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Gabriela Segura, MD The Health Matrix 2013-08-18 12:32:00
Ketosis is an often misunderstood subject. Its presence is equated with starvation or a warning sign of something going wrong in your metabolism. But nothing could be farther from the truth, except if you are an ill-treated type 1 diabetic person.[1] Ketones - contrary to popular belief and myth - are a much needed and essential healing energy source in our cells that come from the normal metabolism of fat. The entire body uses ketones in a more safe and effective way than the energy source coming from carbohydrates - sugar AKA glucose. Our bodies will produce ketones if we eat a diet devoid of carbs or a low-carb diet (less than 60 grams of carbs per day).[2] By eating a very low-carb diet or no carbs at all (like a caveman), we become keto-adapted. In fact, what is known today as the ketogenic diet was the number one treatment for epilepsy until Big Pharma arrived with its dangerous cocktails of anti-epileptic drugs. It took several decades before we heard again about this diet, thanks in part to a parent who demanded it for his 20-month-old boy with severe seizures. The boy's father had to find out about the ketogenic diet in a library as it was never mentioned as an option by his neurologist. After only 4 days on the diet, his seizures stopped and never returned.[3] The Charlie Foundation was born after the kid's name and his successful recovery, but nowadays the ketogenic diet is available to the entire world and it's spreading by word of mouth thanks to its healing effects. | |
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| Puppet Masters |
RT.com 2013-08-19 13:54:00
On the 60th anniversary of the 1953 military coup in Iran that overthrew the government of radical nationalist Mohammad Mossadegh, the US has declassified documents detailing how the CIA's secret operation brought the country's Shah back to power. "American and British involvement in Mossadegh's ouster has long been public knowledge, but today's posting includes what is believed to be the CIA's first formal acknowledgement that the agency helped to plan and execute the coup," the US National Security Archive said. Monday's publication under the US Freedom of Information Act came as something of a surprise, since most of the materials and records of the 1953 coup were believed to have been destroyed by the CIA, the Archive said. The CIA said at time that its "safes were too full." The newly-revealed documents declassify documents about CIA's TPAJAX operation that sought regime change in Iran through the bribery of Iranian politicians, security and army high-ranking officials, and massive anti-Mossadegh propaganda that helped to instigate public revolt in 1953. | |
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Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya RT.com 2013-08-19 11:41:00
The targeting of Kurdish civilians in Syria by US-supported armed thugs is part of a deliberate attempt to galvanize the Kurds and pit them in a resurgent struggle against the non-Kurd regions. The Kurdish Democratic Union Party and other sources are now reporting that Kurdish men, women, and children are systematically being tortured, raped, and executed. Fighting has broken out between Syrian Kurds and the insurgent forces supported by the US, UK, France, Turkey, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and the Iranian Parliament have condemned the targeting of Syrian Kurds while the Obama Administration and its cohorts have remained mostly silent. Lavrov's insistence that the United Nations Security Council condemns the violence has also been to no avail. One of the reasons that the Obama Administration has been silent is because they are supporting the butchers behind the massacre and are trying to avoid more embarrassment. The US and its allies, however, will make supportive noise for the Kurds once they get the result they are seeking. | |
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Alex Kane AlterNet 2013-08-19 11:27:00
A massive industry profits off the government-induced fear of terrorism. Michael Hayden, the former director of the National Security Agency, has invaded America's televisionsets in recent weeks to warn about Edward Snowden's leaks and the continuing terrorist threat to America. But what often goes unmentioned, as the Guardian's Glenn Greenwald pointed out, is that Hayden has a financial stake in keeping Americans scared and on a permanent war footing against Islamist militants. And the private firm he works for, called the Chertoff Group, is not the only one making money by scaring Americans. Post-9/11 America has witnessed a boom in private firms dedicated to the hyped-up threat of terrorism. The drive to privatize America's national security apparatus accelerated in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, and it's gotten to the point where 70 percent of the national intelligence budget is now spent on private contractors, as author Tim Shorrock reported. The private intelligence contractors have profited to the tune of at least $6 billion a year. In 2010, the Washington Post revealed that there are 1,931 private firms across the country dedicated to fighting terrorism. What it all adds up to is a massive industry profiting off government-induced fear of terrorism, even though Americans are more likely to be killed by a car crash or their own furniture than a terror attack. Here are five private companies cashing in on keeping you afraid. | |
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Barry Grey and Thomas Gaist World Socialist Website 2013-08-19 11:16:00
British authorities detained David Miranda, the partner of Guardian reporter Glenn Greenwald, for nine hours on Sunday under a counterterrorism law. They held Miranda, 28, a citizen of Brazil, incommunicado and interrogated him without giving him the opportunity to secure legal counsel. Miranda was stopped by British officers as he passed through London's Heathrow Airport on his way from Berlin to his Rio de Janeiro home, which he shares with Greenwald. The officials released Miranda without charge after nine hours, the maximum detention time allowed under the law. They confiscated Miranda's electronic equipment, including his mobile phone, laptop computer, camera, memory sticks, DVDs and game consoles. Greenwald has written a series of stories, mainly for the British Guardian, exposing the mass surveillance programs carried out by the US National Security Agency (NSA), based on documents given to him by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. Along with Snowden, Greenwald has become a target for attacks by US politicians and media figures. Two months ago, David Gregory, the moderator of NBC News' "Meet the Press" program, asked Greenwald in the course of an interview why he should not be prosecuted, along with Snowden, under US espionage laws. | |
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Noam Chomsky Information Clearing House 2013-08-17 10:58:00
In a powerful speech, Chomsky lays out how the majority of US policies are practically opposite of what wide swathes of the public wants. The following is transcript of a recent speech delivered Noam Chomsky in Bonn, Germany, at DW Global Media Forum I'd like to comment on topics that I think should regularly be on the front pages but are not - and in many crucial cases are scarcely mentioned at all or are presented in ways that seem to me deceptive because they're framed almost reflexively in terms of doctrines of the powerful.
