Picture this: A 10-meter wide asteroid hits Earth and explodes in the atmosphere with the energy of a small atomic bomb. Frightened by thunderous sounds and shaking walls, people rush out of their homes, thinking that an earthquake is in progress. All they see is a twisting trail of debris in the mid-day sky.
This really happened on Oct. 8th around 11 am local time in the coastal town of Bone, Indonesia. The Earth-shaking blast received remarkably little coverage in Western press, but meteor scientists have given it their full attention. "The explosion triggered infrasound sensors of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) more than 10,000 km away," report researchers Elizabeth Silber and Peter Brown of the Univ. of Western Ontario in an Oct. 19th press release. Their analysis of the infrasound data revealed an explosion at coordinates 4.5S, 120E (close to Bone) with a yield of about 50 kton of TNT. That's two to three times more powerful than World War II-era atomic bombs.
Dexter Filkins, Mark Mazzetti & James Risen. New York Times 2009-10-27 21:59:00
Kabul, Afghanistan - Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the Afghan president and a suspected player in the country's booming illegal opium trade, gets regular payments from the Central Intelligence Agency, and has for much of the past eight years, according to current and former American officials.
The agency pays Mr. Karzai for a variety of services, including helping to recruit an Afghan paramilitary force that operates at the C.I.A.'s direction in and around the southern city of Kandahar, Mr. Karzai's home.
The financial ties and close working relationship between the intelligence agency and Mr. Karzai raise significant questions about America's war strategy, which is currently under review at the White House.
The ties to Mr. Karzai have created deep divisions within the Obama administration. The critics say the ties complicate America's increasingly tense relationship with President Hamid Karzai, who has struggled to build sustained popularity among Afghans and has long been portrayed by the Taliban as an American puppet. The C.I.A.'s practices also suggest that the United States is not doing everything in its power to stamp out the lucrative Afghan drug trade, a major source of revenue for the Taliban.
is an incredibly courageous Afghan woman, only 30 years old, living under the constant threat of being killed because she dares to speak the truth. The people who want to kill her are the people we put into power in Afghanistan.
Ms. Joya lived in refugee camps in Iran and Pakistan during Taliban rule. She loved to read and wished to share this gift with other Afghan women. With the support of a charity, Ms. Joya snuck back into Afghanistan and opened a secret school to teach young girls to read. This was at great risk to her personal safety, for the Taliban would have punished her severely if they found her out, which nearly occurred on a number of occasions.
One would think, given this history, that she would be pleased about the ejection of the Taliban and its aftermath. Not so:
Dust has been thrown into the eyes of the world by your governments [speaking to a British reporter]. You have not been told the truth. The situation now is as catastrophic as it was under the Taliban for women. Your governments have replaced the fundamentalist rule of the Taliban with another fundamentalist regime of warlords. [That is] what your soldiers are dying for. (quote from this piece in The Independent, October 21, 2009, which provides the material about Joya for this post).
Today's guest author is Deirdre Walker. She retired recently as the Assistant Chief of the Montgomery County, Maryland, Department of Police. She spent 24 years as a police officer.
"Do I have the right to refuse this search?"
This is a question I heard many times during my law enforcement career. Often my answer was no. But occasionally it would be "yes," followed by an admonition to have a good day.
For the last half of my career, I would have documented each interaction, whether or not it involved an arrest. I would have written down the nature and length of the interaction, the gender, race, and age of the person, and the outcome of the contact (arrest, citation, etc.).
I carry the baggage of this history with me as I've traveled over the last eight years, mindlessly placing my luggage on the conveyer belt and removing my shoes for TSA inspection.
Sam Stanton and Kim Minugh The Sacramento Bee 2009-10-30 12:30:00
A massive search continues off the Southern California coast for survivors of the midair collision between a Sacramento-based Coast Guard plane and a Marine helicopter, but a Pentagon spokesman said this morning it is unlikely any of the nine people aboard survived.
"The search is still on, but it's likely taken the lives of nine individuals," Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman, adding that the crash was a "tragic event."
The comments in Washington, D.C., came as numerous Navy and Coast Guard ships and aircraft maneuvered over a debris field 15 miles east of San Clemente Island, near where Coast Guard plane 1705, a C-130 Hercules search-and-resuce plane, had been operating Thursday night.
