The Power of Gratitude: It's About What
You Have, Not What You're Going to Get
With the hustle and bustle of everyday
life, it's easy to forget about what and
who you're grateful for.
May 31, 2013
Dominion Virginia Power's
second attempt to restart
one of the two nuclear
reactors at its North Anna
facility after a refueling
outage failed when a valve
closure led to decreasing
steam generator levels.
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Thanks to a largely industry-beholden
government and regulatory system,
Americans are not being afforded many of
the same food protections given to
Europeans
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Examples of chemicals and drugs allowed
in US foods and agriculture but banned
in Europe include the
endocrine-disrupting weed killer
Atrazine, arsenic in chicken feed,
antibiotics as agricultural growth
promoters and chlorine washes for
poultry carcasses
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The US also embraces water fluoridation
and genetically modified (GM) foods, two
practices that are much less accepted,
and in some cases banned, in Europe
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If you want to avoid these questionable
ingredients, additives and unethical
practice and you live in the US,
ditching processed foods entirely is the
best option
Manufacturers of electric
vehicle still won't be able
to sell directly to Texas
consumers after legislation
that would have allowed them
to do so died during the
just-ended session.
EPA Region 7 and Rotary Drilling have reached a proposed
agreement to address environmental impacts from the unauthorized
disposal of approximately 140,000 tons of coal ash from Ameren
Missouri's Rush Island Power Plant.
EPA alleges that the dumping of the coal ash on property
owned by Rotary Drilling Supply impacted wetlands, an unnamed
tributary to Plattin Creek and a portion of Willers Lake.
The firestorm commenced by
the revelation of the
execution of a search
warrant on the personal
email server of my Fox News
colleague James Rosen
continues to rage, and the
conflagration engulfing the
First Amendment continues to
burn; and it is the
Department of Justice itself
that is fanning the flames.
Arsenic in water is one thing, but
arsenic in beer? This is getting out of
hand.
While the drinking water supply is
clearly much more of a concern than the
beer supply, the sobering fact is that
arsenic, a known carcinogen, is far too
prevalent in the environment.
Syrian President Bashar Assad said in an interview broadcast Thursday
that he is "confident in victory" in his country's civil war, and he
warned that Damascus would retaliate for any future Israeli airstrike on
his territory.
Assad also told the Lebanese TV station
Al-Manar that Russia has fulfilled some of
its weapons contracts recently, but he was
vague on whether this included advanced
S-300 air defense system
When the Menlo Park, Calif.-based venture
firm The Westly Group raised a $160 million
clean-tech fund earlier this spring, one
thing stood out.
Pension funds and university endowments,
traditionally among the largest investors in
clean tech venture funds, were absent. But
so-called "strategic investors" -
particularly large, multinational
corporations based overseas - were in. Of
the 50 investors in the fund, the three
largest were corporations: banking giant
Citigroup Inc., the German utility E.ON and
the SK Group of South Korea.
Chinese hackers stole the
blueprints of Australia's
new spy agency headquarters
years ago and the breach has
been dealt with since then,
an opposition lawmaker said
Wednesday in the first
confirmation of media
reports.
"I do think there are real
issues regarding the
relationship with the media
on this leak matter," said
Axelrod, adding, "The notion
of naming a journalist as a
co-conspirator for receiving
information is something
that I find very
disturbing."
Hurricane Barbara hit
Mexico's southern Pacific
coast on Wednesday, flooding
roads, toppling trees and
killing two men before
weakening to a tropical
storm as it moved inland.
As California sets the
ground rules for drilling in
the Monterey oil formation,
a hard-to-reach shale
reserve that is the largest
in the United States, some
environmentalists worry that
politicians, regulators and
fellow activists are
fighting the wrong battle.
A potential statewide ban on single-use plastic bags in
California has failed -- for now.
School administrators and
teachers in Batavia,
Illinois apparently think it
is perfectly OK to require
students at the local high
school to possibly
incriminate themselves by
answering in writing, with
their names printed at the
top, a list of survey
questions about, among other
things, their private
emotions together with their
use of alcohol, tobacco and
drugs during their free
time.
The Obama administration —
and the United States — is
wasting valuable energy
getting bogged down in
scandals at a time when
major global shifts are
challenging its crucial role
as a beacon of freedom, says
best-selling author,
biographer and journalist
Conrad Black.
Issa, chairman of the House
Oversight and Government
Reform Committee, said the
subpoena is necessary
because the State Department
has refused multiple
requests to provide the
communications and documents
on a voluntary basis.
"The State Department
has not lived up to the
administration’s broad and
unambiguous promises of
cooperation with Congress.
Therefore, I am left with no
alternative but to compel
the State Department to
produce relevant documents
through a subpoena," Issa
said in a letter to
Secretary of State John
Kerry.
A new list of contaminants
and round of long-term
mandates are under
consideration by the U.S.
EPA, prompting close
attention from drinking
water utilities.
Many Tashkent residents
spent yesterday evening
outdoors, in fearful
expectation of a repeat of
earthquakes that hit the
city on 25 and 26 May.
As the sale of the
historic Wounded Knee site
looms with several offers on
the table for owner James
Czywczynski, the Oglala
Sioux Tribe has moved to
seize the land using eminent
domain, according to a
report by Brandon Ecoffey,
the managing editor of
Native Sun News.
Ethiopia began diverting a
stretch of the Nile on
Tuesday to make way for a
$4.7 billion hydroelectric
dam that is worrying
downstream countries
dependent on the world's
longest river for water...
Ethiopia's energy minister moved to
dispel fears over the dam's impact.
"The dam's construction benefits riparian
countries, showcases fair and equitable use
of the river's flow and does not cause any
harm on any country," Alemayehu Tegenu said
in a speech.
Greenhouse gas emissions fell by 3.3 percent in the European
Union (EU) in 2011 to the lowest level since 1990, according to
the European Environment Agency (EEA). The EU's total greenhouse
gas emissions in 2011 were 18.4 percent below 1990 levels,
according to the EU greenhouse gas inventory.
The 2011 emissions decrease was largely due to a milder
winter in 2011 compared to 2010, which led to a lower demand for
heating.
The surge in home prices, seen most
recently in the Standard &
Poor's/Case-Shiller home price index
released on Tuesday, is at least in part a
function of record-low interest rates,
extraordinarily low housing supply, and
record-high volumes of investor money
pouring into single family homes, analysts
say.
That means that market fundamentals may
not be as healthy as the headline price
increase numbers would suggest.
Most of us are familiar with
snow and ice melting as
seasons change. This process
even occurs in colder
regions that typically have
ice and snow all year round.
However, last July, 98
percent of the Greenland Ice
Sheet's surface melted.
While losing all this snow
and ice may seem normal to
those of us who experience
different seasons, this
percentage is compared to
roughly 50 percent that
usually melts during an
average summer.
The United States should
prepare for an “active or
extremely active hurricane
season” this year, NOAA’s
Climate Prediction Center
says in its 2013 Atlantic
hurricane season outlook
issued for National
Hurricane Preparedness Week.
A federal appeals court on
Tuesday dismissed an appeal
by Sunflower Electric Power
Corporation which challenged
a lower court's ruling that
the utility's proposed new
coal-fired power plant in
Holcomb must undergo an
environmental review before
proceeding to construction.
When a hospital completes a surgery, examination or other
procedure, there are generally leftover materials — gloves, gauze,
syringes — that were prepared for the procedure but never used.
Those materials are often disposed with red bag waste, but
several organizations are attempting to recover these items and
redistribute them to hospitals in need.
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The United Nations established the Codex
Alimentarius Commission in 1962. Usually
referred to as “Codex,” it consists of
approximately 170 member countries that
set food guidelines and standards for
the world.
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Over the years, Codex has been embroiled
in controversy for a number of reasons,
but now our investigations show that
Monsanto―one of the world’s largest
producers of genetically-modified seeds―
is behind a significant number of front
groups that control Codex policy.
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Most recently, more than 50 industry
trade groups formed a new alliance
called Alliance to Feed the Future.
These groups represent multi-national
food-, biotech-, and chemical companies
that generate hundreds of billions of
dollars-worth of revenue each year
The revelation that Acting IRS Commissioner Douglas Schulman visited the
White House at least 157 times during the period in which conservative
groups were being targeted with tax audits gives us the first real
indication of the extent to which this scandal reaches into the White
House.
The incredible frequency of the White House visits -- essentially weekly
-- indicate that Obama must have been deeply involved with the inner
workings of the audits and harassment of conservative groups. If
Schulman was in the White House every week, what was he there to talk
about?
Not ObamaCare. Not without having HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius in
attendance, you wouldn't. About Treasury issues? Deficit reduction?
Not without Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner.
Although the phenomenon of
sudden onset, late stage
cancer is well known, it
has, in my experience of
some 43 years of medical
practice, been an uncommon
phenomenon until recently.
The number of people
contacting me with a first
diagnosis of a previously
unsuspected advanced,
aggressive, widely
metastasized tumor who are
told that they have Stage IV
cancer at the point of first
diagnosis has escalated
suddenly.
It has long been believed
that detecting carbon
dioxide was one of the ways
that mosquitoes target their
human prey. But the fact
that mosquitoes tend to
favor certain people over
others indicates that some
other odor also plays a part
in the attraction.
Researchers at the Howard
Hughes Medical Institute
(HHMI) have genetically
engineered mosquitoes to
alter their sense of smell,
which could provide the
understanding required to
block the pesky pests'
attraction to humans.
Illegal
genetically-engineered wheat
has been discovered growing
in an Eastern Oregon field,
which may cause severe
marketing and export
problems for one of the
state's biggest crops.
German Finance Minister
Wolfgang Schaeuble warned on
Tuesday that failure to win
the battle against youth
unemployment could tear
Europe apart, and dropping
the continent's welfare
model in favor of tougher
U.S. standards would spark a
revolution.
How many people around the
world lack access to
electricity and safe
household fuels? What’s the
share of renewable energy in
the global mix? How are we
doing in improving energy
efficiency? ..
The report tells us that 1.2
billion people — almost
equal to the population of
India — don’t have access to
electricity, and that 2.8
billion rely on wood or
other biomass for household
fuel. Those solid household
fuels produce
health-damaging indoor
pollution that contributes
to about four million
premature deaths a year,
most of them women and
children. The report also
tells us that most of the
people still without access
live in 20 countries in
developing Asia and
Sub-Saharan Africa, and that
about 80 percent of them
live in rural areas.
Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) are to blame for global warming since the
1970s and not carbon dioxide, according to new research from the
University of Waterloo published in the International Journal of Modern
Physics B this week.
CFCs are already known to deplete ozone, but in-depth statistical
analysis now shows that CFCs are also the key driver in global climate
change, rather than carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.
"Conventional thinking says that the emission of human-made non-CFC
gases such as carbon dioxide has mainly contributed to global warming.
But we have observed data going back to the Industrial Revolution that
convincingly shows that conventional understanding is wrong,"...
Google (GOOG) has invested $1 billion in a dozen renewable energy
projects, from a wind farm in West Texas to the massive Ivanpah solar
power plant under construction in California's Mojave Desert.
Now the tech titan is increasingly looking overseas, where its
dollars in support of clean energy often have an even greater impact.
A bill redefining how
Connecticut counts and
categorizes clean energy
passed the House on Tuesday
after months of debate and
negotiations over its
treatment of large-scale
hydropower.
Almost 60 million root
canals are performed a year
(1), on individuals who are
mistakenly informed that it
is a safe and harmless
procedure. While your teeth
may look and feel fine after
the procedure, the reality
is that it is impossible for
all of the bacteria to be
removed from the tooth.
After a root canal, the
healthy bacteria changes to
highly toxic anaerobic
bacteria that will continue
to thrive inside and around
the tooth and periodontal
ligament causing numerous
potentially long term health
problems.
Orange County's beachside power plant is
in the midst of a major redesign to help
prevent summertime outages -- the second
time that AES Huntington Beach, known for
its towering exhaust stacks, has reinvented
itself to plug potential power gaps if the
San Onofre nuclear plant remains offline.
But this year's project is a radical
departure from the plant's traditional
mission to generate electricity.
Instead, two former natural-gas-fired
power units, pulled back from retirement
last year to help with high summer
power-demand, are being converted into
something completely different.
In a word, flywheels.
Shipping along the Arctic northern sea
route is set to grow more than 30-fold over
the next eight years and could account for a
quarter of the cargo traffic between Europe
and Asia by 2030, experts said on Wednesday.
With global warming thawing sea ice, the
route, which runs along Russia's northern
coast and links Europe with ports in East
Asia, is opening for longer and longer each
year.
Iran Monday urged India to
boost its purchase of
Iranian crude oil and also
offered reinsurance cover to
Indian refineries that
process crude from the
country.
The decision lets stand a
district court ruling that
the U.S. government violated
the law by allowing
Sunflower to proceed without
first examining its
environmental effects and
alternative actions.
Ultimately, greater
environmental review and
consideration of
alternatives such as
conservation and renewable
energy is required.
Recent speeches by Tennessee
Republican Sen. Lamar
Alexander highlight a
connection that has yet to
be reported in the media and
is yet to be understood by
the young people struggling
with high interest rates in
the hopes of financing their
college education.
According to the
Congressional Budget Office,
$8.7 billion of the money
collected in student loan
interest payments actually
goes to pay for ObamaCare.
The CBO estimates that the
interest rate on these loans
could be reduced from 6.8
percent to only 5.3 percent
were the funds not used to
subsidize the healthcare
reform law and other federal
programs.
When it comes to putting
devices in hard to reach
places, power consumption
plays a major role.
Depending on the
application, the device
needs to either operate
independently for a very
long period of time or needs
to be sufficiently small so
as to not be intrusive,
which requires very low
power usage. The number of
low power applications is
extensive and growing all of
the time, making this a high
demand area. And given the
complexity of the solutions,
it is also a challenging
one.
As Ameren seeks the approval
of the Missouri Department
of Natural Resources (DNR)
to build coal ash landfills
some of its coal-fired power
plants, the DNR is being
urged to take immediate
action to require
comprehensive groundwater
monitoring of the same
Ameren coal plants --
Labadie, Meramec, and Rush
Island -- in the St. Louis
area.
Glaciers in the Mount Everest region of
the Himalayas have shrunk by 13 percent in
the last 50 years and the snowline has
shifted upward, finds a Nepalese scientist
conducting research for his PhD studies at
the University of Milan.
The snowline has retreated by 180 meters
(590 feet) up the world’s tallest mountain,
which rises 8,848 meters (29,029 ft) above
sea level.
In 2012, there were 905
natural catastrophes
worldwide, 93 percent of
which were weather-related
disasters. In terms of
overall and insured losses
(US$170 billion and $70
billion, respectively), 2012
did not follow the records
set in 2011 and could be
defined as a moderate year
on a global scale. But the
United States was seriously
affected by weather
extremes, accounting for 69
percent of overall losses
and 92 percent of insured
losses due to natural
catastrophes worldwide.
A new study by Australian
scientists projects that the
world will likely warm
between 2 and 6 degrees
Celsius (3.6 to 10.8 degrees
Fahrenheit) from
pre-industrial levels by
2100. The study published in
Nature Climate Change finds
that exceeding the 2-degree
threshold is very likely
under business-as-usual
emissions scenarios even as
scientists have long warned
that passing the 2-degree
mark would lead to
catastrophic climate change.
The Nuclear Regulatory
Commission is considering
whether to penalize the
owners of the Pilgrim
Nuclear Power Station for
violating federally dictated
medical requirements between
2008 and 2011.
If a dangerous asteroid
appears to be on a collision
course for Earth, one option
is to send a spacecraft to
destroy it with a nuclear
warhead. Such a mission,
which would cost about $1
billion, could be developed
from work NASA is already
funding, a prominent
asteroid defense expert
says.
A recent Rasmussen poll
indicates that “38% Favor
Their State Blocking Federal
Anti-Gun Laws” and a
whopping “52 percent of
mainstream voters think
states should have the right
to block any federal laws
they disagree with on legal
grounds.” And this week, a
nullification-friendly Washington
Times article from the
paper’s editorial board was
published stating:
“nullification is a growing
movement with support on
both sides of the political
aisle.”
Many people who buy their
own health insurance could
get surprises in the mail
this fall: cancellation
notices because their
current policies aren't up
to the basic standards of
President Barack Obama's
health care law.
They, and some small
businesses, will have to
find replacement plans - and
that has some state
insurance officials worried
about consumer confusion.
In its half-yearly update,
the Organization for
Economic Cooperation and
Development said that
protracted economic weakness
in Europe "could evolve into
stagnation with negative
implications for the global
economy."
The OECD
again slashed its forecast
for the 17 European Union
countries that use the euro,
saying it will shrink by 0.6
percent this year, after 0.5
percent drop in 2012. The
OECD had predicted a 0.1
percent decline for the
eurozone in its report six
months ago — and this time
last year, it forecast
growth of nearly 1 percent
for 2013.
The "seasonal"
manufacturing activity
slowdown in the US has
arrived on schedule. It is
visible not just in the
Markit PMI measure (below),
but across other national
and regional indicators as
well.
There is a familiar pattern for scandals
in American politics: they degenerate into
gotchas and personalities and then disappear
with nothing having been reformed.
The breadth of the Big Government
Scandals under President Obama is so great
that House Republicans have an opportunity
to break out of this pattern and make
history.
Thursday, 30 May 2013 Sales
of bank-owned homes have
plunged to a five-year low,
the latest evidence that the
nation's foreclosure woes
are easing as the U.S.
housing market recovery
gains momentum.
The approval was the final milestone of the refurbishment
project at the plant.
Unit 2 began sending electricity to the grid in October for
the first time in 17 years.
Ernst & Young has released
its renewable energy
attractiveness index, in
which the U.S. regains the
top spot, as high barriers
to entry for external
investors moves China into
second place. Energy demand,
natural resources,
technology costs and access
to finance and global
competitiveness are key
influences for investors,
according to the research.
There's a romance to food.
It's one of life's great
sensory and social
pleasures. But a lot of us
don't eat healthily, and a
lot of us don't enjoy the
process of preparing food,
especially when we're eating
alone. Furthermore, the way
we eat today is incredibly
wasteful throughout the
entire production and
consumption process, to the
point where it actively
damages our bodies and our
planet. Enter Soylent: a
food engineered to
efficiently deliver 100
percent of the healthy
body's needs with minimal
waste, junk food-beating
convenience and a very low
cost, or, as the inventors
put it, "creating an
efficient form of fuel for
humanity for the first time
in history." Food has always
been sexy, and this sounds
about as exciting as
artificial insemination. But
when you check out the
details, this ambitious plan
actually makes a lot of
sense.