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David Sirota Information Clearing house 2013-08-17 10:51:00
So many of President Obama's statements about NSA have been wrong. But he's too smart not to understand the truth With the latest major revelation about National Security Agency surveillance, there's a huge taboo question that needs to be put out on the table: Has President Obama been deliberately lying about the NSA, or have his statements just been repeatedly "wrong"? After Barton Gellman's blockbuster story today about the NSA breaking "privacy rules or overstepp(ing) its legal authority thousands of times each year," the Washington Post published an attendant commentary with a headline declaring the president was merely "wrong" in last week suggesting that the NSA wasn't "actually abusing" its legal authority. The implication is that when Obama made that comment - and then further insisted the surveillance programs "are not abused" - he may have been inaccurate, but he didn't necessarily deliberately lie because he may not have known he was not telling the truth. | |
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Barton Gellman The Washington Post 2013-08-19 10:43:00
The National Security Agency has broken privacy rules or overstepped its legal authority thousands of times each year since Congress granted the agency broad new powers in 2008, according to an internal audit and other top-secret documents. Most of the infractions involve unauthorized surveillance of Americans or foreign intelligence targets in the United States, both of which are restricted by statute and executive order. They range from significant violations of law to typographical errors that resulted in unintended interception of U.S. e-mails and telephone calls. | |
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Cryptogon 2013-08-18 18:07:00
As wireless devices such as cellular telephones, pagers, personal media devices and smartphones become ubiquitous, more and more people are carrying these devices in various social and professional settings. The result is that these wireless devices can often annoy, frustrate, and even threaten people in sensitive venues. Source: United States Patent 8,254,902 | |
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Laurent Guyénot Voltaire Network 2013-05-02 15:49:00
Exactly fifty years ago a crucial episode took place in the history of "U.S. democracy"; an epic struggle whose outcome would influence the future of the entire world. Guyénot Laurent revisits those events and recalls what was at stake at that critical historical juncture. Kennedy and the AIPAC In May 1963, the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations opened an investigation into the covert activities of foreign agents on U.S. soil, focusing in particular on the American Zionist Council and the Jewish Agency for Israel. [1] The investigation was prompted by a report from the Chairman of that standing Committee, Senator J. William Fulbright, written in March 1961 (declassified in 2010), stating: "In recent years there has been an increasing number of incidents involving attempts by foreign governments, or their agents, to influence the conduct of American foreign policy by techniques outside normal diplomatic channels." By covert activities, including "within the United States and elsewhere," Fulbright was referring to the 1953 "Lavon Affair" [2], where a group of Egyptian Jews was recruited by Israel to carry out bomb attacks against British targets, which were to be blamed on the Muslim Brotherhood so as to discredit Nasser in the eyes of the British and Americans. The Senate investigation brought to light a money laundering racket through which the Jewish Agency (indivisible from the State of Israel and a precursor to the Israeli Government) was channelling tens of millions of dollars to the American Zionist Council, the main Israeli lobby in the United States. Following this investigation, the Department of Justice, under the authority of Attorney General Robert Kennedy, ordered the American Zionist Council to register as "agents of a foreign government," subject to the requirements of the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938, involving the close monitoring of its activities. | |
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Tom Suarez Mondoweiss 2013-08-16 23:22:00
The BBC has confirmed that it will censor a statement made by violinist Nigel Kennedy from its television broadcast of his performance with the Palestine Strings at a prestigious music festival last week. In his statement at the Proms, Mr. Kennedy used the word "apartheid" to describe the world in which his Palestinian colleagues live. Click here for a recording of the actual statement the BBC is excising from its broadcast[1]. The following is a transcript: "It's a bit facile to say it, but we all know from the experience of this night of music, that giving equality and getting rid of apartheid gives a beautiful chance for amazing things to happen."According to The Jewish Chronicle[2], BBC governor Baroness Deech called for an apology from Mr. Kennedy and said that "the remark was offensive and untrue. There is no apartheid in Israel." Not only is there no apartheid in Israel, she claimed, but nor is there any in Gaza or the West Bank. (She made no mention of East Jerusalem.) | |
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Robert Fisk The Independent 2013-08-16 19:59:00
It was a disgrace, a most shameful chapter in Egyptian history. The police - some wearing black hoods - shot down into the crowds of Muslim Brotherhood supporters from the roof of Cairo's Ramses Street police station and surrounding streets. They even fired at traffic on the airport highway. And to see their terrible work, you had only to climb the pink marble steps of the Al-Fath Mosque - sticky with fresh blood yesterday evening - and see the acre of wounded lying on deep-woven carpets and, in a remote corner, 25 shrouded corpses. Dr Ibrahim Yamani gently lifted the bandages from their bodies: shot in the face, shot in the head, shot in the chest. | |
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DSWright FireDogLake 2013-08-16 11:00:00
Few military projects are more notorious than the V-22 Osprey. The name has become synonymous with flawed government contracting and planning. Originally conceived in 1980 in the wake of the botched Iranian Hostage Crisis rescue mission, the Osprey was supposed to represent a new type of aircraft that could land and takeoff vertically but also carry plane sized equipment and personnel. So ends the theory. What followed was an amazing waste of money. The Osprey was first budgeted at $2.5 billion in 1986, by 2008 $27 billion had been spent, with another $27.2 billion needed to complete production. Yes $2.5 billion to an estimated $54.2 billion. And yes, in that time period other aircraft were developed to successfully fulfill US combat needs. And yes, no other country is even within striking distance of America's air capacity. Of course, other countries aren't interested in competing with America for developing anything like the Osprey, because the damn thing doesn't work. In 2001 numerous officers were relieved of duty due to their falsifying records to try to make the Osprey seem like it worked. In 2007 the Pentagon deployed the aircraft leading to condemnation from many that the Osprey was too unsafe for combat use. | |
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Dan Dan from Squirrel Hill Blog 2013-08-15 19:36:00
As the author of this blog post, I place it into the public domain. Anyone may freely copy it in any part or in its entirely, without asking my permission, and without paying any money. I do ask you please cite a link to my blog. I ask you to please show this list to as many people as possible - and especially, to please show it to as many Obama supporters as possible. Sunshine really is the best disinfectant. I can't stop Obama from doing any of these horrible things, but I can tell people about what he is doing. So please share this list with others on Facebook, Twitter, etc. Thank you. The short link for this can be found here. Every President, every politician, and every human being tells lies and engages in acts of hypocrisy. But Barack Obama does these things to a far greater degree than anyone else that I have ever known of. His campaign promises were so much better sounding than anyone else's - no lobbyists in his administration, waiting five days before signing all non-emergency bills so people would have time to read them, putting health care negotiations on C-SPAN, reading every bill line by line to make sure money isn't being wasted, prosecution of Wall St. criminals, ending raids against medical marijuana in states where it's legal, high levels of transparency. Obama's promises of these wonderful things sounded inspiring and sincere. They sounded so much better than the promises of any other President. So when Obama broke these promises, it felt so much worse than when other Presidents broke their promises. | |
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RIA Novosti 2013-08-17 16:12:00
Fugitive US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden was not interrogated by special services after his arrival to Russia, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange said on Friday. In an interview with Fairfax Media, the founder of the anti-secrecy organization has confirmed that WikiLeaks personnel have continuously accompanied Snowden since he left Hong Kong for Moscow on June 23. "Since Hong Kong we have had someone physically by his side the entire time," Assange said. "We have had someone with him for 54 days." The statement comes amid media speculations that Snowden has fallen into the hands of the Russian state security services. | |
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Ben Lynfield The Independent 2013-08-13 00:17:00
In a campaign to improve its image abroad, the Israeli government plans to provide scholarships to hundreds of students at its seven universities in exchange for their making pro-Israel Facebook posts and tweets to foreign audiences. The students making the posts will not reveal online that they are funded by the Israeli government, according to correspondence about the plan revealed in the Haaretz newspaper. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office, which will oversee the programme, confirmed its launch and wrote that its aim was to "strengthen Israeli public diplomacy and make it fit the changes in the means of information consumption". The government's hand is to be invisible to the foreign audiences. Daniel Seaman, the official who has been planning the effort, wrote in a letter on 5 August to a body authorizing government projects that "the idea requires not making the role of the state stand out and therefore it is necessary to adhere to great involvement of the students themselves, without political linkage or affiliation". | |
Comment: Wonder if all those genocidal fanatics who've been spreading pro-Israeli propaganda for free feel like they've been gypped? | |
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| Society's Child |
Paul Lawrance Eyesopenreport.com 2013-08-19 16:37:00
Plans are in the works to make the site of one of histories worse nuclear disasters a tourist attraction. The idea is to build a community on the edge of the exclusion zone that extends 25 miles from the reactor. This community comes equipped with restaurants, souvenir shops and hotels that have been built to protect guests from elevated levels of radiation. The highlight of the visit will be a trip into the unstable reactors perimeter fence. All to serve as a reminder of how the nuclear plant was crippled during a earthquake and tsunami in March 2011. I thought vacation's were to escape the horrors that life brought us? Not for the purpose of entering them. Why would anyone be attracted to a nuclear disaster site that has been killing those who have tried to contain its toxicity? | |
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RT.com 2013-08-19 16:29:00
Readings of tritium in seawater taken from the bay near the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant has shown 4700 becquerels per liter, a TEPCO report stated, according to Nikkei newspaper. It marks the highest tritium level in the measurement history. Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) has detected the highest radiation level in seawater collected in the harbor of the crippled nuclear plant in the past 15 days, Nikkei reports. TEPCO said the highest radiation level was detected near reactor 1. Previous measurements showed tritium levels at 3800 becquerels per liter near reactor 1, and 2600 becquerels per liter near reactor 2. The concentration of tritium in the harbor's seawater has been continuously rising since May, according to Nikkei. | |
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Rob Williams Darryl See was hit by a Chicago-bound train as he walked along the tracks east of Michigan CityThe Independent, UK 2013-08-19 15:37:00
A Michigan man has been released from intensive care after remarkably surviving being struck by an Amtrak train going at 110 miles per hour. Darryl See, 22, was hit by a Chicago-bound train as he walked along the tracks east of Michigan City on Friday. According to reports the train sounded its horn a number of times but Mr See, who was listening to music at the time, failed to hear it. He underwent surgery at Memorial Hospital in South Bend to put a plate in his neck and had several crushed vertebrae. John Boyd of LaPorte County Police, told the Northwest Indiana Times that: "The conductor said it was a straight-on hit." | |
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Richard Shears The Daily Mail, UK 2013-08-19 14:52:00
Four of the 12 hunters on board the wooden boat managed to swim to the shore, but their companions went down with the flimsy vessel after the whale at first dragged the vessel along - before diving. Villagers said it was a mystery why the eight disappeared without trace because they were in an open boat when it was pulled under in the waters off the island of Lembata, in eastern Indonesia.