The plane and seven crew members took off from the Coast Guard station at McClellan Air Park in Sacramento's North Highlands neighborhood at about 3:30 p.m., Lt. Randall Black said this morning.
They arrived off the San Diego coast at about 4:45 p.m. to search for a rower who had been missing for two days after setting out in a 12-foot dinghy for Catalina Island. The plane was searching over the San Clemente area in the theory that ocean currents may have taken the rower there.
Lisa Stark and Devin Dwyer ABC News 2009-10-30 03:00:00
Massive Search for Nine Missing After Mid-Air Crash
The search continues for nine military personnel missing after a mid-air collision of two aircraft off the southern California coast Thursday night. So far, rescuers have not found any survivors or remains.
Officials say a Coast Guard C-130 transport plane, which carried seven passengers, had been on a search and rescue mission for a small boat reported missing since Wednesday. The U.S. Marine Super Cobra AH-1W helicopter, manned by two aviators, was conducting a training exercise out of Camp Pendleton.
Shortly after 7 p.m. Thursday night, an eyewitness reported seeing two large explosions and a large fireball 50 miles off the San Diego coast and 15 miles east of San Clemente Island.
Evan Perez and Gregory L. White Wall Street Journal 2009-10-30 15:10:00
One of Russia's most powerful tycoons -- barred entry to the U.S. for years due to U.S. government concerns about possible ties to organized crime -- visited the country twice this year under secret arrangements made by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska met with FBI agents in August and earlier this month as part of a continuing criminal probe, according to two administration officials. The focus of that probe couldn't be learned.
New York City - Today nine people were arrested outside of the corporate headquarters of Wellpoint, the largest provider of private health insurance to individuals in the country to protest their inordinate influence on the healthcare reform process. This is a part of a third wave of civil disobedience actions demanding Single-Payer Healthcare.Todays action was one of eleven taking place today. Eight more actions are expected to take place this week.
Gareth Porter Inter Press Service 2009-10-29 18:51:00
The revelation by the New York Times Wednesday that Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, has long been on the payroll of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency is only the tip of a much bigger iceberg of heavy dependence by U.S. and NATO counterinsurgency forces on Afghan warlords for security, according to a recently published report and investigations by Australian and Canadian journalists.
U.S. and other NATO military contingents operating in the provinces of Afghanistan's predominantly Pashtun south and east have been hiring private militias controlled by Afghan warlords, according to these sources, to provide security for their forward operating bases and other bases and to guard convoys.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was confronted repeatedly by Pakistanis Friday as she ended a tense three-day tour of the country, chastised by one woman who said a U.S. program using aerial drones to target terrorists amounted to "executions without trial."
On another thorny topic, Clinton slightly softened her blunt charge of a day earlier that Pakistani officials know where al-Qaida terrorists are hiding and are doing little about it.
Clinton faced sharp questions from Pakistani civilians about the U.S. effort that uses unmanned aircraft to launch missiles to kill terrorists along the porous, ungoverned border with Afghanistan.
But she refused to go into detail about the classified strikes that have killed both key terror leaders and bystanders, long a source of outrage among Pakistan's population despite an equally deadly campaign of militant-spawned bombings.
Despite a history of domestic terrorism, from Air India to the Toronto 18, Canada has a "serious blind spot" acknowledging that violent extremism imperils our national security, says the new head of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.
In his first public speech since becoming Canada's spy master this summer, Richard B. Fadden wasted no time Thursday railing against those he believes ignore, minimize and even applaud terrorism and the people caught up in it, while portraying government efforts to combat extremism as assaults on liberty.
Keep tabs on your child at all times with this small but sophisticated device that combines GPS and cellular technology to provide you with real-time location updates. The small and lightweight Little Buddy transmitter fits easily into a backpack, lunchbox or other receptacle, making it easy for your child to carry so you can check his or her location at any time using a smartphone or computer. Customizable safety checks allow you to establish specific times and locations where your child is supposed to be -- for example, in school -- causing the device to alert you with a text message if your child leaves the designated area during that time. Additional real-time alerts let you know when the device's battery is running low so you can take steps to ensure your monitoring isn't interrupted.
