- Signs of the Times Archive for Thu, 17 Jul 2008 -



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George Monbiot
Monbiot.com / The Guardian (UK)
2008-07-15 15:52:00

Image
©Unknown


After every test case, the media assume the worst is over: that Britain's libel laws, designed to protect the powerful from public scrutiny, have been fanged, and freedom of speech will no longer be treated like a crime. And then it gets worse.

On the website of Craig Murray, the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, you can read a letter his publishers have received from the law firm Schillings(1). It contains something I have never seen before: a threatened injunction against a book they haven't read and that won't be published until September. Acting on behalf of the "private security contractor" Tim Spicer, Schillings gave the publishers three days (the deadline was last Friday) to guarantee that the book does not defame its client, or face "an injunction to restrain publication".

No publisher can afford to ignore a letter like this. Though libel is a civil rather than a criminal matter in this country, the consequences can be much graver than most criminal convictions. I would rather go to prison for a few weeks for committing a crime than spend five years fighting a libel case, then lose my house and my savings. It is better to be caught mugging than to be caught speaking freely.

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U.S. News
On Food Tracking, FDA Says "Not Our Responsibility"

Matt Madia
OmbWatch
2008-07-10 17:47:00

The New York Times has an article this morning further underscoring the problems the FDA has tracking the sources of food-borne illness outbreaks. The toll of the current salmonella outbreak has exceeded 1,000 victims "in what officials said Wednesday was the largest food-borne outbreak in the last decade."

Initially, tomatoes were thought to be the culprit of the outbreak. FDA then said it was expanding its search to other types of produce but emphasized tomatoes were still the lead suspect. But according to the article, "Federal investigators have now linked at least some of the outbreak to fresh jalapenos."



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Bush Claims Privilege to Shield Cheney Interview in Leak Case

Robert Schmidt
Bloomberg
2008-07-16 15:43:00

President George W. Bush invoked executive privilege to avoid turning over records of an FBI interview of Vice President Dick Cheney and other documents subpoenaed by Congress in the CIA leak investigation.

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Former EPA official says vice president censored CDC testimony


newsreview.com
2008-07-16 15:40:00

Recent revelations of a former high-level U.S. Environmental Protection Agency official have placed Vice President Dick Cheney in hot water over his climate-change initiatives.

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A small victory: Kucinich wins hearings but not on impeaching Bush

Laurie Kellman
Journal Inquirer/Associated Press
2008-07-16 15:21:00

Washington - Rep. Dennis Kucinich's single impeachment article will get a committee hearing - but not on removing President Bush from office.

The House on Tuesday voted 238-180 to send his article of impeachment - for Bush's reasoning for taking the country to war in Iraq - to the Judiciary Committee, which buried Kucinich's previous effort.

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New Jersey: Woman Awakens From Surgery to Find Panty-Line Tattoo


Fox News
2008-07-16 13:54:00

A New Jersey woman has sued her orthopedic surgeon after awakening from surgery to find a temporary tattoo below her panty line.

Elizabeth Mateo, of Camden County, N.J., filed her lawsuit Tuesday saying she found "a temporary tattoo of a red rose" below her panty line the morning after her surgery for a herniated disc, her attorney, Gregg A. Shivers, told the Philadelphia Inquirer.

"She was extremely emotionally upset by it," Shivers told the paper.

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Police: Man kills woman, self in Missouri mall

Cheryl Wittehauer
Associated Press
2008-07-16 13:52:00

A man shot and killed a woman in a shopping mall outside St. Louis on Wednesday and then killed himself, police said. The pair were cousins, according to a man who said he was a relative.

No one else was injured but the Jamestown Mall was evacuated.

Marcus Gwynn said he heard four shots as he was walking into the mall to begin his shift at a Radio Shack store.

"I seen a lady on the ground face down, then he sits on the ground and shot himself in the head," said Gwynn, 21. He described both the man and the woman as in their mid-40s.

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Blagojevich: Chicago May Need National Guard Help


NBC News
2008-07-16 07:41:00

Mayor Unaware Of Plan; Welcomes Partnership

CHICAGO -- As Governor Rod Blagojevich on Wednesday signed a new law that will put in place tougher penalties for selling guns to minors, he also announced he's got a new idea to help combat the violence that Chicago is experience: he's talking to the Illinois State Police and the National Guard to see if they could help.


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California: Six hurt in explosion at natural gas fueling station in Corona

Gene Ghiotto
The Press-Enterprise
2008-07-16 17:10:00

CORONA - Six people were injured this morning in an apparent explosion at a natural gas fueling station outside Corona's corporate yard.

The incident occurred at 9:04 a.m. as a Commuter Link bus and a privately owned van were refueling, said Sgt. Jerry Pawluczenko, spokesman for the Corona Police Department. Privately owned vehicles that run on natural gas are permitted to refuel at the station.

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Connecticut: Minor explosion, fire reported


EyeWitnessNews3/WFSB
2008-07-16 16:30:00

MANCHESTER - A gas main explosion and structure fire occurred Wednesday in Manchester, according to officials.

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California: Area closed after explosion near UC Med Center

Jason Kobely
News10/KXTV
2008-07-12 08:48:00

SACRAMENTO - Authorities closed off the street and called for evacuations near the UC Davis Medical Center late Wednesday after an underground explosion and electrical fire, Sacramento police officials said.

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Flashback: What Does Treason Have to do with Impeachment?

Bill Hare
Political Cortex
2008-06-19 23:09:00

The saying that has been appearing and re-appearing with such regularity recently is, "This is not the America I grew up in? What is happening?"

This was the saying stated by Bill Moyers in a recent interview. By no coincidence, Bill Moyers has been targeted for dismissal from Public Broadcasting System for years by Bill O'Reilly for "left wing bias" and falling outside the "fair and balanced" standard he has presumably operates under at Fox News.

O'Reilly and his allies are also upset over the numerous articles criticizing the Bush-Cheney neoconservative corporate enterprise.

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Bush library corruption charges

Shaun Waterman
United Press International
2008-07-14 23:06:00

Washington -- Homeland Security officials are looking into allegations that a member of the department's advisory council offered to arrange meetings with senior administration officials in exchange for a large donation to the Bush presidential library.

Stephen Payne, a major GOP fundraiser and international affairs lobbyist, also touted his success in getting an Uzbek opposition leader removed from the U.S. terrorist watch list and issued a U.S. visa.

"This is a horribly unfortunate story," said Homeland Security spokeswoman Laura Keehner. "We are looking into the facts." She declined to comment further.

Payne was appointed to the Homeland Security Advisory Council's subcommittee on "secure borders and open doors" by Secretary Michael Chertoff in August last year.

Last week, he was videotaped by the London Sunday Times offering to arrange meetings for an exiled former president of Kyrgyzstan, with Vice President Richard Cheney, national security adviser Stephen Hadley and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

"The exact budget I will come up with," Payne said, "but it will be somewhere between $600,000 and $750,000, with about a third of it going directly to the Bush library."

Payne, who believed he was meeting with a representative of former Kyrgyz President Askar Akayev, ousted in a people power-type revolution three years ago, called the money "not a huge amount but enough to show that they're serious."

In fact, he had been set up by the intermediary, Yerzhan Dosmukhamedov, known as Eric Dos, a Kazakh politician with whom he had worked before, and was secretly taped by an undercover Sunday Times reporter.

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Flashback: Oklahoma: Fire destroys Altus church building

Hailey R. Branson
NewsOK.com
2008-06-19 22:55:00

A church congregation founded in 1907 lost its building in a fire early Thursday morning.

The First Christian Church of Altus burned after what is presumed to be a lightning-induced fire that began about 3 a.m. Thursday. The single-story building, built in 1950, was a complete loss.

