Strange as it may seem, a couple of weeks ago as I ruminated on Obama's broken promise to bring the troops home, his attempt to out-warmonger the Bush administration and his plummeting popularity, I thought to myself: "ya know, what that guy (or rather the disgruntled US public) needs is a good old fashioned 'Muslim terror attack'. Preferably one that includes a ranting 'terrorist' message about Afghanistan and 'slaughtering infidels'. That'll soon silence the rabble and get them behind Obama's Afghan surge!"
And so it was that, as I sipped my eggnog on Christmas day, I was shockingly unsurprised to read the headlines about an 'underwear bomb' (as shown above).
Comment Back in the turbulent 1960s, the anti-establishment rabble was often derided as being "out of control." Fast-forward 50 years to the 2010s, when that same phrase will soon be back in vogue.
But with a very different meaning.
The coming decade is shaping up to be one in which we, as consumers and citizens, will see our control over choice and privacy eroded by business and government. Some of the effects will be mere annoyances, but others will transform society. And not for the better.
This unwelcome transformation is already underway in the personal-technology sector, led by two of the most secretive companies in our industry: Apple and Google. Waiting in the wings are corporate entities eager to exploit your personal information, and government agencies watching your every step.
Sadly the government has not lost its ambition to create a highly controlled and monitored society - but it's not all bad news
The brass neck quote of 2009 comes from Jack Straw, the justice minister and one of the architects of the new democratic authoritarianism in Britain. On the eve of the Convention on Modern Liberty last February, he wrote, "I hope that in the final reckoning even some of our harshest critics will concede that this Labour government has done more than any before it to extend liberties and to constrain government."
The first is that the government and enemies of liberty in the civil service have not lost their ambition to create a highly controlled and monitored society. They are pressing ahead with the National Identity Register and the ID card. The Independent Safeguarding Authority began vetting and barring millions of people who have glancing contact with minors and the vulnerable. The surveillance of our streets and motorways increased without public scrutiny and debate; the gathering and retention of DNA from innocent people was unaffected by the European court of human rights judgment. The plans to collect vast quantities of data from our communications and internet usage and from our movements across British borders remain unchanged, despite the vast hole in public finances and feints by ministers to give the impression they were responding to civil liberties concerns.
Of course, there is no such thing as a final reckoning because the struggle between government and individual liberty, waged from one generation to the next, is endless; but at year's end we can produce annual accounts, which in 2009 have two main headlines and, unsurprisingly, contradict Jack's mischievous little fib.
John Pilger Information Clearing House 2009-12-31 03:28:00
In Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell described a superstate called Oceania, whose language of war inverted lies that "passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past', ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past'."
Barack Obama is the leader of a contemporary Oceania. In two speeches at the close of the decade, the Nobel Peace Prize winner affirmed that peace was no longer peace, but rather a permanent war that "extends well beyond Afghanistan and Pakistan" to "disorderly regions and diffuse enemies". He called this "global security" and invited our gratitude. To the people of Afghanistan, which America has invaded and occupied, he said wittily: "We have no interest in occupying your country."
In Oceania, truth and lies are indivisible. According to Obama, the American attack on Afghanistan in 2001 was authorised by the United Nations Security Council. There was no UN authority. He said the "the world" supported the invasion in the wake of 9/11 when, in truth, all but three of 37 countries surveyed by Gallup expressed overwhelming opposition. He said that America invaded Afghanistan "only after the Taliban refused to turn over [Osama] bin Laden". In 2001, the Taliban tried three times to hand over bin Laden for trial, reported Pakistan's military regime, and were ignored. Even Obama's mystification of 9/11 as justification for his war is false. More than two months before the Twin Towers were attacked, the Pakistani foreign minister, Niaz Naik, was told by the Bush administration that an American military assault would take place by mid-October. The Taliban regime in Kabul, which the Clinton administration had secretly supported, was no longer regarded as In Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell described a superstate called Oceania, whose language of war inverted lies that "passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past', ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past'."
Bush took a week to talk about the shoe bomber and then tried him in court. So why is Cheney savaging Obama?
President Obama's candor Tuesday describing the mosaic of warnings about Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab that were mishandled by U.S. intelligence officials shouldn't be noteworthy; it should be routine. But let's be honest, it isn't, and Obama deserves credit for bringing what he called "human and systemic failures" out into the light shortly after he learned about them. It seems intelligence agencies had enough information, some of it admittedly scattered, to keep Abdulmutallab from boarding a plane to the U.S. on Christmas Day. It's hard to think of a comparable example of President Bush being so quickly forthcoming about facts that didn't reflect well on his administration.
Del Quentin Wilber The Washington Post 2009-12-31 16:15:00
A federal judge on Thursday threw out charges against five Blackwater Worldwide security guards accused of killing 14 people in a 2007 shooting in downtown Baghdad.