Presumably it can also be used to track people who aren't your kids.
UK government gets a final warning on claims that its laws don't protect Britons from ad targeting companies such as Phorm
Given the amount of CCTV there is everywhere, we know the UK tolerates spying on its citizens more than other EU countries. But now Britain might be taken to court by the EU for failing to provide the UK citizens with enough privacy and personal data protection.
The EU just launched the second step of legal action to force Britain to bring its data protection framework into line with its rules, which guarantee the confidentiality of electronic communication such as emails and internet surfing. Before being internationally embarrassed, the UK has two month to comply with the detailed opinion, which was sent to the UK by the European Commission yesterday and marks the second stage of infringement procedure.
The EU Commission has basically identified three failings. First, there is no independent authority supervising the interception of communications and hearing related complaints. Second, there is an excessively wide interpretation of the principle of consent given in Britain's Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act. Third, its sanctions against the interception of personal data are too limited.
Criminal record checks have gone 'too far' and must be tilted back towards those wanting to work with children, the new Supreme Court ruled yesterday.
In a victory for campaigners fighting the rise of the Big Brother state, the Justices ordered an overhaul of enhanced criminal records bureau checks against anybody seeking a job with a vulnerable adult or child.
In particular, the presumption in favour of disclosing 'soft intelligence' against an applicant came under attack.
Each year, around 20,000 people have details of this type of information disclosed to potential employers, in many cases scuppering their hopes of gaining a job.
But Lord Neuberger said soft intelligence may constitute nothing more than 'allegations of matters which are disputed by the applicant, or even mere suspicion or hints of matters which are disputed by the applicant'.
A secret court is seizing the assets of thousands of elderly and mentally impaired people and turning control of their lives over to the State - against the wishes of their relatives.
The draconian measures are being imposed by the little-known Court of Protection, set up two years ago to act in the interests of people suffering from Alzheimer's or other mental incapacity.
The court hears about 23,000 cases a year - always in private - involving people deemed unable to take their own decisions. Using far-reaching powers, the court has so far taken control of more than £3.2billion of assets.
The cases involve civil servants from the Office of the Public Guardian (OPG), which last year took £23million in fees directly from the bank accounts of those struck down by mental illness, involved in accidents or suffering from dementia.
Shortly after 9/11, George W. Bush secretly signed two executive orders. Both violated basic constitutional protections as well as U.S. obligations under international treaties, yet both carried the force of law.
They still do.
The first order grants the president (and other officials, including the secretary of defense, the secretary of homeland security and presumably certain postal clerks) the right to declare anyone--including an American citizen--an "unlawful enemy combatant." A person so declared has no redress, no way to appeal, no ability to challenge that designation. Once a person has been named an enemy combatant, according to the Bush Administration--and now to the Obama Administration--he has no rights. He can be held without charges forever, tortured, you name it--well, actually, the president or the secretary of defense names it.
In the second covert executive order, Bush authorized the CIA to target and assassinate said "enemy combatants"--again, including American citizens.
London - Leading banks have funded arms manufacturers, whose products include cluster bombs, to the tune of $5 billion in the past two years, despite an international accord to ban such weapons, a study said Thursday.
The report by Profundo consultancy and several NGOs said the banks loaned money to companies whose products include cluster bombs or their components.
It did not say the funds went directly to make cluster bombs. The manufacturers could use the money for any of their production lines.
The top five loan providers were Bank of America, Citigroup , JP Morgan, Barclays and Goldman Sachs, the study said.
A silent battle has been raging right under our noses, a fierce underground struggle pitting the U.S. against one of its closest allies. For all its newsworthiness, the media has barely noticed the story - except when it surfaces, briefly, like a giant fin jutting above the waves. The aggressor in this war is the state of Israel, with the U.S., its sponsor and protector, playing defense. This is the dark side of the "special relationship" - a battle of spy vs. spy.
Convicted spy Jonathan Pollard - now serving a life sentence - stole secrets so vital that an attempt by the Israelis to get him pardoned was blocked by a massive protest from the intelligence and defense communities. Bill Clinton wanted to trade Pollard for Israeli concessions in the ongoing "peace process," and he was only prevented from doing so by a threat of mass resignations by the topleadership of the intelligence community.