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KHOU 2013-08-19 08:19:00
Harris County - - A Walmart west of Houston was evacuated late Sunday after two men sprayed a substance that made some people ill, deputies said. It happened at the store near Highway 6 and Westpark Drive around 8:45 p.m., according to deputies with the Harris County Sheriff's Office. Dozens of employees and about 100 to 150 customers had to be evacuated. Some of them started to experience trouble breathing and suffered burning in their eyes and throat, deputies said. "When I was in there, I was checking out, and I saw people choking," said customer Ken Baptista. "I heard somebody was mixing chemicals in there and throwing it in the air." "By the time I went inside I just smelled something real funny," said Farah Muhamoud. "We don't know exactly what was it." At least four people were sent to area hospitals. Deputies said the suspects got away, but surveillance cameras may have captured the pair on video. Hazmat crews were called in and said the store was clear of the chemicals a short time later. | |
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RIA Novosti 2013-08-19 12:23:00
The cost to agriculture in Russia's flood-hit Far East is estimated at 8.5 billion rubles ($260 million), Russia's Agriculture Ministry said Monday. More than 627,000 hectares of agricultural land, or 40 percent of crop areas, have been affected by the floods, the ministry said in a statement. | |
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Press Association At least 35 people were killed when a train ran over Hindu pilgrims crossing a railway track in eastern India today.2013-08-19 12:17:00 An angry mob then beat the train driver severely and set fire to the coaches in retaliation, officials said. The pilgrims were crossing the tracks at the station in Dhamara Ghat, a small town in Bihar state, when they were struck by the Rajya Rani Express train, said Dinesh Chandra Yadav, a local member of parliament. Several other people were injured. |
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The Siberian Times 2013-08-18 11:27:00
Daria Kuchuk, 35, born in Omsk, had followed her mother to Scotland in search of a new life, but her quest ended in tragedy. Our exclusive pictures show Daria - who was an academic high achiever in Siberia, Moscow and at Oxford University in England - with her long-time boyfriend Igor Pavlov, 27, from Moscow. The couple died from cyanide poisoning after checking into a $500 a night room at The Scotsman five star hotel in Edinburgh, one of the best in Scotland. It was close to a flat they shared near the Royal Mile in the heart of the Scottish capital. The couple died on 1 August but these are the first pictures of the couple, obtained by The Siberian Times. They show the couple with Igor's parents several years ago in the UK. In one, they are posing with the wax models of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip at tourist attraction Madame Tussauds. Family friends of 35 year old Daria (Dasha) from Siberia spoke of the 'appalling shock' of her death and the 'waste of such a brilliant mind'. 'They were not officially married but it is known that they lived together as partners for a considerable time,' said a spokesman for the Russian Foreign Ministry press centre in Moscow. 'As far as we know neither of them had children'. | |
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Peter Hart There's an interesting Politico story (8/22/12) about Andrea Seabrook, who until recently was a Capitol Hill reporter for NPR. She's moved on to a new independent reporting project, but it's what she said about her previous gig that's most revealing: Fair.org 2012-08-23 10:40:00 "I realized that there is a part of covering Congress, if you're doing daily coverage, that is actually sort of colluding with the politicians themselves because so much of what I was doing was actually recording and playing what they say or repeating what they say," Seabrook told Politico. "And I feel like the real story of Congress right now is very much removed from any of that, from the sort of theater of the policy debate in Congress, and it has become such a complete theater that none of it is real.... I feel like I am, as a reporter in the Capitol, lied to every day, all day. There is so little genuine discussion going on with the reporters.... To me, as a reporter, everything is spin." |
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The Extinction Protocol U.S. stocks barely moved Monday. But bond yields continued to creep higher amid chatter that the Federal Reserve could begin winding down its stimulus sooner rather than later. Worries that the central bank could taper its $85 billion a month in bond purchases, or quantitative easing, as early as September has spurred a huge sell-off in bonds. Investors have yanked nearly $20 billion from bond mutual funds and exchange traded funds so far in August. That's the fourth highest pullback ever, according to TrimTabs data.2013-08-19 10:23:00
In June, investors took out $69.1 billion - the highest on record. The heavy selling has pushed long-term bond rates to two-year highs, with the benchmark 10-year Treasury yield nearing 2.87%. "As much as bond professionals say they've never really liked QE, they're trading as though they miss it already," said Jim Vogel, interest rate strategist at FTN Financial. The Fed will remain in focus this week as investors look ahead to Wednesday. That's when the Fed releases minutes from its last monetary policy meeting. The Kansas City Fed also hosts its annual conference in Jackson Hole, Wyo. later this week. Concerns about the Fed tapering have hit stocks as well. The Dow Jones industrial average, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq have dropped for two consecutive weeks. But with no economic data or significant earnings reports on tap Monday, the three major market indexes were only slightly higher. -CNN | |
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Paula Baker Global News 2013-08-14 07:58:00
The Nestlé Waters Canada operates in Hope, B.C. and uses 230 million litres of fresh water every year from an aquifer in the Fraser Valley. It's the same aquifer the residents of the valley use for their water. The food and beverage giant is not required to measure, report or pay for the water because of B.C.'s lack of regulations on its use. Nestlé then takes the 'free' water and sells it back to consumers across Western Canada. This has left Fraser Valley residents wondering if their portion of that underground supply could soon run out. "They weren't concerned with having to pay for water," says Sheila Muxlow, The Water Wealth Project. "But if they were going to have to pay for water they wanted to see everybody have to pay for water. That's an issue for us because corporations are not local residents." | |
Comment: See the world according to the Nestlé CEO. | |
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Arturo Garcia Police in Arlington, Texas are being criticized for their tactics during a drug raid on a local farm that came up empty while allegedly damaging both the property and the crops.The Raw Story 2013-08-14 10:32:00 "They can't even tell the difference between tomato plants and a marijuana drug cartel," farm resident Quinn Eaker told KXAS-TV. "That's just really bad intel." Eaker said to KXAS that he and several residents at the "Garden of Eden" sustainability garden were handcuffed at gunpoint by officers during the Aug. 2 raid, which also involved a SWAT team, after an undercover officer and helicopter surveillance allegedly gave authorities probable cause to believe there was marijuana being grown on the premises. "They came here under the guise that we were doing a drug trafficking, marijuana-growing operation," owner Shellie Smith told WFAA-TV."They destroyed everything." |
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Radley Balko A small organic farm in Arlington, Texas, was the target of a massive police action last week that included aerial surveillance, a SWAT raid and a 10-hour search.The Huffington Post 2013-08-18 06:26:00
