2009-11-07T18:25:35Z Signs of the Times tag:sott.net,2009-11-07:/:signsofthetimes tag:www.sott.net,2009-11-07:/articles/show/196372 2009-11-07T18:22:33Z

Secret police agents have abducted and beaten award-winning blogger Yoani Sanchez, whose online reports chronicle the dark side of everyday life in communist Cuba. Three agents in street clothes snatched Ms Sanchez and her friend Orlando Luis Pardo off the street in the Havana district of Vedado as they headed out to an anti-violence march. "They beat me and then they shoved me into a car head-first. They did not give me any explanation at any time, but it is clear their goal was to stop us from taking part in the march," Ms Sanchez, who writes the blog Generation Y, said. Two other friends of hers were ordered into police cars and released later, she said. In an item on her blog, which is often critical of the Americas' only one-party communist system in which only state media are legal, Ms Sanchez wrote an expose under the headline "A Gangland-style Kidnapping".

tag:www.sott.net,2009-11-07:/articles/show/196371 2009-11-07T18:21:07Z

Being in a bad mood may not be all gloom and doom after Australian scientists found that negative feelings improved judgement, boosted memory and made people less gullible. The study, authored by psychology professor Joseph Forgas at the University of New South Wales, showed that people in a bad mood were more critical of, and paid more attention to, their surroundings than happier people, who were more likely to believe anything they were told. "Whereas positive mood seems to promote creativity, flexibility, cooperation, and reliance on mental shortcuts, negative moods trigger more attentive, careful thinking paying greater attention to the external world," Prof Forgas wrote.

tag:www.sott.net,2009-11-07:/articles/show/196370 2009-11-07T18:09:48Z

An archaeology professor has discovered the missing legs of a 900-year-old Buddhist statue deep in the Cambodian jungle, rewriting history in the process. According to a report in The Independent, the professor in question is Dr Peter Sharrock, a senior teaching fellow in the art and archaeology of Southeast Asia at London's School of Oriental and African Studies. Sharrock was at a conference in Cambodia in July when he decided to spend a day searching the forest around the ruins of Angkor. His aim was to locate the missing giant legs of an eight-headed, three-metre high sandstone statue of Hevajra, the war-like, tantric Buddhist deity. The statue's intricately carved bust was excavated and salvaged in 1925 by French archaeologists, who sold it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where it has been on display ever since.

tag:www.sott.net,2009-11-07:/articles/show/196369 2009-11-07T18:06:09Z

Adolf Hitler was the manager of Germany's national soccer team, and Auschwitz was a World War Two theme park, a poll released by the Daily Mail on Friday said, questioning U.K. children aged 9 to 15. The study, which was conducted by war veterans' charity Erskine in the run-up to Remembrance Day, tested 2,000 children for their knowledge of last century's two world wars. One in 20, according to the poll, thought the Holocaust was the celebration at the end of the war and one in ten said the SS was Enid Blyton's Secret Seven. The poll also showed only half of the respondents knew D-Day was the invasion of Normandy, with a quarter of those asked believing it was "Dooms Day," with another quarter thinking a nuclear bomb was dropped on Pearl Harbour, spurring America's involvement in the war. Twelve percent of respondents said the symbol of Britain's Remembrance Day is the golden arches of McDonald's, rather than the poppy.

tag:www.sott.net,2009-11-07:/articles/show/196368 2009-11-07T18:02:09Z

Byproducts from the production of corn for ethanol biofuels have been found to be contaminated with antibiotics. "Ethanol's drug problem is just the latest of many reasons to impose a moratorium on production of fuels from grains," wrote Stan Cox for the Land Institute's Prairie Writers Circle. "If industry cannot supply sufficient quantities of alternative fuels without risking an even deeper medical crisis, it might just be another sign that our thirst for vehicle fuel has outgrown all ecological limits." Ethanol production has previously been criticized for diverting land from food to fuel production and for degrading soil, depleting water supplies and increasing various forms of pollution. "Now to the list of ethanol's environmental insults we can add pharmaceutical pollution," Cox wrote.

tag:www.sott.net,2009-11-07:/articles/show/196367 2009-11-07T17:59:49Z

Recently, USA Today has been running an interesting series of articles on our ridiculous health care system or, as reality would put it, our "disease care" system. While more and more Americans are concerned with the increasing costs of the U.S. health care system, hawked as the best medical care in the world, the problem is that those that cannot afford it are steadily increasing. A poll found that eighty percent of those that responded were not thrilled with the $2.2 TRILLION, or $7,129 a person, being spent on health care in the U.S. and that medical company profits or malpractice lawsuits were the biggest causes of the spending. Actually, of the $2.2 trillion, 660 billion is spent on hospital care; 462 billion is spent on doctors, and 220 billion on drugs. (See end for complete breakdown) For the most part, this medical inflation is perpetuated by Big Pharma's drug hype as the solution to everything. This inflation is also brought about by waste, inefficiency, and the growing number of chronic diseases caused by our epidemic of obesity.

