 | |||||
 |  |  |  | ||
|
| No new articles. |
Owen Jones UK Guardian 2014-07-09 08:47:00
"Israel under renewed Hamas attack": this was last night's BBC headline on the escalating bloodshed in Gaza. It is as perverse as Mike Tyson punching a toddler, followed by a headline claiming that the child spat at him. As Elizabeth Tsurkov, a Tel Aviv-based Israeli human rights activist, tweeted: "We are targeted by mostly shitty rockets. Gazans are being shelled with heavy bombs. We have shelters, sirens, Iron Dome. They have 0." There is no defence for Hamas firing rockets into civilian areas, and as sirens wail in Israel, the fear among ordinary Israelis should not be ignored or belittled. But the media coverage hardly reflects the reality: a military superpower armed with F-15 fighter jets, AH-64 Apache helicopters, Delilah missiles, IAI Heron-1 drones and Jericho II missiles (and nuclear bombs, for that matter), versus what David Cameron describes as a "prison camp" firing almost entirely ineffective missiles. Twenty-seven Palestinians are reported to have died in Gaza - and, mercifully, no Israelis have been killed by Hamas rockets - and yet the BBC opts for the Orwellian "Israel under renewed Hamas attack". | |
 |
| Puppet Masters |
RT 2014-07-09 17:17:00
The FBI is investigating several vials of smallpox that were found in an unused laboratory storage room on the National Institutes of Health campus in Bethesda, Maryland. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has taken the vials for testing. Only July 1, employees found the box of vials when they were cleaning out the storage room in preparation to move the lab, which has been operated by the Food and Drug Administration since 1972, over to the FDA's main campus in nearby Silver Spring. The six freeze-dried vials were labeled as containing variola, which the CDC says is "the severe and most common form of smallpox." Another 10 vials were also found, but the labels on them were unclear as to what they contained, Dr. Steven Monroe, who directs the CDC's division of high consequence pathogens and pathology, told ABC News. No one knows how long the smallpox has been in the storage area, which is kept at 5 degrees Celsius. But the boxes they were stored in may date back to the 1950s, CDC spokesman Tom Skinner said. On Monday, the CDC arrived at the NIH campus to remove the specimens to their high-containment facility in Atlanta, where overnight testing in the Biosafety Level-4 (BSL-4) Lab confirmed the presence of smallpox. The Georgia-based agency is currently performing additional testing to discover whether the materials inside the vials are viable. This testing could take up to two weeks, the CDC said in a statement. | |
Comment: Mysterious smallpox vials, missing chemical weapons in Iraq... Is something in the works? Remember this: | |
|
Elhanan Miller Times of Israel 2014-07-03 17:06:00
A new Palestinian jihadist group pledging allegiance to the Islamic State (formerly known as ISIL) has claimed responsibility for the killing of three Israeli teenagers last month in the West Bank, as well as other recent deadly attacks against Israeli soldiers and civilians. In a statement posted on jihadi websites Tuesday, the Supporters of the Islamic State in Bayt al-Maqdis said it was behind the capture and killing of "the three soldiers" in Hebron (actually, it was in the nearby Etzion bloc), sniper attacks in Hebron and Tarqumia, and missile launches from Gaza into Israel a month and a half ago. The actions were carried out in honor of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed "caliph" of the Islamic State, the reincarnation of the Islamic State in Syria and the Levant (ISIL) declared last month, the statement said. | |
Comment: This is beyond ridiculous propaganda, and is good for nothing except to encourage the paranoia and confusion of the population. First, let's put things in perspective and consider that in the age of the Internet anyone can claim any crime after the fact, create an imaginary army of jihadists and give it any name they want. Indeed, ever since the attacks of 9-11, 'previously unknown' terrorist groups are a dime a dozen, popping up across the world and usually claiming some sort of obscure affiliation to 'al Qaeda'. The only difference with this one is that 'al Qaeda' is sooo last year, so the affiliation is with the brand new bad kid on the neighbourhood: ISIS. Second, if Hamas has denied they were behind the murder of the three Israeli teenagers, and even the Israeli media give more credit to the supposed ISIS franchise in Palestine, then why is the Israeli government insisting on blaming Hamas without any evidence whatsoever? Well, the answer to that question is pretty obvious. Just read the latest news. | |
|
RT 2014-07-09 16:53:00
The Iraqi government has informed the United Nations that it has lost control of a former chemical weapons depot to Islamist insurgents affiliated with ISIS, or IS, and cannot carry out its obligations to destroy what's stored in the compound. In a letter penned by Iraq's UN Ambassador Mohamed Ali Alhakim, it was revealed that "armed terrorist groups" took over the Muthanna complex on June 11. Located north of Baghdad, the facility was the main center for chemical weapons production prior to the 1991 Gulf War, and is still home to 2,500 rockets containing the lethal nerve agent sarin. According to the Associated Press, the compound is now in the hands of the Islamic State extremist group, also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). In the letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Alhakim said that Iraqi officials witnessed the intruders looting some of the equipment before the surveillance system was taken offline. As RT reported previously, ISIS' rapid gains through northern and western Iraq - the militants also control portions of Syria - have led it to shed part of its name and declare the territory under its control to be a new Islamic state, or caliphate. The group is primarily composed of radical Sunni Muslims, and has won support among those in Iraq disgruntled with the exclusive nature of Iraq's Shia-dominated central government. | |
Comment: 'Missing' or 'stolen' chemical weapons? Sounds like a false flag in the making, perhaps a pandemic to be blamed on evil terrorists? | |
|
Ben Quinn and James Ball The Guardian 2014-07-08 16:49:00
The activities of users of Twitter and other social media services were recorded and analysed as part of a major project funded by the US military, in a program that covers ground similar to Facebook's controversial experiment into how to control emotions bymanipulating news feeds. Research funded directly or indirectly by the US Department of Defense's military research department, known as Darpa, has involved users of some of the internet's largest destinations, including Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Kickstarter, for studies of social connections and how messages spread. While some elements of the multi-million dollar project might raise a wry smile - research has included analysis of the tweets of celebrities such as Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber, in an attempt to understand influence on Twitter - others have resulted in the buildup of massive datasets of tweets and additional types social media posts. Several of the DoD-funded studies went further than merely monitoring what users were communicating on their own, instead messaging unwitting participants in order to track and study how they responded. | |
Comment: | |
|
Oren Yaniv New York Daily News 2014-07-08 16:45:00