 Members of the local police raiding party had a search warrant for marijuana plants, which they failed to find at the Garden of Eden farm. But farm owners and residents who live on the property told a Dallas-Ft. Worth NBC station that the real reason for the law enforcement exercise appears to have been code enforcement. The police seized "17 blackberry bushes, 15 okra plants, 14 tomatillo plants ... native grasses and sunflowers," after holding residents inside at gunpoint for at least a half-hour, property owner Shellie Smith said in a statement. The raid lasted about 10 hours, she said. Local authorities had cited the Garden of Eden in recent weeks for code violations, including "grass that was too tall, bushes growing too close to the street, a couch and piano in the yard, chopped wood that was not properly stacked, a piece of siding that was missing from the side of the house, and generally unclean premises," Smith's statement said. She said the police didn't produce a warrant until two hours after the raid began, and officers shielded their name tags so they couldn't be identified. According to ABC affiliate WFAA, resident Quinn Eaker was the only person arrested -- for outstanding traffic violations | |
Comment: This is the complete, unedited interview with Garden of Eden owners. No drugs were found, no crimes were committed, but their organic farm was destroyed anyway. Still think we aren't living in a Police State?
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Erik Eckholm The New York Times 2013-08-18 09:57:00
The police had warned Lakisha Briggs: one more altercation at her rented row house here, one more call to 911, and they would force her landlord to evict her. They could do so under the town's "nuisance property" ordinance, a law intended to protect neighborhoods from seriously disruptive households. Officials can invoke the measure and pressure landlords to act if the police have been called to a rental home three times within four months. So she faced a fearful dilemma, Ms. Briggs recalled, when her volatile boyfriend showed up last summer, fresh out of a jail stint for their previous fight, and demanded to move in. "I had no choice but to let him stay," said Ms. Briggs, 34, a certified nursing assistant, even though, she said in an interview, she worried about the safety of her 3-year-old daughter as well as her own. "If I called the police to get him out of my house, I'd get evicted," she said. "If I physically tried to remove him, somebody would call 911 and I'd be evicted." Over the last 25 years, in a trend still growing, hundreds of cities and towns across the country have adopted nuisance property or "crime-free housing" ordinances. Putting responsibility on landlords to weed out drug dealers and disruptive tenants, the laws aim to save neighborhoods from blight as well as ease burdens on the police. | |
Comment: There is absolutely no reason for these "nuisance ordinances" except to allow the Police to harass and terrorize the poor. Landlords already have a mechanism with which they can evict a truly troublesome tenant, it's called a "lease." The fact that the government is forcibly inserting itself into the landlord / tenant relationship, often with devastating results for low income crime victims, is yet further proof that we are living in a Police State. | |
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Eliza Borrello Australian Broadcasting Corporation 2013-08-17 23:16:00
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has today announced that parents who choose not to have their children vaccinated will miss out on thousands of dollars in government benefits. Speaking at Westmead Hospital in Sydney, Mr Rudd said that those who do not vaccinate their children will not get the Family Tax Benefit A end-of-year supplement. The payment is worth $726 per child, per year and is paid when children are vaccinated at one, two and five years of age. Since last year, parents who have not immunised their children have not received the benefit; however, those registering as so-called conscientious objectors have. Under Labor's policy, exemptions would only be made on religious or medical grounds. Labor says it wants to boost immunisation rates and prevent children who are not vaccinated from getting diseases like whooping cough and measles, and putting others at risk. | |
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| Secret History |
Meeri Kim The Washington Post 2013-08-19 17:49:00
An Austrian collector has found what may be the oldest globe, dated 1504, to depict the New World, engraved with immaculate detail on two conjoined halves of ostrich eggs. The globe, about the size of a grapefruit, is labeled in Latin and includes what were considered exotic territories such as Japan, Brazil and Arabia. North America is depicted as a group of scattered islands. The globe's lone sentence, above the coast of Southeast Asia, is "Hic Sunt Dracones." " 'Here be dragons,' a very interesting sentence," said Thomas Sander, editor of the Portolan, the journal of the Washington Map Society. The journal published a comprehensive analysis of the globe Monday by collector Stefaan Missinne. "In early maps, you would see images of sea monsters; it was a way to say there's bad stuff out there." The only other map or globe on which this specific phrase appears is what can arguably be called the egg's twin: the copper Hunt-Lenox Globe, dated around 1510 and housed by the Rare Book Division of the New York Public Library. Before the egg, the copper globe had been the oldest one known to show the New World. The two contain remarkable similarities. After comparing the two globes, Missinne concluded that the Hunt-Lenox Globe is a cast of the engraved ostrich egg. Many minute details, such as the lines and contours of the egg's territories, oceans and script, match those on the well-studied Hunt-Lenox Globe. The egg's shape is slightly irregular, while the copper globe is a perfect sphere. Also, the markings around the equator of the egg, where the two halves are joined, appear quite muddled. | |
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Laura Poppick LiveScience 2013-08-19 15:27:00
Archaeologists have unearthed the remains of a 4,000-year-old man preserved in an Irish peat bog, marking the oldest European body ever found with skin still intact. The cool, waterlogged conditions of Northern European bogs (a type of wetland) create low-oxygen, highly acidic environments ideal for body preservation. As a result, hundreds of "bog bodies" dating back thousands of years have been uncovered in the region, but many have shriveled down to mostly skeletons and tend to be closer to 2,000 years old. A resident of central Ireland's County Laois came across the well-preserved "Cashel Man" - named for the bog he was found in - while milling for peat moss, which is used for a variety of farm purposes, including animal-bedding and field conditioning. Having realized that he had come across a human body, the resident notified archaeologists at the National Museum of Ireland, who later conducted a formal excavation of the site. A summary of the dig appeared in the latest edition of the Irish journal Ossory, Laois, and Leinster. "All that was visible to start with was a pair of legs below the knees, and a torso," Eamonn Kelly, an archaeologist at the National Museum and lead excavator of the project, wrote in the report. "The body appeared to be naked. Later, it was possible to work out that the torso had been damaged by the milling machine, which also removed the head, neck and left arm." | |
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Brian Regal New Jersey On-Line 2013-08-18 13:58:00
Everyone knows the story of the Jersey Devil. In 1735, a witch named Mother Leeds gave birth to a hideous "child" with a horse-like head, cloven hooves, a long tail and bat-like wings. It yelped menacingly at the ragged, dull-witted family, then flew up and out the chimney to spend eternity harassing anyone who encountered it along the lonely back roads of the Pine Barrens. Unfortunately, everything you think you know about the Jersey Devil is wrong. It is not a monster of the woods, but of politics. It is not a devilish horse haunting our present, but a scapegoat lost to our memory. The Leeds family does occupy the center of the story, but they were not stereotyped, superstitious rural people. They were politically active religious pioneers, authors and publishers. We have forgotten that the Jersey Devil legend - originally the Leeds Devil - began as a cruel taunt against them, not because of a monstrous birth, but because they had the cultural misfortune of joining the wrong side. Daniel Leeds came to America in 1677 and settled in Burlington. He published an almanac and was promptly attacked by his Quaker neighbors over his use of astrology in it. Undeterred, he continued and, despite himself being a Quaker, they called him "evil." | |