States that have the lowest
level of government
financial intrusion — e.g.,
taxes and regulatory
obstructions — also tend to
have the highest economic
growth rates, a new
"economic freedom index"
shows.
According to
data of America’s 51 largest
metropolitan regions from
the Bureau of Labor
Statistics, the top 10 areas
in job growth included
mostly cities in Sunbelt
states, such as Houston,
Dallas, Austin, Raleigh and
Charlotte, while the bottom
10 featured mostly Rust Belt
areas, such as St. Louis,
Milwaukee and Buffalo, City
Journal reported.
Rep. Peter King says
Attorney General Eric
Holder's initial denial of
involvement in the targeting
of Fox News reporter James
Rosen "could be perjury."
Solar activity has been at low levels for the past 24 hours. chance for a C-class flares on days one, two, and three (31 May, 01 Jun, 02 Jun).
Solar wind speed, as measured by the ACE spacecraft, reached a peak speed of 468 km/s. Electrons greater than 2 MeV at geosynchronous orbit reached a peak level of 35365 pfu. The geomagnetic field is expected to be at quiet levels on day one (31 May), quiet to minor storm levels on day two (01 Jun) and quiet to active levels on day three (02 Jun).
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A new report showed that following an
initial boost in health, retirement
increases your risk of depression by 40
percent while raising your chances of
being diagnosed with a physical
condition by 60 percent
-
Two of the biggest hurdles to health and
happiness facing the elderly are social
isolation and inactivity, both of which
often increase after retirement
-
Making a point to stay active, involved
and to pursue your interests may help
make your retirement a happy and healthy
one: many people are now embracing their
older years as some of the most
fulfilling of their lives, and you can,
too
Recent technology advances
are making desalination less
energy-intensive and less
costly, bringing us closer
to a long-sought solution to
water scarcity
Freshwater is the liquid of
life. Without it the planet
would be a barren wasteland.
The supply of freshwater is
finite, but the demand is
rising rapidly as world
population grows and as
global water use per capita
increases
The issue of energy may have been
overshadowed by that of tax at yesterday’s
EU summit of Heads of State in Brussels, but
its growing importance and impact on
Europe’s economy is one that cannot be
ignored.
As the Financial Times reported on
Tuesday, Europeans are paying a lot for
their energy – prices are 37% higher than
those in the US and 20% higher than those in
Japan. Why? Largely because we import an
incredibly high share of expensive fossil
fuels.
Saudi Aramco boosted its
crude production to a record
9.506 million b/d in 2012,
excluding blended natural
gas liquids, up 5% from
9.068 million b/d in 2011,
the company said in its
latest annual report.
While you may think that standard bandages already serve as
sort-of artificial scabs, the fact is that they mainly just compress
and protect the wound – a scab, on the other hand, actually helps it
heal. Now, however, scientists are working on a wound dressing that
promotes healing in the same fashion as a scab.
New mapping shows 'seam' in
killer virus's protective
shell, opening door for
drugs to attack..
Scientists have long tried
to develop therapies that
attack HIV's capsid, but
it's so far proved too tough
to crack. Its chemical
makeup had never been
completely described before
the University of Pittsburgh
study, published Wednesday
in Nature.
The Madre de Dios region in
Peru is recognized for its
lush Amazon rainforests,
meandering rivers and rich
wildlife. But the region is
also known for its artisanal
gold mining, which employs
the use of a harmful
neurotoxin. Mercury is
burned to extract the pure
gold from metal and ore
producing dangerous
air-borne vapors that
ultimately settle in nearby
rivers.
Let’s face it, free market
capitalism has gotten a bad
rep. Whether you blame
left-wing rhetoric, or
big-government partnerships
in using the control of
government undertaken in the
name of “free enterprise,”
the term has become
essentially a dirty word to
generations of Americans.
Any mention of "capitalism"
tends to conjure images of
greedy men in top hats
carrying dollar signs out to
fleece the public. Many
self-styled “libertarians”
understandably, therefore,
steer clear of the term or
even redefine it to be
synonymous with mercantilism
or state/corporate
partnership (fascism).
U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer
of California is asking the
Justice Department to open a
criminal investigation into
Southern California Edison’s
statements to nuclear
regulators about replacing
steam generators at the
shuttered San Onofre nuclear
power plant.
Southern California Edison’s
nuclear energy woes are
expanding. Now, it may be
under a criminal
investigation, all prompted
by the release of two
letters written nearly a
decade ago detailing the
concerns that the utility
had with changes to the
design of its two steam
generators that have been
shut down since January
2012.
If the claim is accurate,
it's an impressive
achievement. It's one thing
to build a house with
all-renewable electric
supplies. Offices and
factories are much more
intensive energy consumers,
due to the equipment and
machinery packed densely
into the floor area – in
this case, all 11,800 sq m
(127,000 sq ft) of it .
Hoping for federal action on nuclear
waste storage policies, Attorney General
Martha Coakley and Senate President Therese
Murray are lobbying members of the U.S.
Senate to address some nagging, unresolved
issues.
"The federal government has long had an
obligation to develop short- and long-term
solutions to the current on-site storage of
nuclear waste in facilities in Massachusetts
and other states," Murray and Coakley wrote
in a letter Friday. "Its failure to act has
cost taxpayers, and we believe poses great
risks to public safety and the environment."
The possibility of producing
oil and natural gas from the
Arctic region was always
seen as a possibility, one
that became more likely as
the polar ice cap receded.
But the pace of interest has
surged, as Gary Gentile
discusses in this week’s
Oilgram News column,
New Frontiers.
In a shock to humanitarian
aid workers, suicide bombers
in eastern Afghanistan
yesterday assaulted the
offices of the International
Committee of the Red Cross,
an organization that has
worked in the country for
more than 30 years without
suffering a concerted attack
and has received praise from
all sides.
A lawsuit seeking
"compensatory and punitive
damages" from the Obama
administration was filed on
Wednesday by an organization
representing 25 tea party
and conservative groups that
were targeted by the
Internal Revenue Service.
"The only way to stop
this flagrant and arrogant
abuse of our clients' rights
is to file a federal
lawsuit, which we have
done," Jay Sekulow, chief
counsel for the group filing
the lawsuit, the American
Center for Law and Justice,
told The Hill.
Altaaqa Global, a supplier of
Caterpillar temporary power solutions that run on diesel,
natural gas or dual-fuel, installed 24 MW of temporary power
in just four days in the Sultanate of Oman.
Tesla Motors (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk announced that the electric-car
company is expanding its network of "Supercharging" stations across the
country, so that Model S owners can drive from Los Angeles to New York
just using Tesla's network of fast charging stations.
Okay, the title is a bit of an
overstatement. But when it comes to the economy, we don’t need a
crystal ball to understand what is coming next. Rarely in history
has there been a time when the greatest opportunity available has
also been so obvious. People, groups and societies all wish to
maintain and improve their standards of living. Yet the ecological
underpinnings of the economy that would allow that to happen are at
risk from legacy economic activities that we no longer need in order
to maintain that standard of living. Seems like a paradox, but it's
true.
It's no secret that the
talking heads of the liberal
media machine hate guns and
want to strip you of your
natural born rights. It's
bad enough that they use
insane and debased logic to
support their beliefs, but
now they have added
hypocrisy to their insanity.
Syria: Peace Conference
Collapsing; Assad Gets
Russian Missiles
Mali Jihadists Resurface in
Niger
New EU Intelligence Agencies
Pose a Threat to Europe's
Security
China Suspected of Huge
Cyber Theft of US Military
Secrets
Sweden: Riots Reveal Deep
Flaws in Immigration Policy
Taiwan: Tensions High After
Fisherman Killed by
Philippines
Despite Headlines, Global
Tax Reform a Tough Hurdle
In less than a month
of intense negotiations,
decades of animosity and
contentious lawsuits between
the Oneida Indian Nation and
the state of New York were
brought to a close in a
historic agreement that, if
approved by the state
legislature, will resolve
all disputes between the two
sovereigns over land rights,
tax issues, gaming
exclusivity and profits.
Tropical Storm Barbara
gained strength on its
approach to Mexico's
southern coast, the U.S.
National Hurricane Center
said on Wednesday.
The Arab Spring revolutions
scored a number of political victories by removing several
entrenched and ruthless dictators. The movement however failed to
make economic strides, particularly in the lives of most ordinary
people. In fact economic conditions in Egypt have deteriorated
significantly since the revolution. Many argue that these issues are
temporary and will subside once political stability returns.
Perhaps. For now however things are not looking great for the Arab
Spring economies.
Chinese hackers have stolen
some of America's most
sensitive weapons designs —
a dangerous development that
could endanger soldiers in a
conflict with China,
The Washington Post reports.
A confidential report
prepared for the Pentagon by
the Defense Science Board
does not accuse the Chinese
government, but senior
officials told the Post that
the breaches were part of a
growing espionage effort
that targets defense
contractors.
- US consumer confidence jumped 7.2
points to a five-year high of 76.2 in
May 2013, handily beating market
expectations for a reading of 69.5.
- The current employment differential
improved to a five-month high of -25.3
from -27.2 in April as consumers became
less pessimistic about labour market
conditions.
Freddie Mac (OTCQB:
FMCC) yesterday released the results of its
Primary Mortgage Market Survey® (PMMS®), showing fixed
mortgage rates following
long-term government bond
yields higher. The average
30-year fixed moved up
nearly half a percentage
point since the beginning of
May when it averaged 3.35
percent. Regardless,
mortgage rates remain low
historically helping to keep
home-buyer affordability
high, which should continue
to aid home sales and
construction as the housing
market continues to recover
According to the Home Price Index, a monthly housing metric from
the Federal Home Finance Agency (FHFA), U.S. property values climbed
by close to two percent between January and March of this year,
marking the seventh consecutive quarter of growth.
As compared to one year ago, home values are higher by 7 percent
nationwide. Today's home buyers are finding it harder to find a
bargain.
This plan focuses on cheaper
sources of energy; clean,
but not necessarily
renewable, energy, including
nuclear and hydropower; and
free-market principles over
government mandates, he
said.
This plan would
"end an obsession with
taxpayer subsidies and
strategies for expensive
energy, and instead focus on
doubling research and
allowing marketplace
solutions to create an
abundance of clean, cheap,
reliable energy," he said.
The speech came five
years after one Alexander
gave in Oak Ridge that
identified seven energy
policy priorities, including
making electric vehicles
more common, making solar
cost-competitive and safely
managing nuclear waste.
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. pleaded
guilty today in cases filed
by federal prosecutors in
Los Angeles and San
Francisco to six counts of
violating the Clean Water
Act by illegally handling
and disposing of hazardous
materials at its retail
stores across the United
States. The Bentonville,
Ark.-based company also
pleaded guilty today in
Kansas City, Mo., to
violating the Federal
Insecticide, Fungicide and
Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) by
failing to properly handle
pesticides that had been
returned by customers at its
stores across the country.
On the eve (May 24, 2013) of
a worldwide protest against
Monsanto, 71 U.S. senators
(listed below) voted against
an amendment to the Senate
version of the 2013 Farm
Bill that would have
guaranteed states the right
to enact mandatory GMO
(genetically modified
organism) labeling laws.
Seventy-one Senators
voted against you, the 90
percent of consumers who
have said that you want
labels on foods containing
genetically engineered (GE)
ingredients.
Voltage Transients are
defined as short duration
surges of electrical energy
and are the result of the
sudden release of energy
previously stored or induced
by other means, such as
heavy inductive loads or
lightning. In electrical or
electronic circuits, this
energy can be released in a
predictable manner via
controlled switching
actions, or randomly induced
into a circuit from external
sources.
-
Urine has been an important diagnostic
tool for 6,000 years, as well as having
some surprising historical uses
-
You can learn a great deal about your
overall health by examining your urine
and noting its color, odor, and
consistency; your urine can be a
powerful window into your overall health
-
Urine color and odor can be altered by
your diet, medications, supplements,
water consumption, and physical
activity.
-
Your urine characteristics can also
function as an early warning system for
serious health problems including
urinary stones, infections, kidney
problems, metabolic disorders, diabetes,
pituitary disorders, and even tumors
Mortgage rates have run higher this
month, climbing 0.750 percentage points or
higher for a conventional loan, and even
higher for FHA and VA mortgages. Not since
2009 have mortgage rates moved this much,
this quickly.
Rising rates have foiled FHA-backed
homeowners attempting to squeeze in a
refinance ahead of the agency's new rules
for MIP. It's also harmed home buyers hoping
to stretch their mortgage-money dollar.
Facing concerns about
dwindling oil production
capacity (ability to supply
incremental amounts of crude
into the market) Iran
responded back in April with
a statement that the nation
has plenty of spare capacity
and is simply dealing with
weak global demand.
"The current capacity of
Iran's crude oil production
is 4.2 mb/d and we
are currently supplying oil
as much as the world market
needs," [Iranian Oil
Ministry Spokesman Alireza
Nikzad Rahbar] said.
The CCCCC will work with the
National Oceanographic and
Atmospheric Administration
(NOAA) and YSI to install
and operate this network,
beginning in spring 2013.
May 28, 2013
Up to eight cars packed with
explosives blew up in the
co-ordinated attack
yesterday. Security has been
rapidly deteriorating in
Iraq this month. More than
450 people have been killed
in sectarian violence
exacerbated by
anti-government protests and
the war in neighbouring
Syria.
The African Union (AU) has
accused the International
Criminal Court (ICC) of
"hunting" Africans because
of their race.
Solar power is getting much
easier to store — and at a
much cheaper price
The total solar energy hitting Earth each
year is equivalent to 12.2 trillion
watt-hours. That's over 20,000 times more
than the total energy all of humanity
consumes each year.
And yet photovoltaic solar panels, the
instruments that convert solar radiation
into electricity, produce only 0.7 percent
of the energy the world uses.
So what gives?
With so many big government
scandals now implicating the
Obama administration, there
is a great effort to tie
them personally to President
Obama, to discover exactly
what he knew about the IRS
targeting conservatives, the
AP’s phone records, or
Benghazi security.
Despite the very official-sounding name
ascribed to it, there is no science to prove
the existence of the Autonomous Sensory
Meridian Response, or ASMR. We have no idea
what percentage of people have the ability
to experience it, where it comes from, what
it's for or what brain mechanics are
involved.
But if you're lucky enough to be able to
feel it, there's a growing and thriving
community out there producing thousands of
free samples of canned pleasure and
relaxation.
Senators Angus King (I-ME)
and Susan Collins (R-ME)
have introduced legislation
that would recognize and
encourage efficient,
renewable thermal biomass
energy under the law just as
other types of renewable
energy are encouraged today.
Meanwhile, Vermont is
forging ahead...
Participants across the
country in the Better
Buildings Challenge reduced
their energy intensity by
2.5% last year, achieving
about $58 million in annual
energy savings.
Fire crews watched the winds Tuesday as
they struggled to corral a wildfire that
sent thousands of campers fleeing the
mountains above Santa Barbara and threatened
dozens of cabins.
The wind-driven blaze had nearly doubled
in size since it erupted Monday afternoon...
Betting that central bankers
will re-inflate the global
economy is a zero-sum game,
according to Christopher
Whalen, executive vice
president and managing
director of Carrington
Investment Services.
Whalen believes Federal
Reserve Chairman Ben
Bernanke needs to come clean
and admit that central
bankers cannot improve the
economy.
Glacier retreat
has markedly accelerated in the period since
2004 - and many new species lie beneath
Plants that were frozen during the "Little
Ice Age" centuries ago have been observed
sprouting new growth, scientists say.
Samples of 400-year-old plants known as
bryophytes have flourished under laboratory
conditions.
Cleta Mitchell, one of
Washington's most respected
elections attorneys, has
sent out a memorandum she
says demonstrates that the
Internal Revenue Service is
seeking to mislead Congress
and the public.
Mitchell represents several
conservative groups that
have been targeted for
scrutiny by the IRS and is
counsel to the organization
True the Vote, which filed
suit against the IRS on
Tuesday.
It's 1.7 miles long. Its
surface is covered in a
sooty black substance
similar to the gunk at the
bottom of a barbecue. If it
impacted Earth it would
probably result in global
extinction. Good thing it is
just making a flyby.
Global warming has been
going on for a long time.
What were the temperatures
like a hundred years ago?
Terrestrial records go back
that far and farther, but
what about ocean
temperatures? In the late
1800's the HMS Challenger
conducted extensive
measurements of ocean
temperatures across the
globe.
We have had numerous
inquiries about the status
of rainwater catchment
systems and rainwater
related business in North
America. We here at ARCSA
are also very curious about
how many systems exist out
there, how many rainwater
businesses have been
started, as well as how much
money is being spent on
rainwater systems in North
America.
-
Public access to vaccine risk
information is being increasingly
restricted, and vaccine injuries and
deaths are covered up
-
Those denying vaccine risks are running
out of excuses, as the health risks of
excessive vaccinations are becoming more
and more self-evident
-
Legislation backed by public health
officials and Pharma-funded medical
trade groups have been introduced with
the goal to remove or restrict
non-medical vaccine exemptions
-
Doctors have more power to force vaccine
use by children and adults - no
questions asked and no exceptions
-
Autism rates have risen dramatically as
the number of childhood vaccines has
increased. In 1986, autism affected 1 in
2,000. By 1992 it was 1 in 500; in 2004
it had risen to 1 in 150, and according
to recently released statistics the
autism rate is now 1 in 50 American
children
-
Eating peppers – but not other
vegetables in the Solanaceae family --
was associated with a 19 percent lower
risk of Parkinson’s disease in a new
study
-
The association was strongest among
those who had never smoked, and it’s
thought the nicotine naturally found in
the peppers may have a neuroprotective
benefit
-
Although Parkinson’s disease is said to
have no known cause, eating a varied
whole-foods diet that includes healthful
veggies like peppers appears to be one
simple way to lower your risk
-
Avoiding exposure to environmental
toxins like pesticides, industrial
solvents and mercury is also important
in avoiding Parkinson’s
The Justice Department
begged a federal judge to
not tell Fox News reporter
James Rosen that it was
tracking his telephone calls
and emails in a probe
regarding a national
security leak.