Bill Van Auken World Socialist Web Site 2009-10-29 21:22:00
At least 21 US soldiers and Marines have been killed in Afghanistan since last weekend, making October the bloodiest month for US forces since they invaded the country eight years ago. Still more have been wounded by roadside bombs, rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire.
Among those killed in the last several days was a 24-year-old California mother of two young daughters, Sgt. Eduviges Wolf, who died of wounds suffered when her vehicle was attacked wit a rocket-propelled grenade in Kunar province.
The covert Bush administration program that used retired military analysts to generate favorable wartime news coverage may not have been terminated, Raw Story has found.
In interviews, Pentagon officials in charge of the press and community relations offices - which worked in partnership on the military analyst program - equivocated on the subject of whether the program has ended.
Last May, the Pentagon's Office of Inspector General issued a memorandum rescinding a Bush administration investigative report on the retired military analyst program because it "did not meet accepted quality standards for an Inspector General work product." The now-retracted report had exonerated officials of using propaganda and referred to the program as just "one of many outreach groups."
Lebanon's ambassador to the United Nations has warned that Israel is exhibiting signs of an imminent attack on his country, the Lebanese newspaper Al-Hayyat reported on Friday.
Ambassador Noaf Salaam sent missives to the United Nations secretary general and to the Security Council condemning Israel's recent artillery fire on the village of Houla, the site where a Katyusha rocket was fired at the Upper Galilee last week.
Christopher Flavelle ProPublica 2009-10-16 18:27:00
On Thursday, the government released a flood of data about the stimulus, showing how 9,000 federal contractors spent their stimulus dollars - including the value of the contract, each project's status, and how much each of the contractor's five highest-paid officers were paid.
But when it came to presenting that data, Recovery.gov, the government's official site for stimulus information, highlighted one number in particular, posting it on the site's main page in large font: "JOBS CREATED/SAVED AS REPORTED BY FEDERAL CONTRACT RECIPIENTS: 30,383." To make extra certain of getting viewers' attention, the number itself appears in bright green.
Adrianne Appel Inter Press Service 2009-10-30 17:00:00
Boston - Big banks will not be forced to downsize and the public will be the last to know when they fail, a controversial bill unveiled by U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Congressman Barney Frank proposes.
The long-awaited "too big to fail" legislation was roundly criticised during a congressional hearing Thursday as a nod to the biggest financial firms in the U.S.
"This is TARP on steroids," said Rep. Brad Sherman, a Democrat, referring to the U.S. Treasury programme that gave trillions to financial companies.
The legislation was called for by Congress and President Barack Obama in the wake of the trillions recently spent by the U.S. government to rescue behemoth financial institutions like AIG and Bank of America, out of fear that their failure would bring down the whole financial system.
Ankara - Turkey is switching to national currencies in trade with Iran and China, ending dependence on the U.S. dollar and the euro for about 20% of its commodity turnover, local media reported on Wednesday.
Turkey has already switched to settlements in national currencies with Russia amid weakening confidence in the greenback as the world's major reserve currency. The move was initiated by Turkish President Abdullah Gul during his visit to Moscow in February.
Turkey's decision to make settlements with Iran and China in national currencies was announced during a visit to Iran by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The Turkish premier told a Turkish-Iranian business forum on Tuesday that the countries had prepared a legal framework for transition to settlements in national currencies.
"We have adopted a necessary legislative act and are prepared for the transition," the Turkish newspaper Milliyet quoted Erdogan as saying.
Luzi Ann Javier Bloomberg News 2009-10-30 15:03:00
India, the world's second-largest rice grower, may become a net importer for the first time in 21 years in 2010, potentially sparking the kind of "panic" that sent prices to records in 2008, an agricultural economist said.
India may import as much as 3 million metric tons next year after the wet season harvest plunged, Samarendu Mohanty, a senior economist at the International Rice Research Institute, said in an interview. Those would be the imports since 2006, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data.
Food price protests swept the globe from Bangladesh to Haiti last year after fears of shortages prompted producers including India to cut rice exports and importers increased purchases to secure supplies, sending prices to a record.
