Wearing the mantle of education reform, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg told attendees at a recent summit on innovation in education that,“My philosophy is that for education you need to start at a really, really young age.”
A really, really good way to do that, Zuckerberg said, is to let kids ages 13 and under join Facebook.
Research Credit: afterhours
KHOU:
Newly-released e-mails from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality show the agency’s top commissioners directed staff to continue lowering radiation test results, in defiance of federal EPA rules.
The e-mails and documents, released under order from the Texas Attorney General to KHOU-TV, also show the agency was attempting to help water systems get out of formally violating federal limits for radiation in drinking water. Without a formal violation, the water systems did not have to inform their residents of the increased health risk.
“It’s a conspiracy at the TCEQ of the highest order,†said Tom Smith, of the government watchdog group Public Citizen. “The documents have indicted the management of this commission in a massive cover-up to convince people that our water is safe to drink when it’s not.â€
Smith is talking about what happened to residents who live in communities served by utilities like Harris County Municipal Utility District 105. For years, tests performed by the Texas Department of State Health Services showed the utility provided water that exceeded the EPA legal limit for exposure to alpha radiation.
However, the TCEQ would consistently subtract off each test’s margin of error from those results, making the actual testing results appear lower than they actually were. In MUD 105’s case, the utility was able to avoid violations for nearly 20 years, thanks to the TCEQ subtractions.
…
Alpha radiation is emitted from radionuclides such as uranium and radium. While health scientists have said it poses little danger if someone is externally exposed to it, the experts maintain that ingesting even the smallest amount of the particles can cause damage to DNA, and in rare cases, cause cancer.
The head of a Catholic religious order in the Netherlands has confirmed one of his subordinate priests served on the board of an organisation that promotes paedophilia.
Herman Spronck, head of the Dutch arm of the Salesian order, said in a statement Friday the priest served on the board of the“Martijn” organization, which is widely reviled but not illegal.
“Of course we reject this and distance ourselves from this personal initiative” on the part of the priest, Spronck’s statement said.
“Membership in such organizations does not fit with the ethos of the Salesian order.”
However, RTL Nieuws, which broke the story, published interviews both with Spronck and the priest, identified as 73-year-old“Father Van B.,” in which they defend some paedophile relationships.
“Society thinks these relationships are harmful. I disagree,” RTL quoted Van B. as saying. He served on Martijn’s board from 2008 until 2010, when the organization’s founder was arrested for alleged possession of child pornography. That case is ongoing.
RTL quoted Spronck as saying that“formally I always say that everyone must obey the law. But these relationships do not necessarily have to be damaging.”
Spronck and his organisation could not be reached for comment.
BBC:
China has expanded export quotas for rare earth metals, further tightening its grip on the minerals used in a number of high-tech electronics.
From Friday, iron alloys containing more than 10% of rare earths will fall under the export quota, the commerce ministry said in a statement.
Rare earths are a collection of 17 chemical elements in the periodic table.
World manufacturers rely heavily on China for these minerals.
Rare earth metals are used in high tech goods such as mobile phone handsets, hybrid car batteries, wind turbines and weapons guidance systems .
China had already cut exports by about 35% in the first half of 2011 driving up prices to record levels. It produces around 97% of rare earth metal supply.
If you’ve read the lead story in The New York Times on President Barack Obama’s Middle East speech this afternoon, you’re probably under the impression that the president has taken a bold new step to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The first paragraph of the story, filed from Washington, is quite dramatic. Obama,“seeking to harness the seismic political change unfolding in the Arab world… publicly called for the borders prevailing before the 1967 Israeli-Arab war to be the baseline for a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the first time an American president has explicitly taken that position.”
The only problem is, it’s not much of a shift at all.The key word in that opening paragraph is that word“explicitly.” What it means in this context, is that he said something that multiple presidents have said before him, but with slightly weaker language. What did he say?“The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states.”
That an eventual settlement would be based around borders from before the 1967 war, with land“swaps” of some kind to reflect the growth of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, has been a central assumption behind the peace process kicked off under President Bill Clinton in the early 1990s and pursued with subtle variations by presidents George W. Bush and Obama after him. Last year, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told reporters, amid a push to restart peace talks that failed, that a solution could be found that“reconciles the Palestinian goal of an independent and viable state based on the 1967 lines, with agreed swaps, and the Israeli goal of a Jewish state with secure and recognized borders.”
Sound familiar?
What wasn’t in Obama’s speech was anything new on how you get from here (complete dysfunction– it’s a“process” by convention only at this point) to there (peace). He made no mention of the settlement freeze his administration had pushed for– and failed to get – in return for restored talks with the Palestinian leadership. He also sought to shoot down Palestinian efforts to win recognition for an independent state at the United Nations, something the Palestinian Authority has been gearing up for in September.
Fresh doubts have arisen about the safety of genetically modified crops, with a new study reporting presence of Bt toxin, used widely in GM crops, in human blood for the first time.
Genetically modified crops include genes extracted from bacteria to make them resistant to pest attacks.
These genes make crops toxic to pests but are claimed to pose no danger to the environment and human health. Genetically modified brinjal, whose commercial release was stopped a year ago, has a toxin derived from a soil bacterium called Bacillus thuringiensis ( Bt).
Till now, scientists and multinational corporations promoting GM crops have maintained that Bt toxin poses no danger to human health as the protein breaks down in the human gut. But the presence of this toxin in human blood shows that this does not happen.
Scientists from the University of Sherbrooke, Canada, have detected the insecticidal protein, Cry1Ab, circulating in the blood of pregnant as well as non-pregnant women.
They have also detected the toxin in fetal blood, implying it could pass on to the next generation. The research paper has been peer-reviewed and accepted for publication in the journal Reproductive Toxicology. The study covered 30 pregnant women and 39 women who had come for tubectomy at the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Sherbrooke (CHUS) in Quebec.
None of them had worked or lived with a spouse working in contact with pesticides.
They were all consuming typical Canadian diet that included GM foods such as soybeans, corn and potatoes. Blood samples were taken before delivery for pregnant women and at tubal ligation for non-pregnant women. Umbilical cord blood sampling was done after birth.
Cry1Ab toxin was detected in 93 per cent and 80 per cent of maternal and fetal blood samples, respectively and in 69 per cent of tested blood samples from non-pregnant women. Earlier studies had found trace amounts of the Cry1Ab toxin in gastrointestinal contents of livestock fed on GM corn. This gave rise to fears that the toxins may not be effectively eliminated in humans and there may be a high risk of exposure through consumption of contaminated meat.
As Binney imagined it, ThinThread would correlate data from financial transactions, travel records, Web searches, G.P.S. equipment, and any other“attributes†that an analyst might find useful in pinpointing “the bad guys.†By 2000, Binney, using fibre optics, had set up a computer network that could chart relationships among people in real time. It also turned the N.S.A.’s data-collection paradigm upside down. Instead of vacuuming up information around the world and then sending it all back to headquarters for analysis, ThinThread processed information as it was collected—discarding useless information on the spot and avoiding the overload problem that plagued centralized systems. Binney says, “The beauty of it is that it was open-ended, so it could keep expanding.â€
…
When Binney heard the rumors, he was convinced that the new domestic-surveillance program employed components of ThinThread: a bastardized version, stripped of privacy controls.“It was my brainchild,†he said. “But they removed the protections, the anonymization process. When you remove that, you can target anyone.†He said that although he was not “read in†to the new secret surveillance program, “my people were brought in, and they toldme, ‘Can you believe they’re doing this?They’re getting billing records on U.S. citizens! They’re putting pen registers’ â€â€”logs of dialled phone numbers—“ ‘on everyone in the country!’ â€
Drake recalled that, after the October 4th directive,“strange things were happening. Equipment was being moved. People were coming to me and saying, ‘We’re now targeting our own country!’ †Drake says that N.S.A. officials who helped the agency obtain FISA warrants were suddenly reassigned, a tipoff that the conventional process was being circumvented. He added, “I was concerned that it was illegal, and none of it was necessary.†In his view, domestic data mining “could have been done legally†if the N.S.A. had maintained privacy protections. “But they didn’t want an accountable system.â€
Aid, the author of the N.S.A. history, suggests that ThinThread’s privacy protections interfered with top officials’ secret objective—to pick American targets by name. “They wanted selection, not just collection,†he says.
