Jay Root and Anne Gearan Associated Press 2009-11-05 18:25:00
A soldier opened fire at a U.S. Army base in Fort Hood, Texas on Thursday, unleashing a stream of gunfire that left 12 people dead and 31 wounded. Authorities killed the gunman, and apprehended two other soldiers suspected in what appears to be the worst mass shooting at a U.S. military base.
The shooting began around 1:30 p.m., Lt. Gen. Bob Cone said at a news conference. He said all the casualties took place at the base's Soldier Readiness Center, where soldiers who are about to be deployed or who are returning undergo medical screening.
"It's a terrible tragedy. It's stunning," Cone said.
The United States ranks 30th in terms of infant mortality, an important measure of the quality of healthcare, according to a report released on Tuesday.
Most of the deaths are among pre-term infants and the United States has a very high rate of pre-term births, according to the report from the National Center for Health Statistics.
Melissa Nelson and Erin Gartner The Associated Press 2009-11-05 07:30:00
A baby missing for five days was found alive and well under her baby sitter's bed, and Florida authorities said Thursday they plan to charge the sitter, her husband and the child's mother.
Investigators found 7-month-old Shannon Dedrick in a box tucked under a bed surrounded by items intended to hide the child at Susan Elizabeth Baker's home near Chipley, a rural Panhandle town, Washington County Sheriff Bobby Haddock said in an interview early Thursday. The baby was placed in protective custody.
"Statistically speaking this should not have ever happened, that we found this child alive, especially after so many days. Time was against us," Haddock said.
Shannon was taken to a hospital but appeared healthy, Haddock said
The pork industry desperately wants you to believe "the Big Lie" about swine flu: That it can't infect pigs, and therefore it's perfectly safe to buy and eat lots and lots of pork products.
It's a merry little tale, and it would be a nice little piece of information to pass along if only it were true.
But it isn't.
H1N1 swine flu can and does infect pigs. And the safety margin for eating pork products from H1N1-infected pigs is not well known.
Eileen Fleming The Peoples' Voice 2009-11-01 20:06:00
On 10/28/09, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart did what the mainstream media has failed to report about-the rapidly growing global nonviolent solidarity movement of resisters to the occupation of Palestine, by hosting a Palestinian politician and American Jewish scholar and activist author.
The News Media should be interviewing Dr. Mustafa Barghouti & Anna Baltzer, Jon's job is to entertain us, but once again, he led the mainstream media to where many of US already are.
Jon also performed under duress from 'friends' who put him under pressure to censor the highly anticipated appearances of Dr. Barghouti and Baltzer. As of this writing on October 31, 2009, The Daily Show forum conversation regarding the BB show has attracted 21,059 reads to its first page and over 500 messages.
One of mine says: The morning after Anna Baltzer wrote:
Dear friends,
Last night Dr. Barghouti and I were on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart talking about Palestine.
The show was overwhelmed with angry emails and phone calls prior to the appearance, and up until the last minute it seemed like they might cancel. During the taping the show had its only heckler in 11 years. The entire staff were very nervous and may come to regret the monumental decision (and not make it again) as they will surely be inundated now that the show has aired.
That is why it is CRUCIAL that the show receive letters of support from anyone who appreciated the interview.
PLEASE take a moment to give a quick thank you to The Daily Show. I'm sure they will likely be affected by numbers rather than length, so it's OK to make it short, but spread the word to others! Be sure to put "Thank you" in the subject, and maybe Dr. Barghouti's and my name.
Fill out the form here. Or email the Comedy Central Network here: mail@thecomedynetwork.ca
Hundreds of Chinese villagers are protesting after they were registered as dead and struck from village lists.
The taxes villages pay to higher levels of government and the social warfare payments allocated by the central Government are both based on the number of households.
By recording the false deaths, local officials held back payments.
And the victims are also deprived of newly established medical insurance and pension schemes.
The 300 members of Zhouzhuang village - a sixth of the population - discovered they were "dead" when a man tried to apply for a new identity book for his parents, according to a report on China National Radio's website.
When it comes to climate change, just have a little faith!
In an unusual case in the United Kingdom, it has been ruled that climate change beliefs should be afforded the same legal protections as religious freedoms. The bizarre ruling sets a landmark legal precedent and could have broad implications both in Britain and abroad.
The case began when Tim Nicholson, former head of sustainability at property firm Grainger PLC was laid off in July 2008 for his criticism of management on the basis of climate change beliefs. Mr. Nicholson, who renovated his house to be greener and refuses to fly by air, was upset that Rupert Dickinson, the firm's chief executive, had an employee fly to him in Ireland to deliver his Blackberry.
Rachel Donadio The New York Times 2009-11-04 19:39:00
In a landmark ruling, an Italian judge on Wednesday convicted a base chief for the Central Intelligence Agency and 22 other Americans, almost all C.I.A. operatives, of kidnapping a Muslim cleric from the streets of Milan in 2003.