tag:www.sott.net,2009-11-07:/articles/show/196366 2009-11-07T17:52:16Z

The Associated Press has declared war on alternative medicine, publishing a series of stories attacking everything from nutritional therapies to bioidentical hormones. These stories, which are syndicated across thousands of websites around the world, are prefaced with the following highly-opinionated "Editor's Note": EDITOR'S NOTE: Ten years and $2.5 billion in research have found no cures from alternative medicine. Yet these mostly unproven treatments are now mainstream and used by more than a third of all Americans. This is one in an occasional series examining their use and potential risks. What this note reveals is an extraordinary bias against natural medicine from the start. It's clear from the claim of "examining their use and potential risks" that the Associated Press isn't even looking for potential benefits of natural medicine. They're just looking to discredit it. And the part about "Ten years and $2.5 billion in research have found no cures" is factually incorrect. To be more accurate, the statement should have said "Ten years and $2.5 billion in research by pharmaceutical researchers who don't even know how to study something holistically have found no cures that they are willing to publicly acknowledge."

tag:www.sott.net,2009-11-07:/articles/show/196365 2009-11-07T17:44:32Z

Chicago, Illinois - The swine flu vaccine has become a coveted commodity all over the country, but someone in Milwaukee appeared at first glance to carry the notion to a new level this week, stealing off in a refrigerated truck that was hauling 930 of the prized doses. The doses were being returned to Milwaukee's main storage facility on Thursday evening after a public vaccination clinic when one or more people took off in the truck, which had been left idling and unattended only for moments, the authorities said. The police found the truck 40 minutes later, and said the crime appeared to have been inspired more by the easily available vehicle than by the H1N1 vaccine inside. In fact, the vaccine was all found, apparently untouched and perhaps even unnoticed.

tag:www.sott.net,2009-11-07:/articles/show/196364 2009-11-07T17:44:17Z

Scientists have discovered the first evidence that dinosaurs roamed the South Island of New Zealand with 70-million-year-old footprints found in six locations. They are the first dinosaur footprints found in the country although bones, mostly vertebrae, have been discovered in two North Island locations. The footprints were found by scientist Greg Browne in the remote Whanganui Inlet in the northwest of Nelson at the top of the South Island. They are spread over 10 kilometres and in one area there are up to 20 footprints, Browne said. Browne, a sedimentologist, believes the footprints belonged to sauropods -- plant-eating dinosaurs which were among the largest animals to have lived, growing up to six metres (yards) in length and weighing several tonnes.

tag:www.sott.net,2009-11-07:/articles/show/196363 2009-11-07T17:38:41Z

Tree-dwelling ants generally live in harmony with their arboreal hosts. But new research suggests that when they run out of space in their trees of choice, the ants can get destructive to neighboring trees. The research, published in the November issue of the American Naturalist, is the first to document that ants bore into live trees, and it reopens a centuries-old debate on the relationship between ants and plants. Ants and certain species of plants and trees have cozy relationships. Myrmecophytes, also knows as ant-plants, have hollow stems or roots that occur as a normal part of their development. Ant colonies often take residence in these hollows. To protect their homes, the ants patrol the area around the tree, killing insects that want to eat the plant's leaves and sometimes destroying vegetation of other plants that might compete for precious soil nutrients and sunlight. The relationship is a classic biological mutualism. The ants get a nice place to live; the trees get protection. Everybody wins.

tag:www.sott.net,2009-11-07:/articles/show/196362 2009-11-07T17:33:12Z

Five people have been confirmed dead in a village fire on Friday in Sanjiang County of south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, rescuers said on Saturday. A fire-fighting official said 3,276 villagers have fallen victims to the fire, as their houses were burnt down. The official said that the county government sent 43 fire engines and mobilized 2,500 people to put out the fire, which broke out at 2:30 a.m. Friday. The fire was put out at 7 a.m. A government investigation team led by Zheng Junkang, mayor of Liuzhou City, which administrates Sanjiang, found the fire was caused by the malfunction of the electric switch of the rice mill owned by villager Wei Xianting. The 70-year-old man and his four-year-old granddaughter were among the dead.

tag:www.sott.net,2009-11-07:/articles/show/196361 2009-11-07T17:11:25Z

Two Somali gunmen attempted to hijack a plane flying to Djibouti from Bossaso airport, but the effort was foiled by the passengers, local aviation officials announced. The two Somali gunmen ordered the pilot to divert the plane, owned by Daallo Airlines, to land in the northern coastal town of Las Qorey, prompting the 30 passengers to desperately fight back and overpower the gunmen, according to Garowe online, a Press TV correspondent reported from Kenya. The passengers were unhurt, but one of the hijackers was injured.