In a 90-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina ruled that the government violated the guards' rights by using their immunized statements to help the investigation. The ruling comes after a lengthy set of hearings that examined whether federal prosecutors and agents improperly used such statements that the guards gave to State Department investigators following the shooting on Sept. 16, 2007.
"The explanations offered by prosecutors and investigators in an attempt to justify their actions and persuade the court that they did not use the defendants' compelled testimony were all too often contradictory, unbelievable and lacking in credibility," Urbina wrote.
Dean Boyd, a spokesman for the Justice Department, said, "We're obviously disappointed by the decision. We're still in the process of reviewing the opinion and considering our options."
Jennifer Loven The Associated Press 2009-12-29 16:01:00
The Obama administration claim that "the system worked" after a failed aircraft bombing wasn't quite as jolting as President George W. Bush's "Brownie, you're doing a heckuva job" while New Orleans sank under deadly Hurricane Katrina. But both raised disturbing questions about presidential response in a time of crisis.
Bush's praise for his beleaguered FEMA director, Michael Brown, came while storm evacuees remained trapped in the Louisiana Superdome and victims' bloated bodies floated in the streets. It became a clarion call for all his administration did wrong during the 2005 calamity -- and a larger symbol of all that people disliked generally about Bush.
Obama is dealing with a crisis of a different sort, Friday's attempt by a 23-year-old Nigerian to blow up a Detroit-bound flight from Amsterdam. It ended with only a quickly extinguished fire, no lives lost and the man in custody.
One of the things that I thought President Obama would handle differently from the Bush administration was the next attempted act of aviation terrorism. Instead, we got the same knee-jerk, poorly thought out overreaction that seems right out of the Bush/Cheney playbook. These draconian restrictions are embarrassing ("New questions, new scare," Cover story, News, Monday).
The "shoe bomber" tried to ignite a device in his shoe, so eight years later we still have to take our shoes off as we go through security. Some Britons plotted to bring down an airplane with liquid bombs, and three years later we cannot bring our own water on a plane.
An editorial in a Danish newspaper, citing both foreign and domestic policies pursued by President Barack Obama, is deifying the American political leader.
"Obama is, of course, greater than Jesus - if we have to play that absurd Christmas game," opined the unsigned editorial yesterday in Politiken, which boasts of being Denmark's largest newspaper, in publication since 1884.
The English translation is provided online by Julian Isherwood.
It continued, "But it is probably more meaningful to insist that with today's domestic triumph, that he has already assured himself a place in the history books - a space he has good chances of expanding considerably in coming years."
The newspaper says Obama "is provocative in insisting on an outstretched hand, where others only see animosity."
And while "his tangible results in the short time that he has been active - are few and far between," his words "remain in the consciousness of their audience and have long-term effects."
Heather Hollingsworth The Associated Press 2009-12-31 00:11:00
A trucker and his son told investigators they tortured and killed a 20-year-old Ohio man in the trucker's basement with the help of several other people, prosecutors said in a court filing Wednesday seeking first-degree murder and other charges against the men.
Authorities have been holding 38-year-old Chester Harvey Jr., of Laddonia, and 19-year-old Chad Michael Harvey, of Eolia, on one count each of abandonment of a corpse since shortly after finding the body of James William Boyd McNeely in the trailer of Harvey's semi.
Audrain County Prosecuting Attorney Jacob Shellabarger declined to comment Wednesday about a possible motive for the killing, where in Ohio the victim was from or how the defendants knew the victim.
A lone gunman killed four people in a rampage in a Finnish shopping mall and also murdered his former girlfriend before being found dead himself, police said.
The man, named as Ibrahim Shkupolli, 43, opened fire in the suburban Helsinki mall yesterday where his ex-partner reportedly worked, shooting dead three men and a woman before fleeing, detectives told a press conference.
The body of his former partner, whom he had been barred by a court from approaching, was later discovered in a house on the outskirts of the capital.
Markus Salzmann World Socialist Web Site 2009-12-31 00:08:00
Last Sunday, the votes of the ruling social democratic party, the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK), enabled the Greek parliament to pass an austerity budget calling for the deepest cuts since the end of the military dictatorship in the 1970s.
Although Finance Minister Giorgos Papaconstantinou will not publicly announce details of the budget until next month, its essential features are already known.
Prime Minister George Papandreou has declared the government's intention of - among other things - reducing the budget deficit to the Maastricht limit of 3 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) within four years. The budget provides for a new deficit of 9.1 percent of GDP in contrast to 12.7 this year.
A new case of a boy stuck with several sewing needles as part of a black magic rite has sickened a Brazil already raw from a two-year-old who nearly lost his life to such a practice.
The boy in the northern state of Maranhao, also two years old, was apparently perforated with the slivers by his father, police told AFP.