The case was a huge symbolic victory for Italian prosecutors, who drew the first convictions involving the American practice of rendition, in which terrorism suspects are captured in one country and taken for questioning in another, often one more open to coercive interrogation techniques.
Critics of the Bush administration have long hailed the case as a repudiation of the tactics it used to fight terrorism. And the fact that Italy would actually convict intelligence agents of an allied country was seen as a bold move that could set a precedent in other cases.
President Hamid Karzai is "corrupt" but NATO has to accept that "he is our guy" in Afghanistan, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said, according to the New York Times on Thursday.
Kouchner also complained that President Barack Obama's US administration was drawing up a new strategy for the war in Afghanistan without consulting its European allies within NATO, leaving them in the dark.
"What is the goal? What is the road? And in the name of what?" Kouchner asked, according to the New York Times report. "Where are the Americans? It begins to be a problem ... We need to talk to each other as allies."
Thailand and Cambodia recalled their ambassadors from each others' countries on Thursday, deepening a diplomatic row after Cambodia made fugitive former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra an economic adviser.
The tit-for-tat spat threatens to worsen a political crisis in Thailand by giving Thaksin and his red-shirted anti-government supporters an ally just across the border, causing a diplomatic embarrassment for Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva.
It also suggests deepening enmity between leaders of the two countries after Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen soured the start of an Asian summit hosted by Abhisit last month by turning up and offering Thaksin the job of adviser.
Alexandra Zavis Los Angeles Times 2009-11-05 16:26:00
The United Nations is temporarily pulling hundreds of staff members out of Afghanistan while it reviews security arrangements in the wake of an attack by militants on a Kabul guesthouse last week that killed five U.N. employees, officials said today.
U.N. officials said staff members, scattered in dozens of dwellings in Kabul and around the country, were in many cases protected only by a few Afghan security guards.
Taliban spokesmen said the U.N. was specifically targeted in the Oct. 28 attack because of its involvement in plans for a Nov. 7 presidential runoff election, which has since been canceled. Officials have conducted a security review since the attack and have determined that arrangements for many staffers are inadequate.
A 14-year-old boy has spent the last eight years living alone in a ramshackle sheep shed in the mountains of Kyrgyzstan, the Vecherny Bishkek newspaper reported on Thursday.
According to the paper, the boy's parents left the former Soviet state for Russia in early 2000, leaving their young son with his ill grandmother. For reasons which are not yet clear, the boy began living in the sheep shed almost immediately.
In the beginning, he tried to mix with children from a nearby village, but they bullied and teased him. He then became a hermit. His story came to light after his grandmother died and locals found her body, the paper said.
He has almost completely forgotten how to speak, the paper said. There is as yet no information on his parents.
Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya Global Research 2009-11-05 13:01:00
"Managed Chaos" is the proper term to describe the tensions in NATO-garrisoned Afghanistan and the border zones of Pakistan. Afghanistan and Pakistan, which are now being described by the Pentagon and NATO as the same front in the very same war, are tied to the Iranian border province of Sistan and Baluchistan or Sistan-Baluchistan. It is with the tenure of George W. Bush Jr. and his administration that Sistan-Baluchistan, with emphases on "Baluchistan" begun getting international attention through the ignition of a series of attacks inside the Iranian border with Pakistan by a group originally calling itself the "Army of God" or Jundallah in Arabic.
One must first take a closer look at Sistan-Baluchistan and the issues being depicted as the source of antagonism there before discussing Jundallah, the nature of its attacks, its source of support, and if the Pakistani government and the Obama Administration have been involved with Jundallah's attacks. So, with a purposeful focus on Baluchistan, what is Sistan-Baluchistan and where is it? The Iranian province of Sistan-Baluchistan, which is located in southeastern Iran, is in fact the blending of two different bodies, one is Sistan and the other is Baluchistan. Both were separate historical entities and Iranian provinces until they were amalgamated into one in 1959 under the reign of Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, the last shah or monarch of Iran.
Sistan according to some local traditions is the legendary home of the Iranian epic hero Rustam. Sistan is also where Iraq's Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who is an Iranian, originates from. In ethnic terms the people of Sistan are mostly Persians and Sistani. Sistani is a label that can be used to identify anyone from Sistan, but it also has two other meanings. Sistani in ethnographic terms is used to refer to a sub-population of the Baluch or Baluchi, which are a distinct Iranic ethno-linguistic group. The relationship between the Sistani and the Baluchi almost correlates with the affinities between the Flemish and the Dutch or of those between the Pathans (Pashto of Pakistan) and the Pashto in Afghanistan. What sets the Sistani apart and is a cause for their distinction is geography and, more importantly, the fact that they speak a localized dialect of the Persian language called Sistani.
Nearly four million Canadians, among them 750,000 children under the age of 15, are living in inadequate housing, according to a report released Thursday.