An official with the Altus Fire Department said an investigation is still ongoing. There were no injuries reported.

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Horrors to come! Truck stops to offer personal Taser weapons

Jon Chavez
The Blade
2008-07-16 22:44:00

Very soon, truckers and motorists will be able to buy a jolter with their jolt of java at TravelCenters of America Inc. truck stops, 11 of which dot Ohio's roadways.

TravelCenters, based in Westlake, Ohio, said last week it had reached a deal with Taser International Inc. to begin selling Taser weapons at its truck stops starting this month.

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Sickening: 'World's greatest dad' charged in online child-sex sting


USA Today
2008-07-16 18:54:00

Daniel Allen Everett
©Michigan Attorney General via AP


A Michigan man wore a T-shirt that said "World's Greatest Dad" when he went to have sex with someone he thought was a 14-year-old girl, officials tell the Detroit Free Press.

Daniel Allen Everett "allegedly engaged in graphic sexual conversation with an undercover agent and propositioned the agent, who was posing as a 14-year-old girl, to meet him for sex," prosecutors say in a statement issued Tuesday.

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UK & Euro-Asian News
Violence rewarded: Free higher education for UK MoD troops

Andrew Sparrow
The Guardian (UK)
2008-07-17 17:21:00

Servicemen and women may be able to go to college or university without paying tuition fees when they leave the army, navy or air force under a wide-ranging package of measures announced today.

Unveiling the proposals in the Commons the defence secretary, Des Browne, also confirmed that he would double the compensation paid to troops seriously injured in military operations.

"Our armed forces are truly inspiring - every day they risk their lives to keep us safe - and it is a fundamental duty of government to support them," he said.

The proposals, which were contained in a government command paper, would "make a real difference to the everyday lives of our forces and their families".



Comment: Contrast this with the 'difference' caused by those same armed forces to the families in Iraq and Afghanistan, whose lives they have destroyed.




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Irish twins saved by miracle operation in womb


Belfast Telegraph
2008-07-07 16:59:00

The parents of baby twins who defied death due to groundbreaking surgery in the womb have thanked the hospital that saved them.

Fidelma and Paul Greene, from Swords, Dublin, said yesterday their daughters, Lauren and Sophie, were thriving three months after being born.

Their unborn children had been given almost no chance of survival when Rotunda Hospital medics discovered they suffered from a rare medical condition.

Doctors diagnosed them with Twin-to-Twin Transfusion Syndrome (TTTS) when their mother was 21 weeks pregnant.

The condition means one baby gets too much blood and the other too little. In almost all cases it leads to death of both twins, if it's not treated.

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Experts explode World War II bomb in Berlin, 5,000 residents evacuated


Associated Press
2008-07-16 16:40:00

Experts carried out a controlled explosion Wednesday on a World War II bomb whose discovery forced the evacuation of some 5,000 residents, police said.

The British bomb was found during construction work Tuesday afternoon in the garden of a house in the capital's western Wilmersdorf district.

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Ukraine: Festival of Ancient Trypillian Culture

Yelena Pidsosonna & Lidia Louk
The Epoch Times
2008-07-08 15:16:00

Image
©Alexey Pidsosonny/NTDTV
Riding horses at the Tripillian culture festival.


Rzhyschev, Ukraine - A big crowd gathered in the small village of Rzhyschiv near Kyiv this past weekend to bring to life and celebrate 5,000 years of Trypillian culture. According to archeological data, Tripillia is an ancient civilization, which populated parts of modern-day Ukraine, Romania, and Moldova between 5,400 and 2,750 B.C.

It is not by accident that a small Ukrainian town of Rzhyschev was hosting this annual festival. It is here, 30 miles away from Kyiv, that ancient settlements of Tripillian civilization were found, stretching all the way between the Danube and Dnipro rivers.

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34 years ago - the world learns of Cyprus coup


Famagusta Gazette
2008-07-16 15:12:00

As confusion reigned across Cyprus 34 years ago, international press reports differed on the events in Nicosia and the fate of President Makarios.

The report below was one of the most accurate accounts to come out of the confusion, and was published world wide in late editions on July 15, 1974.

CY Coup papers
©Unknown



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Drought-stricken Cyprus' water imported from Greece no potable


Monsters & Critics
2008-07-16 14:08:00

Athens/Nicosia - The drought-stricken Mediterranean island of Cyprus has been forced to dump its first shipment of water from Greece because it smells bad, officials said Wednesday.

A tanker containing some 40,000 cubic meters of water arrived off the coast of Limassol two weeks ago and was supposed to be pumped into the city's water network once infrastucture was completed to bring it onland.

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Spain's supreme court acquits four over Madrid bombings


Agence-France Press
2008-07-17 12:11:00

Spain's supreme court Thursday overturned the convictions of four of 21 people condemned to prison over the Madrid train bombings that killed 191 people in 2004.


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China quake sends 1.4 million back into poverty


Agence France-Presse
2008-07-16 23:49:00

Up to 1.4 million people in remote villages in southwest China have slipped back into absolute poverty after the May 12 earthquake flattened their homes, state press said Tuesday.

"In many counties, the hard-won anti-poverty achievements in the previous two decades disappeared within seconds," the China Daily quoted Fan Xiaojian, head of the central government's poverty alleviation office, as saying.

"The damage is so massive and many farmers have reversed back into poverty again."

Fan was referring to efforts in China to bring millions of people out of absolute poverty in recent decades, an achievement that has been widely praised by international organisations such as the United Nations.

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Flashback: Putin will punish "irresponsible" power players


Reuters
2008-06-19 22:30:00

Putin
©Reuters / RIA Novosti


Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has called on investors in the liberalizing power sector not to stuff their "stomachs" with quick profits and pledged harsh treatment for those not respecting national and social interests.

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Flashback: The Putin plan: The Medvedev phase

Chris Weafer
Prime-Tass
2008-06-19 22:25:00

Russia has a very strong financial platform and the national wealth is boosted daily with record high oil and gas tax revenues. The government promises to take a much more active role in helping the country's small- and medium-sized enterprises develop with a mixture of fiscal incentives and a step-up in efforts to deal with corruption and intrusive bureaucracy.

The so-called rules of the game for investing in the country's strategic industries are also now much clearer and leave the way open for increased participation by private and foreign investors. What that should mean is that the country is about to enter a new golden-age of investment and re-building, a twenty-first century version of the "new economic plan."

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Around the World
Canada ignores calls for Guantánamo youth to come home

Angela Balakrishnan
The Guardian (UK)
2008-07-17 17:18:00

The Canadian government was today under fire for refusing to seek the repatriation of a teenage national held at Guantánamo Bay, who was shown desperately pleading for his country's help in recently released footage.

Liberal politicians and human rights groups criticised Canada's conservative prime minister, Stephen Harper, for the lack of action saying it undermined attempts to eradicate the use of child soldiers.

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U.S. experts say Russia 'is winning the Arctic race'


RIA Novosti
2008-07-17 14:16:00

Image
©RIA Novosti, Alexey Danichev
The icebreaker St. Petersburg is the second in a series of modern ice-breaker ships being built at a Russian shipyard after a long break. Over the past 30 years Russia has ordered the construction of all its non-nuclear icebreakers abroad.


A top U.S. Coast Guard official has told lawmakers that Russia is getting ahead of the United States in the "Arctic race" and the current U.S. administration must urgently revise its approach to Arctic exploration.

"I'm concerned we are watching our nation's ice-breaking capabilities decline," Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Thad Allen told the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee on Wednesday.

"It's imperative to obtain the current validating capabilities so our polar operations can be met," he said.

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Korean plane makes emergency landing in Japan


Reuters
2008-07-17 13:49:00

A Korean Air Lines Co Ltd plane made an emergency landing at an airport on Japan's northernmost island of Hokkaido on Thursday, but no one was injured.