Coal-fired generation
produced 40 percent or more
of that nation’s electricity
from November of last year
until March of this year,
rising from a low of
producing 32 percent in
April of last year. In that
month, coal and natural gas
both produced about 32
percent of the U.S.’s
electricity. Natural gas has
since dropped to produce
about 25 percent of the
generation in the period
between November 2012 and
last March.
Swappable batteries might
seem like a good idea to
overcome the range
limitations of electric
vehicles, but the benefits
of such an approach weren’t
enough to save Better Place,
the company responsible for
the first commercial
implementation of a
battery-switching service.
After just one year of
commercial operation, a
motion has been filed in
Israel asking for the
dissolution of the company
and the appointment of a
temporary liquidator.
A map of the universe based
on its oldest light is
giving astronomers hope that
they may be able to answer
some of the deepest
questions of the cosmos,
including how it got
started.
The Federal Reserve is likely to taper its
quantitative easing in September, says
bond-investing legend Bill Gross, co-chief
investment officer of Pimco.
The Fed is
currently buying $85 billion of Treasurys
and mortgage-backed securities a month.
Federal regulators have
indefinitely delayed a
decision on the proposed
restart of the shuttered San
Onofre nuclear power plant
in California, raising new
questions Monday about
whether the twin reactors
will produce
electricity again.
-
A former research scientist who once
touted the benefits of GM crops now
acknowledges the steady flow of research
showing that there is significant reason
for concern – and he has now reversed
his position
-
Federal departments in charge of food
safety in the US and Canada have not
conducted tests to affirm the alleged
safety of GM crops
-
The whole paradigm of the genetic
engineering technology is based on a
misunderstanding, as it operates on the
70-year-old “one gene, one protein”
hypothesis, which has since been proven
false
-
Scientific evidence shows that many of
the industry claims that GM crops yield
better and more nutritious food, save on
the use of pesticides, have no
environmental impact whatsoever and are
perfectly safe to eat are simply not
true
-
At present, the only way to avoid GM
foods is to ditch processed foods from
your grocery list, and revert back to
whole foods grown according to organic
standards
-
Angelina Jolie recently publicized her
decision to undergo a double mastectomy
to avoid breast cancer, as she carries a
hereditary gene mutation associated with
breast- and ovarian cancer
-
While women with breast cancer
susceptibility gene (BRCA) defects have
a 45-65 percent increased risk of breast
cancer, only about two percent of
diagnosed breast cancers are caused by
BRCA faults
-
Nearly the entire human genome is
covered by patents. This has created
monopolies that hinder genetic research
progress and makes gene-related medicine
unnecessarily expensive
-
It’s important to understand that while
you may carry a defective gene, it does
not mean that the genetic trait is
destined to be expressed. There are many
alternatives to dramatically decrease
your cancer risk through the lifestyle
choices you make
The Brauer-Bund beer
association is worried that
fracking for shale gas,
which involves pumping water
and chemicals at high
pressure into the ground,
could pollute water used for
brewing and break a
500-year-old industry rule
on water purity.
The International Energy
Agency said Friday that
Germany must shield its
consumers from paying too
much of the cost of its
ambitious switch from
nuclear power and fossil
fuels toward renewable
energy.
The IEA also
said Europe's biggest
economy should make greater
use of natural gas to smooth
the transition and reduce
the use of coal to meet its
carbon reduction targets to
combat climate change.
U.S. power plant emissions
from the nation's largest
generators
continued to fall in
2011 even as overall
electricity output rose
"largely due to increased
use of natural gas and
growing reliance on
renewable energy," according
to a May 15 report issued by
Ceres, the Natural Resources
Defense Council and others.
A bill aimed at lowering the costs of
energy while dramatically changing the way
Mainers consume it vaulted out of a key
legislative committee on a 12-1 vote Friday.
The vote came after months of hearings,
negotiations, compromises and outright
wrangling among Democrats, Republicans and
Gov. Paul LePage's office over strategic
changes to state energy policy. Lawmakers
hope these changes will improve Maine's
economy by increasing efficiency while
diversifying and expanding energy sources.
Don't rely on housing to
support a strong economic
recovery, according to three
housing market experts.
Many believe a housing
market rebound will lead the
way to an economic recovery
despite government spending
cuts, tax increases and an
ongoing economic malaise in
Europe.
A high school teacher in
Batavia, Illinois could be
disciplined for informing
his students of their Fifth
Amendment rights before
administering a survey
school officials was
intended to gauge their
emotional needs.
Iran has stepped up a
campaign of cyberattacks
against U.S. companies and
has successfully hacked the
computer networks of several
American energy firms.
The blossoming IRS scandal
may be welcomed by Americans
who hope to avoid the
unblinking eye of the
national tax agency, as the
last time the IRS was in
such a public mess, tax
audits fell by 50 percent,
according to MarketWatch.
The single limestone
aquifer, which is the main
source of freshwater in Sri
Lanka's northern Jaffna
peninsula, is gradually
depleting through overuse,
researchers say.
A new study that finds
troubling levels of toxic
metals in lipstick and lip
gloss is giving women reason
to pause before puckering
up. John Salerno, M.D., a
board-certified family
physician who specializes in
complementary medicine,
tells Newsmax Health that
women are wise to reconsider
all the cosmetics they have
been using because heavy
metal contamination is not
limited to the sheen on
their lips.
When President Barack Obama pushed his
healthcare overhaul plan through Congress,
he counted labor unions among his strongest
supporters.
But some unions leaders have grown
frustrated and angry about what they say are
unexpected consequences of the new law —
problems that they say could jeopardize the
health benefits offered to millions of their
members.
Finding common ground on hot
button energy issues has
been a major impediment. But
one area where policymakers
are coming together is in
the realm of energy
efficiency, which is
cost-effective while it is
also reducing emissions and
the reliance on electric
generation.
Memorial Day--a great
three-day weekend, good
sales, delicious barbeques,
and the unofficial start of
summer. Oh yeah, and
something about soldiers.
-
A record number of women under the age
of 50 are being diagnosed with breast
cancer in the UK, where one out of every
five women diagnosed with breast cancer
is now younger than 50
-
A JAMA study similarly found that the
number of young women (aged 25-39) in
the US being diagnosed with advanced
breast cancer is also increasing
-
Environmental factors, including
exposure to synthetic hormones in birth
control pills, personal care products
and food, are likely fueling the
increase
-
The majority of US breast cancer cases
could be prevented if people made wiser
lifestyle choices, such as eating
healthier, avoiding environmental
poisons, exercising and optimizing
vitamin D levels
Illegal and risky it may be,
but mining for gemstones is
an irresistible way of
earning a living for some
Afghans.
Though not something people
like to ponder, the purpose
of mucus as a protective
barrier that keeps
underlying tissues moist and
traps bacteria and other
foreign organisms is well
known. However, researchers
at San Diego State
University (SDSU) have now
discovered that the surface
of mucus is also the site of
an independent human immune
system that actively
protects us from infectious
agents in the environment.
In a scene right out of Star
Trek, a Texas company is
developing a 3-D food
printer for astronauts to
create custom meals on the
fly.
The cleanest electricity is no
electricity at all — a fact that is not lost
on new Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz.
During his first speech after being sworn
into his new post, Moniz said energy
efficiency would be one of his top
priorities.
El Nińo wreaks havoc across the globe,
shifting weather patterns that spawn
droughts in some regions and floods in
others. The impacts of this tropical Pacific
climate phenomenon are well known and
documented.
A mystery, however, has remained despite
decades of research: Why does El Nińo always
peak around Christmas and end quickly by
February to April?
Underwater homeowners have joined the
Refinance Boom en masse this year.
Falling mortgage rates have drawn them
in. "No appraisal" mortgages have made
closings more simple. The FHA Streamline
Refinance and HARP mortgage programs have
been especially popular.
In 2013, U.S. homeowners will close on 2
million FHA Streamline Refinance and
HARP mortgages combined.
The Radiation and Incidence
of Cancer around Ontario
Nuclear Power Plants from
1990 to 2008 study (the
RADICON study) estimated
radiation doses to members
of the public living within
25 km of the three NPPs and
compared cancer cases among
these people with the
general population of
Ontario. The study was
conducted using data from
the Canadian and Ontario
Cancer Registries and the
Census of Canada.
Standing by a pile of debris
that once was an elementary
school, President Barack
Obama on Sunday called the
destruction last week's
tornado wrought in Moore,
Oklahoma, "hard to
comprehend" and vowed to
provide long-term federal
help in rebuilding.
Although the natural
absorption of CO2 by the
world's oceans help mitigate
climate effects, the
resulting decrease in pH
causes ocean acidification
which can have negative
consequences for much of the
marine life, specifically
calcifiers such as corals
and mollusks that construct
their shells and skeletons
from calcium carbonate.
Residents and elected
officials opposed to
Southern California Edison's
plans to build high-voltage
power lines through the city
gathered to consolidate
support among themselves as
a decision from the state's
utility regulators looms.
The Nevada Senate has passed a bill that
would allow NV Energy Inc., Nevada’s biggest
utility, to retire its coal-fired plants and
transition to using more renewable energy,
according to the Associated Press.
Under the bill passed by the state
Senate, would close the Reid Gardner coal
plant in southern Nevada by 2017 and divest
800 MW of coal by 2019
The Obama Administration’s plan to remove
the gray wolf from the protections of the
Endangered Species Act, as detailed in a
draft Federal Register notice released today
by Public Employees for Environmental
Responsibility, PEER, is temporarily on
hold.
The reasons for the indefinite delay
announced this week were not revealed nor
were the records of closed-door meetings to
craft this plan that began in August 2010.
Appearing on ABC's "This
Week," Paul said the three
controversies currently
swirling around the
administration weaken his
leadership ability.
"Nobody questions his legal
authority, but I think he’s
really losing the moral
authority," Paul said. "I
don’t care whether you’re a
Republican or Democrat,
nobody likes to see the
opposite party punishing you
for your political beliefs."
...among all the
memorials and monuments on
the National Mall in
Washington, D.C., there is
not one that recognizes the
contributions of Native
warriors. But that,
hopefully, will soon change.
C1 event observed .
There are currently 5
numbered sunspot regions on
the disk. Solar
activity is likely to be low
with a slight chance for an
M-class flare on days one,
two, and three (28 May, 29
May, 30 May). The
geomagnetic field is
expected to be at quiet to
unsettled levels on day one
(28 May) and quiet levels on
days two and three (29 May,
30 May).
"The recent news about the
FBI's seizure of the phone
and email records of Fox
News employees, including
James Rosen, calls into
question whether the federal
government is meeting its
constitutional obligation to
preserve and protect a free
press in the United States,"
Ailes, a former media and
political consultant to
President Ronald Reagan,
wrote in a "memo of support"
to Fox News employees
Russia reserves the right to provide
Syria with state-of-the art air defence
missiles, seeing it as a key deterrent
against foreign intervention in the country,
a top Russian official said Tuesday.
Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov
wouldn't say whether Russia has shipped any
of the long-range S-300 air defence missile
systems, but added that Moscow isn't going
to abandon the deal despite strong Western
and Israeli criticism.
South Korea plans to halt
two nuclear reactors and
delay the start of
operations at another after
discovering that the
facilities were using
components whose safety
certificates were faked.
SolarCity, a California company with an
office in Mililani, installed the
8.88-kilowatt system -- 37 panels in all --
atop her two-story house at no cost, with no
down payment required, just a high credit
score.
Ishikawa said she and her husband
couldn't afford the upfront costs of the
system after putting in an addition, but the
goal was to lower her electricity bill.
Chad Stern doesn't look like a
revolutionary.
He doesn't wear a tricornered hat or
carry around a muzzle-loader. He's got a
wife and two kids and he goes to work every
day.
But he is part of a revolution -- a shift
in Massachusetts toward the use of solar
energy to generate electricity to power
everything from home furnaces and air
conditioners to lightbulbs and iPads.
The solar crisis will become
a boon, as record low prices
boost demand, more than
doubling the market to 61.7
GW – with China emerging as
the largest
market, Lux Research
The suitability of onshore
or offshore wave energy
conversion systems, as
harvesters of the
intermittent wave energy
resource, is highly
dependant on the particulars
of wave climate, bathymetry,
and topography of the locale
with respect to the
proximity of facilities
power requirements
Sweet news for candy lovers:
New research suggests candy
has been unfairly
characterized as a dietary
evil and, in fact, does not
contribute to obesity, heart
disease, or other health
problems, when eaten in
moderation.
Nearly everyone knows that
college tuitions have been
skyrocketing. Over the past
quarter-century, tuitions
have jumped 440 percent,
nearly twice the rate of
health care and three times
faster than inflation. This
has spiked student loan
debt, which at $1 trillion
now exceeds total credit
card debt or automobile loan
debt.
Although the Navajo
Generating Station carries
the name of the Navajo
people, the “Navajo”
Generating Station
previously negotiated in
1968 and 1969 had
significant flaws for the
Navajo Nation. First, five
power companies along with
the United States Bureau of
Reclamation planned a way to
generate cheap electricity
and deliver water throughout
the State of Arizona by
using the Navajo Nation’s
resources.
-
In the 1930s, farmers rapidly plowed-up
the grasslands of the southern Plains
and planted wheat in its place
-
With millions of acres of plowed fields
and a chronic drought, winds picked up
the soil creating thick clouds of dust
called “black blizzards,” which covered
the region in an unprecedented
years-long “storm”
-
The Dust Bowl film chronicles the events
of this manmade disaster, including
interviews with 26 survivors who
describe in vivid detail how the
dust-filled winds could easily blister
your face and carried with them an
indescribable feeling of evil
-
As we once again struggle with droughts
and the laws of nature continue to be
manipulated by poor farming practices,
we could once again be brewing a dust
storm of epic proportions … or another
manmade ecological disaster that has
never before been seen
People have eaten seaweed,
sometimes called "sea
vegetables" for thousands of
years. It is coming under
more and more scientific
scrutiny and the discoveries
are pretty amazing. The
mixture of vitamins,
minerals and trace elements
found in seaweeds so closely
resembles that of the human
body, that the minerals and
other healing elements found
in seaweed are easily
absorbed through the skin
and digestive tract and into
the blood. Some researchers
are beginning to believe
seaweed alone is an almost
perfect solution to many
health woes
Syria: New Developments
Could Kill Peace Conference
Rabinovich Not Optimistic
About Arab-Israeli Peace
Scandal in Canada Could
Bring Liberals Back to Power
US Unprepared for
Electromagnetic Attacks
Europe's Bad Loan Problems
Demand an Urgent Solution
Now that it looks like the
hunt for the Higgs boson is
over, particles of dark
matter are at the top of the
physics "Most Wanted" list.
Dozens of experiments have
been searching for them, but
often come up with
contradictory results.
The new all-electric Tesla S sedan is not
just the favorite of car magazines, now
Consumer Reports calls it the best car
they’ve ever driven, scoring 99 points of
100 and beating out the Lexus LS460 that
held the previous record back in 2007. What
does this massive battery-powered EV have
that no others do?
"It handles like a sports car, it rides
like a luxury car, it has the energy
efficiency that is twice as good as the best
hybrids and is the quietest car we’ve ever
tested," said CR tester Gabe Shenhar. "It
does so many things so right on so many
levels that to us it wasn't a surprise."
A man who forced his way into a Union
County home early Thursday was shot and
killed by an occupant of the residence,
according to the sheriff’s office.
Calling the case a “home invasion,”
detectives say the intruder tried to escape
after being shot but never made it past the
front yard of the house.
U.S. ethanol production rose
2.1 percent to 875,000
barrels a day last week, the
most in 11 months, the
Energy Information
Administration said.
Returns to make the biofuel
from a bushel of corn are
near the highest levels
since 2011, data compiled by
Bloomberg show. Prices for
the grain have eased on
projections that farmers
will plant the most acres
since 1936 as they seek to
rebound from drought that
shriveled crops last summer.
Aquifers across the United
States are being drawn down
at an increasing pace, finds
a new study released today
by the U.S. Geological
Survey.
“Although groundwater
depletion is rarely assessed
and poorly documented, it is
becoming recognized as an
increasingly serious global
problem that threatens
sustainability of water
supplies,” writes report
author USGS hydrologist
Leonard Konikow.
The world has two types of
currency de-valuers -- the
ones announcing their
intentions such as the
Japanese -- and those not
announcing it, says David
McAlvany, CEO of the
McAlvany Financial Group.
"The dollar has been …
rallying considerably," he
told Newsmax TV in an
exclusive interview.
"But we need to put
'strong' in quotes because
it's strong relative to an
extra-weak yen. It is strong
but not of its own merits.
What we have today is a very
artificial market space and
… there is a competitive
devaluation; a race to the
bottom."
New rules
for U.S. meatpackers will require labeling
that tells consumers where the animal was
born, raised and slaughtered.
Sounds simple.
Two days before thousands of
people across the United
States plan to march against
Monsanto’s genetically
engineered crops, the U.S.
Senate Thursday turned down
a measure that would have
allowed states to require
labels on food or beverages
made with genetically
modified ingredients.
A key satellite positioned to track
severe weather in the eastern United States
has failed, just as the 2013 Atlantic
hurricane season is about to start.
The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA) activated a spare
satellite, which will provide coverage of
the East Coast, while it is trying to fix
the failed one, the agency said in a status
report on its website on Friday.
"There is no estimate on return to
operations at this time," NOAA said.
US coal production totaled
about 18.9 million st in the
week that ended Saturday,
the Energy Information
Administration said
Thursday.
This
production estimate, based
on railcar loadings, is 2.2%
higher than the previous
week's estimate and 4.6%
above output in the
comparable week in 2012, EIA
said.
Lynn Tilson is trying to
save 374 of her red pines
from the chainsaw...
METC is rebuilding its
138,000-volt
Keystone-Hodenpyl
transmission line and
replacing old wooden power
poles installed in the 1950s
with new steel monopoles.
The utility informed
property owners in Grand
Traverse, Manistee and
Wexford counties it plans to
remove trees located up to
80 feet on either side of
the center line, making the
right-of-way 160 feet.
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has been
considering delaying the Pentagon's portion
of a $510 million federal program to invest
in biofuel refineries that has been the
subject of congressional battles for more
than a year, according to multiple sources
with knowledge of the deliberations.