tag:www.sott.net,2009-11-07:/articles/show/196360 2009-11-07T15:37:30Z

Mexico City: Three doctors and a nurse have been arrested for allegedly selling newborns after telling their mothers they had died. Police uncovered the scheme after one of the women learnt her baby was alive and had been sold to a woman for 15,000 pesos ($1240), said Mexico City's deputy attorney general, Luis Genaro. The woman gave birth to a girl through caesarean section at the private Central West Hospital in a working-class district in October 2008, Mr Genaro said. She had told authorities she heard her baby cry but when she asked to see the child, doctors told her she had to wait until the effects of the anaesthetic wore off. Later they told her the baby had been taken to another hospital. A day later, the woman was told her baby died and had been cremated, Mr Genaro said. The woman learnt the truth in an email from a man believed to be the son of the hospital director.

tag:www.sott.net,2009-11-07:/articles/show/196359 2009-11-07T13:21:06Z

A council which used controversial laws to spy on a mother and her family 21 times in three weeks insisted today that its actions only 'minimally' invaded their privacy. Poole Borough Council had also used Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa) legislation on two other occasions to determine whether families were living in the right school catchment areas, a landmark hearing was told. Mother-of-three Jenny Paton had applied for a school in Poole which was 'educational gold dust', Ben Hooper, counsel for the district's borough council, said. Ms Paton, 40, had branded the authority 'ludicrous and completely outrageous' as she took the authority to court for its use of Ripa legislation. In the second day's evidence before the Investigatory Powers Tribunal in central London, Mr Hooper told the panel: 'It was minimally invasive of privacy.'

tag:www.sott.net,2009-11-07:/articles/show/196358 2009-11-07T13:20:24Z

Madrid - The new ''smart meters'' utilities are installing in homes around the world to reduce energy use raise fresh privacy issues because of the wealth of information about consumer habits they reveal, experts said Friday. The devices send data on household energy consumption directly to utilities on a regular basis, allowing the firms to manage demand more efficiently and advise households when it is cheaper to turn on appliances. But privacy experts gathered in Madrid for a three-day conference which wraps up Friday warned that the meters can also reveal intimate details about customers' habits such as when they eat, what time they go to sleep or how much television they watch. With cars expected to be fuelled increasingly by electricity in the coming years, the new meters could soon be used to gather information on consumer behaviour beyond the home, they added.

tag:www.sott.net,2009-11-07:/articles/show/196357 2009-11-07T13:18:38Z

Every child in England will have their personal details stored on a controversial database despite fears over security and privacy. Ministers are pressing ahead with the introduction of ContactPoint to every local authority in the country after claiming that a pilot project has proved a success. They say the long-delayed £224 project will make England's 11million young people safer by providing a single register that can be used by all child protection professionals. But there are concerns that the sensitive data could fall into the wrong hands, after an official review concluded that it could never be completely secure. It is also feared that police or council workers will use it to search for evidence of crime or pry into family arrangements, rather than safeguarding children. The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats are both committed to scrapping ContactPoint, should they win the general election.

tag:www.sott.net,2009-11-07:/articles/show/196356 2009-11-07T13:02:27Z

A world treaty on climate change will be delayed by up to a year and is likely to be watered down because countries with the highest greenhouse gas emissions are refusing to commit to legally binding reductions. British officials preparing for next month's UN summit in Copenhagen said the best that could be hoped for was that national leaders would make "political agreements" on emission cuts and payments to help poor countries to adapt to climate change. These agreements would be non-binding, however, and could later be revised or rescinded by national parliaments.

tag:www.sott.net,2009-11-07:/articles/show/196355 2009-11-07T10:16:57Z

Samson - An Army investigation found that Soldiers should not have been sent to man traffic stops in a small Alabama town after 11 people were killed in March during a shooting spree. An Army report released to The Associated Press on Monday in response to a Freedom of Information Act request said the decision to dispatch military police to Samson from nearby Fort Rucker broke the law. But an Army spokesman said no charges have been filed following the Aug. 10 report. "As a result of the findings of the report, the Army took administrative action against at least one person," Lt. Col. Christopher Garver said. The action was less than a transfer or discharge but Garver would not elaborate.

tag:www.sott.net,2009-11-07:/articles/show/196353 2009-11-07T08:31:50Z

Kabul - NATO forces mistakenly killed seven Afghan soldiers and police in an air strike during a battle while searching for two missing American soldiers in Afghanistan, the Afghan Defense Ministry said on Saturday. The NATO-led force said none of its troops were killed but five were wounded, along with at least 20 Afghans, in a battle that took place on Friday during a manhunt for the two soldiers who went missing on Wednesday. "Yesterday, in a NATO air strike, seven Afghan (soldiers and police) were martyred in Badghis province," Afghan Defense Ministry spokesman General Zaher Azimy said, adding that other members of the Afghan security forces were wounded.