…
Binney, for his part, believes that the agency now stores copies of all e-mails transmitted in America, in case the government wants to retrieve the details later. In the past few years, the N.S.A. has built enormous electronic-storage facilities in Texas and Utah. Binney says that an N.S.A. e-mail database can be searched with“dictionary selection,†in the manner of Google. After 9/11, he says, “General Hayden reassured everyone that the N.S.A. didn’t put out dragnets, and that was true. It had no need—it was getting every fish in the sea.â€
Research Credit: coxsone
Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the head of the International Monetary Fund and the man French Socialists hope will be the next occupant of the Elysée Palace, was arrested at JFK airport in New York on Saturday afternoon accused of a sex attack on a Times Square hotel maid earlier in the day.
He was taken off an Air France flight by officers from the Port Authority of New York and turned over to Manhattan police, according to a spokesman from the agency. Plainclothes officers boarded the flight at 4.45pm, moments before take-off, and took the 62-year-old out of the first-class cabin and into custody. He had been due to meet German chancellor Angela Merkel on Sunday.
“It was 10 minutes before its scheduled departure,” said John Kelly, a Port Authority spokesman.
Port Authority officers were acting on information from the New York Police Department, whose detectives had been investigating a brutal alleged attack on a woman employee at the Sofitel New York on West 44th Street in the heart of the city’s theatre district.
The 32-year-old woman told police that she entered Strauss-Kahn’s room at about 1pm on Saturday and he emerged from the bedroom naked, threw her down and tried to sexually assault her, NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said. She broke free and escaped the room and told hotel staff what had happened who called the police.
When New York City police detectives arrived moments later, Strauss-Kahn had already left the hotel, leaving behind his mobile phone and other personal items.“It looked like he got out of there in a hurry,” Browne added.
Overturning a common law dating back to the English Magna Carta of 1215, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Hoosiers have no right to resist unlawful police entry into their homes.
In a 3-2 decision, Justice Steven David writing for the court said if a police officer wants to enter a home for any reason or no reason at all, a homeowner cannot do anything to block the officer’s entry.
“We believe… a right to resist an unlawful police entry into a home is against public policy and is incompatible with modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence,” David said.“We also find that allowing resistance unnecessarily escalates the level of violence and therefore the risk of injuries to all parties involved without preventing the arrest.”
Research Credit: C
Wall Street Journal / Dow Jones:
Giant polyester covers will soon be placed around the damaged reactor buildings at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex to help contain the release of radioactive substances into the atmosphere, the plant operator said Friday.
Tokyo Electric Power Co. will install the first cover at the No. 1 reactor, the focus of recent stabilization efforts.
Workers will erect a steel framework and place a giant polyester tent-like cover around the reactor building. The cover will be 55 meters high, 47 meters long and 42 meters wide.
The operation to fit the cover will begin next month. Similar covers will be placed around units Nos. 3 and 4. The work is expected to be completed by the end of the year.
Japan will scrap a plan to obtain half of its electricity from nuclear power and will instead promote renewable energy and conservation as a result of its ongoing nuclear crisis, the prime minister said Tuesday.
Naoto Kan said Japan needs to“start from scratch†on its long-term energy policy after the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant was heavily damaged by a March 11 earthquake and tsunami and began leaking radiation.
Nuclear plants supplied about 30 percent of Japan’s electricity, and the government had planned to raise that to 50 percent by 2030.
Kan told a news conference that nuclear and fossil fuel used to be the pillars of Japanese energy policy but now the government will add two more pillars: renewable energy such as solar, wind and biomass, and an increased focus on conservation.
Related:Children Don Masks, Hats in Fukushima as Radiation Looms
After more than five years of planning, a national emergency alert system that will send messages to cellphones during disasters is set to be launched in New York City and Washington by the end of year.
The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Julius Genachowski, said the Commercial Mobile Alert System will direct messages to cellphones in case of a terrorist attack, natural disaster, or other serious emergency. The plan was approved by Congress in 2006.
Genachowski and the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s administrator, Craig Fugate, said the new system will be selective. “These are really focused on the highest levels of alerts, and those that require urgent action,’’ he said.
There will be at least three levels of messages, ranging from a critical national alert from the president to warnings about impending or occurring national disasters to alerts about missing or abducted children. People will be able to opt out of receiving all but the presidential alerts.
A special chip is required to allow a phone to receive the messages, and soon all new phones will have the technology. Some smartphones already have the chip, and software updates will be available when the network goes online later this year, Genachowski said.
Fugate said cellphones turned on in the vicinity of a disaster— an evacuation zone, for instance — would receive a message warning them of the impending danger. The alert would show up on the phone’s front screen, instead of the traditional text message inbox, and arrive with a distinct ring and probably a vibration.
U.S. home values fell in the first quarter at the fastest rate since late 2008, real estate data firm Zillow said on Monday, suggesting that a bottom will not be seen until 2012 at the earliest.
Zillow said its home value index fell 3 percent in the first three months of the year from the previous quarter, and was down 8.2 percent year-over-year.
The number of homeowners under water—or, those who owe more on the mortgage than their house is currently worth—amounted to 28.4 percent of single-family homeowners, representing a peak since Zillow began calculating the data in 2009.
That was up from 27 percent in the fourth quarter of last year.
Foreclosures also rose, following the moratoriums that had been in place in late 2010. In March, one out of every 1,000 homes was in foreclosure.
An unknown amount of radioactive water was released accidentally into the Mississippi River late last week at the Grand Gulf Nuclear Station.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is investigating the incident, but suggests the release poses no public health hazard.
Entergy Nuclear, which operates Grand Gulf, filed a report with the NRC explaining that crews located standing water at the plant last week after the area experienced heavy rains.
Water was found Thursday at the Unit 2 turbine building— which is an abandoned, partially constructed building — and began pumping the water into the river.
An alarm apparently alerted workers to the presence of tritium, a byproduct of the nuclear reactor processes. The pumps were turned off stopping the flow. Investigators are not certain why tritium was in the storm water or how it got there.
“Although the concentrations of tritium exceeded EPA drinking water limits, the release should not represent a hazard to public health because of its dilution in the river,†said Lara Uselding, public affairs officer with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Region IV.
Over 30 years ago, a man by the name of Nelson Bunker Hunt hatched the perfect plan: protect his inherited wealth (which then was one of the largest legacy fortunes in the world) from the inflationary destruction of“paper” assets by converting his assets into silver, and in the process cover the silver market, and send the price of silver to an inflation adjusted price of over $140 (nearly three times higher than the nearly record nominal silver price hit last week). Understandably, Hunt’s name has appeared very often in the popular media in recent months, since after all it was the“Hunt” price that the May 1 silver smackdown (which will most certainly never be investigated) that sent silver from $48 to $42 in seconds that was being protected by the paper cartel. Yet just who is Nelson Bunker Hunt? And how did he cover the silver market when did? What exactly did he do, and is someone doing a comparable silver cornering right now? And, most importantly, why? The answers, all of which are provided in this September 1980 Playboy article reprint, will surprise and astound many, primarily due to the myriad parallels between the world of the 1970s and our own. What follows is one man’s attempt to escape from the“system.”
From“Silverfinger”
IN THE SUMMER of 1979, an invisible hand reached out from an island in the Atlantic and quietly began tightening its grip on the world’s supply of silver. The fingers of that hand extended to London, New York, Dallas, Zurich and Jidda. But the only visible clue to its existence was a newly formed Bermuda shell corporation called International Metals Investment Company Ltd. That dull sounding little trading company was not just another offshore tax scam but the operating front for a secret partnership seemingly capable of controlling the world price and supply of silver.
