Wednesday 6 May 2015

The European Union Times

Places where no animal can survive found in Atlantic Ocean

Posted: 05 May 2015 04:28 AM PDT

Example of an ocean eddy (not from the study) as seen from space.

A team of German and Canadian marine biologists have for the first time ever witnessed so-called ‘dead zones’ in the Atlantic Ocean, places where no life can thrive, owing to there being almost no dissolved oxygen in the water.
Zones depleted of oxygen do exist in nature and have previously been discovered along populated coastal areas off the eastern and southern coasts of the United States and the Baltic Sea. But this is the first time such a place has been observed in the open ocean.
In a paper published in the journal Biogeosciences, researchers outline the existence of pockets of low-oxygenated patches of water in the Atlantic Ocean.
They are vast – sometimes 100 square miles in size. They travel constantly and are also seasonal. One of the biggest ever discovered forms each year in the Gulf of Mexico.
What makes these things tick is a hodge-podge of nutrients and microbes delivered from elsewhere. It’s a cyclical process: the nutrients are food for algae blooms, which in turn get devoured by microorganism. This creates waste, which is then eaten by other microbes. This process uses up a lot of oxygen, creating oxygen-free pockets.
The nutrient run-off here is a means of transportation. But if you’re an animal or fish, there are only two options: moving and surviving, or staying and dying.
Dead zones are normally found in shallow water, where not a lot of mixing takes place. The Atlantic Ocean is obviously very different, which creates a puzzle.
Researchers found that these particular dead zones masquerade as ‘eddies’ – basically huge underwater ocean cyclones that spin into a vortex, practically no different to how weather sometimes acts above ground. They can twist uninterrupted for months on end. The spinning vortex creates a wall around the central core – a process, which quickly depletes oxygen from it, and so, a dead zone is born.
“The fast rotation of the eddies makes it very difficult to exchange oxygen across the boundary between the rotating current and the surrounding ocean. Moreover, the circulation creates a very shallow layer – of a few tens of meters – on top of the swirling water that supports intense plant growth,” study author Johannes Karstensen of the University of Bremen says in the press release of the journal of the European Geosciences Union (EGU).
What surprised him and the team was that the levels of oxygen depletion found previously in dead zones were way off: before the study, common estimates put dissolved oxygen at around 1 milliliter per liter of seawater. Karstensen and team though found the lower end of the spectrum in the Atlantic to contain only 0.3 milliliters.
The intensity of the phenomena is dependent upon the speed of the eddy, chemical concentration, weather patterns and the Earth’s rotation.
The researchers worry that the existence of dead zones even at the center of the Atlantic could have an effect on people living on land, particularly in Cape Verde.
“Given that the few dead zones we observed propagated less than 100 kilometers north of the Cape Verde archipelago, it is not unlikely that an open-ocean dead zone will hit the islands at some point,” Kartsensen explains. “This could cause the coast to be flooded with low-oxygen water, which may put severe stress on the coastal ecosystems and may even provoke fish kills and the die-off of other marine life.”
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EMP Device Used to Disable Possible Explosives Following Garland Attack

Posted: 05 May 2015 04:18 AM PDT

Reporters told to disable electronics by police before “electronic pulses”.
Several reporters at the scene of Sunday’s terror attack in Garland, Texas, stated that police used an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) device when examining the suspected shooters’ vehicle for explosives.
According to NBC 5’s Kevin Cokely, an explosion sound was heard from the suspects’ vehicle shortly after the police bomb squad told media personnel to disable all electronics.
“Garland police had warned of electronic magnetic pulse…” Cokely said on Twitter.
Following the explosion, NBC 5’s Jocelyn Lockwood, who captured the event on film, said that police refused to comment on the sound’s origin.
A separate reporter, Fox 4’s Zahid Arab, told Twitter followers that police had warned of further “electronic pulses” after the initial explosion.
Technology experts, including the ACLU’s Christopher Soghoian, debated on social media over whether Garland police or federal agents were responsible for the device.
Police later stated that no explosives were found in the vehicle but that several suspicious items were detonated. Since the incident, no comment has been made by law enforcement on the reported EMP device.
Infowars was unable to reach the Garland Police Department’s public and media relations representative for clarification at the time of publishing.
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Israeli court OK’s demolition of Palestinian village

Posted: 05 May 2015 03:59 AM PDT

An Israeli soldier guards an area as an army bulldozer pulls down the house of the Palestinian Raba’ai family in Al-Dirat, south of Yatta Village near the West Bank town of Hebron (al-Khalil), January 20, 2015.