Checks sent by mistake - and now money must be repaid
Thousands of desperate jobless Bay Staters - at the end of their ropes and unemployment benefits - thought the state had tossed them a lifeline when new checks arrived in the mail, only to learn it was all a big mistake and now they have to give the money back.
The state Division of Unemployment Assistance mistakenly sent checks totaling $3.4 million to 4,159 out-of-work residents who'd exhausted their benefits, thanks to a glitch in the office's archaic computer system, the Herald has learned.
Officials have yet to notify the hardluck recipients of the gaffe.
Washington - U.S. consumer spending fell in September after four months of gains as a government program to boost auto purchases ended, adding to fears that economic growth could stumble without government support.
The Commerce Department said on Friday consumer spending fell 0.5 percent, the largest decline since December, after a 1.4 percent increase in August. The decline was in line with market expectations.
A separate report from the Labor Department showed employment costs in the United States rose 0.4 percent in the third quarter, matching the previous period's increase and indicating marginal gains in income.
U.S. stock index futures trimmed losses after the economic data, while U.S. government debt prices rose.
An earthquake, measuring 6.0 on the Richter scale, jolted most of the upper parts of Pakistan Thursday night, local TV channel reported Friday.
The earthquake rattled most of the areas of eastern Pakistan's Punjab province, North West Frontier Province and northern regions, creating panic and distress among the residents, the private TV ARY News reported.
The shocks, which hit at around 11:44 pm local time (1744 GMT) and lasted near 20 seconds, were felt in the major cities of Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Muzaffarabad, Lahore, Faisalabad and other areas. The epicenter was monitored in Hindukash mountain range, Pakistan Meteorological Department said.
Spanish researchers have confirmed that the largest bat in Europe, Nyctalus lasiopterus, was present in north-eastern Spain during the Late Pleistocene (between 120,000 and 10,000 years ago). The Greater Noctule fossils found in the excavation site at Abríc Romaní (Barcelona) prove that this bat had a greater geographical presence more than 10,000 years ago than it does today, having declined due to the reduction in vegetation cover.
Although this research study, published in the journal Comptes Rendus Palevol, is the second to demonstrate the bat's presence in the Iberian Peninsula, it offers the first description in the fossil record of the teeth of Nyctalus lasiopterus from a fragment of the left jaw.
"It is an important finding because this species is not common in the fossil record. In fact, the discovery of Nyctalus lasiopterus at the Abríc Romaní site (Capellades, Barcelona) is one of the few cases of fossils existing on the species in the European Pleistocene," says Juan Manuel López-García, principal author of the work and researcher at the Institute of Social Evolution and Human Palaeoecology at the Rovira i Virgili University (URV).
A strong earthquake struck the Hindu Kush region of eastern Afghanistan Thursday, but the U.S. Geological Survey said it had no reports of damage or injuries.
The preliminary magnitude was 6.0, the USGS said. The epicenter of the quake -- which struck about 10:15 p.m. (1:45 p.m. ET) -- was 255 kilometers (160 miles) north-northeast of the capital, Kabul.
The depth of the quake was 202 kilometers (126 miles), said USGS geophysicist Paul Caruso.
It was felt as far away as Islamabad, Pakistan. Because of the depth, Caruso said, it is not unusual for a quake to be felt quite a distance away.
Saturated fats have a deservedly bad reputation, but Johns Hopkins scientists have discovered that a sticky lipid occurring naturally at high levels in the brain may help us memorize grandma's recipe for cinnamon buns, as well as recall how, decades ago, she served them up steaming from the oven.
The Hopkins team, reporting Oct. 29 in Neuron, reveals how palmitate, a fatty acid, marks certain brain proteins - NMDA receptors - that need to be activated for long-term memory and learning to take place. The fatty substance directs the receptors to specific locations in the outer membrane of brain cells, which continually strengthen and weaken their connections with each other, sculpting and resculpting new memory circuits.
Moreover, the researchers report, this fatty modification is a reversible process, with some sort of on-off switch, offering possibilities for manipulating it to enhance or even, perhaps, erase memory.
"Before now, no one knew that NMDA receptors change in response to the addition of palmitate," says Richard Huganir, Ph.D., professor and director of the Solomon H. Snyder Department of Neuroscience at Johns Hopkins.