Senate opponents have tried twice to
block the program -- a joint effort of the
Pentagon, the Department of Energy and the
Agriculture Department -- which is aimed at
spurring large-scale production of
cost-competitive drop-in advanced biofuels
In most cities, if a person were to look
out a window and see a group of people
rifling through trash cans, it would be
cause for alarm. But in San Francisco, it's
just a typical garbage day.
As part of the city's latest effort to
boost its already high recycling rate, city
trash inspectors are going from neighborhood
to neighborhood, digging through residents'
carts to make note of improperly sorted
materials.
Every few years, at least
from the time of President
Franklin D. Roosevelt, there
is a scandal involving abuse
of power at the Internal
Revenue Service. We are
again in the midst of one of
these periodic abuse
scandals, with many solemn
promises that the problems
will be corrected and will
not happen again.
As
always, the rhetoric is far
from the reality for two
basic reasons. The first is
the nature of the income
tax, which, by definition,
is subjective in its
interpretation of the
definition of "income" and
thus subject to abuse. The
second is the type of person
that the IRS attracts as an
employee.
-
When chemicals come in contact with your
skin, they are absorbed straight into
your bloodstream without filtering of
any kind, going directly to your
delicate organs
-
Feminine hygiene products such as
tampons and sanitary pads are an
oft-ignored source of a variety of
potentially toxic ingredients, including
genetically modified organisms and
pesticides
-
Manufacturers of tampons and sanitary
pads are not required to disclose the
ingredients used in their products
-
One conventional sanitary pad contains
the equivalent of about four plastic
bags
Once again, political leaders in West
Virginia are taking on the Environmental
Protection Agency in what they perceive as a
crucial court test with coal production
hanging in the balance.
Specifically, the state joined two other
states -- Kansas and Montana -- in a "friend
of the court" brief, asking the nation's
highest court to hear a challenge of the EPA
in regulating greenhouse gas emissions from
stationary sources.
Xcel Energy hopes to put some of the
state's beetle-infested forests to use
through the generation of electricity.
The company, which provides electricity
to much of the Front Range and parts of the
San Luis Valley, will seek proposals for a
two-megawatt demonstration project that
creates power through the gasification of
forest biomass.
May 24, 2013
A team of international experts has drawn
up the Soil Atlas of Africa — the first such
book mapping this key natural resource — to
help farmers, land managers and policymakers
understand the diversity and importance of
soil and the need to manage it through
sustainable use.
They say that despite soil's importance,
most people in Africa lack knowledge about
it, partly because information about it
tends to be confined to academic
publications read only by scientists.
Frogs, toads and salamanders have been in
trouble for decades, but a new U.S.
government study shows just how quickly many
amphibians are disappearing from ponds and
creeks across the United States.
The average rate of decline for U.S.
amphibians is about 3.7 percent a year,
which may sound small but compounds over
time...
Amnesty International says the world has
become an increasingly dangerous place for
refugees and migrants.
In its annual report, the group said
millions were forced to live on the margins
of society and allowed to be the targets of
"populist rhetoric".
Amnesty said governments were more
interested in protecting their own borders
than the rights of migrants.
Even as the United States accuses China
of military espionage and worries about
Beijing's more strident posture in the
Asia-Pacific region, the ties between the
armed forces of the two nations have been
getting closer.
Direct contact between China's People's
Liberation Army (PLA) and some of its
potential adversaries has increased
dramatically in the last two years.
It's no secret that fresh,
homegrown vegetables are
some of the healthiest foods
you can eat. And it's not
just the vitamins and
minerals. Nutritionists also
point out that they contain
enzymes and dietary
phytochemicals, which are
vital for vibrant health.
One thing that makes garden
produce so much more
nutrient dense (as opposed
to store-bought) is the
shorter time and distance
between harvest and plate.
Scientists say a newly discovered form of
life found living in subzero temperatures of
–15 Celsius may resemble life living
underground on Mars.
Bacteria found living in the permafrost
of the High Arctic seem to thrive in an
environment long thought to be nearly
inhospitable to all forms of life. However,
it now seems that a Canadian-led team of
researchers from McGill University have
uncovered a new microbe, Planococcus
halocryophilus, capable of reproducing
at a record-setting temperature of –15
Celsius.
The research show that the cold waters of
the Arctic sea are more vulnerable to
acidification. Cold water more readily
absorbs CO2 and combined with the
precipitous drop in summer sea ice extent,
thus exposing more open water, northern
oceans are rapidly acidifying.
"The sea ice has been a lid on the
Arctic, so the loss of ice is allowing fast
uptake of CO2," said Richard Bellerby of the
Norwegian Institute for Water Research,
chairman of the report.
On May 13, the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA)
reported a preliminary daily
average carbon dioxide (CO2)
reading of 400.07 parts per
million (ppm) at the Mauna
Loa Observatory on the Big
Island of Hawaii.
A man believed to be a
British soldier was beheaded
and hacked up with a meat
cleaver by two men, who were
then shot by police in
London Wednesday afternoon,
authorities say.
The
victim was cut up "like a
piece of meat," said one
eyewitness to the slaughter,
which occurred in broad
daylight near an Army
barracks.
The state of California
approved mercury thermostat
regulations that will set
aggressive targets for the
collection and recycling of
out-of-service mercury
thermostats...
[ED: So, when are
they going to do this for my
amalgam teeth?]
In 1991, I worked for
the late Cherokee Nation
Principal Chief Wilma
Mankiller. I was walking
down the hall of one of our
buildings, and I overheard
one person tell another, “We
can’t do that—the Bureau of
Indian Affairs won’t let
us.” It was a fascinating
moment that piqued my
curiosity; why did our
people believe it, and when
did such a fatalistic belief
sneak into our national
psyche?
Coal has a bright future, but industry
leaders must push hard to get there.
That was the message Monday morning
during the first session of the Eastern Coal
Council's annual conference, held in
Kingsport.
A new biodiesel production
plant to be built in Boulder
will make 11.5 million
gallons a year of the clean
burning fuel from used
cooking oil collected from
local restaurants.
The federal appeals court in
Denver is set to hear
arguments Thursday on
whether the Obama
health-care law can compel
business owners to violate
'sincerely held religious
beliefs.'
Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd said on
Wednesday it has repaired and reopened a
rail line near Jansen, Saskatchewan, and
continues to clean up after a derailment
that spilled 575 barrels of crude oil on
Tuesday.
CP, the country's second-largest rail
carrier, said the line reopened late Tuesday
night following repairs and inspections. It
said an investigation continues into the
cause of the accident, the largest of three
oil spills for the company in two months.
Researchers had presumed that cutting
down trees near dams increases the flow of
water and hence energy production. This is
because crops and pastures that replace
trees take less water from the ground and
lose less moisture by evaporation.
But trees also release water vapour into
the atmosphere, which turns into rain and
feeds hydroelectric power stations, and this
new research suggests that wider
deforestation can reduce overall rainfall
and therefore energy production. This should
be taken into account when planning
hydropower developments in tropical regions,
say the authors.
Although no one is
announcing a cure for
Alzheimer’s disease just
yet, research recently
conducted at the University
of Southern California does
at least offer a glimmer of
hope. Using drugs known as
TSPO (translocator protein)
ligands, scientists there
have successfully halted and
even reversed the effects of
Alzheimer’s in mice.
Producing and collecting
molecular hydrogen for
transportation and industry
is expensive and
complicated, and its
byproducts can be toxic.
Duke researchers have
demonstrated under
laboratory conditions that
they can reduce carbon
monoxide levels to nearly
zero in the presence of
hydrogen and the harmless
byproducts of carbon dioxide
and water. They also
demonstrated hydrogen
production by reforming fuel
at much lower temperatures
than conventional methods,
which is more practical.
From Virginia to Florida,
there is a prehistoric
shoreline that, in some
parts, rests more than 280
feet above modern sea level.
The shoreline was carved by
waves more than 3 million
years ago -- possible
evidence of a once higher
sea level, triggered by
ice-sheet melting. But new
findings by a team of
researchers, including
Robert Moucha, assistant
professor of Earth Sciences
in The College of Arts and
Sciences, reveal that the
shoreline has been uplifted
by more than 210 feet,
meaning less ice melted than
expected.
"It is absolutely right to seek to
protect areas where there is drinking and
ground water, like at Lake Constance. At an
EU level the topic of fracking and
environmental protection will be looked at
more closely this year," Die Welt quoted
Oettinger as saying in an article published
in its online edition on Monday.
Fracking involves pumping water, sand and
chemicals at high pressure to open up the
shale and release the gas. Critics say
fracking could increase seismic risks and
pollute drinking water.
The Federal Energy
Regulatory Commission (FERC)
has issued a final rule
requiring the development of
reliability standards that
address the impact of
geomagnetic disturbances
(GMD) to ensure continued
reliable operation of the
nation's bulk-power
system.
This week combines two of
the most controversial radio
shows we have ever done.
Both 30 minute radio shows
are one that are ones that
will leave you with your jaw
hanging on the floor. Our
first guest, Joe Wolverton
II, J.D. of the New American
magazine draws profound
connections to political
policies being discussed on
Capitol Hill today and the
political structures that
lead to the Nazi regime.
Wolverton even points out
how unbelievably close even
the wording used in Nazi
Germany echoes the wording
used by today’s political
figures such as Eric Holder
and Nancy Pelosi.
Japanese companies are
renewing their interest in
geothermal energy after the
March 2011 nuclear crisis
shut down reactors for
safety checks and the
introduction of an incentive
program for clean energy
encouraged investment.
Great Lakes water levels are
at historic lows, 26 inches
below their long term
averages, raising prices
right at the beginning of
the supply chain for iron
ore, grain, and coal. For
every inch the water levels
fall, a freighter needs to
leave another 100 tons of
goods behind on the dock.
That means one of the
cheapest and most efficient
ways to move freight in the
world becomes less efficient
and more expensive as the
water levels drop.
Greetings from the
Chiefs, Clanmothers,
Faithkeepers, and people of
the Haudenosaunee
Six Nations Confederacy,
People of the Longhouse...
No one person or
nation can bring into the
Circle another form of
governance without the full
expressed acceptance of the
Grand Council.
It took one sentence
to send shockwaves through
the financial markets.
A man held an intruder at gunpoint in his
home Tuesday night while waiting for law
enforcement to arrive, according to Colorado
Springs police.
Jeremy Strong, 38, was relaxing with his
family around 9 p.m. when he heard glass
shattering and his wife screaming. A man had
broken into his house, located on the 1900
block of South Corona Avenue, east of
Southgate Road.
House Republicans pushed
through a bill Wednesday to
bypass the president to
speed approval of the
Keystone XL oil pipeline
from Canada to Texas.
Democrats criticized the
legislation as a blatant
attempt to allow a foreign
company to avoid
environmental review.
-
Modern Westernized infant and early
childhood feeding regimens differ
dramatically from ancestral-type feeding
regimens
-
92 percent or more of all Westernized
people have some degree of malocclusion,
such as crowding of the teeth, narrowing
of the jaws, or both. This has
ramifications for breathing and
sleeping, which in turn can contribute
to attention deficit disorder
-
By using baby-led weaning, you can
instill in your child a desire for
healthy food choices, reduce risk of
later obesity and other associated
health risks, and promote the natural
development of your child’s oral cavity,
which could be helpful in preventing
sleep problems.
-
Baby-led weaning includes premasticating
regular whole foods in lieu of serving
processed baby foods. This can be done
either by pre-chewing the food before
serving it to your baby, or using a mesh
feeder
-
Anyone, regardless of space allowance,
can produce their own food. Sprouts are
one ideal option. A powerhouse of
nutrition, sprouts can contain up to 30
times the nutrition of organic
vegetables grown in your own garden, and
allow your body to extract more
vitamins, minerals, amino acids and
essential fats from the foods you eat
-
In areas where the growing season is
short, growing seedlings will allow you
to harvest your vegetables four to six
weeks earlier than had you planted the
seeds directly outdoors
-
You can use virtually every square foot
of your space, including your lateral
space. Hanging baskets are ideal for a
wide variety of foods, such as
strawberries, leafy greens, runner
beans, pea shoots, tomatoes, and a
variety of herbs. And instead of
flowers, window boxes can hold herbs,
greens, radishes, scallions, bush beans,
strawberries, chard, and chiles
The discovery of dangerous levels of
toxic cadmium in rice sold in the southern
city of Guangzhou, the latest in a series of
food scandals, has piled more pressure on
China to clean up its food chain - possibly
at the expense of Mao Zedong's cherished
goal of self-sufficiency.
The ruling Communist Party has long
staked its legitimacy on its ability to
guarantee domestic staple food supplies, and
has pledged to be at least 95 percent
self-sufficient even as demand increases and
the fastest and biggest urbanization process
in history swallows up arable land.
The Japanese climber,
accompanied by his
43-year-old son, two other
Japanese, and six Nepali
sherpas, set out for the
so-called "death zone" --
the last, and most
treacherous leg of his
Everest trek - around 2 a.m.
local time, making the final
1,140-foot summit, in
roughly seven hours.
"Abenomics" has been
likened to the decision to
attack Pearl Harbor, to
throw a Hail Mary pass and
to undertake a bold
experiment. Its mix of
monetary, fiscal and reform
policies championed by
Japanese Prime Minister
Shinzo Abe, who took office
in late December, has won
praise from Japan's major
trading partners and the
World Bank. But will it
work?
President Barack Obama's
renewed call on Thursday for
the closure of the
Guantanamo Bay prison
suggests he is clueless on
how to effectively battle
terrorism, according to John
Bolton, former U.S.
Ambassador to the United
Nations.
"He still
doesn't understand the
nature of the war against
terror,'' Bolton told Fox
News.
The IRS could be directly to
blame for lower voter
turnout during the 2012
election after conservative
groups were left sidelined
by the IRS decision to
target them, according to
John Fund, national-affairs
columnist for National
Review Online.
In his
Thursday column, Fund said
there is little evidence to
substantiate claims that
turnout was lower because
voters, particularly
minorities, were thwarted
from casting their ballots
due to tighter state laws
requiring photo-ID at
polling stations.
Harken back to the
deepest and darkest moments
of the California energy
crisis. Utilities’ rates
were tightly regulated and
neither the governor nor the
state legislature would lift
the rate caps so that
utilities could recoup their
costs. Instead, they
insisted that power traders
were manipulating markets
while the elected leadership
pleaded with federal
regulators to limit
wholesale electricity
prices.
Global warming and clean
energy should be priorities
for Congress and the
president, a majority of
Americans said in a recent
survey.
Key findings include a lack
of significant impact on
birds, sea mammals and
benthic organisms (small
creatures that live on the
sea bed, such as sea slugs,
worms and cockles) even
during the construction
phase, the consultancy said.
Attorney General Eric Holder
personally signed off on the
search warrant of Fox News
reporter James Rosen's
emails, NBC reports.
The warrant named Rosen a
“possible co-conspirator” in
violation of the Espionage
Act for obtaining leaked
classified information from
a Pentagon source. Rosen has
not been charged.
The
revelation came on the same
day President Barack Obama
said in a speech that he had
ordered Holder to review the
Justice Department's
standards for investigating
cases that involve
journalists.
A new type of
asthma
drug meant to attack the underlying
causes of the respiratory disease
slashed episodes by 87 percent in a
mid-stage trial, making it a potential
game changer for patients with moderate
to severe disease, researchers said on
Tuesday.
"Overall, these are the most exciting
data we've seen in asthma in 20 years,"
..
The new North Side elementary school will
be the La Crosse School District's first to
use an increasingly popular heating and
cooling system that cuts energy costs and
emissions.
District officials agreed Monday to
include plans for a geothermal system in
designs for the new school, instead of a
traditional boiler. Put simply, geothermal
systems use underground temperatures to
control temperatures in the school.
The evidence continues to
mount. That vaccines are
doing a great deal of harm
is well beyond denying.
Worse, though, the evidence
that vaccines have had
little or no effect on
infectious diseases is
clear, as documented in new
graphs. The precautionary
principle, which is
enshrined in a UN directive,
should have been implemented
before vaccines were ever
routinely injected.
Tornado survivors thanked God, sturdy
closets and luck in explaining how they
lived through the colossal twister that
devastated an Oklahoma town and killed 24
people, an astonishingly low toll given the
extent of destruction.
At least one family took refuge in a
bathtub and some people shut themselves in
underground shelters built into their houses
when the powerful storm tore through the
Oklahoma City suburb of Moore on Monday.
Pesticide makers have taken
to framing themselves as
stewards of the bees as
backlash over their
products' links to mass bee
deaths grows.
The Public Utility
Commission of Texas (PUCT)
has unanimously approved an
application by Electric
Transmission Texas (ETT), a
joint venture between
American Electric Power and
MidAmerican Energy Holdings
Company, to build a 345-kV
transmission line from the
Laredo area into the Rio
Grande Valley.
Legislation at the center of a radio and
newspaper campaign urging the governor's
veto also eliminates an incentive for using
renewable energy generated in Colorado.
A pending federal lawsuit filed in 2011
challenged the constitutionality of the
incentive. Senate Bill 252 -- if signed by
the still-undecided governor -- would
eliminate that incentive beginning in 2015.
C3 event. There are
currently 7 numbered sunspot
regions on the disk.
Solar activity is expected
to be low with a chance for
M-class flares and a slight
chance for an X-class flare
on days one, two, and three
(24 May, 25 May, 26 May).
The geomagnetic field is
expected to be at quiet to
minor storm levels on day
one (24 May), quiet to
active levels on day two (25
May) and quiet to unsettled
levels on day three (26
May). Protons are expected
to remain above threshold on
day one (24 May), are likely
to cross threshold on day
two (25 May) and have a
chance of crossing threshold
on day three (26 May).
When a solar flare filled
with charged particles
erupts from the sun, its
magnetic fields sometime
break a widely accepted rule
of physics. The
flux-freezing theorem
dictates that the magnetic
lines of force should flow
away in lock-step with the
particles, whole and
unbroken. Instead, the lines
sometimes break apart and
quickly reconnect in a way
that has mystified
astrophysicists.
How will rainfall patterns
across the tropical Indian
and Pacific regions change
in a future warming world?
Climate models generally
suggest that the tropics as
a whole will get wetter, but
the models don't always
agree on where rainfall
patterns will shift in
particular regions within
the tropics.