Television showed the plane landing smoothly in misty weather at Shin Chitose airport, after the airline said it planned to divert there on its way to its intended destination of New York.

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Cargo jet crash in Mexico kills US pilot


Associated Press
2008-07-06 12:42:00

A plane carrying a load of auto parts crashed Sunday as it was trying to land in northern Mexico, killing the pilot and severely injuring the co-pilot.

The plane crashed before dawn Sunday half a mile (one kilometer) from the runway in Ramos Arizpe, 200 miles (320 kilometers) south of the U.S.-Mexico border, said Segismundo Doguin, the deputy civil defense chief for Coahuila state.

The co-pilot received second- and third-degree burns and was in critical condition at a hospital in the nearby city of Saltillo, Doguin said.

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Yet another US Afghan bombing 'kills dozens' of civilians


BBC
2008-07-17 11:46:00

heratmap


Dozens of Afghan civilians have been killed during aerial bombing by US forces in the western province of Herat, tribal elders say.


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Explosion at Spanish biofuel plant injures 1


The Associated Press
2008-07-16 09:03:00

MADRID - A Spanish emergency official says an explosion in a new biofuel facility situated near the central city of Salamanca has left one worker injured and caused a fire.

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Flashback: EU lifts Cuba diplomatic sanctions


Telegraph
2008-06-20 05:20:00

The European Union has agreed to lift diplomatic sanctions against Cuba in the hope of encouraging democracy in the Communist state.

Benita Ferrero-Waldner, the union's external relations commissioner, said the decision was designed to encourage changes in Cuba after Raul Castro took over from his ailing brother Fidel.

The gesture was largely symbolic, as the sanctions banned high-level visits by Cuban officials - and they have been suspended since 2005. However, a summit of EU foreign ministers in Brussels called for several conditions for relations to improve further.

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Court finds Mitsubishi executives guilty

Shino Yuasa
Associated Press
2008-07-16 22:21:00

TOKYO - A Japanese court found Mitsubishi Motors and its three former executives guilty Tuesday of falsifying a report to the government in a fatal accident suspected of being linked to a wheel defect.

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US troops poised to cross Afghan border for raid on bases

Zahid Hussain
Times Online
2008-07-16 18:43:00

US troops in Afghanistan massed close to the border yesterday for a possible attack on al-Qaeda and Taleban bases in the lawless North Waziristan tribal belt in Pakistan.

Reports from the area said that hundreds of Nato troops were airlifted across the mountains from the village of Lowara Mandi, which has been an important base for cross-border attacks in Afghanistan. Heavy artillery and armoured vehicles were also being moved into position.

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Big Brother
Privacy concerns in cell phone tracking: it knows where you are


UPI
2008-07-12 17:55:00

U.S. privacy experts say they're concerned about new wireless phone technology that pinpoints and stores users' locations in company databases.

There are several new software applications for cell phones that take advantage of the Global Positioning System or nearby cell phone towers to determine the user's location and then send ads or social networking information to them based on their whereabouts. But there is potential for abuse, The Washington Post reported Saturday.

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The Terrorist Watch List reaches 1,000,665 Names and is still Growing!

Rev. Richard Skaff
Global Research
2008-07-17 16:47:00

Image
©Unknown


Are you an activist, an author, a journalist, a patriot, or maybe a scholar who speaks out his or her mind in the defense of democracy? If you are, then, the chance of having your boarding pass stamped with the ominous symbol of "SSSS" on your next flight from the United States is very high.

SSSS stands for "selectee for enhanced security screening." That means that Home Land Security and TSA have labeled you as a US citizen-security risk, and used your tax money to transform themselves into your dictators.

According to a tally maintained by the ACLU, the nation's terrorist watch list has hit one million names and is still growing by the minute. That is based upon the government's own reported numbers for the size of the list. Members of congress, nuns, war heroes, reverends, former assistant attorney general, ACLU administrator, people with difficult names and all American names like Robert Johnson and Gary Smith, have become caught in the vast tentacle of this list. [1].

Once you are on it, a rigorous procedure short of a divine intervention would become necessary to have you taken off this list. Many are wary of raising this issue in fear of additional fascist strategies like harassment, retaliation, and intimidation would be used against them.

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Congress can do more damage than al qaeda

Joseph L. Galloway
Star-Telegram.com
2008-07-08 16:45:00

This week the U.S. Senate is scheduled to vote on an extension of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, with small amendments intended to immunize telecommunications corporations that assisted our government in the warrantless and illegal wiretapping it has grown to love.

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Federal judge rules against RNC protesters

John Croman's
Kare11.com
2008-07-16 23:22:00

ST. PAUL -- A federal judge in Minnesota has refused to grant a group's request to change the time and route for its protest during the upcoming Republican National Convention.


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US: Nowhere to hide - Skyships being used for homeland security

Jim Zebora
Greenwich Time
2008-07-15 22:53:00

It's neither a bird nor a plane taking to the skies over the Florida Straits, it's an "eye in the sky," according to George Spyrou.

The chief executive officer of Greenwich-based Airship Management Services Inc. said last week that his company's blimps have taken on a new role with the Department of Homeland Security.

AMS, along with the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard, is testing "long-duration surveillance" aboard a specially equipped Skyship 600 craft, which the Greenwich company manufactures in North Carolina.

"It's an old use," Spyrou said Friday. "It's back to the future in a way. That's what airships were supposed to be."

AMS's airships have a lot of uses, including as sightseeing vessels, camera platforms for sporting events and providing silent security over high-profile places and events, such as the 2004 Athens Olympics.

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Flashback: Mandatory drug testing for Toronto transit staff: Just say No


The Globe and Mail
2008-06-19 22:40:00

Nobody relishes the idea of men or women under the influence of drugs or alcohol operating buses, subways or other public-transit vehicles. But the notion of trampling over Canadians' civil liberties, as the Toronto Transit Commission is considering doing in response to one or two apparently isolated incidents, is no more appealing.

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US: Officer suspended over Taser death

Cleve R. Wootson Jr.
Charlotte Observer
2008-07-16 22:33:00

A police officer has been suspended for five days after the Taser-related death of a 17-year-old at a north Charlotte Food Lion in March.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg police said Officer Jerry Dawson, a 15-year veteran, held the trigger on the stun gun for 42 seconds in all - a 37-second burst and another 5-second burst after Turner's confrontation with store managers.

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Axis of Evil
Big Oil and the war in Iraq

Derrick Z. Jackson
The Boston Globe
2008-06-24 18:00:00

IT TOOK five years, the deaths of 4,100 US soldiers, and the wounding of 30,000 more to make Iraq safe for Exxon. It is the inescapable open question since the reasons given by President Bush for the invasion and occupation did not exist, neither the weapons of mass destruction nor Saddam Hussein's ties to Al Qaeda and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

The New York Times reported last week that several Western oil companies, including ExxonMobil, Shell, Total, BP, and Chevron, are about to sign no-bid contracts with the Iraqi government. Western oil had a significant stake in Iraqi oil for much of the last century until the government nationalized the industry in 1972. The Associated Press quoted Oppenheimer & Co. analyst Fadel Gheit as saying he believed the contracts were a first step toward production-sharing agreements. "These companies are in it for the money, not to make friends," Gheit said.

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Totalitarian Lockdown Complete: Court Backs Bush on Unlimited Military Detentions

Adam Liptak
The New York Times
2008-07-16 16:42:00

President Bush has the legal power to order the indefinite military detentions of civilians captured in the United States, the federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., ruled on Tuesday in a fractured 5-to-4 decision.