That figure represents 13 percent of all Canadian households, a percentage that has not changed since 2001.
These families either live in accommodation that is in the state of disrepair, is unsuitable for the number of people living there or eats up more than 30 percent of the household's pre-tax income.
The report was prepared for the Co-operative Housing Federation of Canada is based on analysis of the most recent data (2006) provided by Canada Housing and Mortgage Corp.
It finds that seniors, younger Canadians, new Canadians, aboriginals and the jobless were among those most likely to have inadequate shelter.
Parents are to be forced to allow their children to have sex education before the age of consent, the Government announced today. Under the new laws, when children reach 15 their parents will lose the right to withdraw them from sex education.
At present parents can remove their children from lessons about sex until they are 19.
The move forms part of new laws that will make sex education compulsory in primary and secondary schools from 2011. Faith schools will not be able to opt out of any part of the new curriculum, although they will be able to teach topics within the "ethos of their faith".
Thanks to Google's new Dashboard feature, anyone with a Google account (essentially a Gmail address) can see everything the company is tracking about them. It's an amazing, one-stop shopping tool for managing all of Google's services as they pertain to you. It features, among other services, Gmail, Google Search Results Alerts, Calendar, Contacts, Docs, iGoogle, Latitude, Picasa Web albums, YouTube, and of course Web History. Virtually everything you've done with Google and its array of services can be found here, in sometimes excruciating detail.
My Search history currently goes back two years. Every query is features a date- and time-stamp. I know that Google captures this information, but to see it so highly organized and accessible via one Web page is somewhat unnerving. I should relax. Ninety-nice percent of the information is private - Dashboard indicates what's public with a cute little crowd icon next to it. Better yet, I can erase any history information I don't want to keep.
Gabriel Milland The Daily Express 2009-11-05 13:06:00
Home Secretary Alan Johnson wants to prevent a 'Big Brother' society
Critics yesterday blasted plans to water down councils' snooping powers for not going far enough.
Home Secretary Alan Johnson outlined moves to curb the ability of town halls to spy on people putting bins out on the wrong day.
Only council chief executives will now have the power to order covert surveillance operations and a new code of practice will supposedly ban their use for minor matters.
Official figures show that methods like hidden CCTV cameras have been used 50,000 times by local bodies since Labour gave them the powers in 2002. One use will now be to track a hard core of 50,000 absent parents who fail to pay for child support.
But Opposition spokesman criticised yesterday's move.
Eurocratsʼ plans to fit ʻspy boxesʼ in all cars have been slammed by Burtonʼs biggest driving school and the townʼs taxi chief.
They spoke after Burton Euro MP Philip Bradbourn revealed that the proposal had been recommended by a three-year study for the European Commission.
He claimed the black box gadgets would send 20 separate items of information, such as speed, destination and direction, to a central monitoring hub up to every few seconds.
Officials thought the devices would help reduce road accidents and congestion, but the Tory said they would more likely be used to implement 'pay-as-you-drive' road charges and branded them 'another affront to our civil liberties'.
Janet Churchley, joint owner of Burton's LDC School of Motoring, in Borough Road, agreed, fuming: "It's ridiculous and Big Brother gone mad. Why on earth would you want everybody knowing where you were going and what you were doing?
The U.S. Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) recently demonstrated autonomous operations by multiple "swarms" of unmanned air and ground vehicles, unattended ground sensors, video cameras and other devices linked together in an intelligent network powered by EdgeFrontier platform technologies from Augusta Systems, Inc.
The demonstrations were held at a National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) facility on Wallops Island, Va.
"This capability of managing multiple swarms of unmanned vehicles and sensors is a significant achievement," said Patrick Esposito, president and chief executive officer of Augusta Systems. "Working with Augusta Systems and its partner, Vector Research Center, NAVAIR demonstrated autonomous operations of multiple, cooperative swarms, including options for dynamic redirection of assets between the swarms."
A woman says the state took her property and sold it for a fraction of its cost.
The 50 U.S. states are holding more than $32 billion worth of unclaimed property that they're supposed to safeguard for their citizens. But a "Good Morning America" investigation found some states aggressively seize property that isn't really unclaimed and then use the money -- your money -- to balance their budgets.
Unclaimed property consists of things like forgotten apartment security deposits, uncashed dividend checks and safe-deposit boxes abandoned when an elderly relative dies.
Banks and other businesses are required to turn that property over to the state for safekeeping. The problem is that the states return less than a quarter of unclaimed property to the rightful owners.
Israel's Greatest enemies are those who support its decline into moral degeneration and destruction, philosopher and political activist Noam Chomsky has told an audience in Dublin.
Chomsky, who is retired professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said Israel was once a civilised society similar to those found in Scandinavia. Now, however, that has changed. There is high inequality just as in the US, and the social security system has collapsed, he said.