"Everything indicates the father participated in black magic rituals. He has been put in preventive custody for five days, and that could be extended for another five days," said the investigating officer, police chief Armando Pacheco.
Until last year, people in the Ethiopian settlement of Elliah earned a living by farming their land and fishing. Now, they are employees.
Dozens of women and children pack dirt into bags for palm seedlings along the banks of the Baro River, seedlings whose oil will be exported to India and China. They work for Bangalore- based Karuturi Global Ltd., which is leasing 300,000 hectares (741,000 acres) of local land, an area larger than Luxembourg.
The jobs pay less than the World Bank's $1.25-per-day poverty threshold, even as the project has the potential to enrich international investors with annual earnings that the company expects to exceed $100 million by 2013.
"My business is the third wave of outsourcing," Sai Ramakrishna Karuturi, the 44-year-old managing director of Karuturi Global, said at the company's dusty office in the western town of Gambella. "Everyone is investing in China for manufacturing; everyone is investing in India for services. Everybody needs to invest in Africa for food."
More details have emerged in this morning's perplexing story, in which a suicide bomber attacked what officials called a "gym" on a military base in Khost Province, killing eight Americans the military identified as "civilians."
Now US officials admit that all eight Americans slain in the attack were actually CIA agents, adding a reason why the Haqqani network was so quickly blamed, as CIA drones have been bombing the Haqqanis in North Waziristan for over a year.
Moreover, the "gym" at the Forward Operating Base was actually being used as a CIA "operations and surveillance center," explaining the conspicuous lack of military personnel harmed in the attack.
One former CIA official was quoted as saying the attack was "the nightmare we've been anticipating since we went into Afghanistan and Iraq," adding that the CIA agents operating in the warzones often lack adequate protection.
Jim Heintz The Associated Press 2009-12-31 10:19:00
U.S. military deaths in Afghanistan doubled in 2009 compared with a year ago as 30,000 additional troops began pouring in for a stepped-up offensive and the Taliban fought back with powerful improvised bombs.
A tally by The Associated Press shows 304 American service members had died as of Dec. 30, up from 151 in 2008. The count does not include eight U.S. civilians killed by a suicide bomber on a base in eastern Afghanistan on Wednesday.
Also, the annual death toll of international troops, including U.S. forces, surpassed 500 for the first time in the war. The total this year was 502 compared with 286 in 2008, according to the AP count.
Among other forces, Britain took the worst blow in 2009 with 107 deaths and Canada lost 32, including four who died Wednesday when their vehicle was blown up by a roadside bomb. Other countries in the international military operation lost a total of 59 service members.
One of Nigeria's two main intelligence agencies has blamed the other for failing to share key information two months ago about Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the young man who allegedly went on to try to blow up a plane over the United States with nearly 300 people on board.
If the charge is confirmed, it could highlight disarray within the Nigerian intelligence community which parallels the mistakes President Barack Obama said had been made by US officials.
The reported failure by one part of the Nigerian government to share information with other parts of the administration could also, of course, have had potentially catastrophic consequences - although, in the event, Mr Abdulmutallab allegedly failed to completely detonate explosives on the plane.
The "security theater" of pretending that We Must Be Seen To Be Doing Something seems to have afflicted the Netherlands government, which is obviously embarrassed by the recent security failure at Schipol airport.
The Daily Telegraph appears to be hyping up "see through your clothes" / perv scans, as if they were some sort of magical solution to the perceived problem, even though there is no guarantee that the presence of such equipment would actually have prevented the attempted attack.
RFID interrogators installed in Chicago's Ping Tom Park helped the event's organizers learn where attendees of varying demographics spent their time.
The Dragon Boat Race for Literacy is an annual event that typically draws 10,000 participants and spectators to Ping Tom Park, in Chicago's Chinatown. The festival features not only a race between ornate, oar-powered wooden boats, but also musical, dance and acrobatic performances, as well as food. Since 1999, the Chicago Chinatown Chamber of Commerce has hosted the festival, which raises money to support literacy and promote culture and diversity in neighborhood schools.
But this year's Chinese Dragon Boat Race, held on July 25, marked the first time the organizers employed radio frequency identification to track the movement of people throughout the 12-acre city park, in order to measure where individuals of various demographics spent their time.
Lauren weinstein Lauren weinstein's Blog 2009-12-30 15:26:00
Greetings. Here's a "fun" question to think about as we get ready to close out 2009. With politicians clamoring for massive deployment of full body scanners at airports, how long do you imagine it will take before we start to see headlines like the title of this posting, inappropriately blaming the Internet generally and Search Engines in particular for the mess that these scanners are likely to create?
Subscription sites for body scan celebrity images (and different sorts of sites focused on imagery of children) would seem inevitable, as well as more routine "gawking at the big breasts" sites.
Despite claims of privacy improvements, most of these full body scanners still present imagery in astonishing detail.