I suspect the rally was more
fueled by rumors that formal
talks had begun to settle a
conflict that has seen both
the U.S. and EU accuse China
of unfair support for its
solar panel sector. The U.S.
has already imposed punitive
tariffs on Chinese solar
panels, and the EU is
preparing to take similar
action. Such negotiations
would have been a very
positive signal, showing
that Beijing was finally
willing to admit there was a
problem and take action to
find a solution.
The Syrian government has
agreed “in principle” to
attend a conference proposed
by Russia and the United
States on ending the
country’s civil war,
Russia’s Foreign Ministry
said Friday, the first
confirmation that President
Bashar Assad’s regime would
be willing to take part in
the talks with the
opposition.
The free-flowing rivers of
Borneo, the world’s
third-largest island, are at
stake in the struggle of the
island’s indigenous people
against the Sarawak state
government and hydropower
companies over plans to
build the dams that will
flood their lands.
Earlier this week, two
islamic terrorists in London
brutally attacked and
murdered a serving British
soldier with butcher knives
and meat cleavers. This
attack was a gruesome
nightmare that no one
thought would happen in
broad daylight in downtown
London. ..
Murderous psychos are
everywhere, and no kind of
law will stop them. There
were dozens, if not hundreds
of people nearby when the
attack happened in broad
daylight, yet no concealed
carry permit holders in the
area. Why? Because England
forbids their law-abiding
citizens the right to
protect themselves and
others with a gun.
Days before a Shell
drillship went aground in
the storm-tossed Gulf of
Alaska, it was clear that
towing failures could spell
disaster for the vessel, the
crew and the marine
environment, a company
official told a U.S. Coast
Guard panel on Monday.
Occasional rainfall over the next week to
10 days will slow seedings of the U.S. corn
crop, which was planted at a record fast
pace last week, an agricultural
meteorologist said on Tuesday.
"There will be some rains, but not enough
to stop planting entirely," said Don Keeney,
meteorologist for MDA Weather Services. "The
good news is it will be warmer next week,
which will really help growth and
development of the crop."
The gun — a rifle — is
called “TrackingPoint” and
it is, more or less, a
“smart” firearm. The user
looks through the rifle’s
scope, which features an
advanced color graphics
display, and when locked in
on a target, pulls the
trigger. The catch, though,
is that the gun does not
fire right away — instead,
it holds off until it is
pointed in exactly the right
place, taking into
consideration several
different variables,
including wind, shake, and
distance to target.
Only when the moment to fire
is most optimal does the gun
discharge.
The Solar Kettle features a
thermal vacuum tube which
absorbs and converts the
sun’s rays into heat. Two
exterior reflectors open out
to maximize the amount of
solar energy obtained,
enabling the water inside to
boil without the need for
any further energy supply.
The kettle also comes with
an built-in stand so that it
can be positioned to face
the sun, along with a
thermometer located on the
lid, which allows the user
to monitor the temperature
of the contents.
With its two electric motors
receiving power from 537
square meters (5,780 sq ft)
of photovoltaic panels, the
31-meter (102-ft) long,
15-meter (49-ft) wide ship
maintained an average
cruising speed of 5.3 knots
– although it’s capable of
going as fast as 14 knots.
The plan: Use storage plants
to pump energy into the
ground in the form of
compressed air. The
conversion would work two
ways, allowing managers to
deposit energy when it's not
needed, and withdraw it when
it is. The study even
developed conceptual designs
for two large-scale
facilities in Washington to
make that happen at a
practical cost.
Wind energy could be stored
underground among volcanic
rock formations in two
places in Eastern
Washington, making the
seasonal and intermittent
power that wind generates
more practical, according to
a new study...
Researchers are looking at
compressed air storage, a
technology that's relatively
well understood, according
to PNNL. Storage plants in
Alabama and Germany use
man-made salt caverns to
store excess electricity.
So while Chinese economic
growth rates might be
slowing, its consumers are
becoming wealthier and
pushing up gasoline demand,
which is up 15% year to
date, while gasoil
consumption remains flat,
Bernstein Research said in a
report late Tuesday.
Demand for oil in the
transportation sector has
now reached 46%, compared
with only 30% a decade ago,
the report said.
A battle raging for control of a border
town critical to the supply of men and arms
to opponents of the regime of Syrian
President Bashar Assad may determine whether
the two-year rebellion will survive, say
analysts and a rebel officer.
Rebels have held the town of Qusayr a few
miles from Lebanon for over a year, but
fighters for Iran-backed Hezbollah, a
U.S.-designated terror group, have added
renewed strength to the Syrian government
offensive to crush the rebel haven.
U.S. electric vehicle maker
Telsa Motors has paid back
its 2010 loan awarded by the
Department of Energy.
Following payments made in
2012 and earlier in 2013,
the May 22 payment of $451.8
million repays the full loan
amount with interest.
Astrologers having been
associating water with
emotional sensitivity for
thousands of years but it is
only in 2005 that a Japanese
scientist, Dr. Masaru Emoto,
documented in photographs
that freezing water changes
into different shapes
depending on the emotions
directed at it.
Electrostatic Discharge(ESD)
is the transfer of
electrical charge between
any two objects. A common
example of this is the
static shock that a person
experiences after walking
across a carpet and then
touching a metallic object
such as a door knob or file
cabinet. The "shock" is felt
at the point of contact and
is typically accompanied by
a small spark and a slight
snapping sound.
From prominent election
lawyer Cleta Mitchell comes
the disgusting detail with
which the Internal Revenue
Service hounded conservative
groups -- they demanded so
much information it
constituted a deliberately
crippling workload.
Blind Chinese Activist Alone
in Human Rights Struggle
World Politics Playing Out
on Syrian Stage, Says Former
Ambassador
Japan: Massive Stimulus
Triggered Stock Sell-off
Iran: Disqualified
Presidential Candidates Will
Further Alienate Population
UK: Cameron Fighting for His
Life as Euro-skeptics Rally
China’s Resource Grab
Extends into Arctic Circle
-
Exercise is a key factor of optimal
health; it's particularly important for
controlling your blood sugar and
normalizing your insulin levels. When
done correctly, exercise can oftentimes
act as a substitute for some of the most
common drugs used today for things like
diabetes, heart disease and depression
-
Compelling and ever-mounting research
shows that the ideal form of exercise is
short bursts of high intensity exercise
-
Not only does it beat conventional
cardio as the most effective and
efficient form of exercise, Peak Fitness
exercises also provide health benefits
you simply cannot get from regular
aerobics, such as a tremendous boost in
human growth hormone (HGH), aka the
“fitness hormone”
Although global capital
spending this year in the
photovoltaics (PV) supply
chain is expected to fall to
its lowest level since 2006,
indications are that the
downturn in investment has
hit bottom and purchases of
equipment may soon rebound.
Severe storms were expected to pummel as
many as 10 states on Monday, the National
Weather Service said. It predicted a 10
percent chance of tornadoes in parts of
Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri
and Illinois.
Parts of four other states - Wisconsin,
Indiana, Michigan and Iowa - have a 5
percent risk of tornadoes, the service said.
Moniz said he would like to
see more development of
solar and wind technologies,
as well as so-called
"forgotten renewables," such
as geothermal systems and
small hydropower.
He
said that now was the time
to develop these
technologies, since domestic
natural gas supplies were
abundant, prices remained
low and the increased use of
gas has at least partially
contributed to lowered
carbon dioxide pollution.
The Bakken and Three Forks
Formations contain an
estimated mean of 7.4
billion barrels of
undiscovered, technically
recoverable oil. The
updated assessment for the
Bakken and Three Forks
represents a twofold
increase over what has
previously been thought.
These two formations are
also estimated to contain a
mean of 6.7 trillion cubic
feet of undiscovered,
technically recoverable
natural gas and 0.53 billion
barrels of undiscovered,
technically recoverable
natural gas liquids, a
threefold increase for both
resources.
Committee members viewed the
information received during
the period since the March
FOMC meeting as suggesting
that the economy was
expanding at a moderate pace
“despite some softness in
recent economic data.”
Participants viewed the
outlook as little changed
since March, with growth
expected to “proceed at a
moderate pace and result in
a gradual decline in the
unemployment rate” toward
levels consistent with the
Fed’s dual mandate.
The agrichemical companies
are taking these initiatives
at a time when their
best-selling pesticides are
under fire from
environmental and food
activists who say the
chemicals are killing off
millions of bees. The
companies say their
pesticides are not the
problem, but critics say
science shows the opposite.
Several major U.S. utilities
are under "constant"
cyberattack and haven't
taken precautions to protect
critical systems from Iran,
North Korea and other
adversaries, according to a
congressional survey of more
than 100 companies
accounting for much of the
nation's power system.
The United States has
taken the lead yet again,
but this time, we may not be
so proud. We have surpassed
every nation, including
China, in the category of
energy waste. Yes, our
country wastes the most
energy in the world. The
U.S. has an energy
efficiency of 42 percent,
which means 58 percent of
all the energy we produce is
wasted! How can this
happen?!
“Scotland could go it alone, just as the
United Kingdom could go it alone outside the
EU,” he said. “But in both cases our
respective citizens would be less secure,
less prosperous and less influential.”
He said that under the UK’s current
Renewables Obligation system, “some 37
percent of the support — around Ł530m
annually — goes to Scottish renewables
projects”.
Land and water resources in
the U.S. could likely
support the growth of enough
algae to produce up to 25
billion gallons of
algae-based fuel a year --
one-twelfth of the country's
yearly needs, according to
research from the U.S.
Department of Energy's
Pacific Northwest National
Laboratory (PNNL).
A cause of a mysterious
disease devastating shrimp
farms across Asia since 2009
has been tracked back to a
strain of a bacteria native
to coastlines around the
world.
The shrimp
early mortality syndrome has
perplexed experts for years,
in a region where roughly
one million people depend on
shrimp farming for survival.
As former Boulder mayor
Susan Osborne described,
Boulder didn’t set out to
“blaze a trail” for local
ownership of its electric
utility, but for a growing
number of cities across
America considering
municipalization, there’s a
lot to learn from their
remarkable story.
...as the attack escalated
and its dimensions became
clearer, why didn't Defense
Secretary Leon Panetta ask
him for authority to order
relief for the beleaguered
mission? Why didn't he even
ask?
Clearly, the
president must have been
pretty firm in his one
meeting with Panetta that he
did not want to send in more
troops to rescue those
already on the ground in
Benghazi.
Electrical equipment is
grounded (connected to the
earth by wire leading to
metal rods implanted in the
ground) in order to prevent
interference of
electromagnetic fields
(EMF).
Being directly connected with the ground,
the body maintains the same electrical
potential as the earth and receives
important health benefits.
The term earthing refers to
being connected to the ground...
May 21, 2013
For the past three years, the boom in the
U.S. shale oil industry has outstripped all
expectations. Production surged far faster
than any forecasts; drillers raced to secure
space in new pipelines to get their crude to
market.
Now, at the periphery, that may be
changing - at least for a while.
Columnist and actor Ben
Stein, who worked for the
Nixon administration during
the Watergate scandal on
Saturday said that President
Obama’s administration is
guilty of more than
incompetence in the case of
the Benghazi attack that
resulted in the deaths of
Ambassador Chris Stevens and
three other Americans.
“With great respect to
my colleagues, Benghazi is
not incompetence,” Stein
insisted on Fox. “Benghazi
is frank outright
malfeasance, lying, criminal
cover-up.”
-
Wheatgrass contains high amounts of
chlorophyll, and is thought to have a
wide variety of health promoting
properties but its benefits are related
to the quality of how it is grown. Wheat
grass should not be used long term as it
is not a food but a highly detoxifying
medicinal herb
-
Purported health benefits of wheatgrass
include Increasing red blood-cell count;
cleansing your blood, organs and
gastrointestinal tract; stimulating
metabolism and thyroid function;
reducing damaging effects of radiation,
and more
-
It is important to be cautious when
using wheatgrass and to start slowly to
avoid becoming nauseous and stimulating
a healing crisis
-
Sunflower seed and pea sprouts are other
sprouts that are actually foods, which
are highly nutritious and can be
consumed on a regular basis. They can
have up to 30X the nutrition of even
locally grown organic vegetables
The U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM)
has released a new draft proposal for
updated hydraulic fracturing safety
standards, which it says are now more than
30 years old.
About 36 million acres of Federal land
across 24 states are being leased for oil
and gas development, according to BLM data.
Approximately 90 percent of wells on BLM
lands use a fracking process.
Xcel has maintained that
Boulder would owe it $255
million in so-called
stranded costs if the city
separates from Xcel.
Stranded costs are meant to
compensate the utility for
investments it made in power
generation to supply the
city of Boulder and that
would no longer be needed if
Boulder were buying or
generating its electricity
elsewhere.
A team of Virginia
Tech researchers has discovered a way to
extract large quantities of hydrogen from
any plant, a breakthrough that has the
potential to bring a low-cost,
environmentally friendly fuel source to the
world.
“Our new process could help end our
dependence on fossil fuels,” said Y.H.
Percival Zhang, an associate professor
of biological systems engineering in
the College of Agriculture and Life
Sciences and the College of Engineering.
“Hydrogen is one of the most important
biofuels of the future.”
Elders and chiefs of
at least 10 sovereign
nations walked out of a
meeting with U.S. State
Department officials in
Rapid City, South Dakota, on
Thursday May 16 in which the
government was attempting to
engage in tribal
consultation over the
Keystone XL pipeline.
Few people recognize that natural
infections, especially early in life,
can actually be beneficial as they serve
to build a very strong and resilient
immune system for later life.
In the days before vaccination, people’s
immune systems were allowed to become
strong in just such a way.
Representatives from
Viridian Energy joined city
officials at a Wednesday
press conference to
recognize Hudson’s switch in
June to 100 percent, locally
produced wind energy.
Seven in 10 U.S. citizens
believe climate change is
real and happening now. Yet
most have never even
contacted a government
official about the issue,
let alone volunteered with
an environmental
organisation or taken other
action.
The Sierra Club has launched
an ad campaign in response
to a bill that is currently
sitting on Colorado Governor
John Hickenlooper's desk for
approval. Senate Bill 252
(SB 252) will double the
percentage of energy rural
electric cooperatives must
obtain from solar, wind or
other green energy sources.
Corporate treasurers'
risk tolerance remains low
as they prefer to hold
record amounts of cash on
their balance sheets.
Attacks in Iraq have
killed at least 13 people
and wounded 99 others, a day
after a series of bombings
killed 77 people across the
country, officials have
said.
Rescue
crews were searching Tuesday for survivors
and victims of a massive tornado that had
devastated a suburb of Oklahoma City,
grinding up entire neighborhoods and
pulverizing two elementary schools.
A total of 24 people were confirmed dead
as of Tuesday morning...
Land degradation — more
specifically drought and
desertification — have
become increasingly pressing
problems for a growing
number of countries around
the world, threatening
efforts to alleviate
poverty, improve basic
health and sanitation and
address socioeconomic
inequality, as well as spur
agricultural and sustainable
economic development.
The Energy Department today
launched H2USA --
a new public-private
partnership focused on
advancing hydrogen
infrastructure to support
more transportation energy
options for U.S. consumers,
including fuel cell electric
vehicles (FCEVs). The new
partnership brings together
automakers, government
agencies, gas suppliers, and
the hydrogen and fuel cell
industries to coordinate
research and identify
cost-effective solutions to
deploy infrastructure that
can deliver affordable,
clean hydrogen fuel in the
United States.
About a dozen electric, hybrid and
bio-diesel automobiles underwent tech
inspections Friday at Central Pennsylvania
Institute of Science and Technology for the
fifth annual 21st Century Automotive
Competition.
The overall theme of the competition is
to test the performance of efficient
vehicles in real-world conditions including
highway, back road and terrain driving. The
winners will be honored at an award ceremony
next month.
More energy executives
believe that achieving
energy independence in the
U.S. is possible and shale
gas will play a significant
role, according to a KPMG
survey of U.S. energy
executives.
"Imagine opening a hatch in
a submarine under water. The
water will flow into the
submarine with enormous
force. It is precisely this
energy potential we want to
utilize." This is how German
engineer Rainer Schramm
describes his idea for
storing energy under the
sea. By using surplus energy
to pump water out of a tank
at the seabed, the water is
simply let back in again
when there's an energy
shortfall, driving turbines
as it rushes in. The deeper
the tank, the more power is
generated.
The former head of the San
Antonio Tea Party in Texas
says the Internal Revenue
Service's targeting of his
organization terrified so
many members that nearly 50
percent quit the group.
It's safer than the
"conventional" stuff and you
are about 35,000 times more
likely to get sick from
other foods than this - yet
this farmer faces 4 criminal
misdemeanors that could
result in a jail sentence of
up to 30 months, while those
who have harmed thousands
get off scot free...
Farmer Faces Jail Time
Over Raw Dairy Sales
As recently as this week, the FDA has
made attacks like these to expand the
agency’s definition of “disease claim.”
Why? By saying a supplement makes a
disease claim, the FDA can call it a
“drug”—and then remove it from the market!
This also has scary implications for the
government regulation of Internet searches
and speech. If supplement
companies start deleting customer comments
out of fear of FDA action, then the FDA has
effectively limited consumer speech by using
the company as a censorship puppet.
Obamacare plus food stamps
add up to the most jobless
recovery in American
history, according to a
commentary by Forbes.
French research projects
into the safety of nuclear
power plants are to include
studies on the impact of
extreme weather conditions
including heatwaves,
droughts and tidal surges,
government documents show.
France is to invest
Eur50 million ($64.2
million) in nuclear safety
projects, taking into
account knowledge gained
from the Fukushima disaster
in 2011, caused by an
earthquake and huge tsunami.
US natural gas prices will
remain stable in the
$3-$4/MMBtu range for the
rest of the year,
three-quarters of the global
energy executives surveyed
by consulting firm KPMG said
in a poll released Friday.
Following the failed
Responsible Homeowner
Refinancing Act of 2012,
Senators Robert Menendez and
Barbara Boxer have
re-drafted their landmark
refinance bill meant to help
underwater U.S. homeowners
get access to today's low
mortgage rates.
Mirjana
Filipovic is still haunted
by the land mine blast that
killed her boyfriend and
blew off her left leg while
on a fishing trip nearly a
decade ago in a field that
was supposedly de-mined.