In the 1970s, he said, Israel had a choice between security within its existing borders and expansion into settlements and it chose expansion.
The Pentagon's Office of Inspector General is conducting a new investigation into a covert Bush administration Defense Department program that used retired military analysts to produce positive wartime news coverage.
Last May, the Inspector General's office rescinded and repudiated a prior internal investigation's report on the retired military analyst program, which had been issued by the Bush administration, because it "did not meet accepted quality standards for an Inspector General work product." Yet in recent interviews with Raw Story, Pentagon officials who took part in the program were still defending it by referencing this invalidated report.
Gary Comerford, Inspector General spokesman for the Defense Department, told Raw Story last week that his office is conducting an investigation into the retired military analyst program and confirmed that the investigation began during the summer.
New York - Outgoing UN nuclear watchdog chief Mohamed ElBaradei criticized the United States on Monday for using a 'false pretext' to invade Iraq, costing 'the lives of possibly hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians.'
In our day, the American way of war, especially against lightly armed guerrillas, insurgents, and terrorists, has proved remarkably heavy. Elephantine might be the appropriate word. The Pentagon likes to talk about its "footprint" on the geopolitical landscape. In terms of the infrastructure it's built in Iraq and Afghanistan, perhaps "crater" would be a more reasonable image.
American wars are now gargantuan undertakings. The prospective withdrawal of significant numbers/most/all American forces from Iraq, for instance, will -- in terms of time and effort -- make the 2003 invasion look like the vaunted "cakewalk" it was supposed to be. According to Pentagon estimates, more than 1.5 million (yes, that is "million") pieces of U.S. equipment need to be removed from the country. Just stop and take that in for a second.
Of course, it's a less surprising figure when you realize that the Pentagon managed to build, furnish, and supply almost 300 bases, macro to micro, in Iraq alone in the war years. And some of those bases were -- and still are -- the size of small American towns with tens of thousands of troops, private contractors, and others, as well as massive perimeters, multiple bus routes, full-scale PX's, fast-food outlets, movie theaters, and the like.
In many ways, Iraq-style war has now become the gargantuan template for the Afghan War build-up that Nick Turse describes below. (His is the sort of summary picture of a less-than-adequately-covered situation that TomDispatch specializes in, based in part on investigative Internet reporting and the mining of Pentagon contracts, government and corporate websites, and military publications.) In fact, some percentage of those 1.5 million pieces of equipment will undoubtedly simply be sent Afghanistan-wards. As the Bush administration built the world's largest -- and shoddiest -- embassy in Baghdad, our own mother ship, mission control center for the region, and modern ziggurat, so now, the Obama administration is about to do the same (at approximately the same startling cost) in Islamabad, Pakistan, as a monstrous mission control center for the Af/Pak theater of operations.
In Iraq, structures like Balad Air Base or the ill-named Camp Victory just on the edge of Baghdad are so massive, so permanent-looking -- so clearly built for long-term occupation -- that it's still hard to imagine how the Pentagon will abandon them to the Iraqis.
Now, as Turse reports, the U.S. military seems intent on beefing up another network of bases for another surging war, involving another heavy presence in another distant land -- and these bases, too, the Pentagon will undoubtedly be loath to turn over or evacuate. Every army carries a version of its society on its back into battle. We emphasize poundage. Like our culture, our wars are spendthrift and consumption-oriented. If continued, they will someday bust us.
David Edwards and Daniel Tencer The Raw Story 2009-11-03 22:32:00
There is "a lot of evidence" that Vice President Dick Cheney gave false statements to the FBI during its investigation of the Valerie Plame leak affair, says former White House attorney John Dean. Dean told MSNBC's Keith Olbermann that Cheney attained "something of a record" by refusing to answer or claiming to not recall the answer to 72 questions posed by the FBI during a May, 2004, interview.
"If you'll recall, former Chief of Staff Bob Haldeman did 150 'I don't recalls' during his three days before the Senate Watergate committee," Dean said. "This is 72 in less than three hours, that's right up there."
The comparison is striking, because Haldeman served 18 months in prison for conspiracy and obstruction of justice in the Watergate scandal.
Stuart Littlewood Uruknet.info 2009-11-04 20:41:00
Hamas marked the 92nd anniversary of the infamous Balfour Declaration by recalling the misery of the 1948 Nakba (Catastrophe) and insisting that European states in general and Britain in particular make amends for the crimes committed against Palestine.
It is worth reminding ourselves from time to time what started the trouble all those years ago. Arabs know the details only too well, but you would be surprised how the British people are kept in ignorance. The history of the Arab-Israeli struggle is seldom taught in schools and our politicians are afraid to talk freely about it.
To all intents and purposes the fuse to the present powder-keg was lit by the British foreign secretary, Lord Balfour, on 2 November 1917 in a letter to the most senior Jew in England, Lord Rothschild, pledging assistance for the Zionist cause. It was a moment of madness that showed utter disregard for the likely impact on Islamic sensibilities and the day-to-day lives of those (Muslim and Christian) already living in the Holy Land, and for peace in the region.