But a second, overlapping 5-to-4 majority of the court, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, ruled that Ali al-Marri, a citizen of Qatar now in military custody in Charleston, S.C., must be given an additional opportunity to challenge his detention in federal court there. An earlier court proceeding, in which the government had presented only a sworn statement from a defense intelligence official, was inadequate, the second majority ruled.

The decision was a victory for the Bush administration, which had maintained that a 2001 Congressional authorization to use military force after the Sept. 11 attacks granted the president the power to detain people living in the United States.

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Biological warfare against US troops - Courtesy of Halliburton


Brasscheck TV
2008-07-17 15:48:00

This is how George Bush and Dick Cheney support the troops. And you can thank Congress for it too while you're at it.

Simple biological warfare - poisoning the troops' water supply - is the most cost effective way of neutralizing the effectiveness of an armed force.

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Informant denies telling Khawaja about fertilizer bomb plot


CBC News
2008-07-02 21:22:00

Khawaja
©Tammy Hoy/Canadian Press
In this artist's sketch, Mohammad Momin Khawaja, centre, is shown in an Ottawa courtroom in June 2008 at the beginning of his trial.


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War Games: Iranian Missiles Decoded by the Israelis


Strategy Page
2008-07-16 15:08:00

Iran now has something else to worry about. Recent Israeli Air Force exercises near Greece, using over a hundred aircraft, apparently also involved Greek S-300 surface-to-air missile systems. Roughly equivalent to the U.S. Patriot, the Russian built S-300 was known as the SA-10 to NATO, when the system first appeared in the early 1980s. S-300 missiles weigh 1.8 tons each and are 26 feet long and about 20 inches in diameter. The missiles have a range of some 200 kilometers and can hit targets as high as 100,000 feet. The missile has a 320 pound warhead.

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Flashback: The Big Outcome of the '60s: The Triumph of Capitalism

Slavoj Zizek
AlterNet/In These Times
2008-06-27 14:52:00

After the social tumult of the '60s capitalism usurped resistance itself, turning attempts at subversion into commodities.

rationing
©Unknown




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Globalization and terror - Western Bloc barbarism

Toni Solo
Scoop Independent News
2008-07-15 15:31:00

It has not always been so hard to map the frontiers of North Atlantic Treaty Organization country foreign policy beyond which US imperialism goes it alone. Nor, until now, have NATO countries' relations with Israel encroached so blatantly on the enduring symbiosis between Israel's militarist aggression and the US government's militarist imperialism. If it is clear by now that US power and influence is less than it was even ten years ago, what might be the implications for how NATO is used and abused in terms of shifting international economic relations and, in particular, the diverse processes of corporate globalization?

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US judge to consider blocking 1st Guantanamo trial

Matt Apuzzo
Associated Press
2008-07-17 04:35:00

WASHINGTON - A federal judge is considering whether to block the first Guantanamo Bay war crimes trial from beginning next week. If he does, it could throw another kink into the Bush administration's legal strategy in the war on terrorism.

Salim Hamdan, a former driver for Osama bin Laden, is scheduled to go on trial Monday as the first defendant in a special military commission system set up to prosecute detainees at the Navy base in Cuba. Other detainees, including alleged Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, are awaiting trials of their own.

But a Supreme Court ruling last month jeopardized those plans. The court ruled that detainees must be allowed to challenge their detention in civilian courts, a right that the Bush administration said for years did not exist.

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Video: US Senate hearings interrupted to stop testimony


The Real News Network
2008-07-17 04:14:00

American News Project: On two consecutive days, hearings conducted by the Senate Judiciary Committee were suspended when Republicans invoked the rarely used "two hour rule" that states no hearing can run more than two hours. ANP cameras were covering both hearings as part of ongoing stories and were able to capture the latest moves in the political chess match both parties are currently waging on Capitol Hill.

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Amber Alert!: Get ready for war

Justin Raimondo
AntiWar.com
2008-07-14 19:01:00

In spite of reassurances from the Washington talking heads and policy wonks that the U.S. is not about to launch an attack on Iran, or countenance an Israeli strike, the Sunday Times has the real scoop:

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Video: The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder


msnbc
2008-07-11 18:43:00

Author Vincent Bugliosi discusses his controversial book, "The Prosecution of George W.Bush for Murder," which puts together a legal case that could result in a prosecution for first-degree murder.


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Middle East Madness
Military surge in Iraq 'ends' - 150,000 troops remain

Lolita C. Baldor
AP News
2008-07-16 17:05:00

Military buildup in Iraq ends, but shift in mission means more troops there than before surge

The military surge into Iraq that began more than 18 months ago has ended. But 150,000 U.S. troops remain, as many as 15,000 more than before the buildup began.

In recent days, the 3rd Infantry Division's 2nd Brigade, the last of the five additional combat brigades sent in by President Bush last year, left the country.

Its departure marks the end of what the Pentagon calls the "surge." And it starts the 45-day evaluation period that Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, told Congress he would need to assess the security situation and determine how many more troops he could send home.

In the complex battlefield that is Iraq, it's not that easy.

While there now are technically 13 Army and two Marine combat brigades in Iraq - the same as before the buildup - the force is as much as 10 percent larger than it was in January 2007.

Military officials contend comparisons are not valid because a chunk of the remaining troop bulge is due to units that are overlapping, as two brigades begin moving out of Iraq, while their two replacements move in. The overlap could add up to 6,000 soldiers.

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Iran warns of sharp increase in oil prices if attacked


RIA Novosti
2008-07-05 13:57:00

Global oil prices will jump to unprecedented levels in case of any aggression against Iran, the country's oil minister said on Saturday.

Some Western media have long been circulating rumors of an 'imminent" attack on the Islamic Republic planned by either the United States or Israel in order to force Tehran to abandon its controversial uranium enrichment program.

"Even a slightest hint [on a possibility of the attack] will lead to an increase [in global oil prices] by $10-15, but in case of a real aggression against Iran, the oil prices will rise to unpredictable highs," Gholamhossein Nozari told reporters in Tehran.

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Live from Palestine: A family under siege

Philip Rizk
The Electronic Intifada
2008-07-16 07:46:00

At the end of my visit they started asking me to take pictures for their brothers, uncles, sons and fathers detained in Israeli prisons for over four months -- a picture of a newborn not yet seen by the imprisoned father, one father's favorite girl and a picture of the detainees' pictures hanging on the wall to let the prisoners know they are missed, they are celebrated.

On 19 March Israel rounded up Assad Salach and his sons Fahmi and Salach and Assad's brother Sa'id and his son Ghassan along with over 300 men age 16 and above along its northern border with the Gaza Strip. It is not the first time that Israel arrests the male members of the Salach family.

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On the Run, Sadr's Militia May Live to Fight Another Day

Patrick Cockburn
CounterPunch
2008-07-15 04:24:00

All over Baghdad and southern Iraq, supporters of Muqtada al-Sadr, the anti-American Shia cleric, are harassed, on the run or in jail. The black-shirted gunmen of his Mehdi Army militia no longer rule in Shia parts of Baghdad, Basra and Amara where once their control was total.

A great survivor of Iraqi politics, Mr Sadr is living in the Iranian holy city of Qom, where he is studying to elevate his position within the Shia religious hierarchy. It was from there, to the dismay of many followers, that he ordered his Mehdi Army fighters to go home and allow the Iraqi army to penetrate their strongholds.

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U.S. to establish presence in Tehran: report


Reuters
2008-07-16 22:31:00

LONDON - The United States will announce in the next month that it plans to establish a diplomatic presence in Tehran for the first time in 30 years, a British newspaper said on Thursday.


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Grand Theft Economics
Oil tumbles below $130; natural gas falls sharply

Adam Schreck
Associated Press
2008-07-17 16:07:00

NEW YORK - Oil prices fell below $130 a barrel for the first time in more than a month Thursday, as a dramatic slide entered a third day along with a sharp sell-off in natural gas.