District Attorney Kenneth Thompson released a statement Tuesday saying that those busted in Brooklyn with little or no criminal record for small amounts of marijuana will have their arrests dismissed before even seeing a judge The order came from on high. Brooklyn District Attorney Kenneth Thompson on Tuesday said he won't prosecute people with little or no criminal record who get caught with small amounts of weed. While the majority of such cases already are eventually dismissed, those arrested from now on - with some exceptions - will be released before seeing a judge, according to a DA memo. The revised approach is not shared by cops and could even cause tension between the DA and the NYPD. "This new policy is a reasonable response to the thousands of low-level marijuana arrests that weigh down the criminal justice system, require significant resources that could be redirected to more serious crimes and take an unnecessary toll on offenders," Thompson said in a statement. | |
|
Defense One 2014-07-09 16:36:00
Russia on Friday said it plans to finish modernizing its nuclear-capable missile forces within several years, ITAR-Tass reports. "By 2016, the share of new missile systems will reach nearly 60 percent, and by 2021 their share will increase to 98 percent," said Col. Igor Yegorov, a defense ministry spokesman forRussia's Strategic Missile Forces. The project would replace Russia's active-duty, nuclear-ready missiles left over from the Cold War. Yegorov said the upgrades would include systems designed to circumvent missile-defense technology employed by other countries, as well as improvements to their "troop- and weapon-command systems [and] combat equipment." The spokesman added that Russia is moving this year to deliver RS-24 Yars strategic missiles to the country's Novosibirsk, Tagil and Kozelsk missile units. "At this stage, operations for their acceptance and commissioning are underway," Yegorov told ITAR-Tass in an interview. "The work for the creation of new infrastructure of positioning areas of missile regiments continues, it will ensure better conditions for the use of armaments and training of the alert forces," he added. | |
Comment: In other words, they probably already have such capabilities. Russia's subtle way of saying, "Don't even try it." | |
|
RIA Novosti 2014-07-07 16:31:00
Moscow has reiterated its proposal to engage Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia and other states in the Syrian reconciliation effort, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov said in an interview with RIA Novosti Monday. Bogdanov said "an idea to create a parallel track" to the Geneva talks has been voiced in order to boost the negotiations between the Syrian government and opposition groups. "It is an auxiliary course [of negotiations], not an alternative [to the Geneva reconciliation process]. In the past, we discussed engaging countries that might have a positive influence on Syrians: [take] Russia and the United States, as the co-initiators of the Geneva-2 talks, add Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey, Egypt, maybe Qatar, and bring in the United Nations. We still suggest discussing this idea," the Russian diplomat said. Bogdanov said Russia is ready to discuss other similar proposals. | |
|
Huffington Post 2013-07-29 15:53:00
As Middle East peace talks are set to resume after a five-year freeze, 972 Magazine reports a member of Israel's cabinet has declared his backing for simply killing Palestinian prisoners, rather than bringing them to trial. On Sunday, Israel announced it would release 104 Palestinian prisoners, a key caveat in the John Kerry-brokered plan to renew peace talks. But according to the 972 report, Israel's minister of Industry, Trade and Labor and Jewish Home Party leader Naftali Bennett could not have disagreed more, proposing during Sunday's cabinet meeting a swifter, but illegal way to deal with prisoners. "If you catch terrorists, you have to simply kill them," Bennett allegedly said, according to a report in the Hebrew-language print edition of Yedioth Ahronoth. Israeli National Security Adviser Ya'akov Amidror allegedly responded by saying that such a practice was illegal. Bennett then reportedly declared, "I've killed lots of Arabs in my life - and there's no problem with that." A former IDF officer, the right-wing Bennett briefly joined protesters against the decision to release prisoners before attending Sunday's cabinet meeting. According to The Jewish Press, prior to Sunday's vote, Bennett said, "Terrorists should be killed, not released." Peace talks are slated to begin in Washington on Monday, though both sides remain skeptical about the commitment to resolving the decades-long stalemate. | |
Comment: Here Bennett is simply revealing the prevailing mindset that all Israeli politicians hold - that Palestinian lives are less important than theirs. | |
|
RT 2014-07-09 14:38:00
German authorities have carried out a raid on the residence of a defense ministry officialsuspected of passing secrets to the US, just one week after the arrest of a German intelligence officer who worked as a double agent. Officials from the Federal Prosecutor's Office said Wednesday that residential and office premises of the staff of the Federal Ministry of Defense in Berlin were searched on "initial suspicion of activity for an intelligence agency." According to the German newspaper Die Welt, a soldier of the Bundeswehr is suspected of committing espionage. The individual was said to have made "intensive contacts" with alleged US intelligence officials and was under the surveillance of the Military Intelligence (MAD) some time ago. "When sufficient evidence existed, the case was handed over to the federal prosecutor,"security sources told the paper. The news comes just one week after a 31-year-old German intelligence official was arrested on suspicion of spying for a "foreign power" since 2012. German media reported the double agent, who has not been identified, worked on behalf of the CIA.. | |
|
SCG News 2014-07-08 13:53:00
Numerous high ranking British politicians are being investigated for their involvement in an extensive pedophile ring, however the full scope of this scandal can't be fully appreciated without looking at the other side of the Atlantic It wasn't that long ago that those who claimed that there was a massive pedophile ring involving officials in the highest levels of government were written off as conspiracy theorists and kooks. That is no longer the case, at least in the U.K. It turns out that this so called conspiracy theory was true, and is finally being officially investigated. The coverup isn't going well at this point. The British government is even coming under heat for the convenient disappearance of key files regarding the allegations. At least forty British MPs are implicated, but this is really just the tip of the iceberg. The scandal, which initially centered around rape and child abuse accusations against the well connected BBC presenter (and knight) Jimmy Savile (who died in 2011) expanded in scope after victims testified that the abuse involved an organized pedophile ring which was operated out of the BBC. This organized pedophile ring apparently involved at least 40 British MPs. Another aspect of this scandal involves a close friend of Savile, former British MP Cyril Smith (also a knight). Police claim to have "overwhelming" evidence that Cyril physically abused young boys in the 1960s. It's worth noting that Savile wasn't just well connected, he was known to rub shoulders with the royal family itself. Whether those involved actually get brought to justice or not is another story altogether. It's too late to bring down Jimmy Savile and Cyril Smith. They're both dead already. The question now, is whether the rest of the ring will be prosecuted. This is a scandal that has been successfully suppressed for decades in spite of testimony from numerous victims. Indeed the BBC fired the reporter who first attempted to expose the abuse in 2012. Once you look at the profile of those involved it's easy to see why. This time however, the internet seems to be making it a bit harder to sweep under the rug. | |