It's the most terrifying place I've ever been in... it's a horrifyingly sad place because of the desperation and misery of the way people live. I was unprepared for camps that are much worse than anything I saw in South Africa. - Professor Edward Said 1993 [1]
They may be living but they're not alive. - Journalist Philip Rizk [2]
Gaza is a place that needs a million psychologists. - Ayed, a psychotherapist from Northern Gaza [3]
Over 40 years of Israeli military occupation have had a devastating effect on Gaza; airstrikes, artillery shelling, ground invasions, jet flybys and their sonic booms have all led to an epidemic of suffering among Gaza's most vulnerable inhabitants.[4]
Natanya Ginsburg International Middle East Media Center 2009-11-05 17:09:00
Qalandiya
Monday afternoon, 2.11.2009
Phyllis W. and Natanya G. (reporting)
15:30: We drove past Atarot CP on our way to Qalandiya. Twenty-five vehicles were wending their way slowly past the CP.
15:40 - Qalandiya: Already on our arrival a Palestinian ran to ask us to go into the checking area where an elderly couple from Gaza had had their permit to return home confiscated. We found them and discovered that the man had had an operation (we think he had a stent inserted). A taxi to take them to Erez CP was waiting on the Jerusalem side of Qalandiya, but when they tried to go through the CP, their permit was taken from them and they were told to return to Ramallah. They had no where to go and no money left -- the woman was in tears. Phyllis phoned operations headquarters and asked to be connected with the DCO representative. It turned out that the couple was expected and after a short interval they were allowed into the DCO area.
Israeli Navy commandos seized a cargo ship early Wednesday in the Mediterranean Sea that Israeli officials said was carrying rockets and ammunition bound for Hezbollah militants.
Israel intercepted the ship, which was sailing under an Antiguan flag, near Cyprus, 100 miles west of the Israeli coast, and took it to the Ashdod harbor in southern Israel.
"As of now, what we know is that this was a smuggling attempt to arm Hezbollah with terrorist means against civilians," Shaul Mofaz, a member of the Parliament and a former defense minister, told Israel Radio. "The intent was to send arms, mainly missiles and launchers, meant to strike civilian targets."
News reports quoted the Israeli president, Shimon Peres, and other officials saying the ship had been carrying the arms from Iran to Hezbollah forces in Lebanon, but officials released no evidence to support those claims.
The Goldstone report on last winter's Gaza war has become something of a fixture in the media since its publication in September.
But for South Africans, it is another investigation carried out by the distinguished judge Richard Goldstone - a commission that exposed the brutality of Apartheid security forces in the early 1990s - that looms large in their minds.
That investigation, which came as South Africa moved towards democracy, gave Goldstone hero status in the country.
Rami Almeghari The Electronic Intifada 2009-11-04 22:17:00
Azzam Salim used to be one of the leading construction contractors in the central Gaza Strip. Today, however, he spends most of his days idly chatting with other unemployed friends near a bank that he helped build several years ago.
"As a human first and foremost, I need to live normally like before. This situation is unprecedented -- before the siege was enforced here, I didn't have time to sit. But now things have changed, now we are professional talkers."
What prevents Salim from returning to work is the lack of raw building materials in the Gaza Strip, due to Israel's crippling Israeli blockade of the territory since June 2007. In March 2009, international donors including the US, Europe and Saudi Arabia met in the Egyptian resort town of Sharm al-Sheikh pledging at least $4 billion to reconstruct Gaza following last winter's 22-day Israeli invasion of the territory. However, the promised funds have yet to reach Gaza as the international community continues to boycott the governing Hamas party.
The United Nations General Assembly is debating a UN-sponsored report which says Israel committed war crimes during its military assault on the Gaza Strip.
The Goldstone report, which accuses both Israel and Hamas of war crimes, has already been endorsed by the UN Human Rights Council, which sponsored the fact-finding commission.
The draft under debate at the UN calls on both Israel and the Palestinians to investigate accusations of human-rights violations during the 22-day conflict in December and January. The resolution, if adopted, would call upon Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, to take the report to the UN Security Council.
Nick Timiraos The Wall Street Journal 2009-11-05 16:44:00
Fannie Mae plans to allow homeowners facing foreclosure to stay in their homes and rent them for up to one year as part of the latest effort to help troubled borrowers while keeping a glut of foreclosed properties from hitting the housing market.
The Deed for Lease Program, which Fannie plans to roll out on Thursday, will offer borrowers who fail to complete or don't qualify for a loan modification or other workout to deed their property to the lender in exchange for a lease. Borrowers-turned-tenants will be able to sign leases of up to 12 months and will pay market rents, which in most cases are lower than the cost of mortgage payments.