Now, unlikely heroes
may be coming to the rescue
to prevent similar
tragedies: sugar-craving
honeybees. Croatian
researchers are training
them to find unexploded
mines littering their
country and the rest of the
Balkans.
Idacorp CEO LaMont Keen said
Thursday that Idaho Power
Co. will continue to rely on
coal plants in Wyoming and
Nevada, but revisit that
decision in its next
two-year planning process.
-
The documentary I’m Not Nuts: Living
With Food Allergies sheds some light on
this rising issue of food allergies
through interviews with families that
are directly affected.
-
Food allergies were a rarity just 40 or
50 years ago, but today an estimated one
out of every 13 children has a food
allergy -- and the incidence is
increasing.
-
Food allergies can be difficult to
detect in young children who are unable
to communicate their symptoms;
unexplained crying, diarrhea or rash can
be common signs
-
There are likely genetic and
environmental factors triggering the
rise in food allergies; genetic
modification, food additives, and
abnormal gut flora are some potential
culprits discussed
All the license fee money
goes to Rossi, which has
been the primary source of
revenue that has been
keeping the E-Cat endeavor
going. And given how
productive Roger has been,
Rossi has given him wide
berth to handle the
licensing of most of the
territories on the planet.
Israel's military chief
issued a stern warning to
Bashar Assad on Tuesday,
saying the Syrian leader
would "bear the
consequences" of any more
attacks on Israeli forces
near the Syrian border.
A Johns Hopkins scientist
has issued a blistering
report on influenza vaccines
in the British Medical
Journal (BMJ). Peter Doshi,
Ph.D., charges that although
the vaccines are being
pushed on the public in
unprecedented numbers, they
are less effective and cause
more side effects than
alleged by the Centers for
Disease Control and
Prevention (CDC). Further,
says Doshi, the studies that
underlie the CDC's policy of
encouraging most people to
get a yearly flu shot are
often low quality studies
that do not substantiate the
official claims.
The naming of a journalist
as a possible co-conspirator
in a criminal case of leaked
classified information is
"chilling," Judge Andrew
Napolitano says.
"The
Supreme Court has ruled that
when the government makes it
difficult for you to do your
job as a journalist by
scaring off your sources or
watching your every move,
that’s called 'chilling.'"
...
In a flurry of letters late
last year, Southern
California Edison and the
manufacturer that designed
the steam generators at the
now-dark San Onofre nuclear
power plant appeared to be
at odds over a long-term
plan to repair the troubled
facility.
The U.S. federal agency that oversees
offshore oil exploration will analyze the
effects of noisy underwater seismic blasts
on whales and dolphins in the Gulf of
Mexico.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, a
bureau of the Department of the Interior,
and NOAA Fisheries, a part of the Department
of Commerce, announced May 9 that together
they will assess the effects of the seismic
surveys used to find oil under the seabed.
The agencies plan to publish their findings
in an environmental impact statement in
mid-2014.
More than a decade ago,
British parents refused to
give measles shots to at
least a million children
because of now discredited
research that linked the
vaccine to autism. Now,
health officials are
scrambling to catch up and
stop a growing epidemic of
the contagious disease.
Most of the world's frozen
water is locked up at the
poles. 99 percent of Earth’s
land ice is located in the
Greenland and Antarctic ice
sheets. Yet the remaining
ice in the world’s glaciers
contributed just as much to
sea rise as the two major
ice sheets combined from
2003 to 2009, says a new
study led by Clark
University and involving the
University Colorado Boulder.
The new research found that
all glacial regions lost
significant mass from 2003
to 2009, with the biggest
ice losses occurring in
Arctic Canada, Alaska,
coastal Greenland, the
southern Andes and the
Himalayas.
White House chief of staff Denis
McDonough and other senior presidential
advisers knew in late April that an upcoming
report was likely to find that IRS employees
had inappropriately targeted conservative
political groups.
That disclosure on Monday expanded the
known circle of top officials who were aware
of the audit beyond those identified earlier
by the White House.
Federal budget gets are
forcing scientists
monitoring U.S. volcanoes
around the Pacific Basin,
including Mount St. Helens,
to cut back operations and
forgo repairs of seismic
equipment — moves that could
mean delays in getting vital
information to airline
pilots and emergency
planners.
It's been more than a dozen
years since the last uranium
ore was mined in New Mexico,
but a Canada-based company
and a Japanese partner
propose to break that spell
soon.
Enough Northwest wind energy
to power about 85,000 homes
each month could be stored
in porous rocks deep
underground for later use,
according to a new,
comprehensive study.
Researchers at the
Department of Energy's
Pacific Northwest National
Laboratory and Bonneville
Power Administration
identified two unique
methods for this energy
storage approach and two
eastern Washington locations
to put them into practice.
Taxpayers Outspend Private
Insurers 3:1 on Climate
Disruption Costs
U.S. taxpayers paid nearly
$100 billion responding to
damages caused by last
year’s extreme weather
events associated with
climate change, about $1,100
per taxpayer, according to
an analysis by the Natural
Resources Defense Council
released today.
Senior Treasury officials
were made aware in June 2012
that investigators were
looking into complaints from
tea party groups that they
were being harassed by the
Internal Revenue Service, a
Treasury inspector general
said, disclosing that Obama
administration officials
knew there was a probe
during the heat of the
presidential campaign.
Last week, news broke that
the Justice Department
obtained records from AP for
its investigation into an
internal leak. Now, details
are emerging about an
investigation of a Fox News
reporter that some experts
say could harm investigative
journalism even more.
For many years, Huber
Heights, Ohio, had searched
for an effective and
affordable way to eliminate
gaseous chlorine (Cl 2 ) use
at its 4.46 MGD Needmore
Road Water Treatment Plant.
Earlier this year the
plant’s gas chlorination
equipment and pressurized
gas cylinders were finally
removed from the site. In
their place, but
encompassing a much smaller
footprint, now sits the
innovative dry calcium
hypochlo - rite makeup and
delivery system that made
this change possible.
Residents of Omaha, Nebraska
are not taking pollution
from coal-fired power plants
sitting down.
Nearly 1,000 signatures from
North Omaha residents,
health professionals and
students have been submitted
to the Omaha Public Power
District (OPPD), calling on
the utility to address the
community's public health
concerns by phasing out coal
burning at the North Omaha
power plant.
A Gazette investigation
shows an increasing number
of soldiers, including
wounded combat veterans, are
being kicked out of the
service for misconduct,
often with no benefits, as
the Army downsizes after a
decade of war.
The
members of the polio
vaccination team were
unharmed, officials were
quoted as saying by TV news
channels.
The
attackers gunned down a
paramilitary personnel
protecting the vaccinators.
Pakistan is one of only
three countries where the
polio virus is endemic.
Rep. Paul Ryan said on
Friday that the hearing with
the ousted head of the
Internal Revenue Service on
the agency’s targeting of
conservative groups made at
least one thing clear to
legislators.
“The one
answer we did get, though,
is that the IRS withheld
information from Congress,”
the Wisconsin Republican
told Jake Tapper on CNN. “We
have many more questions
that result from today’s
hearing.”
President Barack Obama's
administration has decided
to give the Pentagon control
of some drone operations
against terrorism suspects
overseas that are currently
run by the CIA, several U.S.
government sources said on
Monday.
Obama has
pledged more transparency on
controversial
counterterrorism programs,
and giving the Pentagon the
responsibility for part of
the drone program could open
it to greater congressional
oversight.
The
decades-old fight over
genetically modified food
has reached a fever pitch in
Washington.
The
Obama administration and
Congress are weighing the
safety of technological
advances that seem ripped
from science fiction,
including salmon that can
grow to full size in half
the normal time and strains
of crops engineered to
resist powerful herbicides.
Critics of these
innovations warn that they
could pose threats to public
health, damage the
environment or, in the
salmon’s case, lead to the
destruction of species when
gene-splicing goes wrong.
A new poll found that
Americans by a large margin
believe that Congress is not
overreacting to the
burgeoning scandals plaguing
the Obama administration.
filings of the largest
100 public U.S. retailers
found that federal, state
and local regulations have
increased as a risk among
the nation’s largest
retailers. Nearly all
retailers (97 percent) cite
regulatory risks as they
navigate the effects of
government deficits, payroll
tax increases and internet
sales tax legislation on
their businesses and on
consumer spending. Retailers
also note increased concern
over environmental (57
percent) and accounting (69
percent) regulations.
M1 event observed.
Solar activity is likely to
be moderate with a chance
for X-class flares on days
one, two, and three (21 May,
22
May, 23 May). The
geomagnetic field is
expected to be at quiet to
unsettled levels on days one
and two (21 May, 22 May) and
unsettled to active levels
on day three (23 May).
Protons have a chance of
crossing threshold on days
one, two, and three (21 May,
22 May, 23 May).
Researchers at the
University of Maryland have
developed a 30-meter
resolution forest cover data
set that could boost efforts
to track deforestation and
forest degradation.
While companies like Google,
BMW, Audi and Volkswagen
pour millions into
developing self-driving car
technology with expensive
components, 19-year-old
Romanian high school student
Ionut Budisteanu has
designed an autonomous
vehicle system that would
cost just US$4,000.
Budisteanu’s design took out
the Gordon E. Moore Award in
the Intel International
Science and Engineering Fair
to pocket him a sweet
$75,000.
Pfeiffer looked
uncomfortable when Schieffer
said, "I mean this as no
disrespect to you: Why are
you here today? Why isn't
the White House chief of
staff here to tell us what
happened?"
A new study looks to the
past to learn about the
future of
tropical climate change,
and our ability to simulate
it with
numerical models...
The scientists say the
primary cause for these
conditions during glacial
times was lower sea levels,
which exposed the
now-submerged Sunda Shelf as
dry land and connected what
are now Indonesian islands
into one large land mass.
U.S. Sen. Bob Corker says he
is awaiting an explanation
from the White House over
reports that the United
States has made millions of
dollars in secret cash
payments to President Hamid
Karzai of Afghanistan.
Russian counter-terrorism
agents have carried out a
raid on a group planning a
terrorist act in Moscow
killing two suspects,
officials say...
All three were Muslims and
had been under observation
for a month,
In towns across North Dakota, the
wellhead of the North American energy boom,
the locals have taken to quoting the adage:
"Whiskey is for drinking, and water is for
fighting."
It's not that they lack water, like Texas
and California. They are swimming in it, and
it is free for the taking. Yet as the
state's Bakken shale fields have grown, so
has the fight over who has the right to tap
into the multimillion-dollar market to
supply water to the energy sector.
Global expectations for
hydrogen are currently
sky-high. Transport
applications stand at the
threshold of
commercialisation, while
ahead lies an investment
boom in the hydrogen
distribution network. The
changeover to hydrogen based
on natural gas would already
mean a potential saving of
billion in Finland's balance
of payments. If hydrogen
could then be produced from
domestic renewable raw
material, our car and bus
traffic would eventually be
practically self-sufficient
and leave a significantly
reduced carbon footprint.
The above was revealed in
the Finnish hydrogen roadmap
published recently.
The IRS may be watching your
online activities —
including what you post on
social media sites, what you
sell online, even what you
write in emails and text
messages. ..
"I am sure people will be
concerned about the use of
personal information on
databases in government, and
those concerns are
well-taken."
Anything you do or say on
the Internet can be used
against you in IRS
enforcement actions, he
stressed.
Expert: US Government Must
Do More to Thwart Chinese
Cyber Attacks
Argentina: Kirchner Plays
Her Last Cards, But They
Won’t Save Her
Russian Economic Slowdown
Likely Short-Lived
US-Russia Talks Could Set
Back Syrian Opposition
Cameron’s Tenure In Question
While EU Debate Rages
Expert: Women Can Turn Men
Into Homegrown Terrorists
Why Poland Has Caught the
Eye of Asian Investors
Iran: Presidential Election
Will Bolster Power of
Khamenei
New North Korea Missile
Launches a Cry for Attention
China Pursues New Role in
Arab-Israeli Conflict
Bolivia: Storm Clouds
Gathering Over President
Morales
The "California Hydrogen
Highway," Schwarzenegger's
vision to ensure that every
Californian would have
access to a hydrogen fueling
station by the end of 2010,
..But nearly nine years
later, California has just
nine hydrogen stations open
for the public, and only
about 200 fuel cell cars
that can use them.
A divergent picture of coal
is emerging. One is relaying
the cold hard
market-oriented facts and is
pointing out that
coal-dependent regions need
to diversify their economies
now. The other is saying
that coal can reinvent
itself, and it is arguing
that mining companies have
been making imprudent
business decisions.
It all comes down to
attitude and how you look at
the world. Life is hard. Our
country is changing around
us and liberties we've taken
for granted are being
snatched away from us. But
as we fight the good fight,
let's not forget to be
thankful for the many ways
that God has blessed us.
Take a moment... give your
wife or husband a hug or a
call and tell them you love
them. Ask your kids about
their day. Lay the phone
down and really look at them
when they talk. Take your
mom to lunch or your dad
fishing. Invest in what's
important and learn to
cultivate a spirit of
thankfulness.
The debate about whether or
not Andrea Rossi's E-Cat
technology really works
should be quieting now, with
a very readable, definitive
third-party test report
having been released today,
stating that at the most
conservative, the Hot-Cat
technology showed at least a
ten-fold increase in power
density over what could
possibly have been ascribed
to any presently-known
chemical processes.
Remember all the talk about
how the amnesty bill would
bring 11 million illegal
aliens "out of the shadows"
and make us safer by running
them through thorough
background checks?
Not going to happen,
according to today's
bombshell from the head of
the union that represents
the officers and staff at
the U.S. Citizenship and
Immigration Services (USCIS)
which is responsible for
processing immigrants.
The US Atlantic Coast
wholesale gasoline-pump
price spread narrowed 8
cents/gal Monday to the
lowest level since early
April, according to US
Energy Information
Administration data and
Platts assessments.
East Coast regular gasoline
prices averaged $3.489/gal
Monday, the EIA reported.
That is 64 cents/gal
more than the Platts average
regular gasoline assessment
the same day, down from a
spread of 72 cents/gal one
week ago, data showed.
Alarm bells rang along the
US Eastern Seaboard not too
long ago that the region
would face fuel shortages
due to refinery closures in
the region, but the dynamics
changed with the entrance of
some new players as well as
domestic crude supply via
rail from the Bakken Shale
play.
The Republican chairman of a
congressional oversight
committee on Friday ordered
the leader of the
investigation into the Sept.
11, 2012, Benghazi attacks
to sit for a private
interview next week.
Energy exists all around us
— in the motion of a
heartbeat, the fluorescent
light in an office building,
and even the flow of blood
cells through the body.
These individual units of
energy are relatively small,
but they are numerous.
To foster the adoption of fuel cell
electric vehicles, the U.S. Energy
Department has embarked on a new
public-private partnership to develop the
country’s hydrogen infrastructure.
Dubbed “H2USA,” the new partnership
brings together automakers, government
agencies, gas suppliers, and the hydrogen
and fuel cell industries.
In this video, Jeff Mower
and Samantha Santa Maria,
discuss US natural gas
prices having risen
considerably in 2013, as
winter demand has reduced
inventories. Whereas the
market appeared to be
glutted last year,
inventories are now below
the 5-year average. Ongoing
cold weather conditions are
in stark contrast to a
relatively mild winter last
year when storage capacity
limits for natural gas were
severely tested.
Valero plans to implement a
one-to-one
gasoline-to-distillates
ratio by around 2015, after
more than $3 billion worth
of projects go live to
increase the company's
distillate production, the
company said...
Historically, US refiners
have had a two-to-one output
ratio for gasoline and
diesel, respectively,
according to the Energy
Information Administration.
For the reporting week ended
May 10, US finished motor
gasoline production was
8.929 b/d while US
distillate fuel oil
production was 4.640 million
b/d, the EIA said.
Which environment would wildlife prefer,
actively farmed and managed land, or
untended natural land that to us might
appear unkempt?
Turns out that parts of the farm
landscape that look overgrown and 'scruffy'
are more important in supporting wildlife
than they first appear, according to new
research published today in Ecology Letters.
A wave of attacks killed at
least 86 people in Shiite
and Sunni areas of Iraq on
Monday, officials said,
pushing the death toll over
the past week to more than
230 and extending one of the
most sustained bouts of
sectarian violence the
country has seen in years.
They're called coastal dead
zones.1 Oxygen gets sucked
out of the water. Some fish
swim in, lose consciousness,
and die. Others are driven
out of their habitat. Sea
life is decimated. Entire
ecosystems are stressed. A
dead zone in the Gulf of
Mexico is almost the size of
New Jersey.
Wind turbines lining the
Altamont Pass near
Livermore, Calif., generate
electricity on Sunday, May
12, 2013. It's the
not-so-green secret of the
nation's wind-energy boom:
Spinning turbines are
killing thousands of
federally protected birds,
including eagles, each year.
It happens about once a
month here, on the barren
foothills of one of
America’s green-energy
boomtowns: A soaring golden
eagle slams into a wind
farm’s spinning turbine and
falls, mangled and lifeless,
to the ground.
May 17, 2013
The trouble with really strongly partisan
people is that they never let the other side
talk. I’ll admit it: I’m like that.
And so are lots of liberals. So when they
start to talk about background checks for
firearms sales, they say one thing then they
stop and they never let anyone finish a
complete thought after that. With the
background check issue what they say is
this: A background check will keep criminals
and the insane from getting guns.
Now, that’s a good thought. But it’s not
true. So now, while no one can interrupt me,
I’ll provide the entire rundown on why
background checks don’t work. You feel free
to share the page with as many people as you
see fit, especially liberal politicians.
-
By making it illegal to take undercover
photos or videos, requiring anyone
applying for a job at a CAFO to disclose
affiliations with animal rights groups,
and other measures
-
Ag-gag laws are being heavily promoted
by lobbyists for the meat, egg and dairy
industries to essentially prevent anyone
from exposing animal cruelty and
food-safety issues at CAFOs.