The debt crisis in Greece has taken on a dramatic new twist. Sources with information about the government’s actions have informed SPIEGEL ONLINE that Athens is considering withdrawing from the euro zone. The common currency area’s finance ministers and representatives of the European Commission are holding a secret crisis meeting in Luxembourg on Friday night.
Greece’s economic problems are massive, with protests against the government being held almost daily. Now Prime Minister George Papandreou apparently feels he has no other option: SPIEGEL ONLINE has obtained information from German government sources knowledgeable of the situation in Athens indicating that Papandreou’s government is considering abandoning the euro and reintroducing its own currency.
Alarmed by Athens’ intentions, the European Commission has called a crisis meeting in Luxembourg on Friday night. In addition to Greece’s possible exit from the currency union, a speedy restructuring of the country’s debt also features on the agenda. One year after the Greek crisis broke out, the development represents a potentially existential turning point for the European monetary union— regardless which variant is ultimately decided upon for dealing with Greece’s massive troubles.
Given the tense situation, the meeting in Luxembourg has been declared highly confidential, with only the euro-zone finance ministers and senior staff members permitted to attend. Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Jörg Asmussen, an influential state secretary in the Finance Ministry, are attending on Germany’s behalf.
Schwenninger’s recent report“The American Middle Class Under Stress” has some stunning facts that highlight the struggles the average American is having getting a decent-paying job and keeping up with rising cost of living.
Here are just some of the sobering facts:
– There are 8.5 million people receiving unemployment insurance and over 40 million receiving food stamps.
– At the current pace of job creation, the economy won’t return to full employment until 2018.
– Middle-income jobs are disappearing from the economy. The share of middle-income jobs in the United States has fallen from 52% in 1980 to 42% in 2010.
– Middle-income jobs have been replaced by low-income jobs, which now make up 41% of total employment.
– 17 million Americans with college degrees are doing jobs that require less than the skill levels associated with a bachelor’s degree.
– Over the past year, nominal wages grew only 1.7% while all consumer prices, including food and energy, increased by 2.7%.
– Wages and salaries have fallen from 60% of personal income in 1980 to 51% in 2010. Government transfers have risen from 11.7% of personal income in 1980 to 18.4% in 2010, a post-war high.
The consortium in charge of restructuring the world’s most infamous private security firm just added a new chief in charge of keeping the company on the straight and narrow. Yes, John Ashcroft, the former attorney general, is now an “independent director†of Xe Services, formerly known as Blackwater.
Ashcroft will head Xe’s new “subcommittee on governance,†its backers announced early Wednesday in a statement, an entity designed to “maximize governance, compliance and accountability†and “promote the highest degrees of ethics and professionalism within the private security industry.â€
In other words, no more shooting civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan; no more signing for weapons its guards aren’t authorized to carry in warzones; no more impersonations of cartoon characters to acquire said weaponry; and no more ‘roids and coke on the job.
A Nato air strike in Tripoli has killed the youngest son of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, a Libyan government spokesman has said.
Saif al-Arab Gaddafi, 29, was killed along with three of Muammar Gaddafi’s grandsons, according to reports.
The Libyan leader was in the building at the time of the strike, but was unharmed. Several of Gaddafi’s friends and relatives were wounded.
TVA safely shut down its Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant in Alabama with emergency backup power this week, but power outages across the Tennessee Valley still left the utility without enough emergency sirens to warn nearby residents of potential safety problems at both Browns Ferry in Alabama and the Sequoyah Nuclear Plant near Soddy-Daisy.
In a notice to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission released Friday, TVA said more than 60 percent of its sirens around Browns Ferry and about a third of its warning sirens around Sequoyah were inoperable this week when electricity service was lost to the sirens following Wednesday’s tornadoes and wind storms.
With so many sirens not working, TVA has had to be prepare plans to use police vehicles with loud- speakers to notify residents living within 10 miles of the plant should a nuclear accident occur.
A McJob looked mighty appealing to tens of thousands of people in the Chicago area.
More than 75,000 job-seekers applied for 2,000 area positions with McDonald’s during the fast food king’s first-ever“National Hiring Day” on April 19.
Applicants packed franchises in Illinois, Southern Wisconsin and Northwest Indiana. McDonald’s filled all 2,000 jobs, including more than 1,000 posts in the Chicago area alone, a McDonald’s spokesperson said.
CNN:
Wal-Mart’s core shoppers are running out of money much faster than a year ago due to rising gasoline prices, and the retail giant is worried, CEO Mike Duke said Wednesday.
“We’re seeing core consumers under a lot of pressure,” Duke said at an event in New York.“There’s no doubt that rising fuel prices are having an impact.”
Wal-Mart shoppers, many of whom live paycheck to paycheck, typically shop in bulk at the beginning of the month when their paychecks come in.
Lately, they’re“running out of money” at a faster clip, he said.
“Purchases are really dropping off by the end of the month even more than last year,” Duke said.“This end-of-month {purchases} cycle is growing to be a concern.
The Federal Reserve will end its program of pumping hundreds of billions of dollars into the economy in June but will keep interest rates near zero for the foreseeable future.
An al-Qaida operative accused of bombing two Christian churches and a luxury hotel in Pakistan in 2002 was at the same time working for British intelligence, according to secret files on detainees who were shipped to the US military’s Guantánamo Bay prison camp.
Adil Hadi al Jazairi Bin Hamlili, an Algerian citizen described as a“facilitator, courier, kidnapper, and assassin for al-Qaida”, was detained in Pakistan in 2003 and later sent to Guantánamo Bay.
But according to Hamlili’s Guantánamo“assessment” file, one of 759 individual dossiers obtained by the Guardian, US interrogators were convinced that he was simultaneously acting as an informer for British and Canadian intelligence.
We have a pdf of the indictment of Dr. Poul Thorsen the Danish researcher held in highest esteem for having“debunked” the autism vaccine connection many years ago. As Dr. Max Wiznitzer said about another doctor recently,“If you can’t trust the researcher, you can’t trust the research.”
—
Danish Scientist Indicted in U.S.
Via:Copenhagen Post:
Thorsen’s research on autism is widely known in academic circles, where he was until this week a highly respected figure. A paper of his on the subject, which is known as ‘The Danish Study’, is quoted extensively to refute the autism vaccine connection.
Each count of wire fraud carries a maximum of 20 years in prison and each count of money laundering a maximum of 10 years in prison, with a fine of up to $250,000 for each count. The federal government will also seeks forfeiture of all property derived from the alleged offenses.
Related:Federal Indictment of Poul Thorsen(.pdf)
Research Credit: anothernut
President Barack Obama made stunning accusations about accused Wikileaks whistleblower PFC Bradley Manning, directly asserting that Manning“broke the law.†Apparently the President of the United States of America and a self-described Constitutional scholar does not care that Manning has yet to be tried or convicted for any crime.
Research Credit: anothernut
CBS:
With gas prices pushing $4 a gallon, a lot of people are trying to stretch their dollar at the gas pump, but some of them are trying to stretch it a little too far.
Since the beginning of March, AAA has seen an 18 percent increase in the number of roadside calls for people running out of gas.
Related:U.S. Dollar
A review of technologies that create three-parent embryos to avoid mitochondrial disease has found no evidence that the methods are unsafe, calling for further research. Medical charities have followed up the report with a call to the UK’s health secretary to prepare to regulate the technology in clinics.
Three new studies draw a link between prebirth exposure to a class of pesticides widely used on food crops and lower intelligence scores in children.
The effect is especially noticeable in kids from a California farming region where they and their mothers were also potentially exposed to pesticides through their use on local crops.