tag:www.sott.net,2009-11-07:/articles/show/196351 2009-11-07T08:09:31Z

Many people perceive gambling to be a harmless recreational activity. However, it is estimated that six to eight million people in the United States personally suffer from a gambling related problem. This problem seems to grow tentacles, extending out to wreak havoc and can profoundly impact the physical, emotional, and financial health of the family (spouses, children, extended). As stated in this month's issue of the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, the most common treatment models for problem gambling are focused on meeting the needs of gamblers but do not address the needs of couples and families whose lives have been negatively impacted by someone else's gambling.

tag:www.sott.net,2009-11-07:/articles/show/196350 2009-11-07T08:03:17Z

School-based physical education plays a key role in curbing obesity and improving fitness among adolescents from low-income communities, according to a new study led by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco and UC Berkeley. The study, which identifies opportunities for adolescents to improve their health based on routine daily activities, finds that regular participation in PE class is significantly associated with greater cardiovascular fitness and lower body mass index. "We took an incredibly comprehensive look at all of the opportunities kids have throughout their day to engage in physical activity and determined which are the most strongly linked to fitness and weight status," said first author Kristine Madsen, MD, MPH, an assistant professor of pediatrics at UCSF Children's Hospital. "Obesity continues to be a major public health concern, particularly in low-income communities, so it is imperative that we develop targeted interventions to improve the health of at-risk youth."

tag:www.sott.net,2009-11-07:/articles/show/196349 2009-11-07T07:59:18Z

Being warm enough at home might lead to better health, according to a new review appearing online in theAmerican Journal of Public Health. Hilary Thomson, of the Medical Research Council's Social and Public Health Sciences Unit in Glasgow, Scotland, and her colleagues combined the results of 40 studies from the 1930s through 2007. Improvements in general, mental, and respiratory health followed increases in warmth of a person's housing, studies showed. Positive effects included reductions in breathing-related concerns such as cold and flu symptoms, first diagnosis of nasal allergies and wheezing and dry coughs at night. Better heating also appeared to have an impact on first diagnosis of high blood pressure and heart disease, and there were also indications of less depression or anxiety. "Those who live in poor housing are at a greater risk of developing chronic disease and premature death," Thomson said. "For the public health community there is the potential to use investment to improve housing conditions as a means to improve the health of the worst off."

tag:www.sott.net,2009-11-07:/articles/show/196348 2009-11-07T07:51:23Z

The US government is now so totally under the thumbs of organized interest groups that "our" government can no longer respond to the concerns of the American people who elect the president and the members of the House and Senate. Voters will vent their frustrations over their impotence on the president, which implies a future of one-term presidents. Soon our presidents will be as ineffective as Roman emperors in the final days of that empire. Obama is already set on the course to a one-term presidency. He promised change, but has delivered none. His health care bill is held hostage by the private insurance companies seeking greater profits. The most likely outcome will be cuts in Medicare and Medicaid in order to help fund wars that enrich the military/security complex and the many companies created by privatizing services that the military once provided for itself at far lower costs. It would be interesting to know the percentage of the $700+ billion "defense" spending that goes to private companies. In American "capitalism," an amazing amount of taxpayers' earnings go to private firms via the government. Yet, Republicans scream about "socializing" health care.

tag:www.sott.net,2009-11-07:/articles/show/196347 2009-11-07T07:35:46Z

An unusual meteorite with an interesting orbit has been tracked to the ground using a photographic observatory that records time-lapse images of fireballs traveling across the sky. The network of cameras is in the Nullabor Desert in Western Australia. It allows scientists to track a fireball path, formed by a meteorite as it travels through Earth's atmosphere, and then work out where the meteorite comes to rest. The fireball camera network project was set up by Dr Phil Bland from Imperial College London and scientific associate of the Natural History Museum, along with colleagues from Ondrejov Observatory in the Czech Republic, and the Western Australia Museum, in 2006. This is the first meteorite recovered using the network. The cameras recorded the fireball that ultimately produced the meteorite in 2007, and the fragments that fell to Earth were named Bunburra Rockhole after a local landscape feature near to where they landed.

tag:www.sott.net,2009-11-07:/articles/show/196346 2009-11-07T05:15:20Z

A senior officer who was playing golf Thursday near Fort Hood, Texas, told CNN he witnessed the arrest of one of the two surviving suspects of the shooting at the Army installation. Shortly after the shooting, the officer said, military police told him to clear the course and he saw other MPs surround the building that held the golf carts, he said. The senior officer said he ducked into a nearby house for cover as 30 to 40 cars carrying MPs approached. He said he saw a soldier in battle-dress uniform, his hands in the air. The MPs ordered him to lie on the ground and open his uniform, presumably to ensure he was not carrying explosives, the senior officer said.