The declines accelerated amid growing concerns about the weakening U.S. economy.


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Spain drops reassuring gloss as crisis deepens

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
The Daily Telegraph
2008-07-16 17:50:00

Spain's finance minister Pedro Solbes has stunned the markets with an admission that his country faces the worst economic crisis in its history as the full effects of the property crash spread through the economy.

"This crisis is the most complex we have ever lived through given the plethora of factors on the table at the same time," he told Punto Radio in Madrid, breaking with past efforts to put a reassuring gloss on events.

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The American dream? US fails to measure up on 'human index'

Ashley Seager
The Guardian
2008-07-17 08:39:00

Despite spending $230m (£115m) an hour on healthcare, Americans live shorter lives than citizens of almost every other developed country. And while it has the second-highest income per head in the world, the United States ranks 42nd in terms of life expectancy.

These are some of the startling conclusions from a major new report which attempts to explain why the world's number-one economy has slipped to 12th place - from 2nd in 1990- in terms of human development.


Comment: That is a pretty big change to occur in less than 20 years.



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Citigroup's $1.1 Trillion of Mysterious Assets Shadows Earnings

Bradley Keoun
Bloomberg
2008-07-14 18:16:00

At an investor presentation in May, Citigroup Inc. Chief Executive Officer Vikram Pandit said shrinking the bank's $2.2 trillion balance sheet, the biggest in the U.S., was a cornerstone of his turnaround plan.

Nowhere mentioned in the accompanying 66-page handout were the additional $1.1 trillion of assets that New York-based Citigroup keeps off its books: trusts to sell mortgage-backed securities, financing vehicles to issue short-term debt and collateralized debt obligations, or CDOs, to repackage bonds.

Now, as Citigroup prepares to announce second-quarter results July 18, those off-balance-sheet assets, used by U.S. banks to expand lending without tying up capital, are casting a shadow over earnings. Since last September, at least $100 billion of assets have flooded back onto Citigroup's balance sheet, accompanied by more than $7 billion of losses.

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The death of rice in India

Arun Shrivastava
Global Research
2008-07-11 18:09:00

We will soon be eating genetically modified rice invented by multinational seed corporations.

Someone said, "Monsanto invented the pig.' Very soon we will learn, right here in India and Asia, that US and European seeds multinational corporations "invented" rice. And soon we shall be paying up front royalty to these companies for eating rice. Hold your breath; that situation is upon us.

I pose this question to you before you read further: What would you do to a company that claims it "invented rice" and wants its pound of flesh because you, Sirs and Madams, eat rice?

India is a rice country. Rice has been our staple for thousands of years. A French scientist had once said India has 200,000 varieties of rice. Other environmentalists say 100,000. Does it matter? In the traditional rice producing regions I found that the taste and shape of rice often differed from village to village. Not any more. Post green revolution, the varieties available in the market for commercial sowing have dropped to about fifty in what must surely be called the greatest destruction of genetic diversity in any food crop anywhere in the world.

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The Living Planet
Fragile Antarctic Marine Life Pounded By Icebergs: Biodiversity Suffering


Science Daily
2008-07-17 16:44:00

Antarctic worms, sea spiders, urchins and other marine creatures living in near-shore shallow habitats are regularly pounded by icebergs. New data suggests this environment along the Antarctic Peninsula is going to get hit more frequently. This is due to an increase in the number of icebergs scouring the seabed as a result of shrinking winter sea ice.

Image
©British Antarctic Survey
A British Antarctic Survey marine biologist encounters a giant sponge nearly 20m below the surface.


Scientists from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) show how the rate of iceberg scouring on the West Antarctic Peninsula seabed is affected by the duration of winter sea ice, which has dramatically declined (in space and time) in the region over the last few decades due to climate warming. This increase in iceberg disturbance on the seabed, where the majority of all Antarctic life occurs (80%), could have severe effects on the marine creatures living as deep as 500m underwater.

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Cyprus always had to hoard water - a bit of history


Homeboy Medianews
2008-07-16 14:22:00

With most households now having their water supplies reduced by a third to try to tackle the shortage, Cypriots can be forgiven for believing that this is the worst drought the island has ever experienced. Well, think again.

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Lightning kills three, injures five in Russia's Volga republic


RIA Novosti
2008-07-17 14:08:00

Three people, including two teenagers, were killed and five injured, when they were struck by lightning in the Russian Volga Republic of Bashkortostan, a local emergencies spokesman said on Thursday.

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Giant Clams 'Secure For Another Generation' After Philippine Re-seeding


Science Daily
2008-07-17 11:42:00

Re-seeding programmes on over 50 reefs are securing the survival of the giant clam for at least another generation, according to World Wildlife Fund-Philippines.

giant clam
©Kurt Domingo
The true giant clam (Tridacna gigas), 40 of which were transplanted last month to a new home in Batangas province, Philippines.


The clams, the world's largest bivalve mollusks and the star of lurid but mostly imaginary literary and cinematic depictions of trapped divers, can live for over a century. They have been known to exceed 1.4 metres in length and weigh in at over 260 kilograms.

Once common throughout Philippine reefs, excessive hunting for the food, pet and curio trade all but depleted the wild giant clam population by the mid-1980s, prompting the IUCN to classify them as vulnerable.

An attempt to restore natural clam populations is now being spearheaded by Dr. Suzanne Mingoa-Licuanan of the University of the Philippines Marine Science Institute in partnership with World Wildlife Fund-Philippines.



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Tropical storm Fausto forms off Mexican coast, hurricane Elida strengthens

AP Staff
Associated Press
2008-07-16 01:15:00

MEXICO CITY - Tropical storm Fausto formed off the Mexican resort city of Acapulco on Wednesday, while Elida strengthened to a Category 2 hurricane far away from Baja California's coast.

Neither storm was expected to threaten land. Fausto was moving west away from land at 26 km/h, according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami. It was located about 625 kilometres south of Acapulco with winds reaching 65 km/h.

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Icelandic Volcanoes Help Researchers Understand Effects Of Eruptions


Terra Daily
2008-07-16 23:44:00

For the first time, researchers have taken a detailed look at what lies beneath all of Iceland's volcanoes - and found a world far more complex than they ever imagined.

They mapped an elaborate maze of magma chambers - work that could one day help scientists better understand how earthquakes and volcanic eruptions occur in Iceland and elsewhere in the world.

Lake Öskjuvatn
©Unknown
Formed by an eruption from Askja in 1875, Lake Öskjuvatn is the deepest lake in Iceland at 735 feet (224 meters).


Knowing where magma chambers are located is a key first step to understanding the chemical composition of the molten rock that is flowing within them - and of the gases that are released when a volcano erupts, explained Daniel Kelley, doctoral student in earth sciences at Ohio State University.

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Undersea Volcanic Rocks Offer Vast Repository For Greenhouse Gas


Terra Daily
2008-07-16 23:32:00

A group of scientists has used deep ocean-floor drilling and experiments to show that volcanic rocks off the West Coast and elsewhere might be used to securely imprison huge amounts of globe-warming carbon dioxide captured from power plants or other sources.

In particular, they say that natural chemical reactions under 78,000 square kilometers (30,000 square miles) of ocean floor off California, Oregon, Washington and British Columbia could lock in as much as 150 years of U.S. CO2 production. The findings are published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Deep-sea basalt region for CO2 burial
©Goldberg et al.
Deep-sea basalt region for CO2 burial. Red outline shows where water depth exceeds 2,700 meters and sediment thickness exceeds 200 meters; hatched areas show where sediment thickness exceeds 300 meters. Seamounts and areas near plate boundaries or continental shelf are excluded.