The Russian economy, which had been developing at high speed prior to the global financial turmoil and economic downturn, has suffered severe losses in the crisis. Nonetheless its prospect remains uncertain at present.
President Dmitry Medvedev estimated that Russia's 2009 Gross Domestic Product (GDP) may decline 7.5 percent compared with that of 2008.
Statistics showed that Russia's GDP contracted 10 percent in the first nine months this year. Though monthly GDP has continued to grow starting from June, none of the growth rates was higher than 0.5 percent.
Meanwhile Russia's industrial production declined 13.5 percent from January to September, with the process industry plunging 19.1percent.
One good news may be the high inflation that once bothered Russia has somewhat relieved. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin estimated that the inflation rate might be lowered to less than 9 percent this year.
However, lowering inflation rate turned out to have been followed by shrinking consumption.
Simon Clark and Caroline Binham Bloomberg 2009-11-05 12:10:00
Barclays Plc Chief Executive Officer John Varley stood at the wooden lectern in St. Martin-in-the- Fields on London's Trafalgar Square last night and told the packed pews of the church that "profit is not satanic."
The 53-year-old head of Britain's second-biggest bank said banks are the "backbone" of the economy. Rewarding high- performing bankers with more pay doesn't conflict with Christian values, he said. Varley was paid 1.08 million pounds ($1.77 million) and no bonus in 2008.
"Talent is highly mobile," Varley, a Catholic, said. "If we fail to pay or are constrained from paying competitive rates then that talent will move to another employer."
New York - Inside the thick Goldman Sachs investment circular were the details of a secret, $2 billion deal channeled through a Caribbean tax haven.
The Sept. 26, 2006, document offered sophisticated U.S. and European investors an opportunity to buy into a pool of supposedly high-grade bonds backed by residential, commercial and student loans. The transaction was registered through a shell company in the Cayman Islands.
Few of the potential investors knew it, but the ratings of many of the mortgage securities hid their true risks and, in some cases, Goldman's descriptions exaggerated their quality.
Martin Z. Braun and William Selway Bloomberg 2009-11-04 20:01:00
JPMorgan Chase & Co. agreed to a $722 million settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to end a probe into sales of derivatives that helped push Alabama's most populous county to the brink of bankruptcy.
JPMorgan will give Jefferson County, Alabama, $50 million, pay a $25 million penalty and cancel $647 million in fees the county faced to unwind the transactions, according to an SEC news release. In addition, the agency charged two former JPMorgan employees for their roles in an "unlawful payment scheme" that allowed them to win bond and interest-rate swap business with the county.
The settlement comes a week after Larry Langford, the former president of the Jefferson County Commission and Birmingham mayor, was convicted for accepting $235,000 in designer clothes, Rolex watches and cash from an Alabama banker who JPMorgan paid almost $3 million to help arrange the swaps associated with a refinancing of the county's sewer debt.
"It's a good day for us," said Jefferson County Commission President Bettye Fine Collins. "Finally, we're seeing some movement. We have been victimized by our creditors."
Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) unveiled plans to generate up to $1.7 billion in pretax cost savings through job cuts and other means when planned moves are fully implemented in 2011. Up to 7% of the company's nearly 120,000-person work force will be eliminated through the streamlining. The health-products giant said job cuts will be only one aspect of the move.
A fourth-quarter restructuring charge of up to $1.3 billion will be recorded as the company reiterated its 2009 earnings target excluding items such as that charge.
This year has shaped up to be one of J&J's most difficult, with all three of its main business units showing signs of weakness. Heightened competition from generics has hurt its prescription-drug arm, while unfavorable currency-exchange rates have pulled down sales growth for consumer health care and medical devices.
Christine Dell'Amore National Geographic News 2009-11-04 10:00:00
Injured corals develop colorful glowing "scabs" to help themselves heal, a new study has found.
When a coral is broken or wounded, it releases highly reactive atoms of oxygen known as free radicals to close up the gashes.
But these powerful molecules can also inadvertently kill off some of the coral's healthy cells. Hydrogen peroxide, for instance, is a common free radical in corals, and it can damage every part of the cell, from DNA to proteins.
Hurt corals have also been known to take on brightly colored glows, noted study leader and coral immunologist Caroline Palmer. Wounds on Acropora millepora corals appear blue, for example, while injured tissues on Porites species - like the raised and swollen patches seen above - are an "intense" bubble-gum pink.
Randolph E. Schmid The Associated Press 2009-11-02 17:48:00
The nightly attacks by two man-eating lions terrified railway workers and brought construction to a halt in one of east Africa's most notorious onslaughts more than a hundred years ago. But the death toll, scientists now say, wasn't as high as previously thought.
Over nine months the two voracious hunters claimed 35 lives - no small figure, but much less than some accounts of as many as 135 victims.
It was 1898, when laborers from India and local natives building the Uganda Railroad across Kenya became the prey for the pair, a case that has been the subject of numerous accounts and at least three movies.