-
Five states have ag-gag laws already in
place, and another 10 have introduced
their own anti-whistleblower laws this
year
-
Industrial food producers are also
encouraging their “farmers” to change
the terms they use for their horrific
practices to less-offensive sounding
words, such as swapping “gestation
crates” with “individual maternity pens”
With a barrage of legal
briefs, a coalition of
business groups and
Republican-leaning states
are taking their fight
against Obama administration
climate change regulations
to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The world is a big place
with a lot of cavities and
hidden places. Scientists
have now discovered water
that has been trapped in
rock for more than a billion
years. The water might
contain microbes that
evolved independently from
the surface world, and it's
a finding that gives new
hope to the search for life
on other planets and how it
may appear or act. The water
samples came from holes
drilled by gold miners near
the small town of Timmins,
Ontario, about 350 miles
north of Toronto. Deep in
the Canadian bedrock, miners
drill holes and collect
samples. Sometimes they hit
pay dirt; sometimes they hit
water, which seeps out from
tiny crevices in the rock.
ANH-USA has uncovered
widespread surveillance
(including undercover sting
operations), aggressive
investigations, and
prosecutions of nutrition
professionals. These
actions, together with the
levying of criminal
penalties, have been
undertaken by state health
departments and state
dietetics boards that are
enforcing monopolistic laws
sponsored by the Academy of
Nutrition and Dietetics.
More often than not, they
are supported by local law
enforcement or the offices
of state attorneys general.
The AND—formally the
American Dietetic
Association, or ADA—is not a
medical organization, but a
trade group that represents
the interests of Registered
Dietitians (RDs, who are
certified by the AND’s
credentialing arm). The AND
has about 74,000 members.
Activist hackers from the
Anonymous collective have
announced plans to target
the oil and gas sector in an
operation starting June 20.
In a video message
posted on the YouTube
website, Anonymous said
OpPetrol would be aimed at a
number of countries involved
in the global oil industry,
"especially the US, Canada,
England, Israel, China,
Italy, France, Russia,
Germany, the government of
Saudi Arabia, Kuwait,
Qatar."
Ministers from the eight Arctic states
and representatives of the Arctic Indigenous
Peoples Wednesday adopted a shared vision
statement for the future development of the
region as a “zone of peace and stability.”
“The economic potential of the Arctic is
enormous and its sustainable development is
key to the region’s resilience and
prosperity,” states the “Vision for the
Arctic.”
The US East Coast refining
industry has taken it on the
chin for several years,
buying crude at
Brent-related prices while
their Midcontinent rivals
have enjoyed the depressed
values of WTI. But the
nation’s railroads are
changing that, and 2013 is
expected to be the year
where the results of a
turnaround can be seen.
British oil company BP wants Prime
Minister David Cameron to intervene with the
U.S. government over the escalating cost of
compensating U.S. companies for the Gulf of
Mexico oil disaster in 2010, the BBC
reported Thursday.
BP is still fighting a court battle in
New Orleans over fines and other potential
spill liabilities, but it struck a deal last
year with a wide range of compensation
claimants, including businesses.
California is now
wrestling with the fate of a
single nuclear plant in
Southern California. And
while the fierce debate will
no doubt have broader
ramifications for the entire
sector, the ordeal is
weighing heavily on just one
utility: Edison
International’s Southern
California Edison.
The Cherokee Nation has approved plans to
team up with four other tribes to develop a
90-turbine wind farm in Kay County.
The five tribes will jointly operate the
facility with 45 turbines on 3,000 acres of
Cherokee-owned property and 45 more turbines
on 3,000 acres owned by the four other
tribes - the Kaw Nation, Otoe-Missouria
Tribe, Pawnee Nation and Ponca Nation.
The Arctic Council agreed on Wednesday to
admit emerging powers China and India as
observers, reflecting growing global
interest in the trade and energy potential
of the planet's Far North.
The organization, which coordinates
Arctic policy, is gaining clout as sea ice
thaws to open up new trade routes and
intensify competition for oil and gas -
estimated at 15 percent and 30 percent
respectively of undiscovered reserves.
Little doubt remains
that China's export numbers
are at best unreliable but
more likely simply fudged.
While it’s unavoidable that
any official data from China
comes under criticism from
the skeptics, the monthly
Chinese trade data probably
draws the most questions and
head-shaking of them all.
A recent report from
Navigant Research shows that
consumer acceptance of
renewable energy sources
such as solar and wind is
nearly 70 percent among
respondents. However,
concepts like smart grid are
looked upon favorably by
just over 35 percent (about
half the favorability of
solar) of consumers
surveyed, with 65 percent
viewing the smart grid
either negatively or having
no opinion one way or the
other. The results show a
distinct disconnect
concerning the relationship
between renewables and the
grid.
Cyclone Mahasen buffeted
Bangladesh's low-lying coast
on Thursday, killing six
people after forcing many
thousands into emergency
shelters, but authorities
downgraded warnings later in
the day as the storm lost
strength.
Veteran political analyst
and best-selling author Dick
Morris tells Newsmax that
President Barack Obama "sure
knew" about the IRS' policy
of targeting conservative
groups for scrutiny.
He also asserts that the IRS
went so far as to audit Mitt
Romney's donors during the
presidential campaign.
Imagine taking 6-20 plates of food and
dumping them in the trash, perfectly fresh
and edible. Off they go to the landfill.
Obviously, none of us would behave so
wastefully.
And yet that's precisely the effect each
time any of us consumes meat, since the vast
majority of the calories consumed by a
chicken, pig, or other animal goes into
keeping that animal alive (or into producing
bones, blood, and other parts humans don't
consume). Only a small fraction of those
calories is turned into flesh.
In the course of a lawsuit brought by
Chevron, in which the company sued Stratus
Consulting for fraud and racketeering,
Stratus published a 28-page affidavit
accompanied by 16 pages of individual
declarations disavowing environmental
assessments it had produced that were used
to win a $19 billion judgment against the
Chevron in an Ecuadorian court. Stratus
Consulting has admitted in a U.S. Federal
court to filing a falsified research report.
High capital costs and
maintaining public
confidence are the greatest
challenges facing the
European nuclear power
industry, according to a
recent Platts survey. The
survey included more than
100 utilities, builders,
consultancies and regulators
in Europe. Political risk,
long construction processes,
regulatory uncertainty and
safety concerns also came in
high on the list of hurdles.
Radio talk-show host Bill
Press, former chairman of
the California Democratic
Party, has become at least
the second heavyweight
liberal commentator to call
for the ouster of Attorney
General Eric Holder.
It's true. Even in those
individuals with high blood
pressure, the lowering
effect is quite modest at
best. Still, Dr. Brownstein
will tell you that he
learned in medical school
the traditional party line
that salt = hypertension
(high blood pressure).
In
the past, a PV system with
battery storage was
associated with the off-grid
system — not connected to
the utility grid. The
battery stores the energy
produced by the PV system
and when the sun goes down,
electricity is drawn from
the battery. In Japan, the
battery became attractive to
store electricity from "the
grid," to reduce electricity
bills.
You may not know much about
Finland, but you certainly
know the powerhouse
technology company that
became a household name
across the globe and drove
the nation’s economic
expansion through the
1990s-2000s. Nokia generated
a quarter of Finnish
economic growth from
1998-2007, prompting a new
term, ‘the Nokia effect’, to
describe economic
development powered by a
single company’s success.
But more recently Nokia has
fallen on hard times, and in
the wake of the once
all-powerful company’s
demise a new wave of Finnish
technology startups has
arisen.
There was the Benghazi
Scandal, the IRS Scandal,
and the little covered but
equally alarming Secretary
Sebelius scandal. ..
The White House wants
Americans to believe the
four scandals are all, in
one way or another, the
rogue acts of insignificant
subordinates.
Gmail lets you send all
kinds of files as
attachments. And Google
Wallet lets you pay for just
about anything. Why not
combine the two? That could
have been the thinking by
someone at Google, as the
search giant is set to
launch a payment system
that’s the love child of
Gmail and Google Wallet.
Gov. John Hickenlooper must
weigh whether to attempt to
reduce the state's carbon
dioxide emissions and
consequently raise utility
rates in rural Colorado
during a recession and
drought as he considers
whether to sign Senate Bill
252.
House of Representatives
Speaker John Boehner raised
the possibility of jail time
on Wednesday for law
violations in the growing
scandal involving the
Internal Revenue Service's
targeting of conservative
groups for extra tax
scrutiny.
The House voted to repeal
Obamacare on Thursday for
the third time since
Republicans took over the
chamber in 2011 and the 37th
time the House GOP has voted
to repeal or defund a part
of the bill.
How important is the safety
and well being of your loved
ones? I ask myself this
exact question on a regular
basis. You know why? Because
the answer to this question
is my motivation to train
month after month and year
after year. If I carry a
firearm everywhere I go but
am not sharp enough to use
it flawlessly in a
life-threatening situation,
then what guarantee do I
have that I will be
successful in stopping a
perpetrator from doing harm
to me, my family and others?
A melt of ice on Greenland and Antarctica
is likely to be less severe than expected
this century, limiting sea level rise to a
maximum of 69 cm (27 inches), an
international study said on Tuesday.
Even so, such a rise could dramatically
change coastal environments in the lifetimes
of people born today with ever more severe
storm surges and erosion, according to the
ice2sea project by 24, mostly European,
scientific institutions.
There's an old saying,
"Ignorance of the law is no excuse." It
means the law applies whether or not you
know the law exists. It's based on the idea
that you have an obligation to know the law,
and assumes that the law makes itself known.
But how does the law
make itself known? We might say through
books and official notices, which we are
expected to read. But there's a difference
between the law in the books and the law
that is applied. We know the law that is
applied from the cases where law manifests
in a judgment. The cases become
precedents—signposts to mark out the
contours of what is legal from what is
illegal.
In a dozen states, American
consumers can choose their
electricity provider. New
research from ClearlyEnergy
breaks down current
electricity supply costs --
the portion of the bill
where consumers have a
choice of supplier -- across
20 states and regions. The
research shows that rates
are highest in New York
City, Houston and New Jersey
and lowest in the Midwest.
A cyclone blowing across the
Indian Ocean is expected to
hit Bangladesh on Thursay,
threatening the lives of 8.2
million people in northeast
India, Bangladesh and
Myanmar (Burma). The highest
storm surge and rainfall
predictions are for
Bangladesh’s coastal cities
of Chittagong and Cox’s
Bazaar.
The bleached bones of
seabirds are telling us a
new story about the
far-reaching impacts of
industrial fisheries on
today's oceans. Looking at
the isotopes of 250 bones
from Hawaiian petrels
(Pterodroma sandwichensis),
scientists have been able to
reconstruct the birds' diets
over the last 3,000 years.
They found an unmistakable
shift from big prey to small
prey around 100 years ago,
just when large, modern
fisheries started scooping
up fish at never before seen
rates. The dietary shift
shows that modern fisheries
upended predator and prey
relationships even in the
ocean ocean and have
possibly played a role in
the decline of some
seabirds.
-
A new review evaluating intermittent
fasting found that overweight or obese
individuals with type 2 diabetes who
fast on consecutive or alternate days
lost more weight while also experiencing
enhanced cardiovascular health benefits
-
The therapeutic potential of
intermittent fasting remained even when
total calorie intake per day did not
change, or was only slightly reduced
-
Other benefits of intermittent fasting
include limiting inflammation, reducing
blood pressure, improvements in body
composition and more
Evidence is mounting that
the Internal Revenue Service
gave far better treatment to
left-wing groups than those
on the right, with data
showing the agency approved
dozens of liberal and
progressive organizations as
tax-exempt while leaving
conservative groups hanging.
The Justice Department is
opening a criminal
investigation into the
Internal Revenue Service's
targeting of tea party
groups for extra scrutiny
over whether they qualified
for tax exempt status,
Attorney General Eric Holder
announced Tuesday. [SIC]
NASA’s Kepler space mission
may be coming to an
unexpected end. The space
agency announced on
Wednesday that the
spacecraft, designed to seek
out possible earth-like
extraterrestrial bodies, has
suffered a malfunction that
may make it impossible to
carry on with its search.
We are clearly seeing
signs of stabilization in
the US labor markets as new
unemployment claims march
toward pre-recession levels
(though obviously not there
yet). Also as we saw today,
small businesses have been
increasing the numbers of
employees. However, the
nation's labor market is
still suffering form weak
overall hiring. The pattern
of hiring in the US has
dislocated in late 2008 and
has remained virtually
unchanged since the
recession (chart below).
This relative weakness in
hiring is consistent across
most industries. Thus far
the pace of hiring in 2013
has not been significantly
different from other
post-recession years.
The largest wind farm with installed
capacity of 143 MW was built in the Turkish
province of Balikesir, The Lira newspaper
said on Monday.
According to the report, the wind farm
was built by Turkish Sabanci Holding
together with the German E.ON. Its
construction cost the companies 340 million
lira.
It is expected that the wind farm will
generate 524 gigawatt / hours of electric
power per year.
More than 80 percent of the
world's major oil and
gas-producing and mining
countries fail to meet
"satisfactory standards" for
managing their natural
resources, according to a
report tracking global
resource mismanagement and
corruption.
A construction company in
Belize all but destroyed a
Mayan pyramid more than
2,000 years old, using the
crushed rock for road fill,
the Associated Press has
reported.
"I don’t think we ought to
have Obamacare. We ought to
pull it out root and branch,
if we possibly can.
Glaciologists trekking onto
remote, inhospitable streams
of flowing ice have brought
back some especially bad
news. But then 21st century
monitoring from space began
to show a much smaller role
for glacial ice loss in
sea-level rise. Which to
believe? A new study brings
together both
boots-on-the-ice and
high-tech glaciologists,
saying that although the
field measurements were
painting an accurate picture
of the few glaciers being
monitored, they were not
representative of the
world's glaciers. All 19
glacierized regions of the
world are losing ice, the
study finds, but the iconic
glaciers long-studied by
field glaciologists are
disappearing faster than
most. Still, the world's
glaciers are losing ice just
as fast as the great ice
sheets.
Ernie Moniz has been
unanimously confirmed by the
U.S. Senate as the next
Secretary of Energy, in a
97-0 vote (with three
nonvoters). He succeeds
Stephen Chu who held the
position for four years.
Nano Labs Corp. (OTCQB:CTLE) is pleased
to announce today the development of a
revolutionary self-cleaning paint that
degrades pollutants through a proprietary
nanoparticle compound and natural light.
The eco-friendly, advanced nanotechnology
paint coating will keep exterior surface
material performance and appearance
standards for much longer periods of time.
Halfway through May, the month's been
tough on mortgage rates. After retreating in
April toward the lifetime lows of late-2012,
U.S. mortgage rates have reversed higher --
and sharply.
Conforming mortgage rates rose by more in
the last two weeks than during any 14-day
period in the period in the last 60 weeks.
The second draft of the
Senate bill was made public
this afternoon. Some of our
concerns were addressed,
while others remain. For
example, the first draft of
the bill would have required
a physician’s prescription
“indicating that the
compounded variation
produces for that patient a
significant difference.” We
believe that is an intrusion
into the practice of
medicine, and through your
emails and our efforts on
Capitol Hill, this language
was removed from the second
draft.
"Our thorough review of all
the comments convinced us
that we could maintain a
strong level of protection
of health, safety, and the
environment while allowing
for increased flexibility
and reduced regulatory
duplication," Interior's
Bureau of Land Management
Principal Deputy Director
Neil Kornze said in a
statement.
Hundreds of people took to the streets of
the southwestern Chinese city of Kunming on
Thursday to protest against the planned
production of a chemical at a refinery, the
second demonstration this month against the
project.
China's increasingly affluent urban
population has begun to object to a model of
growth at all costs, which has fuelled the
economy for three decades, with the
environment emerging as a focus of concern
and protests.
In the gold-mining process,
the precious metal is often
extracted from low-grade ore
in a technique known as gold
cyanidation. As its name
suggests, the process
utilizes highly-poisonous
cyanide, some of which ends
up entering the environment
in the mines’ tailings.
That’s not so good.
Scientists at Illinois’
Northwestern University,
however, recently announced
their discovery of a new
gold recovery process that’s
based on a non-toxic
component of corn starch.
President Barack Obama announced
Wednesday that the acting commissioner of
the IRS has been asked to resign and has
done so over the tax-collecting agency's
recent admission that it targeted
conservative groups for extra scrutiny.
After reviewing the inspector general's
report on Tuesday, Obama called the actions
by Internal Revenue Service agents
"inexcusab
President Barack Obama is
set to announce a new round
of strategic nuclear warhead
reductions in the near
future as part of a
disarmament agenda that
could reduce U.S. strategic
warheads to as few as 1,000
weapons.
The next
round of U.S.-Russian arms
talks would follow Obama's
expected announcement that
the United States' arsenal
of strategic warheads can be
reduced unilaterally to
around 1,000 warheads. That
position is expected as part
of the Pentagon's
long-delayed Nuclear Posture
Review implementation study
that Obama was expected to
sign earlier this year.
The increasing global
awareness of the impact of
building energy consumption
on climate change is driving
the efficiency of buildings.
Recent research from Lux
Research predicts that
materials to boost energy
efficiency will reach $16.5
billion in sales in 2017.
Floor space for net-zero
energy buildings (NZEB) and
nearly-zero energy buildings
(nNZEB), will rise more than
six-fold to 80 million
square meters in 2017,
according to Lux Research.
The oil complex shrugged off
largely bearish US Energy
Information Administration
data Wednesday as a rise in
equities coupled with a
technical bounce halted a
four-day slide in June crude
futures.
Senator Orrin Hatch declared
in an exclusive Newsmax TV
interview that Acting IRS
Commissioner Steven Miller
“basically misled me and
purposefully did so” when he
told legislators three times
last year that tea party
groups were not being
targeted by the agency.
“He purposely misled me
because he knew better,” the
Utah Republican told Newsmax
on Tuesday. “That bothers me
quite a bit.
The City of Pittsburgh is well on its way
toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions by
twenty percent in the next decade, according
to the Pittsburgh Climate Initiative (PCI).
PCI reports that over half of the
recommendations in the Pittsburgh Climate
Action Plan, v. 2.0 have already been
completed or are in-progress, just one year
after the plan was adopted.
A hearing for comments about
a proposal to allow Kentucky
Power to buy a 50-percent
interest in a coal-fired
power plant in Mitchell in
Moundsville, W.V. as part of
a plan to close the Big
Sandy power plant in
Lawrence County drew an
often angry-sounding crowd
to the community center in
Louisa Tuesday evening.
Refiners, chemical
manufacturers and utilities
are the most immediate
winners in the US shale gas
revolution, Moody's
Investors Service said
Monday.
The biggest
loser? Coal, Moody's said in
a research note.