Interest in so-called carbon sequestration is growing worldwide. However, no large-scale projects are yet off the ground, and other geological settings could be problematic. For instance, the petroleum industry has been pumping CO2 into voids left by old oil wells on a small scale, but some fear that these might eventually leak, putting gas back into the air and possibly endangering people nearby.

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Storm Kalmaegi bears down on eastern Taiwan


Agence France-Presse
2008-07-16 23:30:00

Storm Kalmaegi has gained momentum as it approaches Taiwan, threatening the island's east, the Central Weather Bureau said Wednesday.

The edge of the storm may hit eastern Taiwan and unleash downpours in the east and north, an official at the bureau said.

"Ships sailing on the Bashih Channel and waters east of Taiwan must heighten their vigilance," the official said.

The storm was 370 kilometres (222 miles) southeast of Oluanpi, the island's southernmost tip, at 5:00 pm (0900 GMT).

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Human society could 'learn much from bees'

Tom Peterkin
Telegraph Media Group
2008-07-08 23:14:00

Humans could learn much about health, public transport and peaceful living by observing the behaviour of bees, the leader of Britain's first bee-keeping research lab has claimed.

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Magnitude 5.1 - Southern Qinghai, China


United States Geological Survey
2008-07-16 23:15:00

Details:

* Wednesday, July 16, 2008 at 22:58:19 UTC
* Thursday, July 17, 2008 at 06:58:19 AM at epicenter
* Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones

Location 33.162°N, 92.049°E
Depth 10 km (6.2 miles) set by location program
Region SOUTHERN QINGHAI, CHINA
Distances 400 km (250 miles) NNE of Lhasa, Xizang (Tibet)

440 km (275 miles) SW of Golmud, Qinghai, China

530 km (330 miles) NE of Xigaze, Xizang (Tibet)

2295 km (1430 miles) WSW of BEIJING, Beijing, China

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Canada: Moth outbreak threatens forests, scientist warns


The Canadian Press
2008-07-11 17:56:00

The mountain pine beetle isn't the only problem British Columbia forest officials are concerned about in the Southern Interior.

Entomologist Lorraine MacLauchlan, who just came back from the field, says the area is in the midst of a severe outbreak of the tussock moth.

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Health & Wellness
Fibromyalgia a frustratingly mysterious illness

ANDREA W. DILWORTH
Gannett News Service
2008-07-14 16:30:00

Imagine hurting all over, every day, with no end in sight. Couple that with a physical exhaustion that never completely subsides, not even with adequate sleep and rest. Add in insomnia, brain fog and depression.

The worst part - there's no cure.

Sufferers of fibromyalgia don't have to imagine that nightmare. They live it. Daily.

The chronic pain syndrome, which manifests itself by widespread muscle pain, results from a chemical imbalance in the brain, causing sufferers to perceive pain differently than the average person, said Dr. Neal Shparago, a Jackson rheumatologist of 15 years.

"There are many physicians who do not believe fibromyalgia exists," he said. "I believe it exists and try to treat it - sometimes successfully and sometimes not."

Stress, sleep deprivation and traumas are triggers of fibromyalgia. It is a common malady, said Shparago, who has seen an increase in the number of patients diagnosed in recent years. Fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue are basically one and the same, according to Shparago.

Image
©Unknown
Chinika Hughes-Hood walks along the water near the Canebrake subdivision in Hattiesburg, Miss. The stay-at-home mom suffers from fibromyalgia, a chronic pain syndrome. 'I'm in pain from sunup to sundown,' she says. Stress, sleep deprivation and traumas are triggers of fibromyalgia.


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Virulence Factor That Induces Fatal Candida Infection Identified


Science Daily
2008-07-17 16:35:00

Scientists here have found that certain substances from bacteria living in the human intestine cause the normally harmless Candida albicans fungus to become highly infectious.

This discovery by researchers at Singapore's Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR)'s Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology (IMCB) could possibly lead to the development of novel treatments for immunocompromised patients infected by the fungus.

The team of scientists, led by Associate Professor Wang Yue, a principal investigator at the IMCB, identified peptidoglycan (PGN) -- a carbohydrate from bacteria -- as a factor responsible for causing the conversion of the otherwise harmless C. albicans to its infectious form.

Once in the infectious form, the fungus is able to invade surrounding tissues and escape destruction by the body's own immune cells. Since immunocompromised patients such as those with AIDS or those undergoing chemotherapy or radiation treatment are extremely susceptible to fungal-induced systemic infections, this finding offers an important clue to the basis of C. albicans infections.

After confirming the presence of PGN-derived molecules in human blood, the researchers discovered that the fungus is able to "sense" the presence of the same molecules, which are produced in abundance by bacteria residing in the gastrointestinal track. Earlier studies suggested that PGNs can enter the blood stream through the intestinal wall.

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Flashback: Hippocampal Structural Asymmetry in Unsuccessful Psychopaths

Adrian Raine, Sharon S. Ishikawa, Estibaliz Arce, Todd Lencz, Kevin H. Knuth, Susan Bihrle, Lori LaCasse,
Biol Psychiatry 2004; 55:185 - 191
2004-07-01 14:34:00

Background: Structural and functional hippocampal abnormalities have been previously reported in institutionalized psychopathic and aggressive populations. This study assessed whether prior findings of a right greater than left (R L) functional asymmetry in caught violent offenders generalize to the structural domain in unsuccessful, caught psychopaths.

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Flashback: Volume Reduction in Prefrontal Gray Matter in Unsuccessful Criminal Psychopaths

Yaling Yang, Adrian Raine, Todd Lencz, Susan Bihrle, Lori LaCasse, and Patrick Colletti
Biol Psychiatry 2005; 57:1103 - 1108
2005-01-21 10:00:00

Background: Although studies of neurologic patients have suggested that prefrontal structural impairments may predispose to sociopathy, it is unknown whether there is a relationship between psychopathy and prefrontal volume in individuals from the community and whether any prefrontal structural impairment is specific to "unsuccessful" (caught) psychopaths as opposed to "successful" (uncaught) psychopaths. This study tests the hypothesis that psychopathy is associated with a reduction in prefrontal gray volume but that this abnormality is specific to unsuccessful psychopaths.

Method: Prefrontal gray and white matter volumes were assessed using structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in 16 unsuccessful psychopaths, 13 successful psychopaths, and 23 control subjects.

Results: Higher total as well as subfactor psychopathy scores (arrogant/deceptive, affective, and impulsive/unstable) were all associated with low prefrontal gray volume. Unsuccessful psychopaths, but not successful psychopaths, had a 22.3% reduction in prefrontal gray matter volume compared with control subjects.

Conclusions: These results demonstrating for the first time a prefrontal structural deficit in community psychopaths provide partial support for a prefrontal theory of psychopathy but highlight an important difference between successful and unsuccessful psychopaths.

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Dementia patient makes 'amazing' progress after using infra-red helmet

David Derbyshire
The Daily Mail
2008-07-14 09:26:00

Two months ago Clem Fennell was fading fast.

The victim of an aggressive type of dementia, the 57-year-old businessmen was unable to answer the phone, order a meal or string more than a couple of words together.

In desperation, his family agreed to try a revolutionary new treatment - a bizarre-looking, experimental helmet devised by a British GP that bathes the brain in infra-red light twice a day.

To their astonishment, Mr Fennel began to make an astonishing recovery in just three weeks.

Image
©North News and Pictures Ltd
Dr Gordon Dougal, a GP from County Durham, treated dementia patient Clem Fennell with his infra-red device


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U.S. still flunks healthcare test, group says

Maggie Fox
Reuters
2008-07-17 11:53:00

The United States fails on most measures of health care quality, with Americans waiting longer to see doctors and more likely to die of preventable or treatable illnesses than people in other industrialized countries, a report released on Thursday said.