Imagine: during lunch your colleague throws an apple to you. You catch it (of course) without difficulty. No problem. But what actually happened? Did you consciously decide to catch the apple with two hands? And how did your hands know where they had to be to catch the apple? According to Dutch researcher Hemke van Doorn you can catch an apple like this thanks to the close cooperation between two separate visual systems. He has now established for the first time how these areas cooperate.
Van Doorn allowed a large number of study subjects to carry out different tests. He wanted to know if we do indeed work with two systems: one system that ensures conscious observation and one visual system that takes care of the movement. In order to demonstrate that the two visual areas are clearly separated, Van Doorn showed the study subjects rods with arrows at the ends. These arrows 'trick' our observation by making the rods seem longer or shorter.
When the study subjects had to say how long the rod was, they were tricked by the arrows. They estimated the length incorrectly. However, as soon as the study subjects were asked to pick up the rod, the size of their hand opening was found to be accurately adjusted to the actual length of the rod. The system for conscious observation and the visual system that guides movement are therefore clearly separated from each other. After all, one system made an error and the other did not.
A genetic tendency to depression is much less likely to be realized in a culture centered on collectivistic rather than individualistic values, according to a new Northwestern University study.
In other words, a genetic vulnerability to depression is much more likely to be realized in a Western culture than an East Asian culture that is more about we than me-me-me.
The study coming out of the growing field of cultural neuroscience takes a global look at mental health across social groups and nations.
Depression, research overwhelmingly shows, results from genes, environment and the interplay between the two. One of the most profound ways that people across cultural groups differ markedly, cultural psychology demonstrates, is in how they think of themselves.
Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) to treat menopausal estrogen deficiency has been in widespread use for over 60 years. Several observational studies over the years showed that HRT use by younger postmenopausal women was associated with a significant reduction in total mortality; available evidence supported the routine use of HRT to increase longevity in postmenopausal women. However, the 2002 publication of a major study, the Women's Health Initiative (WHI), indicated increased risk for certain outcomes in older women, without increasing mortality. This sparked debate regarding potential benefits or harm of HRT. In an article published in the November 2009 issue of The American Journal of Medicine, researchers conducted a meta-analysis of the available data using Bayesian methods and concluded that HRT almost certainly decreases mortality in younger postmenopausal women.
New research shows people who feel depressed tend to recall having more physical symptoms than they actually experienced. The study indicates that depression -- not neuroticism -- is the cause of such over-reporting.
Psychologist Jerry Suls, professor and collegiate fellow in the University of Iowa College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, attributes the findings to depressed individuals recalling experiences differently, tending to ruminate over and exaggerate the bad.
Published electronically this month in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine, the study was conducted by investigators in the UI Department of Psychology, the Center for Research in the Implementation of Innovative Strategies in Practice (CRIISP) at the Iowa City VA Medical Center, and the UI College of Nursing.
Junk food is almost as addictive as heroin, scientists have found.
A diet of burgers, chips, sausages and cake will program your brain into craving even more foods that are high in sugar, salt and fat, according to new research.
Over the years these junk foods can become a substitute for happiness and will lead bingers to become addicted.
Richard Merritt Duke University 2009-10-30 18:41:00
By taking advantage of the vagaries of the natural world, Duke University engineers have developed a novel approach that they believe can more efficiently harvest electricity from the motions of everyday life.
Energy harvesting is the process of converting one form of energy, such as motion, into another form of energy, in this case electricity. Strategies range from the development of massive wind farms to produce large amounts of electricity to using the vibrations of walking to power small electronic devices.
Bobbie Mixon National Science Foundation 2009-10-30 18:38:00
A new study reveals the important role inherited wealth plays in sustaining economic inequality in small scale societies. A team of 26 anthropologists, statisticians, and economists based at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico amassed an unprecedented data set allowing 43 estimates of a family's wealth inheritance and found that financial inequality among populations largely depends on the "technologies" that produce a people's livelihood.
According to the report, released in the October 30 edition of the journal Science, technologies differ across societies. Technologies are defined here to include everything one needs to make a living--from material things such as farms, herds and other real property, to knowledge, skills and other valuable resources.
