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Power lines disturb animal habitats by appearing as disturbing flashes of UV light invisible to the human eye

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Reindeers at the Finnmark mounatin plateau, Norway.
Wild animals see overhead power cables in remote regions of the countryside as disturbing lines of flashing lights, which could explain why many species avoid electricity pylons to the point where their natural territories become seriously fragmented, scientists said.

Airplane

No missing plane wreckage at satellite-located 'debris site'

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Images were released by "mistake" and did not show debris from MH370
Malaysia has "nothing to hide" in the search for the missing flight MH370, the country's transport minister has insisted.

Seri Hishammudin said the situation was 'unprecedented', and nothing had been done to jeopardise the effort to find the aircraft.

And he dismissed reports that the plane had continued to fly for four hours after its final transmission early on Saturday morning.

Control Panel

Symbolic? U.S. Capitol goes dark, thousands lose power

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© Mark Wilson
The morning sun begins to rise in front of the US Capitol, on March 11, 2014 in Washington, DC
The US Capitol building and other iconic Washington landmarks briefly went dark as powerful wind gusts also caused tens of thousands of people in the area to lose power.

Winds were gusting at 47 miles (76 kilometers) per hour in the US capital, as temperatures were plummeted from a balmy high of 69 degrees Fahrenheit (21 Celsius) to an expected low of 21 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the National Weather Service.

The service said the strongest winds could gust up to 55 miles per hour, and anticipated "scattered tree and power line damage... Difficulty driving high-profile vehicles."

The Capitol dome, where power was knocked out for about 30 minutes in a rarely seen event, was not the only building affected by the blast of colder air.

Stormtrooper

Women's rights in Afghanistan under illegal U.S. military occupation

Afghanistan
© World Socialist Web Site
Afghan Provinces
Teaching at a private girl's school in Afghanistan, as I am doing at the moment, brings home to the heart and mind the harsh realities that Afghan women live with. In a series of essays that the fifteen and sixteen year old students at the school recently wrote, one encounters proverbs shared among Afghan women such as, 'When sisters sit together, they always praise their brothers; when brothers sit together, they sell their sisters to others.' Another is, 'The good girl is the one who goes to her husband's house with a white dress and comes out in a white shroud.'

While the abusive treatment of fully half of the population of Afghanistan may seem like a pathology unique to this country or region, one only need to read Nicholas Kristoff and Cheryl Dunn's book Half the Sky to realize the perverse behavior of males in relation to females is commonplace around the world. When one fully grasps the vast extent of this dysfunctional behavior, it becomes clear that what all humans need to do is take their next step towards a sane existence.

USA

Freedom Rider: American style propaganda

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One of the reasons the U.S. government is such a danger to world peace, is U.S. "public acceptance and approval of nearly every crime committed by our government." Americans pretend to believe in due process of law, but are quick to condemn to death any foreign leader that gets on the wrong side of the U.S. propaganda machine.

"If an American president decides that the elected head of state in other country must go, then go he must."

German chancellor Angela Merkel said that Russian president Vladimir Putin was not "in touch with reality" and was "in another world." At least that is how the New York Times quotes an unnamed source. Those words have been repeated by reporters, bloggers, pundits and late night talk show hosts numerous times over the past week. Unfortunately there are a few problems with this often repeated quote. There is no proof that Merkel said such a thing at all, and if she did that she meant he was unstable, as many Americans happily and ignorantly assert. Logic and real reporting show that such a statement was highly unlikely. No matter. It has endlessly been reported as fact. Welcome to American style propaganda.

Robot

RT finally responds on Western press level

Margarita Simonyan
© RIA Novosti / Sergey Pyatakov
Margarita Simonyan
Today I received some interesting questions from BuzzFeed reporter Rosie Gray. RT press office sent me the draft of the answers. They're so funny that I decided to leave them here. Take them as they are, BuzzFeed.

5 Very Serious Answers to 5 Very Serious Questions from BuzzFeed.

BuzzFeed: Do you regularly have meetings at the Kremlin or with Russian government officials? Can you describe them, if so? How much direct influence does the Kremlin have over what RT reports?

‪I don't have to go to meetings at the Kremlin because I already live there. My office is located there as well, as are the offices of all other TV executives in Russia. And RT doesn't do any of its own investigating or reporting -- we just read the latest Kremlin press releases on camera. It is much more efficient that way.

BuzzFeed: Why is your office apparently located on a different floor than the newsroom, as one employee told me?