Getting the images to the outside world will be relatively straightforward, despite the claims that images aren't recorded and that observers will be isolated.
Joanna Sugden The Times Online 2009-12-30 15:23:00
The United States prevented Dutch authorities from installing full body scanners before the suspected Christmas Day bomb plotter passed through security at Amsterdam's airport, the Dutch government claimed today.
The Dutch claimed that they had been trying to install the machines for flights to the US since 2008 but had been blocked by US officials who wanted passengers to all destinations screened.
In light of the failed attack all passengers travelling from Holland to the US will now have to go through full body scanners the Dutch Interior Minister announced following discussions with the Americans.
Guusje ter Horst said the millimetre wave scanners that can see beneath passengers' clothes will be in use at Schiphol airport within three weeks and remain a permanent fixture for all flights to the US.
The Dutch government has said that it will commence using full-body scanners on flights to the US from Amsterdam's Schiphol airport within three weeks, after a failed Christmas Day airliner bomb attack.
The interior ministry made the announcement on Wednesday after Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a 23-year-old Nigerian, boarded a flight from Lagos to Detroit in the US, via Schiphol, with highly explosive material sewn into his underwear.
An investigation by the Dutch government will look into the incident, but a preliminary inquiry said that the plot was of professional standard but its execution was "amateurish".
A former US official has said that both the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) are extremely paranoid about the Israeli secret service Mossad and Jews, and adds that the charges of espionage against US Defense Department scientist Stewart Nozette reflect this fear and "extreme view".
These fears against Israel, former AIPAC staffer Steve Rosen tells The Jerusalem Post, could harm US-Israel relations.
"One of the things that our case revealed is the very extreme views that are held by some in counter-intelligence agencies of the CIA and FBI about Israel," Rosen said.
"They believe that the Mossad spied on the US on a huge scale and they believe that the Pollard case was the tip of some sort of iceberg," he added.
Patrick Martin World Socialist Website 2009-12-31 10:31:00
Five days after the unsuccessful attempt by a Nigerian student to set off a bomb aboard a Detroit-bound passenger jet, US military and intelligence officials are said to be preparing expanded military action against targets in Yemen, the Arab country where the student allegedly received terrorist training and was equipped with an explosive device.
A series of US media reports suggest that new US-backed military attacks inside Yemen are imminent. Citing "two senior US officials," CNN reported: "The US and Yemen are now looking at fresh targets for a potential retaliation strike."
The network said the officials "both stressed the effort is aimed at being ready with options for the White House if President Obama orders a retaliatory strike." CNN continued: "The effort is to see whether targets can be specifically linked to the airliner incident and its planning. US special operations forces and intelligence agencies, and their Yemeni counterparts, are working to identify potential Al Qaeda targets in Yemen, one of the officials said."
"The White House has authorized an expansion of the C.I.A.'s drone program in Pakistan's lawless tribal areas, officials said this week, to parallel the president's decision, announced Tuesday, to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan" -- New York Times, December 4, 2009.
"In the midst of two unfinished major wars, the United States has quietly opened a third, largely covert front against Al Qaeda in Yemen" -- New York Times, yesterday.
Bill Van Auken World Socialist Web Site 2009-12-30 00:00:00
Three days after the failed attempt by a 23-year-old Nigerian student to trigger an explosion on a Northwest Airlines passenger jet, President Barack Obama threatened to unleash US military power in Yemen and across the globe.
Obama interrupted his Hawaii vacation Monday to deliver his bellicose remarks in the face of a crescendo of Republican criticism. The Republican right has tried to exploit the abortive attack in order to indict the Democratic administration as "soft" on terrorism.
This campaign has been fueled in part by the claim initially made by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano that "the system worked" in the incident, which easily could have claimed the lives of 300 passengers and crew members.
In fact, there are serious questions about how the student, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, was able to board the plane. He reportedly bought a one-way ticket, paid for in cash, and checked no luggage. Moreover, according to an account given by fellow passengers, he and an accomplice had tried to get him on the flight without showing a passport.
On Christmas eve when Christians were celebrating the Prince of Peace, the New York Times delivered forth a call for war. "There's only one way to stop Iran," declared Alan J. Kuperman, and that is "military air strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities." [There's Only One Way to Stop Iran, December 23, 2009 ]
Kuperman is described as the "director of the Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Program at the University of Texas at Austin," but his Christmas eve call to war relies on disinformation and contradiction, not on objective scholarly analysis.
For example, Kuperman contradicts the unanimous report of America's 16 intelligence agencies, the reports of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and Russian intelligence with his claim that Iran has a nuclear weapon program. Astonishingly, it does not occur to Kuperman that readers might wonder how an academic bureaucrat in Austin, Texas, has better information than these authorities.
