Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Monday 17 August 2015

The European Union Times


Posted: 16 Aug 2015 03:11 PM PDT

Masked gunmen have killed at least 19 people and injured seven more in a series of shootings on the outskirts of Brazil’s largest city of Sao Paulo, authorities say.
“This is very serious and merits a special investigation,” said Secretary of Public Security for Sao Paulo State Alexandre de Moraes in a Friday statement. “We don’t rule out any possibility.”
According to de Moraes, the shootings were the “largest killing of the year” that occurred Thursday night local time. He further added that a total of 15 individuals were killed in the city of Osasco, three in Barueri and one in Itapevi, all of which lie within Sao Paulo’s metropolitan area.
Authorities further pointed out that the gunmen used a 9mm pistol, commonly used by the Brazilian army, as well as 38 and 380mm guns, used by the country’s police forces, in the shooting attacks at 12 different sites, raising widening suspicions about the involvement of former or current police and military officers.
This is while investigators are considering the hypothesis that the killings may have been carried out by corrupt police officers, de Moraes added, explaining that they could have been seeking revenge for the murders of a policeman and a civil guard officer in Osasco and Barueri last week.
Video footage shows masked gunmen pulling up in a car and opening fire in a bar in Osasco. Ten people were killed there.
According to local press reports, a task force of 50 police officers has been set up to probe the shootings.
Meanwhile, witnesses in several locations reported that masked gunmen pulled up in a vehicle before opening fire on the victims.
In several cases, they added, the assailants checked the victims’ identity before shooting, or asked if they had criminal records.
Sao Paulo’s law enforcement authorities are reportedly looking into the possibility that attacks were targeted killings.
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Posted: 16 Aug 2015 03:00 PM PDT

An area near a chemical plant in the Vigo County city of Terre Haute, Indiana has been evacuated and cordoned off, as witnesses reported feeling chemicals burning their lungs and throats. Officials have confirmed a spill of sulfur dioxide.
Vigo County Central Dispatch has confirmed that chemicals were spilt at 2400 Erie Canal Road in the southern part of the city, which is where Hydrite Chemical Co. is located. Officials have urged people to stay out of the area, and not to leave their houses if they live near the spill.
While initial reports suggested there had been a sulfuric acid spill in the area, firefighters told News 10 the chemical was in fact sulfur dioxide. Sulfur dioxide is a colorless gas with a suffocating odor, which can cause serious or permanent injury when inhaled.
Witnesses told the channel that they smelled and even tasted acid at the time of the leak. Some described a burning sensation in their lungs and throats.
Many people attending the nearby Terre Haute Quarter Midget track reportedly fled while using clothes to cover their faces when they began to feel the effects.
At least 20 people have been reportedly taken to a regional hospital. First responders dispatched to the leak have set up a large blue tarp to “wipe people down” at the scene.
Sulfur dioxide is used in chemical manufacturing, including the production of sulfuric acid, paper pulping, and metal processing. It is also used as a food preservative and even in the process of making wine.
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Posted: 16 Aug 2015 01:56 PM PDT

On August 13, a giant sinkhole appeared on the construction site of a subway station in the city of Dongguan, China.
According to The South China Morning Post, the sinkhole was originally 80 m2 before expanding to 300 m2. The contractor started pouring concrete into the hole to stop it from sinking further.
One person was killed as a result of the tragedy.
Meanwhile, the death toll from the recent massive explosions in the Chinese port city of Tianjin has climbed to over 50. The explosion of warehouses in the port were captured even by satellites in space. In addition, the US Geological Survey, at a distance from 160 kilometers from the epicenter, received information about an earthquake near the city of Tianjin.