Jennifer Viegas Discovery News 2009-10-30 18:16:00
The propensity to believe in paranormal phenomena and superstitions appears to arise in the womb, suggests new research.
The findings, published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, further indicate that a reduced ability for analytical thinking may correspond with increased intuitive thinking, which has been associated with a belief in extrasensory perception (ESP), ghosts, telepathy and other paranormal phenomena.
Author Martin Voracek claims his new study's determinations "suggest (there are) biologically based, prenatally programmed influences on paranormal and superstitious beliefs."
Two teams have observed a huge cosmic explosion that occurred 13 billion years ago in the farthest point of the universe ever detected, the journal Naturereports.
The groups, a British team using telescopes in Hawaii, and an Italian team on the Canary Islands, both observed the burst of gamma rays.
NASA says the burst came from a star that died when the universe was only 630 million years old, or less than 5% of its present age.
The event, dubbed GRB 090423, is the most distant cosmic explosion ever seen, NASA says.
Nature says the previous record sighting was an event from 825 million years after the Big Bang.
The ground-based teams scrambled to observe the event 20 minutes after NASA's space-based Swift telescope spotted the burst in April and relayed the information to Earth.
Nature says the work by the teams "shows that astronomers can effectively probe the early universe from the ground."
The so-called "silver spoon" effect -- in which wealth is passed down from one generation to another -- is well established in some of the world's most ancient economies, according to an international study coordinated by a UC Davis anthropologist.
The study, to be reported in the Oct. 30 issue of Science, expands economists' conventional focus on material riches, and looks at various kinds of wealth, such as hunting success, food sharing partners, and kinship networks.
The team found that some kinds of wealth, like material possessions, are much more easily passed on than social networks or foraging abilities. Societies where material wealth is most valued are therefore the most unequal, said Monique Borgerhoff Mulder, the UC Davis anthropology professor who coordinated the study with economist Samuel Bowles of the Santa Fe Institute.
The researchers also showed that levels of inequality are influenced both by the types of wealth important to a society and the governing rules and regulations. Hunter-gatherers rely on their wits, social connections and strength to make a living. In these economies, wealth inheritance is modest because wits and social connections can be transferred only to a certain degree. The level of economic inequality in hunter-gatherer societies is on a par with the most egalitarian modern democratic economies.
The ancient bones have produced evidence of several suspected murders and one case of leprosy - an extremely rare occurrence in medieval times.
Osteoarchaeologist Carmelita Troy, of Headland Archaeology in Cork, said yesterday she has studied the ancient remains of nearly 1,300 individuals - adult males and females along with children - who were buried at the site at Ardreigh, Athy, in Co Kildare.
It is one of the largest skeleton assemblages in the country.
It is believed the site served as a huge regional cemetery for the south Kildare region from perhaps the 7th or 8th century, with classic Christian-style burials - bodies aligned west to east - taking place right up to the 1400s.
"Through the evidence gathered from the results of these excavations, it was clear Ardreigh was a highly significant medieval site, and one that can be considered to be of regional - and probably national importance," a preliminary report on the site suggested.
A man claiming to be 112 married a 17-year-old at a ceremony in central Somalia, his sixth wedding in total but his first in three quarters of a century, he said Thursday.
"My wife is ten times younger than me but we love each other so much and I believe that I can give her the kind of love that not any young man can offer," Ahmed Mohamed Dhore told AFP.
"Married life is about love and passion rather than age and beauty," said the centenarian, whose wedding ceremony in the town of Guriel was attended by hundreds on Wednesday.
"The first time I got married was so long ago I cannot remember and the last time must have been about 75 years ago, I was still a young man," he said.
Two hapless robbers in America, Matthew McNelly and Joey Miller, have been arrested with the "worst disguises ever" after trying to hide their faces with permanent marker pen.
McNelly, 23, and Miller, 20 were arrested by armed police in Carroll, Iowa, last Friday after witnesses reported seeing two men trying to break into an apartment with fake beards and "masks" scrawled on their faces.
Police responding to a call about the attempted burglary later pulled over a car matching the alleged suspects' vehicle.
When they stopped their 1994 Buick Roadmaster, bewildered police discovered the drunk hapless pair - nicknamed "dumb and dumber" - complete with makeshift disguises.