Kuperman is so determined to damn President Obama's plan to have other countries enrich Iran's uranium for Iran's nuclear energy program and medical isotopes that Kuperman commits astounding blunders. After claiming that Iran has a "bomb program," Kuperman claims that "Iran's uranium contains impurities" and that Ahmadinejad's threat "to enrich uranium domestically to the 20 percent level . . . is a bluff, because even if Iran could further enrich its impure uranium, it lacks the capacity to fabricate the uranium into fuel elements."
Amid mounting concern that Israel may unleash pre-emptive strikes against Iran to attack its nuclear facilities, some Israeli commentators are preaching restraint.
They warn that Israel does not have the firepower to deliver a knockout blow to Iran's perceived drive for nuclear weapons and faces a potentially withering Iranian retaliation the likes of which they have never endured before.
"It must be stated plainly: Israel does not have independent strike capability against Iran -- not in the broad sense of the term," Amos Harel wrote in the liberal daily Haaretz Wednesday.
"The air force is capable of delivering a certain amount of explosives to a given target and bringing most of its aircraft back home intact.
The British hostage Peter Moore was dramatically set free yesterday after the United States handed over an Iraqi insurgent suspected of planning the deaths of five American servicemen.
Mr Moore, an IT consultant, was freed by League of the Righteous, or Asaib al-Haq (AAH) - an extremist Shia group allied to Iran - after 31 months and spent his first night of freedom at the British Embassy in Baghdad. He is expected to fly home today.
David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, said that officials had worked tirelessly to secure his release but strongly denied that the British Government had given ground to his captors. He said: "There were no concessions in this case. There was no - quote, unquote - deal."
Foreign and Commonwealth Office sources confirmed, however, that the transfer from US custody a few days ago of Qais al-Khazali, a cleric and commander of AAH, helped to pave the way for Mr Moore's release. They also admitted that British diplomats had been pressing the US to hand over al-Khazali to the Iraqi administration.
Washington - U.S. lenders involved in risky mortgage lending that contributed to the 2007 financial crisis were also some of the fiercest financial lobbyists, according to a report by International Monetary Fund economists.
In the report "A Fistful of Dollars: Lobbying and the Financial Crisis," the economists said their studies showed that lenders taking on the most risk were also the most active in lobbying against laws and regulations related to mortgage lending.
The study did not name any of the lenders but the language in it implied that they were among the biggest banks and mortgage brokerage companies in the nation.
"Lenders that lobby more intensively on these specific issues have (i) more lax lending standards measured by loan-to-income ratio, (ii) greater tendency to securitize, and (iii) faster growing mortgage loan portfolios," the report said.
There were 45,000 people at the Copenhagen summit and more than 100 world leaders, but in the end it came down to an extraordinary personal showdown between the leaders of the world's two superpowers and biggest greenhouse gas emitting countries, China and the US.
The deal itself was anything but historic. But the implications of how the Chinese handled this negotiation well might be.
In a disastrous result for the world's environment and for 19 years of difficult and painstaking environmental diplomacy, China undoubtedly won.
Chinese chief negotiator Xie Zhenhua said China was leaving Copenhagen "happy", before walking out of the Bella conference centre late on Friday night with his clearly cheerful team .
In a statement, Xie, who is also vice-chairman with China's National Development and Reform Commission, said Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao was also happy with the agreement.
Evelyn Nieves The Associated Press 2009-12-30 16:09:00
Two mysteries surround a huge herd of sea lions that were hanging out on a pier in San Francisco Bay: Why did so many show up, and why did so many leave at once?
Just last month, Pier 39, famous in San Francisco for its sea lions and the throngs of tourists they attract, was groaning under the weight of more than 1,500 of the animals. The record number delighted tourists and baffled experts.
Marine experts suspect the sea lions came and stayed for the food, then left largely for the same reason.
"Most likely, they left chasing a food source," said Jeff Boehm, executive director of the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, which runs an information center and gift shop at Pier 39. "It's probably what kept them here in the first place."
An earthquake of moderate intensity, measuring 5.5 on the Richter scale, jolted parts of India's North-East today.
This was the second quake in the region in the past three days, after a tremor, measuring 5.5 on the Richter scale, had rocked some parts of the North-East on December 29.
The India Meteorological Department (IMD) said today's quake was felt at 1527 hours and had its epicentre at latitude 27.3 N and longitude 91.4 E in Bhutan at a depth of seven km below the earth's surface.
There were no reports of damage to life or property.
Researchers have new insight into the sex lives of the much-maligned mosquitoes that are responsible for the vast majority of malaria deaths, according to a report published online on December 31st in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication. In finding a partner of the right species type, male and female mosquitoes depend on their ability to "sing" in perfect harmony. Those tones are produced and varied based on the frequency of their wing beats in flight.