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Posted: 16 Aug 2015 01:40 PM PDT

More than 60,000 people in the UK have so far signed the petition calling for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to be arrested for war crimes against Palestinians when he pays an official visit to Britain next month.
The online petition, uploaded on August 7 to the UK parliament’s official website, demands the apprehension of Netanyahu for the slaughter of thousands of Palestinians during the Israeli military’s 50-day military war against the Gaza Strip last year. The petition has garnered 60,454 signatures as of Sunday morning.
“Under international law, he should be arrested for war crimes upon arrival in the UK for the massacre of over 2,000 civilians in 2014,” the petition says, referring to the 65-year-old Israeli premier’s scheduled September visit.
After 10,000 signatures, the British government must respond to the petition, and after 100,000 signatures, it will be considered for debate in the parliament. The deadline for signing the petition is February 7, 2016.
However, the Israeli Ministry for Foreign Affairs said in a statement earlier this week that the petition has “no real meaning,” adding, “Bilateral ties between Britain and Israel are closer than ever before.”
Israel unleashed its military onslaught on the impoverished Gaza Strip in early July 2014. The offensive ended on August 26, 2014, with a truce that went into effect following indirect negotiations between representatives from Palestinian resistance movement Hamas and Israeli regime in the Egyptian capital, Cairo.
Nearly 2,200 Palestinians, including 577 children, lost their lives in Israel’s war. Over 11,100 others – including 3,374 children, 2,088 women and 410 elderly people – also sustained injuries.
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Posted: 16 Aug 2015 01:29 PM PDT

Behind closed doors some Pentagon officials have acknowledged that the US military has been battered by years of war in the Middle East and is not prepared for a prolonged military engagement with a major global power like say Russia regardless of how likely this scenario might be.
They cite a series of classified war games different US agencies conducted lately and military drills in Europe to support this assessment.
Surprising as it may seem, this revelation comes at a time when an increasing number of high-ranking military officials have called Moscow a key existential threat to the US. The rhetoric reflects a months-long trend. Since the outbreak of the Ukrainian crisis Washington has been increasingly belligerent towards Russia.
Yet the Pentagon seems to be worried it could well be unable to put its money where its mouth is.
Two major areas of concern are logistics and Washington’s current ability (or inability) to sustain a large troop presence in the Baltics or Eastern Europe, two officials from the US Department of Defense told the Daily Beast. NATO countries have long frivolously insisted that Russia threatens this region, which is neither in Moscow’s interests nor its plans.
“Could we probably beat the Russians today [in a sustained battle]? Sure, but it would take everything we had. What we are saying is that we are not as ready as we want to be,” one of the Pentagon officials clarified.
Some experts say that the US defense agency is using the non-existent Russian threat to further unrelated ends. US military officials could well be overhyping existing challenges or dreaming up new ones to tackle sequestration and secure funding at the highest level possible.
The US Army has been forced to reduce its strength by 80,000 troops and an additional 40,000 may have to be cut in the coming year if Congress fails to resolve the ongoing budget deadlock that has activated automatic sequestration cuts.
If the crisis is not resolved first, these cuts will still come into effect to in just over six weeks on October 1, 2015.
Many US officials have repeatedly insisted that the US military will not be able to protect the country if it is forced into sequestration.
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Posted: 15 Aug 2015 03:04 PM PDT