The death toll had been estimated at 28 railway workers and "scores of unfortunate African natives," with the total ranging as high as 135. Delay of the railroad was even subject to debate in Britain's House of Commons.
The public is finally catching on to the fact that the global-warming scare is driven far more by ideology than science, and a recent Gallup poll revealed that the percentage of Americans who think the threat of global warming is exaggerated is at its highest level ever.
Pat Michaels (Ph.D. in climatology), a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and retired research professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia, relates how the spokesperson for an organization with some of the oldest temperature-sensor data in existence refused to share it with other scientists, saying, "Why should we make the data available when their aim is to try and find something wrong with it?" Whoa, there, Nellie! Did you grasp the outrageousness of that statement? If not, take a moment to reread it for its breathtakingly anti-scientific thrust.
Hospitals around the country have taken a crucial first step toward building a sustainable meat production system by joining the Balanced Menus Challenge. Launched in late September, the Balanced Menus Challenge is a voluntary commitment by healthcare institutions to reduce their meat and poultry offerings in patient meals and hospital cafeterias by 20 percent in 12 months. Balanced Menus is a climate change reduction strategy that also protects the effectiveness of antibiotics and promotes good nutrition. Fourteen hospitals are already participating in the national challenge, which was developed and piloted by the San Francisco Bay Area Chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility and nationally launched in partnership with Health Care Without Harm's Healthy Food in Healthcare Initiative.
After extensive lobbying efforts, naturopaths across Canada are getting governmental green lights for greater prescribing rights.
Need an antibiotic for that nasty lung infection? Your naturopath may soon be able to prescribe it.
That's because naturopathic doctors are among a group of medical professionals that are pushing for expanded prescribing rights - and they're recently seeing success.
Ontario just became the second province in Canada to get the green light for increased prescribing rights for naturopaths. British Columbia granted its naturopaths the right to prescribe a greater number of medications - as well as high-dose vitamins, amino acids, hormones, botanicals and herbs - in April 2009.
The announcement follows the granting of more powers to other health professionals, such as midwives and registered nurses.
Twenty years ago, back when Frank Young, M.D. was Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, he received a report from Samuel S. Epstein, M.D. entitled Potential Public Health Hazards of Biosynthetic Milk Hormones, warning of the public health dangers of consuming milk from hormone-treated cows.
Injection of cows with recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH), the genetically engineered, potent variant of the natural growth hormone produced by cows, sharply elevates levels of insulin-like growth factor (IGF-1) in milk, Dr. Epstein warned the commissioner.
IGF-1, which is readily absorbed through the small intestine, increases the risk of cancer in people who drink milk from cows treated with rBGH, he warned. In 1989, Dr. Epstein had found evidence of breast cancer resulting from IGF-1 ingestion; a few years later colon and prostate data began to emerge.
Common experience tells us that particular scents of childhood can leave quite an impression, for better or for worse. Now, researchers reporting the results of a brain imaging study online on November 5th in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, show that first scents really do enjoy a "privileged" status in the brain.
"We found that the first pairing or association between an object and a smell had a distinct signature in the brain," even in adults, said Yaara Yeshurun of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. "This 'etching' of initial odor memories in the brain was equal for good and bad smells, yet was unique to odor." Sounds did not have the same effect, the research showed.
In the study, the researchers presented adults with a visual object together with one, and later with a second, set of pleasant and unpleasant odors and sounds while their brains were imaged by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). A week later, the researchers presented the same objects inside the fMRI and tested participants' associations of those images with the scents and smells.
There's a fascinating book by author Robert Cialdini called Influence - The Psychology of Persuasion. As someone who frequently writes about Big Pharma's social engineering tactics, I've read and studied many of these tactics, noting carefully how governments and Big Business use them to wage disinformation campaigns against the People.
I was recently chatting with friends on my Facebook page when a friend named Jennifer pointed out that she thought the vaccine shortage had been intentionally engineered to create greater demand once the vaccines were available. This immediately got me thinking about a chapter in the Cialdini book that writes about something I call the "disappearing cookies in the cookie jar" experiment.
This experiment reveals an extremely powerful strategy for influence. And as it turns out, the pharmaceutical industry is using precisely this strategy for fabricating huge demand for their vaccines in an effort to make sure all the vaccines sell out.
Days after birth, French and German infants wail to the melodic structure of their languages
Only days after birth, babies have a bawl with language. Newborn babies cry in melodic patterns that they have heard in adults' conversations - even while in the womb, say medical anthropologist Kathleen Wermke of the University of Würzburg in Germany, and her colleagues.
By 2 to 5 days of age, infants' cries bear the tuneful signature of their parents' native tongue, a sign that language learning has already commenced, the researchers report in a paper published online November 5 in Current Biology.