"Everyone must be familiar with the maddening whine a mosquito makes as it hones in for a bite," said Gabriella Gibson of the University of Greenwich at Medway. "There's no doubt many of us have wondered why it makes its presence so obvious - surely, after all of these centuries of blood-feeding, selection should have favored a more stealthy approach that would leave mosquitoes less vulnerable to the defensive attacks of its unsettled host. Our findings suggest that mosquitoes rely on the sounds they make to attract a mate of the right species, a behavior that is far more vulnerable to selection than avoiding the risk of being squashed by the rare host that is still awake at feeding time."
The Anopheles gambiae mosquitoes in fact include a considerable amount of genetic diversity, representing a complex of seven species and several chromosomal forms. And that diversity comes with real consequences for humans, explained Gibson and Ian Russell of the University of Sussex. The complexity of malaria epidemiology and control is due in part to the mosquito's remarkable genetic plasticity, enabling its adaptation to a widening range of human-influenced habitats.
An arctic chill will slam the northern Plains over the next couple of days with subzero temperatures. The core of the coldest air will be across North Dakota and Minnesota, where daytime highs will be in the single digits and overnight lows could reach as low as minus 25 degrees.
Typical high temperatures this time of year are in the low to middle 20s, but with an arctic boundary pushing across the region, temperatures will be 20-25 degrees below normal. Friday will be the coldest of the next two days with highs in northern North Dakota and northwestern Minnesota below zero.
Nights will be frigid with furnaces getting a workout. Temperatures will be 10-20 degrees below normal for overnight lows. When normal lows are in the single digits to begin with, anything below normal is bitterly cold.
And that's not all, for the week ending Dec 13th, there were 815 new snowfall records set. December 2009 is shaping up to be quite the snowmaker. Here's a map showing continental USA records:
Scientists at The Methodist Hospital Research Institute in Houston recently discovered a simple gene mutation that decreases the chance people will get a flesh-eating disease called necrotizing fasciitis. Further, they proved that inactivating this section of the gene lessens the devastating disease in humans.
Results of this research, funded by the National Institutes of Health and the American Heart Association, recently appear online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
"The study of genomics has opened a wealth of information on how disease develops on a molecular level," said Musser, co-director of The Methodist Hospital Research Institute. "When we identify a gene mutation that has a direct effect on a disease -- like we have done for the flesh-eating bacteria -- this opens up doors to designing drugs that provide treatments and cures."
Psoriasis, a chronic disease that causes red, raised patches of skin, is increasingly seen as a systemic disease with links to arthritis and cardiovascular disease. The December issue of Mayo Clinic Women's HealthSource provides an overview of this sometimes embarrassing condition, what's known about it and how it's treated. Highlights of the overview include:
Symptoms
Patches of thick, red skin covered with silvery, flaky scales commonly appear on the elbows and knees, but can appear anywhere on the body. They result from skin cells on overdrive, reproducing much faster than normal. Doctors aren't sure why this overproduction occurs, although genetic and environmental factors likely play roles. Psoriasis symptoms come and go and flare in response to triggers that can include infections, some medications, alcohol, smoking, stress, sunburn, skin irritation or injury.
2009 may well be remembered for its scandal-ridden headlines, from admissions of extramarital affairs by governors and senators, to corporate executives flying private jets while cutting employee benefits, and most recently, to a mysterious early morning car crash in Florida. The past year has been marked by a series of moral transgressions by powerful figures in political, business and celebrity circles.
A new study explores why powerful people - many of whom take a moral high ground - don't practice what they preach.
Researchers sought to determine whether power inspires hypocrisy, the tendency to hold high standards for others while performing morally suspect behaviors oneself. The research found that power makes people stricter in moral judgment of others - while going easier on themselves.
The Environmental Working Group (EWG) has issued support for a proposed law that would require the Department of Environmental Protection in New York City to test the city's drinking water supply for personal care product and pharmaceutical residue. Citing numerous studies that have found measurable levels of such contaminants in water supplies around the nation, EWG is encouraging support for measures that would investigate and report contaminant levels to the public.
Reports have found that the nation's water supplies contain various antibiotics, phytoestrogens and estrogenic steroids, and pharmaceutical and genotoxic drugs. New York City's water supply is no exception. Since these contaminants have the potential to inflict widespread reproductive harm, neuro-degeneration, endocrine disruption, and cell destruction in humans, EWG is urging that New York City monitor contaminant levels and issue annual water quality reports that outline the results. Since most of these contaminants are currently unregulated, they are typically not disclosed in existing water quality reports.
Wastewater treatment facilities are capable of removing most contaminants from water, however a small percentage of fragments make their way back into the water supply. When combined with thousands of other fragments, the aggregate mass of contaminant particles can pose serious health risks. The extent to which such contamination causes harm has yet to be fully understood and observed.