The Food and Drug Administration has approved the highly addictive and dangerous drug Oxycontin for children as young as 11 despite the fact that overdoses involving prescription painkillers now represent a national epidemic, with 17,000 Americans dying every year.
The approval was given by the FDA after a study by Purdue Pharma of Stamford, Connecticut, the same company that manufactures the drug, “supported a new pediatric indication for OxyContin in patients 11 to 16 years old,” according to the federal agency.
The fact that the drug was approved for children on the basis of a study by the same company that stands to financially profit from the decision represents a flagrant conflict of interest. In 2013, Purdue Pharma had to pay $4 million to settle with a county in Kentucky for “damages the community suffered after the company marketed OxyContin as a safer alternative to other pain medicine,” leading to the drug being dubbed “hillbilly heroin.”
Approval was also given despite Michael Botticelli, the Obama administration’s director of National Drug Control Policy, telling the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime last month that, “Opioids are having a considerable impact on public health and safety in communities across the United States,” and are responsible for almost 37 per cent of all U.S. overdose deaths.
“Because oxycodone and other opioids are extremely powerful and highly addictive, they’re very tightly regulated — and very popular with addicts and pill pushers,” reports News Channel 8, noting that on average 44 people die in the U.S. from opioids every day.
17,000 Americans die from prescription opioid overdoses a year, more than twice the amount that die from heroin overdoses. Painkiller overdoses kill more Americans than heroin and cocaine combined. In 2009, the number of Americans killed annually by drug poisoning, driven largely by painkillers, surpassed the number killed in motor vehicle accidents for the first time ever. Deaths from prescription painkiller abuse in the United States tripled between 1999 and 2008.
Petitions to ban the Oxycontin have been signed by thousands of people, with many complaining of how the drug left their loved ones in vegetative states.
Young people are also being killed as a result of taking counterfeit Oxycontin that is tainted with fentanyl. Over just one weekend, the city of Vancouver recently logged 16 overdoses involving fentanyl, with six occurring over a period of just an hour.
A Calgary teen was also recently hospitalized and suffered brain damage from taking what he thought was an ordinary Oxycontin pill that was laced with fentanyl.
Figures show than one in 30 high schoolers has abused Oxycontin. The FDA’s decision will now ensure that Oxycontin is available to more teenagers who may choose to pass on or sell the drug to their friends.
Kids are already being overprescribed a cocktail of dangerous drugs, with over 10 million children in the United States being put on psychotropic antidepressants.
Oxycontin is the most commonly abused prescription drug in the United States, with Florida becoming the epicenter of the crisis. Addiction is so prevalent that some areas of the state have more pain clinics than McDonalds, with doctors prescribing 10 times more oxycodone pills than every other state in the country combined.
The proliferation of “pill mills” in Florida that illegally sell Oxycontin is so intense that Interstate 75 is now known as the “oxy express.”
The Peabody Award-winning documentary below, The Oxycontin Express, details how the drug has caused a lethal national epidemic.
The FDA’s decision to approve Oxycontin for children is yet another illustration of how the federal agency puts the lives of Americans at risk in favor of its cozy relationship with the pharmaceutical industry.

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Posted: 15 Aug 2015 02:18 PM PDT

DPRK reportedly threatened to respond to US if its military exercises with South Korea are not cancelled.
North Korea threatened to adequately respond to the United States if its military exercises with South Korea scheduled to be launched on Monday are not cancelled, the CNN reported Sunday.
South Korea, the United States and their allies annually conduct the joint military exercise called Ulchi Freedom Guardian (UFG), aimed at testing readiness to combat any North Korean invasion.
“The further Ulchi Freedom Guardian joint military exercises are intensified, the strongest military counteraction the (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea — DPR) will take to cope with them,” the CNN reported a spokesman for North Korea’s National Defense Commission (NDC) as saying.
According to the CNN, a State Department said it was aware of the threats, and that “the exercises are transparent, defense-minded and are designed to increase the readiness of South Korea and the region.”
The media reported that the DPRK’s threats of military actions come often, but that this time around they seem “particularly ratcheted-up.”
“The army and people of the DPRK are no longer what they used to be in the past when they had to counter the U.S. nukes with rifles… North Korea… is the invincible power equipped with both [the] latest offensive and defensive means unknown to the world,” the NDC spokesman was quoted as saying by the media.
The CNN noted that the Pyongyang threatened to attack the United States mainland.
The Ulchi Freedom Guardian military exercises are to last twelve days and conclude on August 28. The exercise is the world’s largest computerized command and control implementation which mainly focuses on defending South Korea from a North Korean attack. The exercise was initiated in 1976 under the previous name Ulchi-Focus Lens.
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Posted: 15 Aug 2015 12:54 PM PDT