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Associated Press 2013-08-16 12:16:00
He's been deposed, reviled, buried and dug up, and now a new battle looms over England's King Richard III. A British High Court judge on Friday granted a group of Richard's relatives permission to challenge plans to rebury the 15th-century monarch in the central England city of Leicester, where his remains were found last year. Judge Charles Haddon-Cave said the Plantagenet Alliance could take action against the government and the University of Leicester, though he hoped the dispute could be settled out of court. "In my view, it would be unseemly, undignified and unedifying to have a legal tussle over these royal remains," the judge said, urging the opposing sides "to avoid embarking on the (legal) Wars of the Roses Part 2." | |
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| Science & Technology |
SpaceWeather A small comet is diving toward the sun today, and it is visible in SOHO coronagraphs. Click here to see the death plunge in action:2013-08-19 16:21:00
The tadpole-shaped comet vaporizing furiously as it approaches the sun. It is probably too small to survive closest approach, but we won't know for sure until the encounter actually happens later today or tomorrow. Join SOHO for a ringside seat. The comet appears to be a member of the Kreutz family. Kreutz sungrazers are fragments from the breakup of a single giant comet many centuries ago. They get their name from 19th century German astronomer Heinrich Kreutz, who studied them in detail. Several Kreutz fragments pass by the sun and disintegrate every day. Most, measuring less than a few meters across, are too small to see, but occasionally a bigger fragment like this one attracts attention. | |
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RIA Novosti 2013-08-18 11:04:00
A delegation of tech giant Google will arrive in Russia in mid-September to discuss the data protection of Gmail users in Russia, a Russian lawmaker said on Sunday. "In mid-September we expect the delegation representatives from the United States," Senator Ruslan Gattarov, who chairs the commission on the information society development in the Federation Council, the upper house of the Russian parliament, said. In his letter to the head of Google Russia, Gattarov said that Google's official position on the issue, according to media reports, is that it "reserves the right to get access to correspondence of Gmail users and to use these data," adding that this violates Russia's personal data protection legislation and the constitution. | |
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Seiichi Yoshida Discovery Date: August 9, 2013Aerith Net 2013-08-17 15:44:00 Magnitude: 18.9 mag Discoverer: Palomar Transient Factory
The orbital elements are published on M.P.E.C. 2013-Q02. | |
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Mary Bates What creates mysterious circles on the seafloor? No, it's not aliens of the deep - it's actually pufferfish hoping to snag a mate, a new study says.National Geographic 2013-08-15 12:34:00 Divers first noticed the 6.5-foot-wide (2-meter-wide) circular structures near Japan's Amami-Oshima Island about 20 years ago. But no one knew how these so-called mystery circles were constructed - or what was creating them - until now.
The circles, scientists say, are actually nests created by male pufferfish, which spend about ten days carefully constructing and decorating the structures to woo females. What's more, this industrious pufferfish is thought to be a new species in the Torquigener genus, according to the study, published July 1 in the journal Scientific Reports. Nesting Instinct The male fish, which measures less than 5 inches (13 centimeters) long, first uses his body to create peaks and valleys in the sandy bottom around a central circle of smooth sand. He accomplishes this feat by swimming in toward the center of the circle in a straight line and then back around the center in a circular motion. (Watch a pufferfish video.) Before the female fish arrive to inspect his handiwork, the male forms irregular patterns in the fine sand particles of the central circle. He also decorates the peaks of the outer portion with shell and coral fragments. | |
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Anna Mikulak You plan on shopping for groceries later and you tell yourself that you have to remember to take the grocery bags with you when you leave the house. Lo and behold, you reach the check-out counter and you realize you've forgotten the bags.Association for Psychological Science 2013-08-15 19:03:00 Remembering to remember - whether it's grocery bags, appointments, or taking medications - is essential to our everyday lives. New research sheds light on two distinct brain processes that underlie this type of memory, known as prospective memory. The research is published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. To investigate how prospective memory is processed in the brain, psychological scientist Mark McDaniel of Washington University in St. Louis and colleagues had participants lie in an fMRI scanner and asked them to press one of two buttons to indicate whether a word that popped up on a screen was a member of a designated category. In addition to this ongoing activity, participants were asked to try to remember to press a third button whenever a special target popped up. The task was designed to tap into participants' prospective memory, or their ability to remember to take certain actions in response to specific future events. When McDaniel and colleagues analyzed the fMRI data, they observed that two distinct brain activation patterns emerged when participants made the correct button press for a special target. |
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Kathryn Hansen NASA.gov 2013-08-14 17:37:00
Atmospheric physicist Nick Gorkavyi missed witnessing an event of the century last winter when a meteor exploded over his hometown of Chelyabinsk, Russia. From Greenbelt, Md., however, NASA's Gorkavyi and colleagues witnessed a never-before-seen view of the atmospheric aftermath of the explosion. Shortly after dawn on Feb. 15, 2013, the meteor, or bolide, measuring 59 feet (18 meters) across and weighing 11,000 metric tons, screamed into Earth's atmosphere at 41,600 mph (18.6 kilometers per second). Burning from the friction with Earth's thin air, the space rock exploded 14.5 miles (23.3 kilometers) above Chelyabinsk. The explosion released more than 30 times the energy from the atom bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. For comparison, the ground-impacting meteor that triggered mass extinctions, including the dinosaurs, measured about 6 miles (10 kilometers) across and released about 1 billion times the energy of the atom bomb. | |
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| Earth Changes |
Tony Thomas Leaked reports of the Fifth IPCC Report, due next month, say the IPCC experts are now 95% sure that human activities and emissions are the main cause of global warming since the 1950s.[1]tthomas061.wordpress.com 2013-08-19 16:59:00 The same IPCC experts remain 100% sure that the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas are homes to tropical forests, and that they have been since 1995. But given a doubling of global CO2, they expect the central US tropical forest belt to shift eastwards to Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa and Illinois, even stretching east to Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
Looking at my own part of the world, I see that the IPCC has Papua-New Guinea, Indonesia and the Philippines currently covered in savannas, dry forests and woodlands. But with global CO2 doubling, the prairies of south-east Asia will surge northwards to Malaysia, Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar, even southern China. India, as in the map below, acquires tropical forests through about 70% of its area. For some reason, the IPCC's tropical forest belt of northern Australia (most Aussies believe it is gum-tree land) advances south by about 1000km, such that tourists towns like Cairns and Townsville become surrounded by Congo-like vegetation, suitable for imported bonobos and, maybe, okapi. | |
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Lawrence LeBlond RedOrbit 2013-08-19 14:43:00