Joseph Bonner Rockefeller University 2009-12-28 04:49:00
Two New York City high school students exploring their homes using the latest high-tech DNA analysis techniques were astonished to discover a veritable zoo of 95 animal species surrounding them, in everything from fridges to furniture, from sidewalks to shipping boxes, and from feather dusters to floor corners.
Guided by DNA "barcoding" experts at The Rockefeller University and the American Museum of Natural History, Grade 12 students Brenda Tan and Matt Cost of Trinity School, Manhattan, also revealed a lot of apparent consumer fraud in progress, finding that the labels of 11 of 66 food products purchased at local markets misrepresented the actual contents.
The January edition of BioScience magazine will report on their "DNA House" project, detailed as well online here.
DNA that is left in the remains of long-dead plants, animals, or humans allows a direct look into the history of evolution. So far, studies of this kind on ancestral members of our own species have been hampered by scientists' inability to distinguish the ancient DNA from modern-day human DNA contamination.
Now, research by Svante Pääbo from The Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, published online on December 31st in Current Biology - a Cell Press publication - overcomes this hurdle and shows how it is possible to directly analyze DNA from a member of our own species who lived around 30,000 years ago.
DNA - the hereditary material contained in the nuclei and mitochondria of all body cells - is a hardy molecule and can persist, conditions permitting, for several tens of thousands of years. Such ancient DNA provides scientists with unique possibilities to directly glimpse into the genetic make-up of organisms that have long since vanished from the Earth. Using ancient DNA extracted from bones, the biology of extinct animals, such as mammoths, as well as of ancient humans, such as the Neanderthals, has been successfully studied in recent years.
The ancient DNA approach could not be easily applied to ancient members of our own species. This is because the ancient DNA fragments are multiplied with special molecular probes that target certain DNA sequences.
Tarot readers working for the insecurity outfit McAfee are predicting that hackers will give up trying to turn over Microsoft and focus on Adobe stuff instead.
In 2009, as attacks on client software increased, cybercriminals' favourite products were Adobe Flash and Acrobat Reader. McAfee expects that next year things will get worse with attackers exploiting vulnerabilities in Flash applications via the Web and Acrobat documents via e-mail attachments.
"We expect that in 2010 Adobe product exploitation is likely to surpass that of Microsoft Office applications in the number of desktop PCs being attacked," the report said.
NASA/JPL/University of Arizona/DLR Nasa.gov 2009-12-31 07:49:00
This image shows the first flash of sunlight reflected off a lake on Saturn's moon Titan. The glint off a mirror-like surface is known as a specular reflection. This kind of glint was detected by the visual and infrared mapping spectrometer (VIMS) on NASA's Cassini spacecraft on July 8, 2009. It confirmed the presence of liquid in the moon's northern hemisphere, where lakes are more numerous and larger than those in the southern hemisphere. Scientists using VIMS had confirmed the presence of liquid in Ontario Lacus, the largest lake in the southern hemisphere, in 2008.
2009 is ending with a flurry of sunspots. Indeed, if sunspot 1039 holds together just one more day (prediction: it will), the month of December will accumulate a total of 22 spotted days and the final tally for the year will look like this:
The dark line is a linear least-squares fit to the data. If the trend continues exactly as shown (prediction: it won't), sunspots will become a non-stop daily occurance no later than February 2011. Blank suns would cease and solar minimum would be over.
On Dec. 31st, the Blue Moon will dip into Earth's shadow for a partial lunar eclipse. The event is visible from Europe, Africa and Asia: map. At maximum eclipse, around 19:24 Universal Time, approximately 8% of the Moon will be darkly shadowed. Click here to launch an animated preview.
Blue Moons are rare (once every ~2.5 years). Blue Moons on New Year's Eve are rarer still (once every ~19 years). How rare is a lunar eclipse of a Blue Moon on New Year's Eve?
Dr. Tony Phillips Science @ NASA 2009-12-30 21:14:00
Party planners take note. For the first time in almost twenty years, there's going to be a Blue Moon on New Year's Eve. "I remember the last time this happened," says professor Philip Hiscock of the Dept. of Folklore at the Memorial University of Newfoundland. "December 1990 ended with a Blue Moon, and many New Year's Eve parties were themed by the event. It was a lot of fun."
Don't expect the Moon to actually turn blue, though. "The 'Blue Moon' is a creature of folklore," he explains. "It's the second full Moon in a calendar month."
Most months have only one full Moon. The 29.5-day cadence of the lunar cycle matches up almost perfectly with the 28- to 31-day length of calendar months. Indeed, the word "month" comes from "Moon." Occasionally, however, the one-to-one correspondence breaks down when two full Moons squeeze into a single month. Dec. 2009 is such a month. The first full Moon appeared on Dec. 2nd; the second, a "Blue Moon," will come on Dec. 31st.