No idea on which floor my RT office is, as I work straight out of my Kremlin digs. I've heard that it's nice though.

Comment: This really brought a smile to our faces. We all know that 2 things are going to happen here: 1) The western media will misrepresent everything said on this topic. If you say nothing, they will just say you said it and lie. 2) If they succeed they will rewrite the history anyway and paint any picture of you they want and people will believe them because they'll erase everything else.

Might as well approach it with a bit of humor and a smile.


Quenelle - Golden

Iranian woman describes her experience of 'American Justice'

Shahrzad Mir-Qolikhan
© Press TV
Shahrzad Mir-Qolikhan
Iranian national Shahrzad Mir-Qolikhan, who spent five years in US detention from 2007 to 2012, says she was held in prison like a caged animal.

In a Press TV documentary titled "Memories of a Witness: Inside US Federal Prisons," in which she recounts her ordeal, Mir-Qolikhan, now 36, said she would have been treated more appropriately were she a real criminal.
"If you are a criminal, you are well treated in the US Department of Justice," she said.
Mir-Qolikhan, a mother of twin girls, said she was put in shackles and chains before being taken from prison to courtroom.

Comment: Well. U.S. Prisons are described about how you would expect. What is interesting here is the manipulation and lies used by the government to entrap her, to arrest her, and then railroad her through the system.

The lesson to be learned here: NEVER TRUST A GOVERNMENT. If any government official tells you something, you can almost guarantee it is a lie.


Airplane

Malaysia: No debris at spot shown on China's satellite images

MH370 Debris?
© AP Photo/Chinese State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense
In this March 9, 2014 satellite image seen on the website of the Chinese State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense, floating objects are seen at sea next to the red arrow which was added by the source. China's Xinhua News Agency reported Wednesday that the images show suspected debris from the missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner floating off the southern tip of Vietnam.
Kuala Lumpur - No signs of the missing Malaysian jetliner have been found at a spot where Chinese satellite images showed what might be plane debris, Malaysia's civil aviation chief said Thursday, deflating the latest lead in the five-day hunt.

"There is nothing. We went there, there is nothing," Azharuddin Abdul Rahman told reporters in Kuala Lumpur.

Vietnamese officials previously said the area had been "searched thoroughly" in recent days.

The hunt for the Boeing 777 has been punctuated by false leads since it disappeared with 239 people aboard just hours after leaving Kuala Lumpur for Beijing early Saturday. The plane was heading northeast over the South China Sea when it disappeared, but authorities believe it may have turned back and headed into the upper reaches of the Strait of Malacca or beyond.

Bug

Prescorts: Spinning Tatar unrest smacks of desperation

Tatar
© Unknown
Recent AP Photo shows at least 1 Tatar doesn't want Russia in the Crimea.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has discussed the situation in Ukraine's Crimea region by telephone with a leader of the Crimean Tatar community, Russian news agencies reported on Wednesday.

Many Crimean Tatars plan to boycott a Russian-backed referendum on Sunday on whether the region, where Tatars make up about 12 percent of the population, should split from Ukraine and join Russia.

Comment: Great, so the best you could find was 12%? Wow... It's like speaking to a retard. DEMOCRACY IS ABOUT EVERYONE. Not just the small number of people who agree with you.


Briefcase

Trader kills self in finance world's latest suicide

Manhattan trader committed suicide
© Riyad Hasan
Modal Trigger A Long Island Rail Road train pulls into the Jamaica station. A Manhattan trader committed suicide by leaping in front of a different train near Syosset Tuesday.

A Manhattan trader was killed Tuesday morning by a speeding Long Island Rail Road commuter train, marking at least the seventh suicide of a financial professional this year.

Edmund (Eddie) Reilly, 47, a trader at Midtown's Vertical Group, jumped in front of an LIRR train at 6 a.m. near the Syosset train station.

He was declared dead at the scene.

Reilly's identity was confirmed by Salvatore Arena, an LIRR spokesperson, who said an investigation into the incident was continuing.

Passengers on the west-bound express train told MTA investigators they saw a man standing by the tracks before he jumped in front of the train, Arena said.

"Eddie was a great guy," Rob Schaffer, a managing director at Vertical, told The Post in an email. "We are very upset and he will be deeply missed."

The divorced father of three had rented a house around the corner from his ex-wife, Michelle Reilly, in East Norwich, NY.

One family friend, who said he spoke to the trader on Sunday, told The Post that Reilly "didn't look good."