Americans squander money on wasteful administrative costs, illnesses caused by medical error and inefficient use of time, the report from the nonprofit Commonwealth Fund concluded.

"We lead the world in spending. We should be expecting much more in return," Commonwealth Fund senior vice president Cathy Schoen told reporters.

The Commonwealth Fund, a private foundation, created a 100-point scorecard using 37 indicators such as health outcomes, quality, access and efficiency.

They compare the U.S. average on these to the best performing states, counties or hospitals, and to other countries. The United States scored 65 -- two points lower than in 2006.

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New Approach Sheds Light On Ways Circadian Disruption Affects Human Health


Science Daily
2008-07-17 11:35:00

Growing evidence indicates that exposure to irregular patterns of light and darkness can cause the human circadian system to fall out of synchrony with the 24-hour solar day, negatively affecting human health - but scientists have been unable to effectively study the relationship between circadian disruptions and human maladies.

Daysimeter
©Rensselaer/Dennis Guyon
The Daysimeter, shown above, measures an individual's daily rest and activity patterns, as well as exposure to circadian light -- short-wavelength light, particularly natural light from the blue sky, that stimulates the circadian system.


A study by researchers in Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's Lighting Research Center (LRC) provides a new framework for studying the effects of circadian disruption on breast cancer, obesity, sleep disorders, and other health problems.

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Colombia: AIDS in the time of war

Teo Ballvé
North American Congress on Latin America
2008-07-16 08:11:00

The combatants in Columbia's conflict threaten AIDS victims and even facilitate the spread of the disease, but powerful activist groups are fighting for their rights.

A few months before Myrian Cossio's 20th birthday, in San José del Guaviare, a bustling frontier town deep in Colombia's eastern tropical lowlands, armed men forced her into a car. She immediately knew they were from one of the three armed groups fighting in Colombia's decades-long civil war - army, paramilitary, and guerrillas. They took her to the town's outer limits and put a gun to her head. "We know you have AIDS, and we know you work with those whores and faggots," they told her. She had 48 hours to leave town, or they'd kill her.

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TV overrides brain, makes kids fat, study suggests

Tom Spears
CanWest News Service
2008-07-15 06:48:00

OTTAWA - Watching TV at mealtime can make children overeat, as the distraction overrides signals that normally make a person feel full, Canadian research has found.

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Scientists find key brain circuits for attention

Michael Kahn
Reuters
2008-07-16 06:21:00

LONDON - Scientists have identified the brain circuits that play a key role in helping us pay attention, a finding that may help explain why things go wrong in diseases such as Alzheimer's and attention deficit disorders.

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Dutch farmers boycott British cattle after TB outbreak in Holland

Lucy Cockcroft and Caroline Stocks
UK Telegraph
2008-07-15 18:12:00

Dutch farmers are boycotting cattle from the UK, an export industry worth around £270 million, after calves sent to Holland were found to be infected by bovine tuberculosis.

The calves were traced after tuberculosis (TB) reactors were found on a British farm which exported the animals in May.

Dutch authorities have placed 27 farms in Holland under TB restrictions and 12 cattle have tested positive for the highly infectious disease, which damages the animal's lungs and eventually leads to death.

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Scotland: Inspectors find filthy conditions at hospital where 18 patients died of superbug C.diff

Raymond Hainey
Sunday Mail
2008-07-13 18:00:00

Hospital inspectors uncovered a catalogue of filth, decay and malpractice five months AFTER a killer superbug outbreak began.

Eighteen people have died from the C.difficile bug at overcrowded Vale of Leven Hospital in six months.

Last night their relatives spoke of their shock at the squalor found on the wards.

Inspectors found the appalling conditions at the hospital - where the first C.diff case came in December - on May 27.

Since then, another patient has died partly as a result of contracting the bug and two more have been infected.

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Science & Technology
Single Boulder May Prove That Antarctica And North America Were Once Connected


Science Daily
2008-07-17 16:57:00

A lone granite boulder found against all odds high atop a glacier in Antarctica may provide additional key evidence to support a theory that parts of the southernmost continent once were connected to North America hundreds of millions of years ago.

Writing in the July 11 edition of the journal Science, an international team of U.S. and Australian investigators describe their findings, which were made in the Transantarctic Mountains, and their significance to the problem of piecing together what an ancient supercontinent, called Rodinia, looked like. The U.S. investigators were funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Image
©John Goodge / University of Minnesota-Duluth
John Goodge and a colleague collecting specimens in the Transantarctic Mountains.


Previous lines of scientific evidence led researchers to theorise that about 600-800 million years ago a portion of Rodinia broke away from what is now the southwestern United States and eventually drifted southward to become eastern Antarctica and Australia.

The team's find, they argue, provides physical evidence that confirms the so-called southwestern United States and East Antarctica (SWEAT) hypothesis.




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Glimpses Of Earliest Forms Of Life On Earth: Remnant Of Ancient 'RNA World' Discovered


Science Daily
2008-07-17 16:52:00

Some bacterial cells can swim, morph into new forms and even become dangerously virulent - all without initial involvement of DNA. Yale University researchers describe July 18 in the journal Science how bacteria accomplish this amazing feat - and in doing so provide a glimpse of what the earliest forms of life on Earth may have looked like.

Ronald Breaker
©Yale University
Ronald Breaker and the chemical structure of cyclic di-GMP.


To initiate many important functions, bacteria sometimes depend entirely upon ancient forms of RNA, once viewed simply as the chemical intermediary between DNA's instruction manual and the creation of proteins, said Ronald Breaker , the Henry Ford II Professor of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology at Yale and senior author of the study.

Proteins carry out almost all of life's cellular functions today, but many scientists like Breaker believe this was not always the case and have found many examples in which RNA plays a surprisingly large role in regulating cellular activity. The Science study illustrates that - in bacteria, at least - proteins are not always necessary to spur a host of fundamental cellular changes, a process Breaker believes was common on Earth some 4 billion years ago, well before DNA existed.

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Brain region linked to obsessive disorder risk

Michael Kahn
Reuters
2008-07-17 16:38:00

Scientists have located an area in the brain that fails to "kick-in" for people with obsessive compulsive disorder and those at risk of developing the condition.

brain scans
©REUTERS/Adam Hampshire/University Of Cambridge/Handout
Undated brain scans show brain activity in healthy brains and ones with obsessive compulsive disorder.


The discovery could allow researchers to diagnose the debilitating disorder much earlier and better track how drug treatments are working, they reported in the journal Science.

"The main finding is that in people with obsessive compulsive disorder and their unaffected relatives, part of their orbitofrontal cortex didn't kick in on line as it should have," said Samuel Chamberlain, a neuroscientist at the University of Cambridge, who led the study.

"This is the first study to identify underactive brains in people at risk of OCD."

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Three Red Spots Mix It Up On Jupiter


Science Daily
2008-07-17 16:29:00

A new sequence of Hubble Space Telescope images offers an unprecedented view of a planetary game of Pac-Man among three red spots clustered together in Jupiter's atmosphere. The images were taken by the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2, developed and built by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

Jupier three spots
©NASA, ESA, A. Simon-Miller (Goddard Space Flight Center), N. Chanover (New Mexico State University) and G. Orton (Jet Propulsion Laboratory)
This time series (click on image for full view) shows the passage of the "Red Spot Jr." in a band of clouds below (south) of the Great Red Spot. The "baby red spot" is in the same latitudinal band as the Great Red Spot.


The time series shows the passage of the "Red Spot Jr." in a band of clouds below (south) of the Great Red Spot. "Red Spot Jr." first appeared on Jupiter in early 2006 when a previously white storm turned red. This is the second time, since turning red, it has skirted past its big brother apparently unscathed.