|
RT.com 2014-07-09 02:25:00
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said he will reduce the country's "useless" science programs to finance the production of drones and precision weapons. "There will be no more spending of billions of people's money, taxpayers' money onuseless research programs, which were used as a tool for theft," said a statement published on the president's website early on Wednesday. "Today, Ukrainian production will be busy making precision weapons systems, Ukrainian drones, everything Ukrainian army needs, starting with bullet proof vests and ending with thermographic cameras," he said. The president added that the army's experience in fighting against self-defense forces in the east of the country will be used when making production decisions. | |
Comment: So instead of using science funding for research that could actually assist humanity, this psychopath wants to use those funds to eradicate humanity. This is actually not surprising since he is a puppet of the US which has been using corrupted science for just that purpose for decades. Any scientist of conscience should boycott the Ukraine! The Corruption of Science in America | |
|
Robert Scheer Truthdig.com 2014-07-07 00:00:00
Who is the true patriot, Hillary Clinton or Edward Snowden? The question comes up because Clinton has gone all out in attacking Snowden as a means of burnishing her hawkish credentials, eliciting Glenn Greenwald's comment that she is "like a neocon, practically." On Friday in England, Clinton boasted that two years ago she had favored a proposal by a top British general to train 100,000 "moderate" rebels to overthrow the Assad regime in Syria, but President Obama had turned her down. The American Thatcher? In that same interview with The Guardian she also managed to get in yet another shot against Snowden for taking refuge in Russia "apparently under Putin's protection," unless, she taunted, "he wishes to return knowing he would be held accountable." Accountable for telling the truth that Clinton concealed during her tenure as secretary of state in the Obama administration? Did she approve of the systematic spying on the American people as well as on others around the world, including the leaders of Germany and Brazil, or did she first learn of all this from the Snowden revelations? | |
Comment: Hillary is campaigning and desperately trying to shore up the lie that the pathocracy needs the NSA to protect us from those US-CIA created 'terrorists'. Psychopath Hillary Clinton: Hero Edward Snowden's leaks 'helped terrorists' Edward Snowden: NSA spies more on Americans than Russians | |
|
Voice of Russia 2014-07-09 08:17:00
Ukraine will retrench financing of research programs "no one needs" in favor of expanding weapons production, Ukraine's President Petr Poroshenko said after a meeting with the military in the city of Slavyansk. "Billions of budgetary funds, taxpayer money will not any longer be spent on research program no one really needs, which were only used as a tool of embezzlement," the press service of the Ukrainian head of state quoted him as saying on Tuesday. According to the Ukrainian president, the country's defense sector will focus on manufacturing "systems of high precision weapons, drones, everything the Ukrainian army needs - from bullet-proof vests to thermal cameras.""Today, my first deputy, along with the newly appointed CEO of Ukroboronprom, officers of the General Staff, defense minister deputies and representatives from the interior ministry held a conference. They will draft amendments to the state defense order," Poroshenko said, adding that the state defense order "will take into account the experience the Ukrainian army and National Guard acquired during combat operations in eastern regions Itar-Tass reports. | |
Comment: All the energy in Ukraine is directed at destruction at the moment. This is not viable long term. | |
|
Dmitry Orlov [An excellent submission from a reader. The topic is Ukraine, but the principle applies wherever emperors parade about in naked shorts.]Club Orlov 2014-07-09 06:27:00
What if Putin, being a strategic thinker that he is in addition to being a master in judo, has an intention to make not just eastern Ukraine but the whole Ukraine a failed-state-showcase of what happens when the US, Nato, EU, and the IMF causes havoc in eastern Europe. Maybe he is giving a lesson to Germany, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, etc. and especially his fellow Russians what happens when the US supports the rabid fascists in their region. He realizes that the neo-cons and the Atlanticists, being the mindless psychopathic and sociopathic killers that they are, are incapable of grasping the lessons and consequences of their actions and will press ahead uninterruptedly and fail to see the trap that is being laid in front of them. Remember that psychopaths always think that they'll never get caught, that they're invincible and they, until the very last moment, will always deny their doom (just ask Napoleon and Hitler). So what if Putin's strategic advisors egged on the Kiev regime to bomb unimportant civilian locations making them think that there was concentrated partisan militia and now scattering the militia in various areas where they can take down invididual KJ troops. Could it be Putin's motive to get the KJ bogged down in eastern Ukraine and at the same time causing increasing revulsion of the people in Russia proper. | |
|
RT 2014-07-07 04:34:00
The leader of ISIS, who appeared in a Ramadan prayer video calling on Muslims to obey him, has prompted confusion and become the subject of mockery as he showed off a $6,500 'James Bond' watch. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi made a public appearance following rumors of his death. | |
|
| Society's Child |
Lucy Watson The Independent, UK 2014-07-09 16:34:00
Danet* is fourteen, and lives in a house built on wooden stilts, with no walls, and only tarpaulin for shelter. There are eleven of them who live in the family home, next to a mosquito-infested pond in a poor, rural community in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. She loves to read fairy tales but she frowns a lot and her eyes have a haunted gaze. At the age of ten, she was locked in a guesthouse bedroom for days, at the mercy of a British paedophile. Her mother sold her for a week for $750. Her virginity was part of the allure, but surely that is irrelevant. This was a child sold by her parents to be raped by a sex offender. Unfathomable. Danet describes Michael Leach - her convicted abuser, a former government advisor - as "big and cruel looking". She says: "He didn't look nice, he looked strange." The 54 year old is now serving a twelve year jail sentence, so she is less afraid to talk about him. "I hope he stays put away forever," she says. Selling her virginity - her innocence - was a way to feed nine children and pay their debts. Danet's father earns $5 a day as a motorbike taxi driver and fruit seller. Her mother was approached and coaxed into the deal by a "broker", a local driver, who worked for Leach to appease his urge to abuse minors. "My mother took me there on the first day. The next, my father drove me there. I didn't want to go but I had to, for my family." A mother and a father escorted their child to be raped. | |
|
Danny Biederman, Noel Brinkerhoff All Gov 2014-07-09 14:03:00