The pesticides in question are known as organophosphates, which kill insects by disrupting their brains and nervous systems. First developed in a more potent form as nerve poisons during World War II, they can disrupt people’s nervous systems as well, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The research doesn’t prove that organophosphate exposure is bad for the developing brains of infants and children. That may be impossible to confirm because ethical constraints prevent scientists from randomly assigning kids to be exposed to pesticides to see what happens.
Still,“there’s a body of evidence that’s beginning to build” in support of a link, said Brenda Eskenazi, co-author of one of the studies and director of the Center for Environmental Research and Children’s Health at the University of California, Berkeley.
Although organophosphates are no longer used in bug-killing products designed for the home, they remain common in agriculture, the researchers noted.
Two of the studies, conducted by researchers at Mt. Sinai Medical Center and Columbia University, examined kids in New York City, while Eskenazi’s study looked at 329 kids and their mothers in the Salinas Valley area of central California. All of the studies found links between exposure to the pesticides in pregnant mothers and lower IQ scores in their kids by age 7.
In the Salinas Valley study, researchers looked at signs of pesticide exposure in urine taken from the mothers during pregnancy and later from their children.
The researchers found that every 10-fold increase in organophosphates detected during a mother’s pregnancy corresponded to a 5.5-point drop in overall IQ scores in her children by age 7.
In fact, the 20 percent of the children whose mothers appeared to have been exposed to the least pesticides had about a 7-point higher IQ level, on average, than those in the 20 percent born to mothers with the highest exposure, the researchers reported.
The difference is equivalent to about six months of brain development in a typical child, Eskenazi said. And the differences remained even when the researchers adjusted their statistics so they wouldn’t be thrown off by factors such as the education levels of the mothers and exposure to other toxins such as lead, she noted.
Eskenazi pointed out that the association was“substantial” in terms of whole populations, and might result in more children in need of special education and other services.
Research Credit: minerva
In Michigan, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has filed a complaint alleging that Michigan State Police officers used forensic cellphone analyzers to snoop in drivers’ cellphones during routine traffic stops. PM talked to a Fourth Amendment expert to sort through whether that amendment’s protections against illegal search and seizure should stop an officer from scanning your phone.
U.S. Government Printing Office:
Jacket Number:735-412/413
Bid Opening Date: 10:00 AM, PREVAILING CHICAGO, IL TIME, ON April 18, 2011.
Product: Paste-on-fold (self cover) Pamphlets (Spanish and English Versions).
Title: 735-412: National Detainee Handbook: Spanish 735-413: National Detainee Handbook: English
Quantity: 735-412: 221,367 (includes 2 GPO Chicago inspection samples) 735-413: 129,567 (includes 2 GPO Chicago inspection samples)
Ship/Deliver Date: MUST deliver complete on or before April 29 D, 2011.
Research Credit: WS
CNN:
Standard& Poor’s lowered its outlook for the nation’s long-term debt Monday, even as it reaffirmed the agency’s top-tier rating for the U.S. economy.
S&P maintained its‘AAA/A-1+’ credit rating on U.S. sovereign debt, saying the nation’s“highly diversified” economy and“effective monetary policies” have helped support growth.
The United Nations warned on Friday of a looming food aid shortage in Afghanistan that could leave more than 7 million people hungry unless it received urgent cash donations of over $250 million to buy more supplies.
Most of those who will go short of food are women and children, but overall those at risk make up nearly a quarter of the country’s population of around 30 million, said the U.N.’s World Food Programme (WFP).
Sitting, it would seem, is an independent pathology. Being sedentary for nine hours a day at the office is bad for your health whether you go home and watch television afterward or hit the gym. It is bad whether you are morbidly obese or marathon-runner thin.“Excessive sitting,†Dr. Levine says, “is a lethal activity.â€
Belarus’ central bank has stopped selling gold to local retail customers for Belarussian roubles, it said on Friday, after demand for precious metals soared due to expectations of a currency devaluation.
The bank did not explain its decision.
Belarus is in talks with Russia on a $3 billion bailout package that Minsk hopes will help it avoid a painful devaluation of the rouble and offset the large current account deficit.
Belarussians bought 470 kilograms of gold from the central bank last month, up from 209 kilograms in January and February together, as they sought to protect their savings.
Analysts say that Belarus will have to eventually devalue the rouble by about 20-30 percent even if it receives aid from Moscow. However, the central bank has said it would not make any such moves until late April.
Research Credit: AN
CNBC:
Google shares slid in extended trading Thursday after the firm posted a profit that missed Wall Street expectations for the quarter, the first reporting period for the company since it named a new CEO.
But if you want to get a true sense of what the“shadow budget” is all about, all you have to do is look closely at the taxpayer money handed over to a single company that goes by a seemingly innocuous name: Waterfall TALF Opportunity. At first glance, Waterfall’s haul doesn’t seem all that huge— just nine loans totaling some $220 million, made through a Fed bailout program. That doesn’t seem like a whole lot, considering that Goldman Sachs alone received roughly $800 billion in loans from the Fed. But upon closer inspection, Waterfall TALF Opportunity boasts a couple of interesting names among its chief investors: Christy Mack and Susan Karches.
Christy is the wife of John Mack, the chairman of Morgan Stanley. Susan is the widow of Peter Karches, a close friend of the Macks who served as president of Morgan Stanley’s investment-banking division.Neither woman appears to have any serious history in business, apart from a few philanthropic experiences. Yet the Federal Reserve handed them both low-interest loans of nearly a quarter of a billion dollars through a complicated bailout program that virtually guaranteed them millions in risk-free income.
The technical name of the program that Mack and Karches took advantage of is TALF, short for Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility. But the federal aid they received actually falls under a broader category of bailout initiatives, designed and perfected by Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, called“giving already stinking rich people gobs of money for no fucking reason at all.”
Research Credit: cgroove69
Take the X-47B experimental killer drone made by Northrop Grumman, the first drone intended to fly off an aircraft carrier. At the Navy League’s annual Sea Air Space convention outside Washington, Northrop and the Navy and unveiled new details about the tailless, triangular plane and their schedule to get it flying off a carrier. Rule number one of the X-47B: it’s not “remotely piloted.â€
Put the phrase“remotely piloted†out of your mind, says Janis Pamiljans, a Northrop vice president who handles the company’s Unmanned Combat Air System Demonstration (UCAS-D) portfolio. When it gets on board an aircraft carrier, it’s going to be controlled by a “mouse click,†Pamiljans says. The click of a mouse will turn on the engines. Another will get it to taxi. Keep clicking, and the plane will “take off and come home.â€
…
Both Engdahl or Pamiljans accordingly ducked a question about how the plane’s boasted autonomy will handle any weapons releases. Everyone who fears Skynet generally blanches at the idea of robots firing weapons on their own.But the X-47B will be“on autopilot 100 percent of the time,†Engdahl says.Nothing left to do but welcome our robot overlords.
The Nuclear Safety Commission of Japan released a preliminary calculation Monday saying that the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant had been releasing up to 10,000 terabecquerels of radioactive materials per hour at some point after a massive quake and tsunami hit northeastern Japan on March 11.
The disclosure prompted the government to consider raising the accident’s severity level to 7, the worst on an international scale, from the current 5, government sources said. The level 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale has only been applied to the 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe.
The current provisional evaluation of 5 is at the same level as the Three Mile Island accident in the United States in 1979.
According to an evaluation by the INES, level 7 accidents correspond with a release into the external environment radioactive materials equal to more than tens of thousands terabecquerels of radioactive iodine 131. One terabecquerel equals 1 trillion becquerels.
Milk from Little Rock and drinking water from Philadelphia contained the highest levels of Iodine-131 from Japan yet detected by the Environmental Protection Agency, according to data released by EPA Saturday.
The Philadelphia sample is below the EPA’s maximum contaminant level (MCL) for iodine-131, but the Little Rock sample is almost three times higher.
Sony Corp. and Canon Inc. were among manufacturers that shut plants in Japan following a 7.1- magnitude earthquake yesterday, delaying their recovery from last month’s record temblor.