The United States must compensate Cuba for multimillion-dollar losses that the country has incurred as a result of the American policy of sanctions, the leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro, said as he turned 89 years old yesterday. Can this be real at all? Pravda.Ru asked expert opinion from the Head of the Department of Comparative Politics at the People’s Friendship University of Russia, political analyst Yuri Pochta.
Russia should seek compensations from USA for illegal sanctions
“I do not think that there can be a compensation, but the attempt to demand a compensation for actual damages caused during a decade of absolutely groundless sanctions and closed economy is a reasonable attempt to make. Cuba has thus demonstrated that it has its position and interests that it defends. Yet, one should understand that there is Fidel Castro, and there are young politicians who will now increase the influence of migrants in the United States. This is a very complicated process that we can see unfolding. The old guard is demonstrating its integrity and determination,” said Yuri Pochta.
If Cuba can ask for compensations from the United States, why can’t Russia ask the same for the sanctions that were approved without a UN resolution?
“One should speak about it and conduct a propaganda campaign both domestically and abroad. In Russia, there are pro-Western forces that say that any decision of the West is absolutely correct. Yet, a compensation is unlikely to follow. The world is being globalized under the plans of the United States, and the people who run the game write the rules of this game. They will find justifications for the sanctions against Russia. The UN has been losing its influence. An attempt to restrict Russia’s veto right is quite indicative at this point. The sitting secretary general of NATO is an absolutely inefficient figure. Most likely, this man still has his job, because he is an obedient and manageable man who does not hide his adoration for the United States. We must keep on saying that we are suffering losses, but a compensation is very unlikely to follow,” the expert told Pravda.Ru.
On Friday, US Secretary of State John Kerry is visiting Cuba. The visit marks the first time, in 70 years, when a US official visits Havana. Why didn’t Fidel Castro say anything on the subject?
“This is a usual diplomatic move, as one has to open an embassy. Fidel agreed that the US-Cuban relations are reviving. One should have done it a long time ago. The USA did not have any reason to terminate the relations with Cuba, except for malice against the Cuban revolution. The Americans are aiming to change the political regime in Cuba, but the regime is strong and is not likely to change quickly. Cuba is not alone in Latin America, there are other countries in the region that run US-independent policies. Russia is a friend of Cuba too. We have invested a lot in the country,” Yuri Pochta said.
USA does not want Iran as Russia’s ally
Meanwhile, there is another country in the world that the USA does not want to see as a Russian friend.
Moscow has expressed surprise over reports from Washington about Iranian General Qasem Soleimani visiting Russia, Deputy Foreign Minister of Russia Sergei Ryabkov said.
“These reports have caused great surprise with us. Earlier this week, we informed our American colleagues that we did not have such information, that Mr. Soleimani was not in Moscow last week. We thought that the matter was closed,” said Ryabkov.
Fox News reported that Soleimani allegedly visited Moscow July 24 for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The US-based channel claims that in Moscow, Soleimani was discussing the lifting of the arms embargo.
Some experts believe that if Russia starts selling arms to Iran, the US will respond immediately by selling arms to Ukraine. Pravda.Ru asked political scientist and expert on Iran, Karina Gevorgyan, to comment on the situation.
“The situation is simple. The Americans would like to restore their military cooperation with Iran. Iran has been switching to Russian weapons lately, and the Americans fight for this market. They use any reason to undermine Russia’s cooperation with Iran. At the same time, there is a serious anti-Iranian lobby in the US. I think that this lobby was behind this provocation. Those people, who were promoting the deal with Iran, do not need this scandal.”
“Why can’t Ukraine buy weapons on the free market?”
“Ukraine has no money for it. Everyone has their patrons. For example, the authorities of Saudi Arabia support the incumbent President of Egypt Al-Sisi. When the question of the purchase of weapons arose, it was Saudi Arabia that gave Egypt 3 billion for Russian arms. The US can not and does not want to allocate money for weapons to Ukraine. Poroshenko does not want to use his personal money for that purpose,” the expert said.
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Posted: 15 Aug 2015 12:17 PM PDT
The US Army 2nd Cavalry Regiment arrives during the Dragoon Ride exercise in Liepupe, Latvia, on 22 March 2015.
US military buildup in Eastern Europe over Ukraine’s conflict with Russia is increasing the probability of a destructive nuclear war between Washington and Moscow, an author and analyst in Chicago says.
“The chance for a US military confrontation with Russia just grows and intensifies,” Stephen Lendman told Press TV on Saturday.
“These two countries have maybe 95 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons with delivery systems that can hit targets with pinpoint accuracy anywhere on the planet,” Lendman said.
A series of secret war games over the summer has raised concerns inside the Pentagon that US forces are not prepared for a sustained military campaign against Russia, The Daily Beast reports, citing defense officials.
The outgoing US Army chief of staff, General Ray Odierno, said Wednesday that Russia is the top military threat to the United States.
The general said the US had to increase its ability to move quickly to the region if needed, and increase interoperability with other NATO forces to counter Russia’s “aggression.”
“America already spends more for militarism and war making than all other countries in the world combined,” Lendman said. “And yet the generals and admirals all the time want more money for more war making and more imperial marauding around the world, and Russia is seen as America’s number one existential threat.”
He blamed Washington’s policies for the growing tensions with Moscow. “Russia wants peace and stability again; America wants endless wars.”
“I am scared for the first time of my life that a war can happen between these two countries which would mean a nuclear war and utter devastation,” he stressed.
An American military report released last month has warned of a growing probability of the United States fighting a war with a major power, Russia or China, with “immense” consequences.
The report released by General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, singles out Russia and China as aggressive countries and a threat to US security interests.
The study points to the alleged presence of Russian troops in Ukraine as a source of tension between Washington and Moscow.
Relations between the United States and Russia are at their lowest point since the end of the Cold War in 1991, largely due to the crisis in Ukraine.
The US and its allies accuse Moscow of sending troops into eastern Ukraine in support of the pro-Russian forces. Moscow has long denied involvement in Ukraine’s crisis.
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Posted: 15 Aug 2015 11:57 AM PDT