Donating blood is anything but a charitable act in the United States. Oftentimes, blood given for free by Americans gets turned into profitable deals by companies specializing in blood sales to hospitals. These days, a pint of blood can go for $180 to $300, depending on demand. One business, General Blood based in Minnesota, serves as a middleman between blood donation centers and medical centers and research laboratories. Given that blood is such big business, it's not unusual for some of it to be spilled in the midst of legal battles. Indeed, General Blood is currently caught up in a lawsuit with the nonprofit Oklahoma Blood Institute (OBI), which sells donated blood. OBI sued General Blood, claiming it is owed money, and General Blood counter-sued OBI for $14 million over alleged confidentiality issues. The sale of people's donated blood for hundreds of dollars per pint explains how a nonprofit like OBI can make $86 million a year, according to The Oklahoman. These earnings get passed down to the institute's top executives, who make six-figure salaries. Leading the team is OBI's CEO, John Armitage, whose annual salary is $421,561. General Blood founder Ben Bowman claims that non-profits like OBI are profiting on blood. But Armitage denies that OBI is doing so. "We are providing a drug," Armitage explained to the newspaper. "On the business side of what we do, the comparison is to a pharmaceutical company. Technically, we like to say the blood is free, but they [hospitals] pay a service charge. It's arranged, so it's a service fee." "We have a charitable side," he added, "which is trying to motivate people to do an amazing thing [donate blood] to help their fellow man or woman." | |
|
Travis Gettys The Raw Story 2014-07-09 09:15:00
A Utah police officer who killed his family before taking his own life had drugged and raped his wife on videotape repeatedly, according to an investigation into the January murder-suicide. Spanish Fork police completed its 145-page investigation Monday into the deaths of 32-year-old Kelly Boren, 7-year-old Joshua "Jaden" Boren, 5-year-old Haley Boren, 55-year-old Marie King, and 34-year-old Joshua Boren, reported the Deseret News. Police believe Joshua Boren, a Linden police officer who previously worked as a Utah County sheriff's deputy, used his department-issued handgun to kill his wife, children, and mother-in-law Jan. 16 in their home and then turned the gun on himself. Investigators said Boren was a well-respected law enforcement officer considered a "teddy bear" by those who knew him, but they said the officer had a dark side he had apparently battled since childhood. | |
|
David Edwards The Raw Story 2014-07-08 15:25:00
A California pastor and two members of his congregation admitted in court that they physically abused a 13-year-old boy and made him dig his own grave. According to affidavits published by The Los Angeles Times, 56-year-old Heart of Worship Community Church Pastor Lonny Lee Remmers, 24-year-old Nicholas James Craig and 30-year-old Darryll Duane Jeter Jr. said that they were following instructions to "scare" the victim. All three of the men had worked at a group home where the boy lived. In March of 2012, the men reportedly took the victim to the desert where he was forced to dig a grave. After he got in the grave, the men threw dirt on him. The men also rubbed salt into his wounds while he was showering, tied him to a chair with zip ties, and sprayed mace on his face until he bled. At one point, the boy was made to sit in the middle of a Bible study group and pinch his own nipples with pliers, investigators said. | |
|
Reuters 2014-07-08 20:23:00
Sixteen Palestinians have been killed and 106 injured in a massive Israeli air and naval assault against the besieged Gaza Strip Tuesday, bombing dozens of targets, including homes. "The casualty toll from the [Israeli] aggression has reached 16 dead and 106 injured," health ministry spokesperson Ashraf al-Qudra wrote on Twitter.The casualties are "mostly children, women and the elderly," he added.In the deadliest of the attacks, eight people were killed when Israel bombed the Kaware family home in the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis, Qudra announced, writing on Twitter that three children aged eight, 13 and 14 were among the dead. Another 25 people were injured in that bombing. Witnesses told AFP a drone launched a warning flare, prompting relatives and neighbors to gather at the house as a human shield, but shortly afterwards an F-16 fired a missile which leveled the building.That attack came after four bodies had arrived to Shifa Hospital after Israel bombed a car transporting them in Gaza City, Qudra said. Israel claims its offensive is meant to end Palestinian rocket fire into Israeli occupied territories, urging Israelis within a 40 kilometer radius of the southern coastal territory to stay within reach of protected areas. The military said it targeted about 50 sites in aerial and naval assaults by morning. Palestinian officials said more than 30 of them were bombed in little more than an hour before dawn, including two homes in southern Gaza, one of which was identified by a neighbor as belonging to a Hamas member. | |
Comment: Seems like everything is going according to plan. Interesting how this all began with three boys being abducted and killed by parties unknown. | |
|
RiaNovosti 2014-07-07 00:00:00
Almost 24,000 refugees from Ukraine are staying in Russia's Rostov Region, the regional emergency department reported Monday. "In total, 23,845 people, including 8,857 children, have been accommodated" in the region, according to the authorities. Almost 20,000 people are staying with relatives and local residents, while others have been housed in temporary accommodation centers. The influx of refugees from the southeastern Ukraine increased dramatically in June amid continuing clashes between independence supporters and Kiev-led security forces. | |
Comment: This is the result of the Obama Administration's sponsored ethnic cleansing to reduce the population in the areas of Ukraine that had voted overwhelmingly "the wrong way" in Ukraine's final nationwide election. Despite what Western media tells you, Americans are engaged in ethnic cleansing in Ukraine | |
|
Ellen Brown Nation of Change 2014-07-08 00:00:00
Mortgage debt overhang from the housing bust has meant lack of middle-class spending power and consumer demand, preventing the economy from growing. The problem might be fixed by a new approach from the Fed. But if the Fed won't act, counties will, as seen in the latest developments on eminent domain and litigation over MERS. Former Assistant Treasury Secretary Paul Craig Roberts wrote on June 25th that real US GDP growth for the first quarter of 2014 was a negative 2.9%, off by 5.5% from the positive 2.6% predicted by economists. If the second quarter also shows a decline, the US will officially be in recession. That means not only fiscal policy (government deficit spending) but monetary policy (unprecedented quantitative easing) will have failed. The Federal Reserve is out of bullets. Or is it? Perhaps it is just aiming at the wrong target. The Fed's massive quantitative easing program was ostensibly designed to lower mortgage interest rates, stimulating the economy. And rates have indeed been lowered - for banks. But the form of QE the Fed has engaged in - creating money on a computer screen and trading it for assets on bank balance sheets - has not delivered money where it needs to go: into the pockets of consumers, who create the demand that drives productivity. Some ways the Fed could get money into consumer pockets with QE, discussed in earlier articles, include very-low-interest loans for students and very-low-interest loans to state and local governments. Both options would stimulate demand. But the biggest brake on the economy remains the languishing housing market. The Fed has been buying up new issues of mortgage-backed securities so fast that it now owns 12% of the mortgage market; yet housing continues to sputter, largely because of the huge inventory of underwater mortgages. | |
