
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news.yahoo.com
2015-05-17 11:46:00
A 16-year-old girl has been gored by a bison in Yellowstone National Park while posing for a picture near the animal. The National Park Service says the unidentified girl's injuries were serious but not life-threatening. The agency described her as an exchange student from Taiwan who was visiting the park with her host family. The incident occurred shortly after noon Friday in the Old Faithful area. The Park Service says she and others were between 3 and 6 feet from the bison when she turned her back to the bison to have her picture taken. The bison took a couple steps and gored her. The girl was airlifted to an area hospital. The Park Service advises visitors to stay at least 25 yards away from bison in the park. | |
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CTV News
2015-05-16 15:26:00
Crews are responding to five new wildfires in British Columbia's Central Interior, as a massive blaze continues to burn about 70 kilometres southwest of Prince George. B.C.'s Wildfire Management Branch says all of the new fires were sparked by Friday's lightning activity in the Cariboo region. The largest fire is raging four hectares west of Anahim Lake, where a three-person attack crew, airtankers and a helicopter are on site with 16 additional firefighters on the way. The branch says crews are also working on three small fires in the Big Bar area and one small fire southwest of Quesnel. Meanwhile, the aggressive Little Bobtail Lake blaze has destroyed about 17,000 hectares since it was first discovered last Saturday. Some 240 firefighters, 11 helicopters, eight air tankers and 23 pieces of heavy machinery have been brought in and 20 per cent of the fire has been contained. Jill Kelsh with the Prince George Fire Centre says crews have been working around the clock since last Sunday. | |
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Manny Cruz
Pacific Sunday News 2015-05-17 09:32:00
Many Guam residents were left without power or water yesterday while hundreds remained in island storm shelters. More than 3,300 Guam Waterworks Authority subscribers experienced water outages and 40 percent of Guam Power Authority customers experienced power outages that lasted through yesterday, according to GPA and GWA spokeswoman Heidi Ballendorf. Ballendorf said more than five of the emergency generators used to power water wells experienced malfunctions, which left about 8.2 percent of the agency's 41,000 customers without water.
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