One of the world's most active volcanoes showed its ugly side this weekend, erupting and producing an ash cloud that spread out across one southern Japanese city. Sakurajima, a volcano that sits in the background of the southern Japanese city of Kagoshima and is known for producing hundreds of small explosions per year, erupted Sunday in one of the volcano's largest explosions in decades and perhaps the largest since an eruption in 1914, burying village homes in feet of ash. The plume from Sunday's eruption reached 16,500 feet (more than 3 miles) before settling down over homes and businesses in Kagoshima and surrounding areas. The ash caused poor visibility and train delays in the city that sits just 5 miles east of the summit of Sakurajima. Residents who ventured outside were forced to wear dust masks to keep from inhaling deadly volcanic glass shards produced from explosive expansion of bubbles in erupting magma. Some evidence from a YouTube video of the eruption shows what might be small pyroclastic flows generated from the explosion as well. | |
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Anthony Watts While many climate alarmists still try to tell us that global warming will increase tornadoes, we are in the middle of a tornado drought, and well below normal. Normally we'd see 1221 tornadoes in the USA, so far for 2013, only 716 have been reported.Wattsupwiththat.com 2013-08-19 13:05:00
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Peter Langen Polarportal.dk 2013-08-19 12:26:00
The surface mass balance was positive Wednesday last week for the first time since melting took off in early June. On Saturday, a big snowfall gave solid push in the positive direction. On August 14, the surface contribution to the mass balance on the Greenland Ice Sheet was +0.6 gigatons per day. One gigaton (Gt) corresponds to one cubic kilometer of water and the 0.6 Gt on Wednesday is a rather modest contribution in this context. But the surface mass contributions have remained positive since then and on Saturday, a big snowfall over West Greenland gave a positive contribution of 4 Gt. These days mark the beginning of the end of the melt season: The Sun is no longer as high in the sky and climatologically, it is typically in these weeks that the surface budget of the ice sheet changes sign. During the summer, more mass is lost to melting than is gained from snowfall. In winter, it is the other way around, and the transition typically occurs in August. | |
Comment: Though it sounds as business as usual, the end of the melting season is rather early this year compared to the last decade or two. Check out the sea ice page | |
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Jeremy Schulman Mother Jones 2013-08-15 11:34:00
Of all the business opportunities presented by global warming, Raytheon Company may have found one of the most alarming. The Massachusetts-based defense contractor - which makes everything from communications systems to Tomahawk missiles - thinks that future "security concerns" caused by climate change could mean expanded sales of its military products. Raytheon, it should be noted, isn't exactly gunning for catastrophic global warming. Quite the opposite, in fact: In February, the company received a "Climate Leadership Award" from the Environmental Protection Agency for publicly reporting and aggressively reducing its greenhouse gas emissions. It's working on renewable energy technologies. And it has publicly warned of significant climate-change-related risks to its business - from things like hurricanes, floods, droughts, and forest fires. Raytheon anticipates "demand for its military products and services as security concerns may arise...as a result of climate change." | |
Comment: It is actually global cooling, not warming that is an increasingly likely scenario. See: Global Cooling is Here! Evidence for Predicting Global Cooling for the Next Three Decades. But irrespective of the political agenda surronding the labelling of extreme weather, it is sadly predictable that military contractors are looking at ways they can profit from suffering. | |
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RIA Novosti A 5.1-magnitude quake was registered early on Sunday off Indonesia's North Maluku province, the US Geological Service reported.2013-08-18 10:55:00 According to the service, the quake's epicenter was located 130 kilometers (81 miles) to the northeast from the town of Tobelo in the North Maluku province at the depth of 225 kilometers (140 miles). There were no reports on casualties or any damages to the infrastructure. Meteorologists did not issue a tsunami warning to the world's sixth largest island. Indonesia is notorious for its high volcanic and seismic activity, as it sits on the so-called Pacific "Ring of Fire", where tectonic plates meet. |
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The Extinction Protocol Up to 100,000 people may be evacuated from flood-hit regions in Russia's Far East. Water levels at local reservoirs have already reached historic highs, and officials say the floods raging in the area are expected to continue rising even further. Floods are currently affecting over 32,500 locals living in over 5,000 homes. Over 17,000 residents have already left the area over the disaster. Viktor Ishayev, Russia's Minister for the Far East, said that "in the worst-case scenario up to 100,000 people could be evacuated" from the Amur, Khabarovsk and Jewish Autonomous Regions. The water level in the Amur River near Khabarovsk has risen 17 centimeters in one day and now stands at 657 centimeters, the regional office of the Emergency Ministry reported. Authorities fear that by August 25, the water level will reach the seven-meter mark. Dozens of bridges have been swamped by the waters, complicating the evacuation.2013-08-19 10:18:00
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The Siberian Times More than 20,000 residents were moved as rivers burst their banks with forecasts of worsening flooding later this week.2013-08-19 15:11:00
Two caged bears from the Zelyonaya tourist resort near Blagoveshchensk, in Amur Region, were airlifted to safety they were threatened with drowning. Two weeks after their cage was first flooded, they were moved to high ground 800 metres from the resort with a keeper to care for them, reported RIA Novosti. However, the main focus was on people's safety after dramatic floods caused by heavy rain which has devastated Amur, Khabarovsk and Jewish Autonomous regions. More than 6000 homes have been hit across these regions. More than 20,000 have been evacuated. Some 140 settlements have suffered from flooding. Other sources said that more than 33,000 live in homes touched by partial flooding. 60 bridges and 200 sections of road are underwater. 'Over the past 24 hours, water level in the Amur River in the area of Khabarovsk rose by 17 cm, reaching a historical maximum of 657 cm on Monday morning,' reported Itar-Tass. | |
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Agence France-Presse via Yahoo News At least three people have died in the Philippines after torrential rain engulfed parts of the main island of Luzon including Manila where neck-deep water swept through homes forcing thousands into emergency shelters. The National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council said mountainous areas to the north of the island were experiencing floods of 1.8 metres (six feet), following persistent rain that began at the weekend.2013-08-19 09:54:00 One person was killed in a storm-related car accident in the northern Apayao mountain region while a child was crushed by a collapsing wall and a man drowned in towns just outside the capital. Four other people are missing including three washed away by floods and overflowing rivers and a local female tourist who got lost while exploring a cave in the northern resort town of Sagada. In the capital Manila, a megacity of 12 million people, schools, government offices and the stock exchange were closed as a red alert was raised in the morning -- the highest level of a warning system in which widespread floods are predicted.
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Independent.ie People in Kagoshima wore raincoats and used umbrellas to shield themselves from the ash after the Sakurajima volcano erupted. Local media said drivers had to turn on their headlights and reported the ash resembled driving through snow at night. Kyodo News said the plume was 5,000 meters high and lava flowed about a kilometre from the fissure.2013-08-19 09:50:00 It also said that railway operators stopped service in the city while ash was removed from the tracks. It reported that no one has been hurt.