Fluent speakers use melodic patterns and pitch shifts to imbue words and phrases with emotional meaning. Changes in pitch and rhythm, for example, can indicate anger. During the last few months of fetal life, babies can hear what their mothers or other nearby adults are saying, providing exposure to melodies peculiar to a specific language, Wermke says. Newborns then re-create those familiar patterns in at least some of their cries, she proposes.
A gene associated with longevity in roundworms and humans has been shown to affect the function of stem cells that generate new neurons in the adult brain, according to researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine. The study in mice suggests that the gene may play an important role in maintaining cognitive function during aging.
"It's intriguing to think that genes that regulate life span in invertebrates may have evolved to control stem cell pools in mammals," said Anne Brunet, PhD, assistant professor of genetics. She is the senior author of the research, which will be published Nov. 6 in Cell Stem Cell.
Unlike your skin or your intestine, your adult brain doesn't make a lot of new cells. But those it does are critical to learning, memory and spatial awareness. To meet these demands, your brain maintains two small caches of neural stem cells, which can both self-renew and give rise to neurons and other cells known as oligodendrocytes and astrocytes. Properly balancing these functions allows you to generate new nerve cells as needed while also maintaining a robust neural stem cell pool.
Darth Vader's Death Star? Ming the Merciless and his war rockets? The awesome power of Chuck Norris?
Piffle, suggests one astrophysicist, at least when it comes to explaining what force could have permanently bent a ring in our Milky Way Galaxy within the last 60 million years. The real explanation may be the power of an invisible wrecking ball made of dark matter - a cloud of the enigmatic physics particles born in the fiery aftermath of the Big Bang and weighing as much as 10 million suns.
William J. Broad New York Times 2009-11-04 21:50:00
The massive eruption of the Thera volcano in the Aegean Sea more than 3,000 years ago produced killer waves that raced across hundreds of miles of the Eastern Mediterranean to inundate the area that is now Israel and probably other coastal sites, a team of scientists has found.
The team, writing in the October issue of Geology, said the new evidence suggested that giant tsunamis from the catastrophic eruption hit "coastal sites across the Eastern Mediterranean littoral." Tsunamis are giant waves that can crash into shore, rearrange the seabed, inundate vast areas of land and carry terrestrial material out to sea.
The work was carried out over the summer in preparation for Oxford University's proposed Radcliffe Observatory Quarter - plans for which were revealed earlier this month.
In addition to these findings, the work has also uncovered evidence of a 6th century Saxon settlement, including a sunken featured craft hut known as a Grübenhauser and a pit containing unfired clay loom weights.
Rocketing into space? Some think an elevator might be the way to go.
That's the future goal of this week's $2 million Space Elevator Games in the Mojave Desert.
In a major test of the concept, robotic machines powered by laser beams will try to climb a cable suspended from a helicopter hovering more than a half-mile (one kilometer) high.
Three teams have qualified to participate in the event on the dry lakebed near NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards. Attempts were expected from early Wednesday through Thursday.
Funded by a space agency program to explore bold technology, the contest is a step toward bringing the idea of a space elevator out of the realm of science fiction and into reality.
This is literally smoking gun evidence of hostile military action towards advanced extraterrestrial spacecraft, photographed during NASA Space Shuttle mission STS-48.
Sean Murphy The Associated Press 2009-11-05 15:43:00
It's not unusual to see a deer or a cow crossing Oklahoma's rural highways. But an elephant?
An Oklahoma couple driving home from church nearly slammed into a giant pachyderm that had escaped from a nearby circus late Wednesday.
"Didn't have time to hit the brakes. The elephant blended in with the road," driver Bill Carpenter said Thursday. "At the very last second I said 'elephant!'"
Carpenter, 68, said he swerved his SUV at the last second and ended up sideswiping the 29-year-old female Asian elephant on U.S. 81 in Enid, about 80 miles north of Oklahoma City.
"So help me Hanna, had I hit that elephant, not swerved, it would have knocked it off its legs, and it would have landed right on top of us," he said. "We'd have been history."
The couple, who own a wheat farm, weren't injured. But the 8-foot, 4,500-pound elephant was being examined Thursday for a broken tusk and a leg wound. A local veterinarian said it appeared to have escaped major injury.
"I thought this can't be happening. Out here you could hit a deer or a cow, but this can't be happening. The good Lord was with us," Carpenter said. The elephant's tusk punched through the side of the SUV, tearing up sheet metal.
Jim Stevens said he's not particularly religious and is clueless about why an image resembling Jesus Christ keeps appearing on his pickup.
Stevens, of Jonesborough, said nearly every morning, an image that looks to him like the face of Jesus Christ has appeared in the condensation on the driver's side window of his Isuzu truck.
A Johnson City Press photo of the truck showed a facial image.
Stevens said when he first saw the image, he figured it would evaporate and not return. But it kept reappearing for two weeks now.
Stevens said folks at the grocery store he goes to were amazed to see the image.