Sony, Japan’s largest exporter of consumer electronics, said it suspended operations at two plants in Miyagi prefecture because of power outages caused by last night’s aftershock of the 9-magnitude temblor that struck March 11. Canon, Nikon Corp., Fujitsu Ltd., Tokyo Electron Ltd., NTT DoCoMo Inc. and KDDI Corp. also reported disruptions today.
Harold Vinegar, the former chief scientist of Royal Dutch Shell, has devised an ambitious plan that would, if successful, turn Israel into one of the world’s leading oil producers. Now chief scientist for Israel Energy Initiatives (IEI), Vinegar maintains that the 238 sq km Shefla Basin holds the world’s second largest shale deposits outside the United States, from which around 250 billion barrels of oil – about the same as Saudi Arabia’s proven reserves, could be extractable. IEI estimates the marginal cost of production at between US$35 and US$40 per barrel. That, says Vinegar, would be cheaper than the US$60 or so per barrel it would cost to extract crude oil in more hospitable locations such as the Arctic, and even favourably with the US$30-US$40 in Brazilian deepwater.
IEI, owned by the American telecom giant IDT Corp, anticipates starting commercial production by 2020, producing 50,000 barrels a day initially. While that figure is a fraction of the 270,000 barrels per day Israel currently consumes, Vinegar maintains it is a further key step toward achieving energy independence. Vinegar proposes thermal recovery for Israeli shale oil.
The IEI shale oil project has already attracted serious interest from investors. In November last year,Jacob Rothschildand media mogulRupert Murdochbought an $11million stake in Genie Oil and Gas, the division of IDC that is the parent company of IEI. Genie’s advisory board also includes former vice-presidentDick Cheneyand hedge fund investorMichael Steinhardt. But it seems development funding is likely to be no bar to the Shefla project. Vinegar states,“Funding is not needed for the pilot and demonstration, although once we are getting 50,000 barrels per day, we would want to have a partner. We have been approached by all the majors.â€
Tokyo Electric Power Co. said it stopped highly radioactive water leaking into the sea from a pit near one of the reactors at its stricken nuclear station north of Tokyo, after five days of trying to stem the flow.
Related: Fishing Halted in Japan’s Ibaraki After Radioactive Water Contaminates Sea
Via:Bloomberg:
Fishermen in Ibaraki prefecture, Japan’s fifth-largest seafood producer, halted operations after tainted fish were detected south of Fukushima, where radioactive water from a stricken nuclear plant contaminated the sea.
About 96 percent of fishing off the coast of Ibaraki was suspended after sand lance contaminated with higher-than- acceptable levels of cesium were discovered yesterday, said Tomoki Mashiko, assistant director at the fishing policy division of the prefectural government. Fishing in Ibaraki had been suspended since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, restarted as early as March 28, and then suspended again today.
Sushi restaurants and hotels, including Shangri-La Asia’s luxury chain, dropped Japanese seafood from their menus because of radiation fears. Japan exported 565,295 metric tons of marine products worth 195 billion yen ($2.3 billion) last year. A fishing industry group in Fukushima asked Tokyo Electric Power Co. to stop dumping toxic water into thesea as the operator of the damaged nuclear plant struggles to stem radiation leakage.
“The action may be undermining the whole fishing industry in Japan,†Ikuhiro Hattori, chairman for the National Federation of Fisheries Co-Operative Associations, told a vice trade minister today, referring to Tepco dumping water.
AP:
While most of the country is still dealing with the daily realities of a struggling economy, University of California, Berkeley professor Robert Reich said the super-rich are richer today than they have ever been.
“It’s very hard to spend $20 million a year, even $10 million,” said Reich, former Secretary of Labor during the Clinton administration.“The super-rich are always on the lookout for new thrills and new expensive thrills.”
High-end retailers such as Tiffany& Co. and Neiman Marcus continue to do well despite the economy, he said. And even as NASA experiences budget cuts, the extraordinary wealthy are willing to pay small fortunes to go into space or into the depths of the ocean, said the public policy professor.
“People who are selling to the super-rich basically can’t lose,” he said.“Richard Branson can dig a hole to the center of the earth and charge a million dollars a day to go through it and he’d find people to take him up on the offer.”
AP:
McDonald’s Corp. plans to hold its first national hiring day April 19 to fill 50,000 openings at its restaurants nationwide.
The company says it is making a concerted effort to add staff as its business improves and as more of its restaurants stay open 24 hours a day.
The single biggest atrocity in the long battle for control of Ivory Coast has emerged after aid workers discovered the bodies of up to 1,000 people in the town of Duekoue.
Charity workers who reached Duekoue said it appeared the killings had taken place in a single day, shortly after the town fell to troops loyal to Alassane Ouattara, the man internationally-recognised as having won last year’s presidential election.
The apparent massacre came despite the presence of United Nations troops and– if confirmed– will cast a shadow over Mr Outtara’s assumption of the Ivory Coast’s presidency after a four-month battle to oust Lawrence Gbagbo, the former president who lost the November election but refused to step down.
William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, said he was“gravely concerned†by the violence and loss of life in Ivory Coast and added: “I am determined that all alleged human rights abuses… must be investigated and those responsible held to account.
The International Committee for the Red Cross said its staff discovered more than 800 bodies of people who were clearly local civilians. They were mainly men who had been shot and left where they fell, the organisation said, either alone or in small groups dotted around the town, which lies at the heart ofIvory Coast’s economically crucial cocoa producing region.
U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke’s two-year fight to shield crisis-squeezed banks from the stigma of revealing their public loans protected a lender to local governments in Belgium, a Japanese fishing-cooperative financier and a company part-owned by the Central Bank of Libya.
Dexia SA (DEXB), based in Brussels and Paris, borrowed as much as $33.5 billion through its New York branch from the Fed’s “discount window†lending program, according to Fed documents released yesterday in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. Dublin-based Depfa Bank Plc, taken over in 2007 by a German real-estate lender later seized by the German government, drew $24.5 billion.
The biggest borrowers from the 97-year-old discount window as the program reached its crisis-era peak were foreign banks, accounting for at least 70 percent of the $110.7 billion borrowed during the week in October 2008 when use of the program surged to a record. The disclosures may stoke a reexamination of the risks posed to U.S. taxpayers by the central bank’s role in global financial markets.
“The caricature of the Fed is that it was shoveling money to big New York banks and a bunch of foreigners, and that is not conducive to its long-run reputation,†said Vincent Reinhart, the Fed’s director of monetary affairs from 2001 to 2007.
Corn rose the most allowed by the Chicago Board of Trade as concerns mounted that food costs will climb after the latest U.S. government forecasts on supplies and acreage. Soybeans and wheat also jumped.
At the entrance of a sports gymnasium in Fukushima city earlier this month, a doctor wearing a white hat, mask and gloves was seen holding a radiation monitor over the hands of a visiting resident.
The doctor then held it over the person’s forehead, abdomen and back. The resident was then asked to raise their heels to check the back of the shoes at the end of the procedure to get a reading on the monitor.
After the series of problems at one of the country’s largest nuclear power plant, these radiation screenings have been conducted at the entrance of shelters in Fukushima Prefecture since March 13, two days after the devastating quake and tsunami crippled the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. They are intended to check if a resident has been exposed to radiation.
“Certificates” are then issued by the doctors to those who have been declared free of any abnormality.
But these certificates have come to be an unexpected function in the community that has become nervous about anything radioactive. Some shelters have started demanding that certificates be presented before any residents evacuating from the nuclear disaster are admitted.
Some officials in the central government, however, are raising their eyebrows about such documentation while demand for them appears to be growing.
Research Credit: EB
After an intense search, a crew of amateur satellite sleuths has spotted the U.S. Air Force’s second X-37B space plane– a robotic spacecraft that launched into orbit March 5.