Japan has frequent seismic activity. Kyodo cited the Japan Meteorological Agency as saying there are no signs of a larger eruption at Sakurajima but similar activity may continue. | |
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The Extinction Protocol More than 10,000 homes are threatened by a furious Idaho wildfire, including getaways owned by Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tom Hanks and Bruce Willis, after an all-out "ground and air attack" failed to stop the blaze spreading to more than 126,000 acres, according to latest reports from the U.S. Forest Service. "Take your essentials, belongs and pets and GO NOW," a news release on inciweb warned those in the path of the lightning-sparked Beaver Creek fire. Despite an army of more than 1,200 firefighters, the blaze continues to spread across parched sagebrush, grasslands and pine forests in the Sun Valley area. "Every fire has a personality, and this fire has an angry personality," Beth Lund, and incident commander with the U.S. Forest Service team managing the blaze in central Idaho told Reuters.2013-08-19 09:47:00 More than 10,000 homes near the towns of Hailey and Ketchum remain threatened by the blaze, including luxury getaways owned by Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tom Hanks and Bruce Willis. The fire that has been burning for more than 12 days, scorching an area larger than the city of Denver, has already forced 2,250 homes into a mandatory evacuation order. Another 7,700 homes are under what is known as pre-evacuation, giving them time to pack up essential belongings and get ready to go at a moment's notice if the fire grows closer.
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RT 2013-08-16 10:18:00
The more than 100 nuclear reactors across the United States are inadequately prepared to repulse terrorist attacks, a new report warns. The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, or NRC, presently requires that energy plants are capable of preventing attacks carried out by five or six people, according to the report, entitled "Protecting US Nuclear Facilities from Terrorist Attack." The report, prepared by the Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Project at the University of Texas, focuses on the terrorist attacks of 2001, and warns the NRC to prepare for something much bigger down the road. The combined public and private security provided at the US's 104 commercial nuclear reactors and three research reactors "is inadequate to defend against a maximum, credible, non-state adversary," the researchers said, adding that private-sector nuclear facilities remain "less protected than government facilities that face similar risks of theft of fissile material or radiological sabotage, which makes no sense." | |
Comment: We wonder if the U.S. government has noticed, like us, that power plants and other large industrial facilities are showing major vulnerability to ongoing Earth Changes?... Blast at fertilizer plant kills nearly 70, injures 100s in Texas, authorities say 18 Apr 2013Power Plant Explosion 'Sounded Like a Sonic Boom, Earthquake', 2 injured May 03, 2013, Plant Bowen near Cartersville in Bartow County, GeorgiaExplosion at Louisiana chemical plant kills 1, injures 73 Jun 13, 2013, Williams Olefins chemical plant in Geismar, LouisianaAnother chemical plant explosion in Louisiana! 14 June 2013Three injured in Postville, Iowa plant explosion 17 Jun 2013Massive explosions rock a central Florida propane gas plant 29 Jul 2013Explosion hits chemical plant in East China 30 Jul 2013Major explosion ignites inferno at Taipei chemical factory Aug 08, 2013Chemical reaction may be cause of Valdosta plant explosion Aug 14, 2013, Valdosta, Georgia | |
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Japan Today Kagoshima - Mount Sakurajima in Kagoshima erupted in spectacular fashion on Sunday, spewing an ash plume up to 5,000 meters into the air, meteorological officials said.2013-08-19 02:40:00 The eruption of the 1,117-meter Sakurajima near Kagoshima city took place around 4:30 p.m., Jiji Press said. A large amount of volcanic ash fell in the northern and central parts of the city, causing a delay in train services and temporary poor visibility, forcing car drivers to use their headlights. The eruption also resulted in a small flow of volcanic material up to about one kilometer from the crater, Jiji said. It was the 500th eruption this year of Sakurajima. The eruption lasted for about 50 minutes. Source: Agence France-Presse |
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The Siberian Times Damage from wave of floods already labelled 'catastrophic' with worse to come as Russian president Vladimir Putin demands: 'Put people first'.2013-08-18 13:58:00
Tens of thousands of homes have been hit by rivers bursting their banks in stricken regions, villages are marooned, bridges washed away, farm land submerged, and a threat of disease, with more rain threatened in coming weeks. The vagaries of modern climate mean that as Eastern Russia faces biblical scenes from flooding, elsewhere in Siberia fierce wildfires are taking hold and covering causing irreparable damage to pristine forests. A state of emergency has been declared in many eastern regions, as the president called for a united effort to combat the worst flooding in more than a century. At least 17,000 have been evacuated so far. Putin urged regional chiefs to take personal command of combating the wave of flooding, demanding they report direct to him. 'There is no doubt that we will restore agricultural facilities, bridges, roads, and power and communications lines - the so-called metal,' he said. 'The issue is to prevent damage to people and, the main thing, to prevent irretrievable losses. 'Please concentrate on this. The situation is indeed difficult but manageable. It is under control. If we work concertedly - this is the main thing, to work concertedly, - then we will be able to minimize losses and prevent irretrievable losses. I am asking all heads of Russian regions which are facing the problem of floods to deal with these problems personally. Nobody should be forgotten. Nobody should be lost. I mean people living in your regions. Please report to me every day, or immediately if the situation changes quickly'. | |
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Robert Felix in mid August.....iceagenow.info 2013-08-17 14:19:00 Special Weather Statement SPECIAL WEATHER STATEMENT FAIRBANKS AK AUG 16 2013 NORTHEASTERN BROOKS RANGE- INCLUDING...ANAKTUVUK PASS...ATIGUN PASS...GALBRAITH LAKE... SAGWON...FRANKLIN BLUFFS AN EARLY FALL STORM IS FORECAST TO IMPACT THE NORTH SLOPE AND WEST COAST OF ALASKA SUNDAY AND IMPACT THE ALASKA INTERIOR MONDAY AND TUESDAY OF NEXT WEEK. A LOW DEVELOPING OVER NORTHEAST RUSSIA AND CHUKCHI SEA SATURDAY WILL BEGIN TO IMPACT THE WESTERN NORTH SLOPE SUNDAY WITH PERIODS OF RAIN...HEAVY AT TIMES. GALE FORCE NORTH WINDS WILL DEVELOP IN THE SOUTHERN CHUKCHI SEA AND THROUGH THE BERING STRAITS SUNDAY NIGHT AND MONDAY. RAIN...HEAVY AT TIMES WILL DEVELOP IN WESTERN ALASKA SUNDAY NIGHT. AN UNSEASONABLY COLD AIR MASS MOVING ON TO THE NORTH SLOPE BEHIND THIS SYSTEM WILL CHANGE RAIN TO SNOW IN AREAS FROM THE BROOKS RANGE NORTH SUNDAY NIGHT AND MONDAY WITH SOME WET SNOW ACCUMULATION POSSIBLE IN THE BROOKS RANGE ABOVE 3000 FEET SUNDAY NIGHT AND MONDAY. http://pafg.arh.noaa.gov/wmofcst.php?wmo=WWAK81PAFG&type=public Thanks to Kenneth Lund for this link |
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| Fire in the Sky |
Chris Carrington activistpost.com 2013-08-15 09:14:00
The 'space fence', which is officially known as the US Air Force Space Surveillance System, is going to be shut down on October 1st this year. The system, which is a multi-station radar, tracks satellites, meteoroids and space debris that is heading our way. The radar stations are scattered across the southern USA and can detect objects some 25,000 miles away from the Earth. The tracking devices form a crucial part of our defenses against all types of space matter likely to cause damage to the planet. The Congressional sequester imposed automatic budget cuts meaning there just isn't the cash to run the service past October 1st. It's worrying in the extreme that the government thinks it's reasonable to shut down such a critical part of our defense system. As more and more satellites are blasted into orbit from countries around the globe it's not difficult to work out that more and more of them will eventually crash back to Earth. | |
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| Health & Wellness |