Israel’s supreme court has authorized the regime’s authorities to demolish a Palestinian village in the occupied West Bank.
The high court approved on Monday a request from the Israeli civil administration to demolish the tents and houses of Khirbet Susiya Village near the city of Hebron (al-Khalil).
The planned destruction will leave 450 Palestinians homeless.
Nasr al-Nawajaa, a resident of the village, said the court decision was made “under the pretext that there is no infrastructure in the area.”
Jihad al-Nawajaa, the head of the village’s local council, said Israel wants to displace the villagers and build a park for settlers. He said the residents’ houses have previously been demolished several times but the Palestinian residents have not abandoned their land.
“We have been here for over 30 years and will not leave,” he emphasized.
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Israeli authorities have razed to the ground as many as 42 Palestinian-owned structures in Ramallah, al-Quds, Jericho, and al-Khalil since January 20.
This is while according to international law, the destruction of private or public property in occupied territories is prohibited.
The Israeli regime destroyed at least 359 Palestinian structures in the West Bank throughout 2014, according to the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions.
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EU Leaders to Shield Europe From ‘Kremlin Propaganda’

Posted: 05 May 2015 03:21 AM PDT

EU leaders will try to develop a strategy to curb “Kremlin propaganda” an issue that is on a par with the Grexit and terrorism threats on the agenda.
The leaders of 28 EU countries will discuss ways to clamp down on “Russian propaganda” in light of the Ukrainian crisis during their upcoming summit in June, a diplomatic source told RIA Novosti.
“EU leaders are expected to discuss a plan of action to counter the Russian disinformation campaign,” the diplomat said.
In early 2015 Lithuania, Great Britain, Denmark and Estonia called on the European Commission to develop a strategy of battling Russia’s “propagandist campaign.” One of the measures stipulated was launching a Russian-speaking TV channel to dispel “Kremlin media myths.”
The bloc took a serious approach to the issue. Earlier it was reported that the EU would pay €4,350 ($4,670) per person a month to experts who would wage war against the deceitful “Kremlin propaganda machine.”
In late April, Finland set up a group to combat what it called “false information” spread by Russian media.
EU’s Imaginary Help to Ukraine
It is noteworthy that the EU views filtering the flow of news pieces from Russia as a measure to help Ukraine.
As the East European country’s economy is hanging on by the skin of its teeth, Brussels offers an information war instead of boosting economic aid.
How will this imaginary battle help Kiev pay the money to striking coal miners and starving retirees, as the ruling team is unable to control the soaring prices?
Freedom of Speech in the Framework of Invisible Censorship
The EUobserver noted that “Russian propaganda disseminated by outlets such as RT and Sputnik International is finding receptive audiences in various EU member states.” It shows that Europeans are willing to look at what is happening in the world from another angle. Does it contradict the EU’s “human-rights-above-all” ideology?
In essence, Brussels warily labels all Russian news pieces as “propaganda” as it simply cannot tolerate another point of view, which is an outright breach of freethinking.
It seems that in the European Union press freedom is a merit only until its content reflects Brussels’s official stance. Just a single step from the mainstream and that is “propaganda.”
During the Cold War, the West slammed the Soviet Union for an “iron curtain” for filtering news presented by European and US media. It seems history is making an ironic U-turn right before our eyes.
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ISIS claims responsibility for cartoon exhibition attack in Texas

Posted: 05 May 2015 03:10 AM PDT

The Islamic State has reportedly declared it was behind the attack in Garland, Texas, via its Al Bayan radio station.
The Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) made a statement on Tuesday, claiming this was the terrorist group’s first attack on US soil. The IS added that two of its “soldiers” had attempted to carry out an attack as the exhibit was “portraying negative pictures of the Prophet Mohammed,” AFP reported.
The jihadist group warned that this could be start of a terror campaign that will be “bigger and more bitter.”
Both gunman were shot and killed in a parking lot outside the venue, which was hosting a controversial art event depicting images of the Prophet Mohammed.
The shooters were named as roommates Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi, from Phoenix. It emerged that Simpson had been under surveillance since 2006. In 2011, he was convicted of committing a terror-related offense after lying to FBI agents about his desire to travel to Somalia and join jihadist militia.
Two social media accounts, which had possible links to the Islamic State (IS), posted messages referring to Sunday’s attacks before they were carried out.
A Twitter account under the name “Shariah is Light” posted a message with the hashtag #texasattack at 18.35 Central Time. An image on the account featured American-born jihadist Anwar al-Awlaki, who was killed in 2011 in Yemen by a drone attack.
The Shariah is Light account subsequently attempted to follow a second account “AbuHussainAlBritani.” This second account posted a number of messages referring to the shooting in Texas and appeared to imply that IS was behind it.
One of the tweets said that “2 of our brothers just opened fire” at the Prophet Muhammad art exhibition in Texas.
The incident unfolded when a car drove up towards an indoor arena in Garland, where in the region of 200 people had been attending the exhibit, which offered a $10,000 first prize for the best artwork or cartoon depicting the prophet.
Artist Bosch Fawstin won the award for his drawing of a sword-wielding Prophet in a turban saying, “You can’t draw me.”
The event was organized by the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), which is led by Pamala Geller, a critic of Islam. It emerged that the AFDI paid $10,000 for extra security and protection.
Geller’s organization decided to create the ‘Mohammed Art Exhibition and Contest’ following the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris in January after the satirical magazine had published cartoons mocking the Prophet.
Following the shooting, Geller, who has been behind a series of anti-Hamas adverts displayed on transportation networks across the US, wrote a statement on her website saying that “This is war on free speech.”
The prize was presented to Fawstin, who was a former Muslim, by the controversial Dutch politician Gert Wilders, who gave a 15 minute speech to the audience, in which he said, “We are here to defend our rights and stand for freedom of speech.” He also declared that similar exhibitions should be held “all over the United States and all over the free world.”
Last week, two Democrat lawmakers had asked President Barack Obama to prevent the far-right politician from being allowed to enter the US for his anti-Muslim views. Before speaking in Texas, he had met with Republican Senators Louie Gohmert and Steve King.
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