This definition of Blue Moon is relatively new. If you told a person in Shakespeare's day that something happens "once in a Blue Moon" they would attach no astronomical meaning to the statement. Blue moon simply meant rare or absurd, like making a date for the Twelfth of Never. "But meaning is a slippery substance," says Hiscock. "The phrase 'Blue Moon' has been around for more than 400 years, and during that time its meaning has shifted."
The witness called four days after his sighting occurred. I called him back the following day. The witness said that he originally reported the sighting to the police. The police were not interested and said that they had not received any other sighting reports on that night. The witness was quite upset during and after his sighting. He was too afraid to get out of car. He and his wife were traveling south on Landing Avenue. (See map above.) He saw bright blue lights behind street lights straight ahead. At that point the lights began approaching. He stopped his car to get a better look. He said that the object contained several very bright blue lights. Smaller lights surrounded the larger lights. He saw a large black mass between the lights. The object was moving right over the street lights northward on Landing Avenue. The object passed directly overhead. He said that the object emitted no sound.
Location of Sighting: Edinburgh
Date of Sighting: 26 December 2009
Time: 2000
Witness Statement: So glad I found this website as I thought me and my husband were going mad. On Boxing Day we saw what we thought was an aeroplane on fire as there was a huge orange glow in the sky, on the flight path making what seemed to be a routine landing. It looked as though there were orange flames and bits dropping off the underside. My husband who is a plane buff opened the patio doors looked at it again and said hand me phone to call the police there is an aeroplane in trouble.
Location of Sighting: South London
Date of Sighting: 25 December 2009
Time: Early evening
Witness Statement: Went out into back garden sometime in the early evening to have a smoke. Saw a bright red globe-shaped light moving across the sky. The light went on and then off in a precisely calibrated fashion moving forwards all the time, maybe one second on and one second off but not like the strobe flashes always seen on aeroplanes. I am often looking up and paying attention to what I see but I have never seen something electric red like this and I didn't hear any sound associated with it. It was some way off but can't judge how far.
Location of Sighting: Jersey
Date of Sighting: 31/12/2009
Time: 00:02
Witness Statement: 2 witness to a fast moving bright light object traveling from west to east over north coast of Jersey. The weather was cloudy with very low cloud. The bright light was similar to a welders torch brightness and was below the cloud level which was approx 2000 feet max. Amazing and a first for the both of us. We just sat there for 10mins later wondering what would move so fast at such a low level?
Location of Sighting: shrewsbury, shropshire, uk
Date of Sighting: 30/12/2009
Time: approx 0145 hours
Witness Statement: Can anyone help me?
In the early hours of yesterday morning a large slow moving craft of some sort moved straight over the Herongate estate in Shrewsbury moving south to north. The noise from this was very unusual as it was defo not a helicopter or fixed wing aircraft. The object had a very bright white light that shone directly through the curtains as it passed over head. It made a rushing sound and also sounded like something was whirring or grinding.
Location of Sighting: Colshaw estate, Wilmslow
Date of Sighting: 20th December 09
Time: 2200
Witness Statement: On my own this time having a can at front door when I noticed the triangle shape that's fast becoming popular on here. 2 lights at back and 1 at front, was easily size of a football pitch. Was basically looking towards the other row of houses for a mate who saw nothing. It was silent and moved very slow across the sky. Ran up to 1 of the car parks to see it and it was just hovering and moving very slow if anything,
If you recently tweeted about how you were chillaxin for the holiday, take note: Fifteen particularly over- or mis-used words and phrases have been declared "shovel-ready" to be "unfriended" by a U.S. university's annual list of terms that deserve to be banned.
After thousands of nominations of words and phrases commonly used in marketing, media, technology and elsewhere, wordsmiths at Lake Superior State University on Thursday issued their 35th annual list of words that they believe should be banned.
Tops on the Michigan university's list of useless phrases was "shovel-ready." The term refers to infrastructure projects that are ready to break ground and was popularly used to describe road, bridge and other construction projects fueled by stimulus funds from the Obama administration.
And speaking of stimulus, that word -- which was applied to government spending aimed at boosting the economy -- made the over-used category as well, along with an odd assortment of Obama-related constructions such as Obamacare and Obamanomics.
Britain's winter ends tomorrow with further indications of a striking environmental change: snow is starting to disappear from our lives.
Sledges, snowmen, snowballs and the excitement of waking to find that the stuff has settled outside are all a rapidly diminishing part of Britain's culture, as warmer winters - which scientists are attributing to global climate change - produce not only fewer white Christmases, but fewer white Januaries and Februaries.
The first two months of 2000 were virtually free of significant snowfall in much of lowland Britain, and December brought only moderate snowfall in the South-east. It is the continuation of a trend that has been increasingly visible in the past 15 years: in the south of England, for instance, from 1970 to 1995 snow and sleet fell for an average of 3.7 days, while from 1988 to 1995 the average was 0.7 days. London's last substantial snowfall was in February 1991.