The mission of the unmanned X-37B space plane, which is known officially as the Orbital Test Vehicle 2 (OTV-2), is shrouded in secrecy. The Boeing-built spacecraft is believed to be involved in reconnaissance— perhaps testing powerful sensors for a new generation of spy satellites. It looks much like a small version of NASA’s space shuttles and blasted off from the Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.
While its mission is secret, the OTV-2 itself has attracted the eyes of dedicated skywatchers hoping to spot it in orbit just as they saw its predecessor– the first X-37B spacecraft, OTV-1 – during the OTV-1′s months-long flight last year.
A new video, recorded by amateur Canadian skywatcher Kevin Fetterof Brockville, Ontario, shows the OTV-2 as a bright point of light soaring across the night sky.
Fetter was successful in getting video of the OTV-2 gliding past the binary star Eta Serpentis on March 24. The OTV-2 and the star can easily be seen with the naked eye, shining at a magnitude 3 on the scale astronomers use to measure the brightness of sky objects (with the lowest numbers representing the greatest brightness).
Taos County Sheriff’s Office stated Tuesday (March 22) that they have identified the body found in the RÃo Grande Gorge last Friday (March 18) as belonging to a nuclear scientist from Washington state.
Undersheriff Ed Romero said that Rodger Lynn Dickey, 56, died after he jumped from the Gorge Bridge. Dickey, a scientist working on contract with SandÃa Laboratory, was originally from Richland, Wash.
Related:Several Other Dead Nuclear Scientists
Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. said early Monday the concentration of radioactive substances of the puddle was 100,000 times higher than that usually measured in water in a reactor core, correcting its earlier analysis of 10 million times higher.
—End Update—
Update: And Now…“The number is not credible”
Wow. Who would believe anything that these goons say at this point?
Via:AP:
Emergency workers struggling to pump contaminated water from Japan’s stricken nuclear complex fled from one of the troubled reactors Sunday after reporting a huge increase in radioactivity— a spike that officials later apologetically said was inaccurate.
The apology came after employees fled the complex’s Unit 2 reactor when a reading showed radiation levels had reached 10 million times higher than normal in the reactor’s cooling system. Officials said they were so high that the worker taking the measurements had withdrawn before taking a second reading.
On Sunday night, though, plant operators said that while the water was contaminated with radiation, the extremely high reading was a mistake.
“The number is not credible,” said Tokyo Electric Power Co. spokesman Takashi Kurita.“We are very sorry.”
He said officials were taking another sample to get accurate levels, but did not know when the results would be announced.
—End Update—
The radioactivity in water in one unit of a hobbled nuclear power plant in northeastern Japan has tested 10 million times higher than normal, the plant’s operator said Sunday.
Leaked water in Unit 2 of the Fukushima Daiichi plant measured 10 million times higher than usual radioactivity levels when the reactor is operating normally, Tokyo Electric Power Co. spokesman Takashi Kurita told reporters in Tokyo.
Radioactivity in the air in Unit 2 measured at 1,000 millisieverts per hour— four times higher than the occupational limit of 250 millisieverts set by the government, he said.
The readings came as workers grappled with how to remove and store the highly radioactive water pooling in four troubled units at the plant.
The discovery of puddles with radiation levels 10,000 times the norm sparked a temporary evacuation of the plant on Thursday. Two workers who stepped into the water were hospitalized with possible burns.
The development set back feverish efforts to start up a crucial cooling system knocked out in a massive March 11 earthquake and tsunami, but has helped experts get closer to determining the source of the dangerous leak.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano, speaking Sunday on TV talk shows, said the radioactive water is“almost certainly” seeping from a reactor core.
On Saturday, the utility admitted that it had failed to adequately warn workers about dangerous radioactive water at the plant.
More:CNN:
Radiation levels in pooled water tested in the No. 2 nuclear reactor’s turbine building at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant are 10 million times above normal, utility company and government officials said Sunday.
Hidehiko Nishiyama, an official with Japan’s nuclear and industrial safety agency, said the surface water showed 1,000 millisieverts of radiation. By comparison, an individual in a developed country is naturally exposed to 3 millisieverts per year, though Japan’s health ministry has set a 250 millisievert per year cumulative limit before workers must leave the plant.
The 10-million-times normal reading applies to radioactive iodine-134 found in the No. 2 building’s pooled water, according to the nuclear safety agency. This isotope loses half its radioactive atoms every 53 minutes, compared to a half-life of every eight days for radioactive iodine-131 that has also been detected in recent days.
This exponentially dwindling amount of radiation means, according to Nishiyama, that it’s unlikely that sealife— and, several steps down the line, humans who might eat once contaminated seafood— will suffer greatly from the iodine-134 exposure.
In the first such effort, Tata group chairman Ratan Tata has signed on a leading scientist from the globally renowned Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to commercialize cutting-edge research that promises to produce cheap power from water.
Daniel Nocera, a professor of chemistry and energy, and his group of elite scientists at MIT attracted attention from Tata when he heard they had found a way towards one of science’s holy grails—to imitate photosynthesis, the process by which plants breathe, and produce power while doing so.
…
As he did with the Nano small car and the Swach non-electric water purifier, Tata hopes Nocera’s solution will be the latest in the group’s effort to serve the “bottom of the pyramid†and turn a profit while doing so, said a Tata group executive who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Tata’s hope is that Nocera’s “personalized energy†can produce a stand-alone, mini-power plant, perhaps a refrigerator-sized box, that could reinvent rural electricity supply and bring power to about three billion people worldwide who don’t have it.
Nocera said MIT’s technique has seen more than a year of preliminary research and hopes to produce enough electricity from a bottle-and-half of water, however dirty, to power a small home.
“We hope to have a prototype in a year-and-a-half,†said Nocera, whose other backers include Bob Metcalfe, co-inventor of the Ethernet and a former director of the US’ Central Intelligence Agency.
CNN:
Toyota’s U.S. manufacturing arm is preparing for a possible shutdown because of parts shortages from Japan, a Toyota spokesman said. Word has gone out to all 13 of Toyota’s factories in the United States, Canada and Mexico. This does not mean that the plants will stop working, Toyota spokesman Mike Goss said, but that they should be ready in case the need arises.
CBS:
South of El Paso, Texas, on Mexico’s side of the border, lies Juarez– the most dangerous city in the world. CBS News investigative correspondent Sharyl Attkisson reports ATF Special Agent Rene Jaquez has been stationed there for the past year, trying to keep U.S. guns from being trafficked into Mexico.
“That’s what we do as an agency,” Jaquez said.“ATF’s primary mission is to make sure that we curtail gun trafficking.”
That’s why Jaquez tells CBS News he was so alarmed to hear his own agency may have done the opposite: encouraged U.S. gun dealers to sell to suspected traffickers for Mexico’s drug cartels. Apparently, ATF hoped that letting weapons“walk” onto the street– to see where they’d end up– would help them take down a cartel.
Jaquez is so opposed to the strategy, he’s speaking out.“You don’t let guns walk. I’ve never let a gun walk.”
Yet ATF agents told us they were ordered to let thousands of weapons walk. Two of them, assault rifles, were later found at the murder scene of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in Arizona last December. Another gunrunning suspect under ATF surveillance was linked to the shooting of Customs Agent Jaime Zapata. And sources say many more“walked” weapons turned up at Mexican crime scenes.
Jaquez said,“I think this incidence is probably one of the darkest days in ATF’s history.”
But ATF wasn’t working alone on the case known as“Fast and Furious.” Documents show ATF had conference calls with“DHS” (Homeland Security).“USMS” (U.S. Marshals) and DEA. An“ICE,” or Customs agent, was on ATF’s Fast and Furious team. They were advised by an“AUSA,” or Assistant U.S. Attorney under the Justice Department.