|
RT 2014-07-07 15:09:00
The Memphis, Tennessee Police Department is hemorrhaging officers as hundreds of cops continue to call in sick as part of a growing act of protest. On Monday this week, MPD spokesperson Sgt. Karen Rudolph confirmed to the Knoxville News Sentinel that 472 officers were off of work that afternoon after claiming to be sick. One day earlier, Mayor A C Wharton said at a news conference that 308 officer had called out of work since the previous Monday, causing a noticeable strain on the department's ability to patrol the streets. Now if the trend continues in this manner, the number of active cops on the MPD may be obliterated even further. Over the weekend, Police Director Toney Armstrong acknowledged that the growing number of officers calling out of work was the result of an effort waged after the City Council voted recently to reduce health care subsidies for city employees. According to the Memphis Flyer, city officials approved those changes when they agreed to pass a new budget last month. Now ahead of a July 15 vote where changes to the city employee pension plan are expected to be approved, officers are striking en masse by using up their sick days to express their outrage. Officer Mike Williams, the president of the local police union, told a Memphis CBS Newsaffiliate recently that a potential strike seemed to be among the only options the cops had left to speak up. | |
|
| Secret History |
Re-examination of birdlike fossil challenges common belief that birds evolved from ground-dwelling dinosaurs. The re-examination of a sparrow-sized fossil from China challenges the commonly held belief that birds evolved from ground-dwelling theropod dinosaurs that gained the ability to fly. The birdlike fossil is actually not a dinosaur, as previously thought, but much rather the remains of a tiny tree-climbing animal that could glide, say American researchers Stephen Czerkas of the Dinosaur Museum in Blanding, Utah, and Alan Feduccia of the University of North Carolina. The study appears in Springer's Journal of Ornithology. The fossil of the Scansoriopteryx (which means "climbing wing") was found in Inner Mongolia, and is part of an ongoing cooperative study with the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences. It was previously classified as a coelurosaurian theropod dinosaur, from which many experts believe flying dinosaurs and later birds evolved. The research duo used advanced 3D microscopy, high resolution photography and low angle lighting to reveal structures not clearly visible before. These techniques made it possible to interpret the natural contours of the bones. Many ambiguous aspects of the fossil's pelvis, forelimbs, hind limbs, and tail were confirmed, while it was discovered that it had elongated tendons along its tail vertebrae similar to Velociraptor. | |
Comment: Journal Reference: Stephen A. Czerkas, Alan Feduccia. Jurassic archosaur is a non-dinosaurian bird. Journal of Ornithology, 2014; DOI: 10.1007/s10336-014-1098-9 | |
|
Tia Ghose Live Science 2014-07-09 11:00:00
Children's skulls found at the edges of Bronze Age settlements may have been a gruesome gift for the local lake gods. The children's skulls were discovered encircling the perimeter of ancient villages around lakes in Switzerland and Germany. Some had suffered ax blows and other head traumas. Though the children probably weren't human sacrifices killed to appease the gods, they may have been offered after death as gifts to ward off flooding, said study co-author Benjamin Jennings, an archaeologist at Basel University in Switzerland. | |
|
| Science & Technology |
Planetary Science Institute 2014-07-09 15:18:00
Scientists using data from NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft have discovered part of the outer layer of the Sun that is sending out modestly energetic subatomic particles called fast neutrons. MESSENGER's close proximity to the Sun - the spacecraft orbits Mercury at a distance as close as 28 million miles from the Sun, compared to Earth's 93 million miles - allowed instruments to detect solar neutrons as they flowed past Mercury into space, according to a paper in Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics. "To understand all the processes on the Sun we look at as many different particles coming from the Sun as we can - photons, electrons, protons, neutrons, gamma rays - to gather different kinds of information," said David Lawrence of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab, the first author on the paper. "Closer to Earth we can observe charged particles from the Sun, but analyzing them can be a challenge as their journey is affected by magnetic fields." | |
Comment: Reference: Lawrence, D. J., W. C. Feldman, J. O. Goldsten, P. N. Peplowski, D. J. Rodgers, and S. C. Solomon (2014), Detection and characterization of 0.5 - 8 MeV neutrons near Mercury: Evidence for a solar origin, J. Geophys. Res. Space Physics, 119 Accessible here. | |
|
Heather Dewar Phys Org 2014-07-09 15:05:00
Working with a gene that plays a critical role in HIV infection, University of Maryland researchers have discovered that some human genes have an alternate set of operating instructions written into their protein-making machinery. The alternate instructions can quickly alter the proteins' contents, functions and ability to survive. This phenomenon, known as programmed ribosomal frameshifting, was discovered in viruses in 1985. But the UMD study, published online July 9, 2014 in the journal Nature, is the first to show that a human gene uses programmed ribosomal frameshifting to change how it assembles proteins, said senior author Jonathan Dinman, UMD professor of cell biology and molecular genetics. In the immune system-related gene that Dinman and his colleagues studied, programmed ribosomal frameshifting triggers a process the body can use to eliminate some immune system molecules, thereby reining in potentially harmful side effects such as fever, inflammation and organ failure. The discovery could lead to better treatments for AIDS, allergies and rejection of transplanted organs, Dinman said. "This has useful implications in situations where you want to shut down the immune response in one part of the body but not in another, or shut down one facet of the immune response," Dinman said. "It could lead to very specific therapies without side effects." The ribosome, the protein factory in every living cell, gathers amino acids and assembles them into protein chains to make almost anything the cell needs. A strand of ribonucleic acid, or messenger RNA, is the template. Each amino acid is represented by a group of three molecules called nucleotides; each triad is called a codon. Specialized molecules called transfer RNAs "read" each codon and deliver the matching amino acids to the ribosome for assembly. Some codons act as stop signs, instructing the ribosome to release the finished protein chain. | |
|
RT 2014-07-09 14:45:00
Russia has launched the ecologically clean Angara rocket from the Plesetsk military сosmodrome in Russia's north on the second try. It is the first space booster designed in Russia from a scratch since the collapse of the Soviet Union. A Ministry of Defense statement says that the launch of Angara 1.2PP conducted by Russia's Airspace Defense troops has been a success. "After the 21st minute from launch the second stage of the rocket with a full-scale mock-up payload has arrived to Kura range in the Kamchatka Peninsula, some 5,700km from the point of launch," Colonel Aleksey Zolotukhin, an official representative of Aerospace Defense command, told ITAR-TASS.