tag:www.sott.net,2009-11-07:/articles/show/196345 2009-11-07T02:13:27Z

When you read a news story saying that "the United Nations called on Israel to stop demolishing Palestinian homes and put an end to the policy of forced evictions in East Jerusalem, warning that there are 60,000 Palestinians threatened of becoming homeless," you cannot but wonder about the role of the international organization today and about the goal for which it was created on the eve of the victory of the forces of freedom against Nazism and Fascism and whether it is the same organization authorized by history and the world's peoples to guarantee the right to 'self determination'? Is it the same organization charged with "putting an end to colonialism"? Is it the same organization which believes in the right of all peoples to freedom without discrimination in terms of race or religion? If it is the same organization, why does it allow Palestinian civilians suffer from the brutality of armed settlers? The evasive and shameful language of the UN's call comes in the context of the submission of the Security Council to the Zionist will, and consequently commits a historic disgrace in the form of ignoring the legitimate political, civil and human rights of the Palestinian people including their right to life and freedom. For the UN not to take any initiative or measure which leads to giving the Palestinian people the right to self determination will remain a disgrace in the history of the organization which will never be removed. The Palestinians have been under a racist settler form of colonialism for over sixty years; and they are targeted with a campaign of ethnic cleansing launched by armed gangs of settlers supported by Israel's police and army. This is unparalleled in the 21st century in terms of the crimes which include siege, murder, food poisoning, starvation, assassination, demolishing houses, scorching crops, destroying farms, raping prisoners, trafficking in the organs of captives and preventing Palestinians from moving between their villages, farms and schools.

tag:www.sott.net,2009-11-07:/articles/show/196344 2009-11-07T00:51:09Z

Life may have been built on a foundation of cyanide formed in the fiery wakes of asteroids plunging through Earth's atmosphere, high-speed impact experiments suggest. Earth was probably not born with much in the way of organic material - the complex molecules containing carbon that life requires. It formed too close to the sun for such compounds to condense from the swirling primordial disc of gas and dust. One possibility is that organic matter formed on Earth after the planet coalesced, for example in chemical reactions induced by lightning arcing through the atmosphere, as experiments by Stanley Miller at the University of Chicago in the 1950s suggested. But the chemical reactions in this process could happen only in an early atmosphere full of methane and hydrogen, and later studies of the ancient geological record have suggested that was unlikely. Others have suggested the building blocks came from comets and asteroids that struck Earth, because these objects are known to contain high concentrations of organic material. But the tremendous heat of impact would have burned up much of that material, converting it into simpler molecules like carbon dioxide.

tag:www.sott.net,2009-11-07:/articles/show/196343 2009-11-07T00:42:43Z

Great whites aren't all alike. Even though the sharks travel all over the Pacific Ocean to hunt, they tend to mate with others from the same area, forming genetically distinct groups. That's what local great whites revealed to Barbara Block of Stanford University in California and her colleagues. The team headed out into the Pacific to find the sharks, which they lured to the surface using a silhouette of a seal. They then used a pole to attach two different tags to the sharks and took a sneaky biopsy at the same time. See the biologists tagging white sharks here. GPS tags were used to track the long-distance movements of the creatures, allowing the team to follow their migration during the colder months from coastal areas to the deep ocean. The other tags gave off sonic "pings" that were picked up by sensors moored in coastal areas, providing more precise location fixes than the satellite measurements, so that the team could tell if the sharks returned to the same areas.

tag:www.sott.net,2009-11-07:/articles/show/196342 2009-11-07T00:15:42Z

Some earthquakes can leave a legacy of aftershocks that last for centuries. Low-level seismic rumbles appear to foreshadow many quakes. Yet not always: the 2008 Sichuan quake in China came out of the blue. These rumbles may not be precursors but aftershocks - readjustments at a fault following a larger event, in some cases centuries earlier. Seth Stein of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and colleagues analysed the rate of fault slip in various tectonic settings. At plate boundaries, motion rapidly "reloads" a fault with new stress and changes conditions there, so tremors that can be clearly identified as aftershocks typically end within a decade, they found. Far away from plate boundaries, however, fault reloading is much slower, and aftershocks can continue for hundreds of years. The New Madrid fault in Missouri, for instance, may be experiencing aftershocks from a quake in the early 1800s (Nature, DOI: link).

tag:www.sott.net,2009-11-07:/articles/show/196341 2009-11-07T00:06:42Z

Fossil fuels have a new crime to live down. A frenzy of hydrocarbon burning at the end of the Permian period may have led to the most devastating mass extinction Earth has ever seen, as explosive encounters between magma and coal released more carbon dioxide in the course of a few years than in all of human history. Around 250 million years ago, the so-called "Great Dying" saw 70 per cent of species wiped out on land and 95 per cent in the oceans. A clue to what may have triggered this disaster lies in solidified magma from this time, which is widespread in an area of Siberia where coal is also abundant. One suggestion is that the heat of the magma could have baked many billions of tonnes of CO2 out of the coal over a geologically brief period of a few thousand years (New Scientist, 8 December 2007, p 42). The ensuing climate change and ocean acidification would account for the extinctions. Now Norman Sleep and Darcy Ogden, both of Stanford University in California, think the trigger for the Great Dying may have been even swifter and more terrifying.