Related:
ATF Let Hundreds of U.S. Weapons Fall into Hands of Suspected Mexican Gunrunners
U.S. regulators accused International Business Machines Corp. of a decade-long campaign of bribery in Asia, saying employees handed over shopping bags stuffed with cash in South Korea and arranged junkets for government officials in China in exchange for millions of dollars in contracts.
The Armonk, N.Y., technology giant agreed to pay $10 million to settle the civil charges, which allege“widespread” payment of bribes by more than 100 employees of IBM subsidiaries and a joint venture from 1998 to 2009. In exchange for the payments, the Securities and Exchange Commission said, IBM received contracts for computer gear.
President Barack Obama made a strong pitch for the Boeing F-18 jet fighter in a meeting with Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, but she did not indicate if her government had decided to buy the U.S.-made plane, the White House said on Sunday.
“The F-18 issue did come up. President Rousseff raised it,” White House aide Dan Restrepo told reporters in Rio de Janeiro, referring to the leaders’ bilateral meeting in Brasilia on Saturday that kicked off Obama’s five-day Latin American tour.
Brazil is weighing a multi-billion dollar bid to modernize its air force, and Obama has made promoting exports to boost U.S. jobs back home a central part of his trip to Brazil, Chile and El Salvador.
“President Obama underscored that the F-18 is the best plane on offer… in that the technology transfer package… is equivalent to the packages that are offered to partners and allies around the world,” said Restrepo, Obama’s top Latin American adviser.
Research Credit: anothernut
CNN:
Hours after French, British and American military forces unleashed cruise missiles and fighter jets, a defiant Moammar Gadhafi said Libya will fight back against undeserved“naked aggression.”
A coalition that includes Canada and Italy made good Saturday on international warnings to Gadhafi, hammering Libyan military positions in the first phase of an operation that will include enforcement of a no-fly zone.
More than 110 Tomahawk missiles fired from American and British ships and submarines hit about 20 Libyan air and missile defense targets in western portions of the country, U.S. Vice Adm. William Gortney said at a Pentagon briefing.
The U.S. will conduct a damage assessment of the sites, which include SA-5 missiles and communications facilities. A senior U.S. military official, who was not authorized to speak on the record, said the cruise missiles, which fly close to the ground or sea at about 550 miles per hour, landed near Misrata and Tripoli, the capital and Gadhafi’s stronghold.
Japanese engineers conceded on Friday that burying a crippled nuclear plant in sand and concrete may be a last resort to prevent a catastrophic radiation release, the method used to seal huge leakages fromChernobylin 1986.
But they still hoped to solve the crisis by fixing a power cable to two reactors by Saturday to restart water pumps needed to cool overheating nuclear fuel rods. Workers also sprayed water on the No.3 reactor, the most critical of the plant’s six.
It was the first time the facility operator had acknowledged burying the sprawling complex was possible, a sign that piecemeal actions such as dumping water from military helicopters or scrambling to restart cooling pumps may not work.
“It is not impossible to encase the reactors in concrete. But our priority right now is to try and cool them down first,” an official from the plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co, told a news conference.
General Motors plans to halt production Monday of the Chevrolet Colorado and GMC Canyon compact pickups made at Shreveport, La., because some parts come from Japan and aren’t available now.
The GM move is the first production halt directly linked to the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that wiped out portions of the northeast coast of Japan.
“We have suspended production at Shreveport for next week due to parts shortages due to the crisis in Japan. We will resume operations as soon as we can,” GM manufacturing spokesman Chris Lee tells Drive On. He wouldn’t identify the parts involved. Japanese companies often are the sole suppliers of electronics part for many vehicles.
AP:
Wholesale prices jumped last month by the most in nearly two years due to higher energy costs and the steepest rise in food prices in 36 years. Excluding those volatile categories, inflation was tame.
The Labor Department said Wednesday that the Producer Price Index rose a seasonally adjusted 1.6 percent in February— double the 0.8 percent rise in the previous month. Outside of food and energy costs, the core index ticked up 0.2 percent, less than January’s 0.5 percent rise.
Food prices soared 3.9 percent last month, the biggest gain since November 1974. Most of that increase was due to a sharp rise in vegetable costs, which increased nearly 50 percent. That was the most in almost a year. Meat and dairy products also rose.
Panic swept Tokyo on Tuesday after a rise in radioactive levels around an earthquake-hit nuclear power plant north of the city, causing some to leave the capital and others to stock up on food and supplies.
Several embassies advised staff and citizens to leave affected areas, tourists cut short vacations and multinational companies either urged staff to leave or said they were considering plans to move outside Tokyo where low levels of radiation have been detected.
CNN:
A blast at a nuclear reactor and a series of problems at a neighboring one led to a brief spike in radiation levels outside Japan’s troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant Monday, triggering even greater fears that dangerous radiation could add to the country’s devastation.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said he was not ruling out the possibility of a meltdown at all three troubled reactors at the plant.
The blast— caused by a buildup of hydrogen— also damaged the cooling system at reactor No. 2, starting a new round of problems for officials trying to contain the damage from Friday’s earthquake and tsunami.
The explosion at Fukushima Daiichi’s reactor No. 3 Monday morning injured 11 people. It was powerful enough to blow the roof and walls off a building, the Kyodo news agency reported.
More: Unit Three Uses More Toxic‘MOX’ Fuel
Via:Cnet:
The fuel used in the Japanese nuclear reactor where an explosion occurred today is more volatile and toxic than the fuel used in the other reactors there, a Japanese nuclear expert warned.
At a press conference in Tokyo, Masashi Goto, who worked for Toshiba as a reactor researcher and designer, said the mixed oxide (MOX) fuel used in unit 3 of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant contains plutonium, which is much more toxic than the fuel used in the other reactors.
MOX fuel is a mixture of uranium and plutonium reprocessed from spent uranium, and is sometimes involved in the disposal of weapons-grade plutonium.
Goto added that the MOX also has a lower melting point than the other fuels. The Fukushima facility began using MOX fuel last September, becoming the third plant in Japan to do so.
Research Credit: GP
Earlier reports indicated that the gas used was tear gas, but doctors who have been treating the wounded refuted that claim today.
“The material in this gas makes people convulse for hours. It paralyses them. They couldn’t move at all. We tried to give them oxygen but it didn’t work,” said Amaar Nujaim, a field doctor who works for Islamic Relief.
“We are seeing symptoms in the patient’s nerves, not in their respiratory systems. I’m 90 per cent sure its nerve gas and not tear gas that was used,” said Sami Zaid, a doctor at the Science and Technology Hospital in Sanaa.
Mohammad Al-Sheikh, a pathologist at the same hospital, said that some of the victims had lost their muscular control and were forced to wear diapers.
“We have never seen tear gas cause these symptoms. We fear it may be a dangerous gas that is internationally forbidden,” Al-Sheikh said.
The government considers a family of four to be impoverished if they take in less than $22,000 a year. Based on that standard, and government projections of unemployment, it is estimated the poverty rate for kids in this country will soon hit 25 percent. Those children would be the largest American generation to be raised in hard times since the Great Depression.
Research Credit: ottilie
CNN:
NATO has launched around-the-clock surveillance flights of Libya as it considers various options for dealing with escalating violence in the war-torn country, America’s ambassador to the organization told reporters Monday.
Representatives of key Western powers also highlighted the possibility of establishing a no-fly zone in Libya— part of growing campaign to break strongman Moammar Gadhafi’s grip on power.
A federal class action claims Florida and a private contractor detain drivers on the Florida Turnpike if they pay a toll with a $50 or $100 bill, and won’t let them go until they cough up personal information. The class claims the detentions are dangerous and unconstitutional, and that sometimes drivers and passengers are detained and interrogated for paying tolls with bills as small as $5.
The class action in Tampa also names collections company Faneuil as a defendant. Florida hired Faneuil to provide toll collectors and supervisors on its toll roads.
Lead plaintiff Joel Chandler claims the state and Faneuil violate the Constitution by authorizing toll collectors, at their discretion, to imprison motorists and their passengers and hold them until they divulge personal information, some of which is written up on“Bill Detection Reports.”