| ||
|
Ernesto Guido, Nick Howes & Martino Nicolini The asteroid 2014 MF6 was discovered (at magnitude ~17.0) on 2014, June 23.3 byCatalina Sky Survey (MPC code 703) with a 0.68-m Schmidt + CCD.Remanzacco Observatory 2014-07-09 14:17:00 According to the preliminay orbit, 2014 MF6 is an Apollo type asteroid. This class of asteroids are defined by having semi-major axes greater than that of the Earth (> 1 AU) but perihelion distances less than the Earth's aphelion distance (q < 1.017 AU). It is also flagged as a "Potentially Hazardous Asteroid". PHA are asteroids larger than approximately 100m that might have threatening close approaches to the Earth (they can come closer to Earth than 0.05 AU). 2014 MF6 has an estimated size of 190 m - 420 m (based on the object's absolute magnitude H=20.7) and it will have a close approach with Earth at about 9.1 LD (Lunar Distances = ~384,000 kilometers) or 0.0233 AU (1 AU = ~150 million kilometers) at 1939 UT on 2014, July 09. This asteroid will reach the peak magnitude ~15.3 on the period from 06 to 09 July 2014. We performed some follow-up measurements of this object on 2014, July 09.4, remotely from the Q62 iTelescope network (Siding Spring, AU) through a 0.50-m f/6.8 astrograph + CCD + focal reducer). Below you can see our image taken with the asteroid at magnitude ~15.3 and moving at ~ 40.43 "/min. Click on the image below to see a bigger version. North is up, East is to the left (the asteroid is trailed in the image due to its fast speed).
Here you can see a short animation showing the movement of 2014 MF6 (three consecutive 60-second exposure). East is up, North is to the right. | |
|
Elizabeth Howell Universe Today 2014-07-09 13:44:00
Behind the Big Dipper is something pumping out a lot of extremely high-energy cosmic rays, a new study says. And as astronomers try to learn more about the nature of these emanations - maybe black holes, maybe supernovas - newer work hints that it could be related to how the universe is structured. It appears that the particles come from spots in the cosmos where matter is densely packed, such as in "superclusters" of galaxies, the researchers stated, adding this is promising progress for tracking down the source of the cosmic rays. "This puts us closer to finding out the sources - but no cigar yet," stated University of Utah physicist Gordon Thomson, co-principal investigator for the Telescope Array that performed the observations. "All we see is a blob in the sky, and inside this blob there is all sorts of stuff - various types of objects - that could be the source," he added. "Now we know where to look." | |
|
| Earth Changes |
John Kekis and Michael Hill KFVS12.com 2014-07-09 16:19:00
Residents of this rural central New York town on Wednesday picked through debris from homes battered by a deadly tornado, and utility crews worked to restore power in several Eastern states hit by severe storms. In all, five people died Tuesday as strong thunderstorms blew down buildings, trees and utility lines and left hundreds of thousands without power into Wednesday. Madison County Sheriff Allen Riley said Kimberly Hilliard, 35; her 4-month-old daughter, Paris Newman; Virginia Warner, 70; and Arnie Allen, 53, were killed in the rural town of Smithfield, between Utica and Syracuse. He said four homes were destroyed and numerous others were damaged, with Allen's two-story home blown hundreds of feet before it landed on an unoccupied house. In Manchester, Maryland, a tree fell at the River Valley Ranch summer camp, killing one child and injuring six others headed to a shelter. | |
|
The Guardian 2014-07-09 07:37:00
Thousands of people in east coast states woke up to power cuts and a major clean-up operation on Wednesday after severe storms and high winds killed five people. One of the hardest hit spots was the Syracuse-area community of Smithfield, New York, where four of the deaths were reported and at least four homes destroyed on Tuesday, Madison County undersheriff John Ball said in a statement. In Maryland, one boy was killed and eight others, aged 15 and under, were injured when they tried to shelter from tree branches and other debris being whipped around by the wind. The storms uprooted trees and tore down power lines across several counties in central New York, as the extreme weather raged from the Ohio Valley and parts of New England through the mid-Atlantic region, police and weather officials said. | |
|
Joel Christie Daily Mail, UK 2014-07-09 12:12:00
The California coastline was gripped by an epic oil spill on Tuesday. Or so it appeared. In truth the ominous dark band that formed off the coast of La Jolla, in the state's south, was a massive school of Northern anchovies. However the anchovy aggregation has baffled scientists, who say they have not seen anything like it in the area for over 30 years, according to The LA Times.