Monica Helton Americans buy more soft drinks per capita than people in any other country. These drinks are consumed by individuals of all ages, including very young children. Although soft drink consumption is associated with aggression, depression, and suicidal thoughts in adolescents, the relationship had not been evaluated in younger children. A new study scheduled for publication in The Journal of Pediatrics finds that aggression, attention problems, and withdrawal behavior are all associated with soft drink consumption in young children.Elsevier Health Sciences 2013-08-17 15:34:00 Shakira Suglia, ScD, and colleagues from Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, University of Vermont, and Harvard School of Public Health assessed approximately 3,000 5-year-old children enrolled in the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a prospective birth cohort that follows mother-child pairs from 20 large U.S. cities. Mothers reported their child's soft drink consumption and completed the Child Behavior Checklist based on their child's behavior during the previous two months. The researchers found that 43% of the children consumed at least 1 serving of soft drinks per day, and 4% consumed 4 or more. |
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Tony Leys Des Moines Register 2013-08-15 15:15:00
File this under Advice That Should Be Obvious: Ingesting a live tapeworm is not the best way to lose weight. Somewhere in Iowa recently, a patient told her doctor that she had bought a tapeworm on the internet and ingested it. The physician called the Iowa Department of Public Health to ask what to do for her. The department's medical director, Dr. Patricia Quinlisk, advised to prescribe an anti-worm medication. Quinlisk recounted the incident Thursday in a weekly email to public-health workers around the state. She noted that websites have been selling tapeworms as a weight-loss tool, and she warned against the practice. "Ingesting tapeworms is extremely risky and can cause a wide range of undesirable side effects, including rare deaths," she wrote. "Those desiring to lose weight are advised to stick with proven weight loss methods; consuming fewer calories and increasing physical activity." Tapeworms are parasites that can live in the intestines of animals and humans. They can be accidentally ingested in undercooked meat. Quinlisk said that a century ago, hucksters often sold tapeworm eggs in pill form as a weight-loss aid. | |
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Mike Adams, the Health Ranger McDonald's Chicken McNuggets found to contain mysterious fibers, hair-like structures; Natural News Forensic Food Lab posts research photos, videoNaturalNews.com 2013-08-16 00:00:00
Today we announce the first investigation conducted at the Natural News Forensic Food Laboratory, the new science-based research branch of Natural News where we put foods under the microscope and find out what's really there. Earlier today I purchased a 10-piece Chicken McNuggets from a McDonald's restaurant in Austin, Texas. Under carefully controlled conditions, I then examined the Chicken McNuggets under a high-powered digital microscope, expecting to see only processed chicken bits and a fried outer coating. But what I found instead shocked even me. I've seen a lot of weird stuff in my decade of investigating foods and nutrition, but I never expected to find this.. . Strange fibers found embedded inside Chicken McNuggets
As the following photos show, the Chicken McNuggets were found to contain strange fibers that some people might say even resemble so-called "Morgellon's." We found dark black hair-like structures sticking out of the nugget mass, as well as light blue egg-shaped structures with attached tail-like hairs or fibers. These are shown in extreme detail in the photos below, taken on August 15, 2013 at the Natural News Forensic Food Lab. The actual Chicken McNugget samples used in these photos have been frozen for storage of forensic evidence. | ||
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| Science of the Spirit |
Tia Ghose LIveScience 2013-08-19 14:00:00
Willpower may be plentiful - as long as you believe it is. People who consider willpower a finite resource tend to need a sugar pick-me-up to continue working on a hard task, whereas those who believe willpower is abundant don't, new research suggests. Moreover, nudging people's beliefs about willpower in one direction or the other can influence how they behave. The findings, published today (Aug. 19) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, contradict earlier studies that suggested that willpower is quickly depleted. | |
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Anna Mikulak Getting kids to share their toys is a never-ending battle, and compelling them to do so never seems to help. New research suggests that allowing children to make a choice to sacrifice their own toys in order to share with someone else makes them share more in the future. The new findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.Association for Psychological Science 2013-08-19 12:06:00 These experiments, conducted by psychological scientists Nadia Chernyak and Tamar Kushnir of Cornell University, suggest that sharing when given a difficult choice leads children to see themselves in a new, more beneficent light. Perceiving themselves as people who like to share makes them more likely to act in a prosocial manner in the future. Previous research has shown that this idea - as described by the over-justification effect - explains why rewarding children for sharing can backfire. Children come to perceive themselves as people who don't like to share since they had to be rewarded for doing so. Because they don't view themselves as "sharers" they are less likely to share in the future. Chernyak and Kushnir were interested in finding out whether freely chosen sacrifice might have the opposite effect on kids' willingness to share. "Making difficult choices allows children to infer something important about themselves: In making choices that aren't necessarily easy, children might be able to infer their own prosociality." |
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| High Strangeness |
The Indian Express 2013-08-18 10:19:00
Indian Army troops have sighted mysterious unidentified flying objects (UFOs) in the Ladakh sector along the Line of Actual Control with China. On August 4, the UFO was sighted by Army troops in Lagan Khel area in Demchok in Ladakh area in the evening and a report has been sent to the Army headquarters by the local formation, sources said here. There have been over 100 sightings of UFOs along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in the last several months but this sighting has come after some time-gap, they said. Asked about the UFO sightings by the Army troops in Ladakh sector, Defence Minister A K Antony had told Parliament that there is no conclusive proof of sighting of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) over the Sino-Indian border. The UFO sighting on August 4 comes after reports suggested that a top-level science research institute had found that the UFOs were actually planets Jupiter and Venus, which are clearly visible from the high altitude and thin atmosphere terrain of Ladakh. | |
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Todmorden News, UK 2013-08-17 15:09:00
This eerie picture was taken earlier in the summer and the photographer, who has blown up the relevant section and placed it in the middle of the photograph, wonders if anyone can shed any light on it. Taken from near the Baltimore Marina, where photographer William Kay had moored his boat, it appears to show, in the bottom right of the image, the ghostly presence of a woman wearing an old-style dress. William explained that he was only taking some test shots with a new camera and only noticed the figure when checking the pictures on his personal computer later. | |
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Anthony Castellano Good Morning America 2013-08-16 08:18:00
Area 51 in Nevada has long been the subject of wild conspiracy theories about extraterrestrials, time travel and alien autopsies, but newly released declassified documents from the CIA finally acknowledge its existence. The report does not detail the sensational stories that have played out in pop culture for decades, but states that Area 51 was started as a testing site for the government's U-2 spy plane. The report, more than 400 pages, is titled "Central Intelligence Agency and Overhead Reconnaissance: The U-2 and Oxcart Programs, 1954-1974." The U-2 spy planes were commonly used by the United States during the Cold War in reconnaissance missions around the globe. Officials and former employees have previously acknowledged in passing the existence of the facility and how it was used for testing U-2 planes, but this is the first time the U.S. government has openly referred to Area 51 and given specifics on its operations. The report also features a map of the area. | |
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| Don't Panic! Lighten Up! |
KPIX Cops give away Doritos to Stoners, instead of misdemeanor tickets, for Marijuana use at the Hempfest in Washington State this year.2013-08-17 00:00:00
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