…
“The personal information recorded by toll collectors includes, but is not limited to the vehicle make, model, color, tag number and state of issuance. Other information such as the vehicle occupants’ race, gender, and relative age has also been recorded.” The class adds:“Toll collectors have required motorists to provide additional personal information, including drivers license information in exchange for their release.”
Toll collectors trapped motorists at toll booths by holding the barrier down, even though the drivers had enough money to pay the toll.
The Duke of York’s billionaire paedophile friend kept a secret journal, described as “The Holy Grail†by lawyers, which listed his alleged under-aged victims and the celebrity guests he entertained at his Florida mansion.
Jeffrey Epstein used the“black book†to log contact details of the girls that gave massages to him and his friends and those of his powerful and famous associates, such as Bill Clinton and Donald Trump.
A servant at the£4 million manor in Palm Beach, where Prince Andrew enjoyed daily massages during several stays, stole the journal and initially kept it secret from investigators. He is now in prison after attempting to sell it for $50,000 (£31,000).
Epstein, 58, was accused of sex offences by more than 20 under-aged girls. They alleged that after being recruited as masseuses by aides including Ghislaine Maxwell, daughter of the late tycoon Robert, they were seriously assaulted and then paid hundreds of dollars.
The billionaire financier, who attended The Queen’s birthday party in 2000, was sentenced to 18 months in prison in 2008, having secured a plea bargain that prevented full criminal trials. He later settled more than a dozen multi-million dollar civil lawsuits from his alleged victims out of court.
The previously undisclosed journal, however,“detailed the full scope and the extent of Epstein’s involvement with underage girlsâ€, according to lawyers for several alleged victims.
It contained the names of girls that Epstein allegedly abused in“Michigan, California, West Palm Beach, New York, New Mexico, and Parisâ€, according to court papers.
It also listed extensive contact details for Epstein’s house guests, who had “no connection whatsoever†with alleged offences, including Mr Clinton, the former US President, and Mr Trump, the famous businessman.
It could not be confirmed last night whether the book contained contact details for the Duke. One lawyer for Epstein’s alleged victims said: “I would bet he is, because he is that good a friendâ€.
There is no suggestion that the Duke did anything wrong. However he has this week faced a string of questions about his judgment due to his association with a convicted child sex offender.
Epstein kept 21 different phone numbers for Mr Clinton, including some for his assistant and also“Clinton’s personal numbersâ€, the court papers state.
Alfredo Rodriguez, a servant who“saw numerous underage girls coming into Epstein’s mansion for purported ‘massages’,†took the journal and did not mention it to investigators.
“Because of the importance of the information in the journal to the civil cases, Mr Rodriguez called it ‘The Holy Grail’,†the court documents state.
He attempted to sell the book to lawyers for $50,000 (£31,000) in August 2009– by which time Epstein had already been sentenced and released from jail.
The lawyers contacted the FBI, who sent an undercover agent to buy the book from Rodriguez. He was then arrested and charged with obstruction of justice.
Rodriguez, who said in sworn testimony that he was terrified of Miss Maxwell, also said he took the book as an“insurance policy†to prevent Epstein making him “disappearâ€.
He was sentenced to 18 months in prison– the same punishment Epstein received for his sex offences – in June last year. His wife, Patricia Dunn, told The Daily Telegraph that he was “sorry†for his error.
Dave Lee Brannon, an Assistant Public Defender who represented Rodriguez, said:“If this book had been produced when requested, Mr Epstein’s sentence may have been significantly different.â€
Details of the journal emerged in a lawsuit brought in Florida by Epstein against Brad Edwards, a lawyer representing several alleged victims.
Epstein alleges Edwards was linked to a“Ponzi scheme” run by a colleague, which lured investors by falsely claiming Epstein had agreed to settle sex-offence lawsuits for hundreds of millions of dollars.
Edwards rejects the allegation, which has already been dismissed by the Florida Bar.
The Homeland Security Department paid contractors millions of dollars to develop and study surveillance systems that could covertly track pedestrians and check under people’s clothing with airport-style body scanners as they enter train stations, bus depots or major events, newly released documents show.
Two contracts the department signed in 2005 and 2006 were part of its effort to acquire technology to find suicide bombers in a crowd of moving people, according to documents given to the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), a privacy-rights group that is suing Homeland Security.
The department dropped the projects in a“very early” phase after testing showed flaws, Homeland Security spokesman Bobby Whithorne says.
Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and Creighton University School of Medicine in Omaha have reported that markedly higher intake of vitamin D is needed to reach blood levels that can prevent or markedly cut the incidence of breast cancer and several other major diseases than had been originally thought. The findings are published February 21 in the journal Anticancer Research.
While these levels are higher than traditional intakes, they are largely in a range deemed safe for daily use in a December 2010 report from the National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine.
“We found that daily intakes of vitamin D by adults in the range of 4000-8000 IU are needed to maintain blood levels of vitamin D metabolites in the range needed to reduce by about half the risk of several diseases– breast cancer, colon cancer, multiple sclerosis, and type 1 diabetes,†said Cedric Garland, DrPH, professor of family and preventive medicine at UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center. “I was surprised to find that the intakes required to maintain vitamin D status for disease prevention were so high – much higher than the minimal intake of vitamin D of 400IU/day that was needed to defeat rickets in the 20th century.â€
Related:Natural News
Also Tuesday, the U.S. ordered two warships and 1200 Marines to the waters off of Libya, but a top Obama administration official stopped short of saying the forces would intervene in the clashes that have consumed the country following anti-Gadhafi protests here in recent weeks.
At a Pentagon briefing, Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced he had ordered to the Mediterranean the USS Ponce and the USS Kearsarge, an amphibious-assault ship thatn typically carries infantrymen and troop-transport helicopters. Those ships currently have 800 marines, in addition to 400 U.S.-based Marines who will be airlifted to meet the ships. He said the ships would be ready to perform evacuations and humanitarian relief.
Mr. Gates wouldn’t specify the other military options he has offered President Barack Obama. But he sounded a note of caution about sending U.S. assets into Libya.“We have to think about the use of the U.S. military in another country in the Middle East,” Mr. Gates said.“We are sensitive about all these things.”
It seems unusual for a staid, respected publication (one that has received three National Magazine Awards in just this past decade) to start treating a celebrated journalist (who himself has won two National Magazine Awards in just this past decade) as if he were nothing more than a paranoid crank.
It seems unusual, but it’s exactly what the staff of Foreign Policy has done to Seymour Hersh, following a lecture the venerated reporter gave at Georgetown University’s campus in Doha, Qatar. You may know Hersh as the dogged investigator who exposed the My Lai Massacre during Vietnam. You may know him as the staff writer for The New Yorker who published some of the earliest pieces on Abu Ghraib in May 2004. You might even know him as the man derided and then vindicated for claiming that Dick Cheney was running a secret assassination squad right out of the Vice President’s office. (In truth, the squadwas and is a bipartisan affair, initiated under Clinton and still operative under Obama.)
Yet, given the Foreign Policy staff’s derisive commentary on Seymour’s January 17th talk, you would think he was some credulous rube midway through his first Dan Brown novel.
Research Credit: MP
To get a sense of just how interconnected the formal and illicit dimensions of international political economy are, take a peek at this brief cable from the U.S. Embassy in Bogota published by WikiLeaks Sunday.
The cable details then-Ambassador William Woods’ hunt for two missing helicopters that had originally been sold to the Israeli military by the United States government, but had somehow ended up in the hands of multimillionaire Enilse Lopez, a businesswoman who was suspected of close ties to Colombian paramilitaries.
Research Credit: ottilie
Obama administration officials held talks on Sunday with European and other allied governments as they readied plans for the possible imposition of a no-fly zone over Libya to prevent further killings of civilians by forces loyal to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.