| ||
|
Cape Breton Post 2014-07-08 11:30:00
It's a 'welcome to Cape Breton' most tourists would probably like to do without. As they pass over the swing bridge that bears those words, visitors to Cape Breton are being treated to a decidedly inhospitable greeting - the stench of a decomposing 50-foot female fin whale. The whale has come to rest on the shoreline below the busy Port Hastings visitor information centre. Dwayne MacDonald, who represents the Port Hastings area on Inverness County council, noted he has spoken with someone who works at the tourist bureau and visitors are commenting on the smell, which gets worse by the day. "Nobody wants to be responsible for moving it," MacDonald said. "It doesn't matter what government organization you work for, any level of government, nobody wants to take responsibility for anything. | |
|
Shanghaidaily.com 2014-07-09 00:00:00
Six people have died and 25 remain missing after rain-triggered mudslides hit two counties in southwest China's Yunnan Province early on Wednesday. In Shawa Village, Fugong County, a mudslide destroyed a silicon mining site at around 3 a.m., leaving 17 people missing and another injured, said Li Hongwen, the county's Communist Party chief who is overseeing rescue work. In a difficult operation, more than 140 rescuers are searching the site about 500 meters from the Nujiang River. Some of the missing people may have been swept into the river, while others may be buried under the thick mud and rock debris, Li said. | |
|
Andrew An unseasonably cold airmass looks to wash over the northern United States, in a pattern eerily similar to the one seen this past winter.The Weather Center 2014-07-08 07:30:00
Oddly enough, the atmospheric pattern behind this expected cold blast is quite similar to the pattern we observed this past winter. On the top-left image, we see the mid-level atmospheric flow valid on July 14th. Here, we can see a strong vortex dropping anomalously south from Canada, nearly pushing into the United States. If you recall, we had the polar vortex take a very similar path down south more than once last winter, which is how the weather got so cold so often. So what's provoking this to happen again, only this time in mid-July? The same thing that made it happen six months ago. We see a very strong ridge pushing north across the northeast Pacific and into the Gulf of Alaska, which is how the West US should end up with those much warmer than normal temperatures. And, bringing things back full-circle, that ridge is likely being caused/enhanced by the body of above-normal water temperatures in the Gulf of Alaska that we targeted as the mechanism responsible for the brutality of last year's winter. The latest water temperature anomaly image is shown below, which identifies the body of much warmer than normal water in the northeast Pacific. | |
|
RT 2014-07-07 14:44:00
New government data suggests that the average temperature in the United States has cooled by approximately 0.7 degrees Fahrenheit during the last decade. The statistics come courtesy of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which for nearly a decade has been collecting weather data from 114 different stations administered by the US Climate Reference Network, or USCRN, across the country. Combined, the weather stations are among the most state-of-the-art and advanced in the nation. Last month, Watts Up With That? blogger Anthony Watts wrote that an analysis of the last few years' worth of data implies the US has cooled slightly, not warmed. "Not only is there a pause in the posited temperature rise from man-made global warming, but a clearly evident slight cooling trend in the US Average Temperature over nearly the last decade," Watts wrote after examining the data. "We've had a couple of heat waves and we've had some cool spells too. In other words, weather," he wrote. | |
|
| Fire in the Sky |
There are reports of a fireball streaking through the skies of Southern Manitoba. Scott Young with the Manitoba Museum tells CJOB they got some calls from the Interlake just before 11 this morning. "Saying, is there something going on? I saw this big trail of smoke in the sky and then we had a big explosion, but I didn't hear any sounds. What's with that? Well we think what happened is a little asteroid or a big version of a meteor came into the atmosphere somewhere over Central Manitoba, and exploded." Young says they can't pinpoint where it was yet, but they suspect it was in western Manitoba, so they're asking for anyone who saw it to let them know, so they can triangulate a location. | |
|
| Health & Wellness |
Rachael Rettner Live Science 2014-07-09 15:03:00
Nearly 90,000 U.S. adults visit the emergency room yearly for side effects of prescription psychiatric medications, and more than 10,000 of these visits are related to the sleep drug Ambien, according to a new study. In fact, side effects of Ambien, along with generic forms of its drug zolpidem tartrate, were tied to more emergency room visits than those of any other psychiatric medication examined in the study. Researchers analyzed information from 63 hospitals in the United States that collect data on emergency department visits for drug side effects, and then estimated how many visits would be expected for the whole U.S. population. Between 2009 and 2011, there were an estimated 89,094 emergency room visits yearly for prescription psychiatric drug side effects, about half of which were among adults ages 19 to 44. About 1 in 5 of these ER visits resulted in a person being hospitalized, the study found. Sedatives and anti-anxiety drugs caused the most ER visits (30,707 visits), followed by antidepressants (25,377 visits) and antipsychotics (21,578 visits). The side effects that lead to ER visits were: delirium, drowsiness, falls or head injuries (seen in people taking sedatives), vertigo and rash (seen in those taking antidepressants) and movement disorders and spasticities (seen in people taking antipsychotics), according to the study. | |
|
Sara Reardon Nature Magazine 2014-07-09 11:04:00
Smallpox, officially preserved in two repositories worldwide, may have been sitting alive and well in an unsecured US government refrigerator. On 8 July, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced that vials containing the deadly virus had been discovered in a cardboard box in the refrigerator, located on the National Institutes of Health (NIH) campus in Bethesda, Maryland. That refrigerator belongs to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which has conducted some of its research at the Bethesda site since 1972. On 1 July, FDA researchers discovered the vials - labelled "variola", the name of the virus that causes smallpox - while conducting an inventory of the lab in preparation for a move to the FDA's White Oak site in Silver Spring, Maryland. NIH safety officials determined that the virus had not leaked and there was no danger to the employees who had found it, and then moved the samples to a secure lab on the Bethesda campus, the agency said. | |
Comment: The statement from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) can be found here. | |
|
Mark Sisson Marks Daily Apple 2014-07-09 00:00:00