tag:www.sott.net,2009-11-06:/articles/show/196338 2009-11-06T20:37:12Z

The Verkhovna Rada has ratified the Law "On Border Control," which was submitted by the Yulia Tymoshenko government. The law identifies the legal framework for border control, procedures and conditions for crossing the state border of Ukraine. According to the law, passports and other documents of Ukrainian citizens, foreigners and stateless persons who are crossing the state border are checked by authorized officials of the State Border Service of Ukraine to establish that they are authentic and belong to the given person. They also determine the presence or absence of grounds for temporarily refusing a border crossing.

tag:www.sott.net,2009-11-06:/articles/show/196337 2009-11-06T20:29:07Z

Ukraine may delay its presidential elections until May 2010 because of the flu epidemic, the deputy head of President Viktor Yushchenko's secretariat was reported by Itar-Tass news agency as saying on Friday. "If the government fails to establish control over the situation with the influenza epidemic, the possible imposition of an emergency situation in the country and the postponement of the elections to May 30 (2010) are not excluded," the official, Igor Popov, was quoted as saying. The elections are due to take place on Jan. 17, 2010.

tag:www.sott.net,2009-11-06:/articles/show/196336 2009-11-06T20:25:37Z

The Ukrainian authorities are using hysteria over the flu outbreak in the country in order to distract the attention of citizens from economic and social problems, presidential candidate Sergiy Tigipko has said. "The seasonal flu epidemic has completely pushed off the agenda the fight against the economic crisis and other really urgent social issues," the politician's press service quoted him as saying on Thursday. "The mission of the World Health Organization is planning to study the situation in Ukraine for another two weeks, and only then draw a conclusion about the danger of the epidemic. However, our authorities have created a sensation, although they in fact appeared to be unprepared for an annual seasonal flu epidemic," Tigipko said.

tag:www.sott.net,2009-11-06:/articles/show/196335 2009-11-06T20:15:29Z

Dear fellow citizens! I address you in performance of my constitutional duty under the Article 106 of the Basic Law of the state. The reason is the emergency epidemic situation in the country. Infections of viral origin, including the A/H1N1 flu, are rapidly spreading across Ukraine. The emergency is evident in the scale of the epidemic: the speed and the geography of its spreading, rapid progress of the illness and the exceptional number of deaths.

tag:www.sott.net,2009-11-06:/articles/show/196334 2009-11-06T20:10:10Z

These photographs of albatross chicks were made just a few weeks ago on Midway Atoll, a tiny stretch of sand and coral near the middle of the North Pacific. The nesting babies are fed bellies-full of plastic by their parents, who soar out over the vast polluted ocean collecting what looks to them like food to bring back to their young. On this diet of human trash, every year tens of thousands of albatross chicks die on Midway from starvation, toxicity, and choking. To document this phenomenon as faithfully as possible, not a single piece of plastic in any of these photographs was moved, placed, manipulated, arranged, or altered in any way. These images depict the actual stomach contents of baby birds in one of the world's most remote marine sanctuaries, more than 2000 miles from the nearest continent.

tag:www.sott.net,2009-11-06:/articles/show/196333 2009-11-06T19:47:13Z

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Friday that his government won't buy vaccines for swine flu that have not been properly tested or from producers who won't take responsibility for possible side effects. Tusk told reporters that vaccine producers were pressuring governments to buy, but were also demanding that all responsibility and compensation for possible negative side effects fall upon government shoulders. "Today we are dealing with great pressure from pharmaceutical firms ... we are dealing with expectations that hundreds of millions of zlotys (dollars) will be spent on vaccine while no one wants to guarantee that it has no side effects," he said.

tag:www.sott.net,2009-11-06:/articles/show/196332 2009-11-06T19:43:37Z

Islamic fundamentalist militants are the enemies of Israel and Western governments, right? Think again. Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed reports. Once upon a time, the CIA trained, financed and supported Osama bin Laden and his mujahidin networks in Afghanistan to repel the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. After the end of the Cold War, bin Laden turned against the West and we no longer had any use for him. His persistent terrorist attacks against us for more than a decade, culminating in 9/11, provoked our own response, in the form of the 'War on Terror'. This is the official narrative. And it's false. Not only did Western intelligence services continue to foster Islamist extremist and terrorist groups connected to al-Qaeda after the Cold War; they continued to do so even after 9/11. The CIA's jihad The story begins in the summer of 1979, six months before the Soviet invasion, when the CIA had already begun financing elements of an emerging Islamist mujahidin force inside Afghanistan. The idea, according to former US National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski and former CIA Director Robert Gates, was to increase the probability of a Soviet invasion, and entrap 'the Soviets into a Vietnamese quagmire'.1