But this is not the fate of "baby red spot," which is in the same latitudinal band as the Great Red Spot. This new red spot first appeared earlier this year. The baby red spot gets ever closer to the Great Red Spot in this picture sequence until it is caught up in its anticyclonic spin. In the final image, the baby spot is deformed and pale in color and has been spun to the right (east) of the Great Red Spot. Amateur astronomers' observations confirm that this pale spot is the migrating baby spot.

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Eruptions wiped out ocean life 94 million years ago


University of Alberta
2008-07-16 16:27:00

University of Alberta scientists contend they have the answer to mass extinction of animals and plants 93 million years ago. The answer, research has uncovered, has been found at the bottom of the sea floor where lava fountains erupted, altering the chemistry of the sea and possibly of the atmosphere.

Earth and Atmospheric Science researchers Steven Turgeon and Robert Creaser found specific isotope levels of the element osmium, an indicator of volcanism in seawater, in black shale - rocks containing high amounts of organic matter - drilled off the coast of South America and in the mountains of central Italy.

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TeleEye used to study meteor disintegration in the atmosphere


Advanced Imaging Pro
2008-07-10 15:25:00

Image
©Unknown
The meteor research team of Tican Astronomical Observatory employs TeleEye RX.


TeleEye RX Press Release

TeleEye RX Video Recording Server has found a new, interesting application at the Tican Astronomical Observatory in Croatia. Young scientists from Croatia are working on some meteor disintegration in the Earth's atmosphere. TeleEye RX364 is involved in a research investigating the coincidence of meteor occurrence and change of electrostatic field in the upper atmosphere and on the ground.

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Pre-Incan tomb found in Peru


Reuters
2008-07-06 15:21:00

Image
©Unknown


Archeologists have discovered the intact tomb of a pre-Incan leader who lived 1,600 years ago that could help solve mysteries about Peru's ancient Moche civilization, the group's lead scientist said on Saturday.

The tomb, called Huaca del Pueblo, was dug up in the province of Lambayeque, some 770 km north of Lima, a coastal desert region where the Moche culture blossomed between 100 BC and 600 AD.

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NASAs solar observatory to improve forecasts of space weather


Thaindian News
2008-07-14 15:01:00

With assistance from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), NASAs Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) will peer deep inside the sun, with the aim of improving forecasts of space weather.

About six times each minute of every hour for at least five years, the soon-to-be launched NASA satellite will measure the suns quirky and sometimes stormy output of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) light.

To ensure that this solar stake-out yields data useful for understanding the weather in space and its earthly consequences, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) are helping a NASA team prepare for annual rocket-borne check-ups of key instruments aboard the Solar Dynamics Observatory.

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Tree branching key to efficient flow in nature and novel materials


Duke University
2008-07-17 14:09:00

Nature, in the simple form of a tree canopy, appears to provide keen insights into the best way to design complex systems to move substances from one place to another, an essential ingredient in the development of novel "smart" materials.

Duke University engineers believe that an image of two tree canopies touching top-to-top can guide their efforts to most efficiently control the flow of liquids in new materials, including the next generation of aircraft and rocket "skins" that can self-repair when damaged, or self-cool when overheated.

"Examples of this branching design tendency are everywhere in nature, from the channels making up river deltas to the architecture of the human lung, where cascading pathways of air tubes deliver oxygen to tissues," said Adrian Bejan, J.A. Jones Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Duke's Pratt School of Engineering.

Image
©Adrian Bejan
Canopy-to-Canopy


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Geologists study China earthquake for glimpse into future


Penn State
2008-07-06 13:44:00

The May 12 earthquake that rocked Sichuan Province in China was the first there in recorded history and unexpected in its magnitude. Now a team of geoscientists is looking at the potential for future earthquakes due to earthquake-induced changes in stress.

Around the world, earthquakes like the one in China are associated with triggered aftershocks that are very large. In 1999, a 7.1 earthquake in Duzce, Turkey, followed a 7.4 magnitude earthquake in Izmit, Turkey. In 2004, an 8.7 magnitude earthquake struck three months after the Sumatra Andaman earthquake of magnitude 9.2. While analysis of the Turkish earthquakes was not timely enough to shed light on the second earthquake there, the researchers believe that information on the Sumatra Andaman earthquake did illuminate the situation.

For the May 12 earthquake, the researchers performed analysis of co-seismic stress transfer onto Sichuan basin faults using broad ranges because at this time, exact values for all the various factors are unknown. The researchers report in today's (July 6) advanced online edition of Nature that "this approach enables rapid mapping of faults with heightened rupture likelihood."

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New Way To Weigh Giant Black Holes


Science Daily
2008-07-17 11:30:00

How do you weigh the biggest black holes in the universe? One answer now comes from a completely new and independent technique that astronomers have developed using data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory.

Image
©X-ray (NASA/CXC/Univ. of California Irvine/P.Humphrey et al.); Optical (NASA/STScI)
A composite image from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory (shown in purple) and Hubble Space Telescope (blue) shows the giant elliptical galaxy NGC 4649. By applying a new technique, scientists used Chandra data to measure the black hole at its center to be about 3.4 billion times more massive than the Sun. The value from this X-ray technique is consistent with a more traditional method using the motions of stars near the black hole. NGC 4649 is now one of only a handful of galaxies for which the mass of a supermassive black hole has been measured with two different methods.


By measuring a peak in the temperature of hot gas in the center of the giant elliptical galaxy NGC 4649, scientists have determined the mass of the galaxy's supermassive black hole. The method, applied for the first time, gives results that are consistent with a traditional technique.

Astronomers have been seeking out different, independent ways of precisely weighing the largest supermassive black holes, that is, those that are billions of times more massive than the Sun. Until now, methods based on observations of the motions of stars or of gas in a disk near such large black holes had been used.

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Our Haunted Planet
Flashback: Officials: Blasts heard near Pakistani capital may have been from sonic boom


Associated Press
2008-06-30 14:03:00

Investigators found no physical evidence of loud explosions heard Monday near the Pakistani capital and officials said it may have been a sonic boom caused by fast-moving aircraft.

The blasts were heard in Rawalpindi and the capital, Islamabad, two cities about 7 miles (12 kilometers) apart. Rawalpindi houses the headquarters of
Pakistan's army and the residence of President Pervez Musharraf, a key U.S. ally in the war on terror.

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Africa: 17 Die at Prayer Session

Emmanuel Ugwu
Thisday.com
2008-07-16 23:42:00

About 17 persons were alleged to have died in mysterious circumstances during a church prayer session in a private home at Umuoluihe in Alaoma community near Omoba in Isialangwa South Local Government Area of Abia State.


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UK: Experts investigate mysterious smell

Mark Smith
Runcorn and Widnes Weekly News
2008-07-16 23:35:00

Government experts are investigating what residents in the Ditton area have described as a "strange smell" near their homes last Thursday.

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UFO; Radar shows large, fast, unexplained object in Texas


Associated Press
2008-07-15 23:02:00

FORT WORTH - Radar documents examined by a UFO group stir up thoughts of an enormous aircraft without transponders traveling up to 2,100 miles-per-hour in Texas.

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Don't Panic! Lighten Up!
Satire to Sue New Yorker

Steve Young
Steve Young on Politics
2008-07-16 17:30:00

In an unprecedented legal move that should shakeup the dictionary industry already under siege by critics and linguists, Satire - the word and its definition - has filed suit against The New Yorker for classifying its cartoon depiction of Barack and Michele Obama as satire.

"Words can no longer stand by and let the media abuse them without retribution," said Satire's lawyer, Noah Webster VI. "Words have rights too. But more importantly, they have real meaning and represent to people the truth. The courts have said so."

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