Obesity has reached epidemic proportions. People are fat and getting fatter, with no end in sight. Even kids are fat these days. Right? We've all seen the picture of the McDonald's-eating toddler and heard the dire nightly news reports about growing obesity narrating back shots of anonymous overweight families trudging along with wedgies and short shorts. But just as the public at large bemoans the pervasiveness of the obesity epidemic, many critics are claiming the opposite: that the obesity epidemic is exaggerated and overinflated; that the "overweight" and "obese" categories are ploys by insurance companies to get more money from policy holders; that obesity in and of itself isn't actually a health hazard. Some, like Paul Campos, are even arguing that America's weight problem is "imaginary." Could this be? Am I tilting at windmills when I decry our collective weight problem? Let's look at the claims being made. First, there's the claim that the definition of obesity is arbitrary and the obesity epidemic only arose because our definition of obesity changed to include more people. According to this argument, people aren't necessarily any heavier, but what was previously assumed to be a healthy weight has now been deemed an unhealthy weight by statistical trickery. In his 2005 book, Fat Politics, J. Eric Oliver (PDF) tells the story of Louis Dublin, a statistician for MetLife insurance in the 1940s who analyzed the connection between age, bodyweight, and death rate among MetLife subscribers. Dublin found that thinner people generally lived longer and those who maintained close to the bodyweight of an average 25 year-old lived the longest. He published a new weight chart that shifted the healthy weight threshold back, effectively making millions of Americans obese or overweight overnight. And even though he did this to predict who would die earliest and determine who should pay the most for insurance policies, not to uncover a public health threat, it caught on and formed the basis for government policy regarding obesity and health that continues today. | |
Comment: There is evidence to support the fact that being over the 'recommended' weightdoes not necessarily imply that the condition is unhealthy. However there is indeed enough evidence to support the fact that obesity levels have skyrocketed. There are multiple reasons for this which not only include the plague of fast / junk food that people are consuming, but also the chemicals polluting our water, air and soils, prescription drugs, and lack of nutrients in the food we eat. However, there is a way to dramatically improve health by eating a paleo/ketogenic diet which has been found to lower inflammation, heal disease while also reducing weight. For more information, visit our forum thread on the Ketogenic diet. Junk food addiction may be clue to obesity: study Common Chemicals May be Feeding Obesity Epidemic Prescription drugs cause obesity New research shows that vaccines cause an epidemic of chronic inflammation Solve Your Health Issues with a Ketogenic Diet Ketogenic Diet (high-fat, low-carb) Has Neuroprotective and Disease-modifying Effects | |
|
| Science of the Spirit |
Science 2.0 2014-07-09 14:27:00
Feelings are personal and subjective, just like all of psychology, but the human brain turns them into a standard code that objectively represents emotions across different senses, situations and even people, according to a new paper. The authors set out to gain insight into how the brain represents our innermost feelings - what they call the last frontier of neuroscience - and upend the long-held view that emotion is represented in the brain simply by activation in specialized regions for positive or negative feelings. "We discovered that fine-grained patterns of neural activity within the orbitofrontal cortex, an area of the brain associated with emotional processing, act as a neural code which captures an individual's subjective feeling," says senior author Adam Anderson, associate professor of human development in Cornell University's College of Human Ecology. "If you and I derive similar pleasure from sipping a fine wine or watching the sun set, our results suggest it is because we share similar fine-grained patterns of activity in the orbitofrontal cortex." Anderson says. For the study, the researchers presented participants with a series of pictures and tastes during functional neuroimaging, then analyzed participants' ratings of their subjective experiences along with their brain activation patterns. | |
|
Tanya Lewis Live Science 2014-07-09 10:00:00
The U.S. military has chosen two universities to lead a program to develop brain implants to restore memory to veterans who have suffered brain injuries, officials said at a news conference yesterday (July 8). The Restoring Active Memory (RAM) program is a project of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the branch of the U.S. Department of Defense charged with developing next-generation technologies for the military. The initiative aims to develop wireless, fully implantable "neuroprosthetics" for service members suffering from traumatic brain injury or illness, DARPA Program Manager Justin Sanchez said at the news conference. DARPA has selected two teams of researchers to develop the implants: The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and the University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia. | |
|
| High Strangeness |
Sarah Waddington The Plymouth Herald 2014-07-06 11:47:00
Since The Herald reported on rising claims of Plymothians hearing a 'mystery hum', the paper has been inundated with calls, letters and emails from people who thought they were alone in their hum troubles. From farm machinery to power works to submarines, Plymouth residents are struggling to cope with 'the hum' - whatever it may be - and want to source its origins. Reports claim that around 2 per cent of the UK's population can hear the hum, which supposedly sounds like a low throbbing drone, and can only ever be heard indoors. Mr Baul, 72, and his wife, 56, who live in Milehouse, can hear the mysterious humming noise day and night and it is affecting their relationship. "We're arguing about the noise," said Mr Baul. "At first my wife couldn't hear it, but now she can; I just want to know where it's coming from." | |
|
Rob Morphy This bizarre, allegedly self propelled, seamless metallic orb was discovered by members of the Betz family in 1974, and rapidly became the object of fascination, controversy and alarm for scientists, military officials, ufologists and the general public as the story of this mystery sphere spread like wildfire through the international media.Mysterious Universe 2012-04-21 10:33:00
On May 26, 1974, Terry Mathew Betz, a 21 year-old pre-med student, along his mother Gerri and his marine engineer father, Antoine, were inspecting the damage caused by a brush fire that had raged across an 88-acre swathe of woodland that they had recently acquired on marshy Fort George Island, which is nestled just east of Jacksonville, Florida. At first the trio found nothing out of the ordinary, but before their expedition was over they stumbled across a peculiar highly polished, metal orb that was just under 8-inches in diameter. The only delineating mark that the three could find on the eerily unblemished object was an elongated triangular shape stamped into its surface. Stunned, Terry and his parents wondered whether or not they might have stumbled across some kind of downed NASA or maybe even Soviet satellite. Perhaps they even speculated that the friction induced heat of this object plummeting from its orbit might have had something to do with the fire that had ravaged the property, but none of them could find any signs of an impact crater or any indication of collision or heat damage on the gleaming metal globe. The trio then surmised that it might be an "old fashioned canon ball, which someone had silver plated," as a souvenir. Intrigued by this extraordinary find, Terry decided to heft the 22 lbs., bowling ball sized sphere into their car and take it back to their castle-like home, where he showed the unusual object to a 12 year-old relative named Wayne. He was just as perplexed by the mystery object as the rest of the family had been. The young medical student then placed his strange prize on a window seat in his bedroom, and there the anomalous object remained, virtually forgotten, until approximately two weeks later when Terry decided to entertain his friend, Theresa Fraser, with an impromptu guitar recital in his room, eliciting some decidedly unusual reactions from this enigmatic orb. |