tag:www.sott.net,2009-11-06:/articles/show/196331 2009-11-06T19:08:46Z

Evidence for a thin veil of carbon has been found on the neutron star in the Cassiopeia A supernova remnant. This discovery, made with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, resolves a ten-year mystery surrounding this object. "The compact star at the center of this famous supernova remnant has been an enigma since its discovery," said Wynn Ho of the University of Southampton and lead author of a paper that appears in the November 5 issue of Nature. "Now we finally understand that it can be produced by a hot neutron star with a carbon atmosphere." By analyzing Chandra's X-ray spectrum -- akin to a fingerprint of energy -- and applying it to theoretical models, Ho and his colleague Craig Heinke, from the University of Alberta, determined that the neutron star in Cassiopeia A, or Cas A for short, has an ultra-thin coating of carbon. This is the first time the composition of an atmosphere of an isolated neutron star has been confirmed.

tag:www.sott.net,2009-11-06:/articles/show/196330 2009-11-06T19:05:07Z

Group wins bid to develop west Qurna as Baghdad signs up slew of big contracts Baghdad - An ExxonMobil-led consortium has beaten rival Russian, French and Chinese groups to bag initial rights to develop Iraq's West Qurna field, the Oil Ministry said, adding momentum to Iraq's bid to unlock its oil riches. With reserves of 8.7 billion barrels, West Qurna is among the prized Iraqi fields eyed by Western oil majors as they face flat or lower output at home and stiff competition from Chinese and Indian oil companies in bidding for oilfields elsewhere. "The consortium led by ExxonMobil, which includes Shell, won the contract to develop West Qurna Phase One oilfield," Oil Ministry spokesman Asim Jihad said. The initial deal was signed in Baghdad on Thursday but needs Cabinet approval before it can be finalized. The 20-year contract is part of a raft of deals Iraq is close to formalizing in a bid to catapult itself to the world's third largest oil producer after decades of war and economic decline.

tag:www.sott.net,2009-11-06:/articles/show/196329 2009-11-06T19:04:26Z

Kandahar, Afghanistan | U.S. military officials sent a medical team to a remote outpost in southern Afghanistan this week to take blood samples from members of an Army unit after a soldier in the unit died from an Ebola-like virus. Dr. Jim Radike, an expert in internal medicine and infectious diseases at the Role 3 Trauma Hospital at Kandahar Air Field, told The Washington Times that Sgt. Robert David Gordon, 22, from River Falls, Ala., died Sept. 16 from what turned out to be Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever after he was bitten by a tick. The virus is transmitted by infected blood and can be carried by ticks, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

tag:www.sott.net,2009-11-06:/articles/show/196328 2009-11-06T18:57:02Z

As readers of Antiwar.com certainly are aware, J Street was created a year and a half ago to serve as an alternative to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). J Street supports creation of a viable Palestinian state that would exist side-by-side in peace with Israel. Unlike AIPAC, J Street advocates first negotiating issues rather than dropping bombs and it rejects the view that American Jews should close ranks and reflexively and unconditionally support every government in Israel. J Street targets liberal minded American Jews who are troubled by the Israel Lobby's right wing-Likud orientation. It promotes itself as pro-Israel, pro-American, and pro-peace, maintaining that it is possible to support Israel without having to endorse all Israeli government actions. It has recently concluded its first Washington conference which attracted a smattering of politicians. General James Jones, President Barack Obama's National Security Adviser, was a featured speaker.

tag:www.sott.net,2009-11-06:/articles/show/196327 2009-11-06T18:50:12Z

Israel displays hundreds of tonnes of weapons it says were bound for Lebanese militia disguised as bulldozer parts Hezbollah and its Iranian and Syrian backers have flatly rejected Israeli claims that a shipment of arms and ammunition intercepted at sea was destined for the Lebanese militia group. As Israel moved quickly to exploit the propaganda value of the find to highlight the role of Iran, Hezbollah "categorically" denied any connection to the case. The Israeli government spokesman, Mark Regev, said he hoped the weapons seizure would be a "wake-up call to those few in the international community who up until now have still held illusions about the true character of the extremist, radical regime in Tehran". Arab commentators and Iran suggested Israel's announcement of the weapons find was an attempt to undermine or divert attention from the Goldstone report, which accuses Israel of war crimes in its attack on Gaza this year. Israel is working to highlight the danger of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons that could challenge its own nuclear monopoly.

tag:www.sott.net,2009-11-06:/articles/show/196326 2009-11-06T18:36:32Z

Preparations have begun for the withdrawal of Canadian troops from Afghanistan, as the 2011 deadline for that withdrawal draws closer. A government official confirmed media reports that General Walter Natynczyk, the Chief of the Defence Staff, has ordered preparations to get under way that would involve the return of the thousands of troops and their equipment from the troubled country. "A Chief of Defence Staff directive has been issued to begin planning preparations for the 2011 end of combat mission," the official told The Globe and Mail Friday.