Two recent studies into ancient animal extinction appear to diametrically contradict each other, after a new university study claimed it was humans, and not climate change, that caused the demise of mammoths, sabretooth tigers and other ancient species.
Just last July, research from the University of Adelaide and the University of New South Wales in Australia, published in the journal Science, made headlines for pinning the blame for the disappearance of mammoths and other megafauna on sudden climate shifts.
Now, this week, the universities of Exeter and Cambridge claim that climate change alone was insufficient to cause the extinction; moreover, their new research challenges the notion that ancient humans lived more harmoniously with their surroundings than modern humans do.
The latest study utilized cutting edge statistical analysis which found that, while climate was indeed a factor, humans had been, by far, the most dominant reason for the disappearance of megafauna. Besides mammoths, this category includes woolly rhinos, sabretooth tigers, giant armadillos, and other animals that lived comfortably in their environments up to about 80,000 years ago, before abruptly going extinct at the dawn of the Neolithic Age some 10,000 years ago.
The new research, carried out in concert with the universities of Bristol and Reading, was published in the journal Ecography.
The scientists looked at thousands of various scenarios which all led to humans in the end. They arrived at their results by mapping every possible time period each of the animals is believed to have gone extinct and crossed that with the time humans had arrived on continent or island they inhabited.
“As far as we are concerned, this research is the nail in the coffin of this 50-year debate – humans were the dominant cause of the extinction of megafauna,” Lewis Bartlett of the University of Exeter says.
What the researchers still can’t account for is what drove humans to exterminate the animals at such a rapid pace – habitat destruction, or the need for food and material.
“Our analysis doesn’t differentiate, but we can say that it was caused by human activity more than by climate change. It debunks the myth of early humans living in harmony with nature,” Bartlett adds.
By contrast, the Australian study from late July appears to show that sudden periods of warming were to blame – especially when considering the abrupt disappearance of mammoths 11,000 years ago. This contradicts the view that it was a shift to colder weather that had done them in.
“The abrupt warming of the climate caused massive changes to the environment that set the extinction events in motion, but the rise of humans applied the coup de grace to a population that was already under stress,” Professor Chris Turney from the University of New South Wales said in July.
That conclusion was reached as a result of pattern analysis of ancient DNA carried out by the Australian researchers. Global rainfall and vegetation pattern shifts were only exacerbated by human activity, according to the study.
Whichever version of events is actually true, both studies sharply counter the view that humans ever lived in harmony with nature – a conclusion stressed by the Exeter scientists.
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Posted by Roberto Abraham Scaruffi at 08:14