tag:www.sott.net,2009-11-06:/articles/show/196325 2009-11-06T18:30:19Z

Nanoparticles of metal can damage the DNA inside cells even if there is no direct contact between them, scientists have found. The discovery provides an insight into how the particles might exert their influence inside the body and points to possible new ways to deliver medical treatments. The preliminary work also raises questions about the safety of nanoparticles - which are a thousand times smaller than the width of a human hair and used in everything from sunscreens to electronics - though the researchers point out that the doses they used in their study were higher than anything a person might come into contact with.

tag:www.sott.net,2009-11-06:/articles/show/196324 2009-11-06T18:23:40Z

Tens of thousands of angry demonstrators rallied across Ireland on Friday to protest government plans for tough austerity measures, police and reports said. The protests were called by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) to back its 10-point plan to spread belt-tightening -- ordered to deal with a ballooning gap in public finances -- over the next eight years instead of four. Rallies took place in Dublin and seven other centres. Unions also threaten a national strike on November 24. In February 120,000 people took to the streets in Dublin in a similar protest before an emergency budget in April.

tag:www.sott.net,2009-11-06:/articles/show/196323 2009-11-06T18:16:03Z

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Friday said that he will transmit the Goldstone report to the UN Security Council at the request of the General Assembly. "As requested by the General Assembly, I will transmit the report of the Fact Finding Mission to the Security Council," Ban told reporters here after he briefed 15-nation Security Council on the current situation in Afghanistan. "I know that all of you have recently followed the vote yesterday in the General Assembly concerning the UN Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict that was led by Justice (Richard) Goldstone," a former prosecutor at the UN war crimes tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, he added.

tag:www.sott.net,2009-11-06:/articles/show/196322 2009-11-06T18:12:44Z

More than a third of American youth of military age are unfit for service, mainly because they are too fat or sickly, the Army Times reports, quoting the latest Pentagon figures. Most of the rest are too dumb or have used too many drugs to qualify, the study shows. The report says 35% of the 31 million Americans aged 17 to 24 are unqualified because of physical and medical issues. "The major component of this is obesity," Curt Gilroy, the Pentagon's director of accessions, tells the Times. "We have an obesity crisis in the country. There's no question about it." He also said young people, by and large, can't do push-ups. "And they can't do pull-ups," Gilroy says. " And they can't run." The Times says the Pentagon gets its data from the Centers for Disease Control, which has found that the percentage of youth 18 to 34 who are considered obese has jumped from 6% in 1987 to 23% now. Here's the Pentagon's breakdown of the ineligible population, according to the Times: Medical/physical problems, 35%. Illegal drug use, 18%. Mental Category V (the lowest 10% of the population), 9%. Too many dependents under age 18, 6%. Criminal record, 5%. Update at 1:06 p.m. ET: The Times reports that Education Secretary Arne Duncan and a group of retired military officers will issue a report on Thursday warning that the situation is so dire it amounts to a threat to national security. That study will show that when all factors are considered, 75% of military-age youth are not eligible to serve.

tag:www.sott.net,2009-11-06:/articles/show/196321 2009-11-06T17:53:10Z

The recent alleged discovery by Israel of a boatload of "Iranian weapons destined for Syria and Hizb'allah" is designed to distract from growing global public awareness that Israel is a terrorist state guilty of the most despicable war crimes. The UN fact finding mission on the Israeli attack on Gaza from Dec 27th 2008 to Jan 18th 2009, aka "The Goldstone Report" was released on September 15th 2009. Initially the scope of the investigation was limited to violations of international and human rights law by Israeli forces alone. The official wording was: to dispatch an urgent, independent international fact-finding mission, to be appointed by the President of the Council, to investigate all violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law by the occupying Power, Israel, against the Palestinian people throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory, particularly in the occupied Gaza Strip, due to the current aggression, and calls upon Israel not to obstruct the process of investigation and to fully cooperate with the mission.

tag:www.sott.net,2009-11-06:/articles/show/196319 2009-11-06T17:21:08Z

New York - Bailed out insurance giant AIG on Friday announced a profit of 455 million dollars in the third quarter, a massive turnaround from a 24.4 billion dollar loss in the same period last year. The earnings from group, the largest recipient of US government aid during the financial crisis, were better than expectations. Excluding special items, the profit was 2.85 dollars per share, compared with a market forecast of 1.98 dollars per share. It was the second consecutive quarterly profit for American International Group after the prior quarter's earnings of 1.8 billion dollars.

tag:www.sott.net,2009-11-06:/articles/show/196318 2009-11-06T16:55:15Z

Talk about bad timing. As Washington reels from the news of 10.2 percent unemployment, the Center for Responsive Politics is out with a new report describing the wealth of members of Congress. Among the highlights: Two-hundred-and-thirty-seven members of Congress are millionaires. That's 44 percent of the body - compared to about 1 percent of Americans overall.