Geoengineering is the
deliberate and large-scale
intervention in the Earth’s
climatic system with the aim
of reducing global warming.
Who should do it and when?
Anything done has the
possibility of affecting
everybody so who should be
consulted? Who decides such
world spanning concepts? A
new study investigated these
concerns. The findings are
the result of the first UK
public engagement study to
explore the ethics and
acceptability of so-called
solar radiation management
(SRM) technology, and a
proposed field trial for a
possible deployment
mechanism.
Small and medium wind
turbines (SMWTs) often offer
the most environmentally
friendly and
cost-competitive technology
for rural electrification in
developing countries. Yet,
they are even more often
left out of the
energy-solutions options by
decision-makers and project
developers.
Despite some high-profile
scrutiny of the failures of
some renewable energy
companies, consumers still
view solar and wind energy
favorably, according to
Navigant Research -- but not
as favorably as they did in
2008.
The news headlines out
of Europe continue to
surprise to the downside.
Especially the euro area is
struggling across the board,
as growth in most countries
stagnates.
A decision this week by the Atomic Safety
and Licensing Board (ASLB) could put the
brakes on efforts to restart the San Onofre
Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS).
The ruling by the board, which has
independence from the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission (NRC), came in response to a June
2012 petition from environmental advocacy
group Friends of the Earth. The petition
asked that a formal licensing proceeding be
initiated before SONGS is allowed to resume
generation.
Utilities are stepping
up their efforts to protect
critical infrastructure now
that the U.S. Department of
Homeland Security has issued
public warnings. The grid’s
safety is especially vital,
because it transports the
lifeblood that fuels the
American economy.
A comprehensive analysis
of peer-reviewed articles on
the topic of global warming
and climate change has
revealed an overwhelming
consensus among scientists
that recent warming is
human-caused.
Even with the economy
rebounding, peak electricity
demand is expected to be
0.3% lower than last summer
in the Northeast and eastern
Canada, according to a
forecast issued Tuesday by
the Northeast Power
Coordinating Council.
The super-active sunspot
responsible for unleashing
the three most powerful
solar flares of 2013 within
a 24-hour stretch this week
is slowly rotating toward
Earth and will likely be
facing our planet by the
weekend, experts say. Active
Region 1748, as the sunspot
is known, unleashed three
monster solar flares between
Sunday and Monday (May 12 to
13).
Guess what the South
Carolina Department of
Natural Resources did with a
state-funded scientific
report on the flooding,
contamination, and coastal
"dead zones" that climate
change could bring to
the state?1 They buried it.
The department's
politically-appointed board
said it didn't want to
address "the reasons for
climate change, which remain
under scientific debate."2
There is no scientific
debate—only a political one.
Securities of fossil fuels firms, as an
economic sector, may soon be on the decline.
Predictions as to when oil and
gas will become a smaller part of
the investment society makes into
its total energy mix, in favor of
renewables such as solar, wind and
ocean energies, vary, ranging from
2060 on the long side (this
prediction from oil industry
powerhouse Shell) to 2030 or even
sooner on the shorter side (as
reported by Bloomberg). But so far,
markets appear to be mispricing the
risk this presents to fossil fuels
companies, and their share prices
for now remain high. In our opinion,
it’s not too soon to consider
divesting from fossil fuels while
one might still recover significant
value.
Ask veteran gardeners what the secret to
successful gardening is, and you'll hear one
word over and over again. Compost.
Compost is decayed organic material like
grass clippings, leaves, pine needles,
weeds, manure, sawdust, eggshells, coffee
grounds, and vegetable scraps. There are
multitudes of compost "recipes" but they all
have one thing in common - they take a long
time to "cook."
Italy: Berlusconi Drama
Could Weaken Fragile
Coalition
Three Things Smartphone
Users Can Do to Stop a Hack
Attack
Bulgaria Faces Political
Deadlock Amid Slow-Growth
Austerity
North Korea: Chinese Banking
Sanctions Largely Symbolic
Will New Flu Epidemics
Devastate the Airline
Industry?
There is a concern with the
carbon stored in the form of
frozen partially decomposed
vegetation in the vast
tundra of the north. When
the permafrost melts, it may
releases carbon in the form
of carbon dioxide and
methane, both of which are
greenhouse gases. The amount
of greenhouse gases which
will be released from the
Arctic’s stockpile of carbon
may be more secure than
scientists thought. In a
20-year experiment that
warmed patches of chilly
ground, tundra soil kept its
stored carbon, researchers
report. Almost half of the
world’s soil carbon is
stored at high latitude, in
the form of dead and
decaying organisms.
Consumers should have the
right to know if they are
eating products from animals
fed on a GM diet. Currently,
British people don't have
that choice. Supermarkets
are choosing to hide the
presence of GM animal feed
and GM DNA in milk and meat
by deliberately not
labelling products from
animals fed on a GM diet.
What have UK supermarkets
got to hide?
- US consumer prices dropped 0.4% in
April, building on a 0.2% decline in
March. Market expectations were for a
slightly smaller 0.3% decline. The
year-over-year rate of increase eased to
1.1% from 1.5% in March.
- The decline in the overall CPI
largely reflected an outsized 4.3% drop
in energy prices as gasoline prices fell
sharply again in April. Food prices
provided some offset, inching up 0.2%
following an unchanged reading in March.
- Housing starts fell 16.5% to 853,000
annualized units in April, significantly
weaker than the 970,000 starts expected
by markets going into the report.
- In sharp contrast, building permits
jumped 14.3% in April to an annualized
1.017 million, much stronger than market
expectations for a reading of 941,000.
- In a separate release, initial
claims for unemployment insurance in the
US rose by 32,000 to 360,000 in the week
ending May 11, missing market
expectations for a 330,000 reading. The
increase in filings in the latest week
built on the rise to a revised 328,000
(was 323,000) in the previous week and
brings claims to their highest level
since the end of March.
- Industrial production fell 0.5% in
April 2013 following downwardly revised
gains of 0.3% (was 0.4%) and 0.9% (was
1.1%) in March and February,
respectively. Market expectations were
for a modest 0.2% decline.
- The capacity utilization rate fell
to 77.8% from 78.3% in March.
- The greater than expected pullback
in industrial production in April
followed solid gains in the previous two
months
-
Poor sleep has been linked to a number
of health ailments, including short-term
memory loss, behavioral problems, weight
gain, diabetes and even increased risk
of cancer
-
New technologies are emerging, promising
to decrease our relentless need for
sleep without the side effects
associated with stimulant drugs. This
includes a mask designed to optimize the
restorative power of the “power nap,”
transcranial stimulation devices to
treat insomnia, and transcranial
magnetic stimulation, which can
literally induce deep sleep at the flip
of a switch
With many of the oldest,
dirtiest coal-fired power
plants due for retirement,
our nation is at a
crossroads: do we invest in
renewable energy, or do we
keep generating electricity
by burning fossil fuels that
are not only expensive but
threaten our planet?
East London is set to play
host to the world's biggest
power station to run solely
on fat, which will provide a
much-needed use for the
discarded fat which can
block the city's sewer
system. The station will
generate 130 gigawatt-hours
of electricity per year,
enough to power about 39,000
houses.
State officials hope
scientific and economic data
could convince states, such
as Colorado, to purchase
wind energy originating from
Wyoming.
May 14, 2013
Retail savers in the
US are abandoning
certificates of deposits
(CDs). The amount of CDs
outstanding that are $100K
or smaller has been on a
sharp decline since the
recession and is now at the
lowest level since the Fed
began keeping track of these
balances.
The
world's biggest drug makers
have for years enjoyed rich
premiums for their medicines
in the U.S. market. Those
days may be coming to an
end.
Companies like Pfizer Inc and AstraZeneca
have grown dependent on higher U.S. prices
to generate profits as generic rivals to
their best-selling medicines enter the world
market, Europe's government-run health plans
clamp down on spending and sales growth in
emerging markets stutters.
In the long run, nuclear
power is cheap.
State officials repeat the
nuclear-is-cheaper gospel so often, the
Tampa Bay Times set out to see if the
premise is true. The analysis compared the
cost of the Levy nuclear plant to a natural
gas facility, using a set of assumptions
that, if anything, favors nuclear. A new
truth emerged:
Natural gas would be cheaper. Cheaper by
billions and billions of dollars.
"Cirrus" is Latin for a curling lock of
hair so it is fitting that thin, wispy
clouds that we often see in the atmosphere
are called cirrus clouds. These clouds form
when water vapor undergoes deposition at
high altitudes and therefore are found at
higher elevations and appear more delicate
compared to the other types of clouds.
Cirrus clouds cover as much as one-third
of the Earth and play an important role in
global climate. Depending on altitude and
the number and size of ice crystals, cirrus
clouds can cool the planet by reflecting
incoming solar radiation — or warm it by
trapping outgoing heat.
The American Civil Liberties
Union has obtained documents
revealing that the
FBI
and IRS
may be reading emails and
other electronic
communications of U.S.
citizens without obtaining a
warrant. This comes just as
reports have emerged that
the Obama administration is
considering approving an
overhaul of government
surveillance of the
Internet. The New York Times
reported the new rules would
make it easier to wiretap
users of web services such
as instant messaging. "The
FBI
wants to be able to
intercept every kind of
possible communication,"
says attorney Ben Wizner,
director of the ACLU’s
Speech, Privacy, and
Technology Project. "The
FBI
basically wants to require
all of these companies to
rewrite their code in order
to enable more government
surveillance. … And in order
to accomplish that, they
would make the whole
Internet less secure."
The North Dakota oil boom
gives the state new funds.
Lots of them. Lots and lots
of them. Starr Spencer, in
this week’s Oilgram News
column At the Wellhead,
discusses how the state is
dealing with that cash.
On an arid mountain in Eureka County,
Nev., a mining company believes it's struck
the 21st-century equivalent of gold.
The precious commodity is vanadium, a
metal that can be extracted from shale rock
and used to make powerful, long-lasting
batteries for cars, homes and utilities.
The Federal Reserve has
broadened its oversight
beyond banks and now
monitors a wide-range of
financial institutions that
could hasten another
financial crisis, Chairman
Ben Bernanke said Friday.
Bernanke said the Fed is
still monitoring banks and
other systematically
important financial
institutions. But it has
widened its scope to include
other important participants
that could either trigger a
crisis or make the system
more vulnerable.
As Merrill's junk bond
index yield crossed the
historical low of 5% on
Thursday, some senior Fed
officials are clearly
becoming uneasy. Corporate
credit markets are entering
bubble territory and up
until recently very little
has been said on the topic
by the US central bank. On
Friday Ben Bernanke sent a
signal to the markets that
the Fed is watching the
"reaching for yield"
situation "particularly
closely".
Buried in the more than 800
pages of the bipartisan
legislation (.pdf) is
language mandating the
creation of the
innocuously-named “photo
tool,” a massive federal
database administered by the
Department of Homeland
Security and containing
names, ages, Social Security
numbers and photographs of
everyone in the country with
a driver’s license or other
state-issued photo ID.
Sources report that the group --
comprised of members from the Munduruku,
Juruna, Kayapo, Xipaya, Kuruaya, Asurini,
Parakana and Ara tribes -- arrived by bus
and were armed with traditional weapons,
preventing workers from entering or exiting
the site.
According to a letter intended for
Brazil's government, the protestors said
Belo Monte's development has been barreling
forward without consent or input from
indigenous groups.
"We want dialogue, but you are not
letting us speak," the letter said. "This is
why we are occupying your dam building site.
You need to stop everything and simply
listen to us."
Hundreds of protesters
gathered in the Chinese
financial hub of Shanghai on
Saturday to oppose plans for
a lithium battery factory,
highlighting growing social
tension over pollution.
The habitats of many common
plants and animals will
shrink dramatically this
century unless governments
act quickly to cut rising
greenhouse gas emissions,
scientists said on Sunday
after studying 50,000
species around the world.
The only way forward is
back: to retrace our steps
and seek to return
atmospheric concentrations
to around 350ppm
The data go back 800,000
years: that's the age of the
oldest fossil air bubbles
extracted from Dome C, an
ice-bound summit in the high
Antarctic. And throughout
that time there has been
nothing like this. At no
point in the preindustrial
record have concentrations
of carbon dioxide in the air
risen above 300 parts per
million (ppm). 400ppm is a
figure that belongs to a
different era.
On Earth Day 2013 (April
22), scientists announced a
collaboration to develop an
affordable photovoltaic
system capable of
concentrating solar
radiation 2,000 times and
converting 80 percent of the
incoming radiation into
useful energy. The system
can also provide desalinated
water and cool air in sunny,
remote locations where they
are often in short supply.
“There are a lot of
people out there screaming
who are not Comanche, as in
this story Tonto is supposed
to be,” said William
"Two-Raven" Voelker. “They
know nothing of bird
culture. When we wear or use
those feathers, we’re
calling on the energy of the
entire bird.”
Distributed generation (DG) and net
metering will provide Arizona Public Service
(APS) customers with $34 million in annual
benefits, according to a study by
Crossborder Energy.
The study, commissioned by the Solar
Energy Industries Association (SEIA), used
data from APS' 2012 Integrated Resource Plan
to examine the costs incurred and the
benefits generated by distributed solar over
the 20-year life of a distributed solar
system -- an approach consistent with APS'
long-term resource planning.
Hedge fund manager Doug
Kass' repeated forecast this
year for a stock market
correction obviously hasn't
proven to be correct so far,
and he blames it on the
Federal Reserve.
"Where I've gone wrong, and
I'm being a little
facetious, is that I didn’t
realize the Fed's mandate
had gone from employment and
inflation toward elevating
the Dow and the S&P 500," he
told CNBC.
The country has vowed to
unplug itself from nuclear
power and embrace
renewables. The world should
be paying attention
The Federal Reserve's effort
to boost the economy with
quantitative easing (QE) has
failed, says Harvard
economist Martin Feldstein.
"[T]he evidence suggests
that the program has done
little to raise economic
growth while saddling the
Fed with an enormous balance
sheet," he writes in The
Wall Street Journal.
The central bank has added
more than $2 trillion to its
balance sheet since 2007.
QE
is supposed to help the
economy by lifting stock
prices, says Feldstein,..
The Home Affordable Refinance Program
(HARP) expiration date is extended. The
program's new expiration date is December
31, 2015.
The extension is the program's second
since its 2009 launch. HARP refinance
opportunities are available to millions of
U.S. homeowners.
The House Ways and Means
Subcommittee on Oversight
has demanded that the IRS
provide by Wednesday all
communications involving the
words "tea party,"
"conservative" or "patriot."
The committee also is
demanding the names and
titles of all individuals
who were involved in
targeting conservative
non-profit groups for extra
scrutiny...
"Cheap natural gas is
disrupting the electricity,
chemical, and heating
industries, but the impact
on the transportation market
has been minimal," said
Andrew Soare, Lux Research
senior analyst. "Technical
and economic challenges mean
that's likely to remain true
-- even if fuel splits
widen."
The IRS has apologized for
targeting tea party groups.
But that hasn’t satisfied
critics pushing for
congressional
investigations, and they're
still waiting for President
Obama to speak out.
During an unscheduled
spacewalk on the space
station's exterior on
Saturday morning, NASA
astronauts Tom Marshburn and
Chris Cassidy carried out
the mother of all plumbing
jobs: They detached a
suspect ammonia pump,
replaced it with a spare and
watched for any further
ammonia leakage.
Those in the Internal
Revenue Service who targeted
conservative groups should
be fired immediately, as
their actions have tainted
President Barack Obama's
administration, says Times
Magazine political columnist
Joe Klein.
A study by Spanish researchers found that
eco-friendly LED lights can be damaging to
your retinas, which cannot regrow or be
replaced.
The lights produce high levels of
radiation in the “blue band” of the light
ray rainbow, which, over time, can damage
retinas,..
Life is full of surprises and
inconveniences--things we never see coming
or never thought to prepare for. Everyone
experiences this, but preppers have one
advantage--by becoming self-sufficient and
stocking up on necessary items, we can at
least hedge our bets a bit. Life may still
be a gamble, but we've at least stacked the
deck in our favor.
Use every opportunity in life to learn
and prepare.
Mexican authorities raised the alert
level for the Popocatepetl volcano near
Mexico City on Sunday morning after
observing an increased level of explosive
activity.
The lava dome of Popocatepetl, some 50
miles to the southeast of the capital, may
expand and unleash increasingly powerful
explosions of ash and lava, Mexico's
National Center for Disaster Prevention said
in a statement.
A top Republican on Sunday
said he expected more
witnesses to step forward
with information about last
year's deadly attack on a
U.S. mission in Benghazi and
how President Barack Obama's
administration responded to
the unfolding events.
For years, chatter about the
possibility of offshore wind
power in North Carolina has
hummed among state
environmental groups. In the
past year, that conversation
intensified as concrete
plans to develop the state's
offshore resource moved
forward through federal
channels.
Newly-released data from the Bureau of
Justice Statistics (BJS) proves that more
guns in private hands do not lead to more
murders, and a Pew Research study showing
widespread ignorance of this fact suggests
that the public has been misled, the
Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and
Bear Arms said today.
“The BJS data covers 1993 to 2011 and
suggests that for almost 20 years, the gun
prohibition lobby has been consistently
wrong about private gun ownership and its
correlation to crime,” said CCRKBA Chairman
Alan Gottlieb. “The Pew report suggests that
the public has been essentially hoodwinked
into believing otherwise.”
In a new study,
physicists have shown that
surrounding a magnetic
source with a magnetic
shell can enhance the
magnetic field as it moves
away from the source,
allowing magnetic energy to
be transferred to a distant
location through empty
space.
North Korea has replaced its
hard-line defense minister
with a little-known army
general, according to a
state media report Monday,
in what outside analysts
call an attempt to install a
younger figure meant to
solidify leader Kim Jong
Un's grip on the powerful
military.
The oil complex settled
lower Monday on bearish
China data and increased
OPEC production, amid weak
fundamentals in the US.
NYMEX June crude settled
87 cents lower at
$95.17/barrel, having traded
in a $94.47-$95.68/b range
throughout the day. ICE June
Brent settled lower as well,
down $1.09 at $102.82/b.
Products were mostly
bearish,..
Worms live underground and
slugs above ground. Yet they
may affect one another in
ways not obvious. The lowly
earthworm, well known for
conditioning and improving
soil, is great at protecting
leaves from being chomped by
slugs, suggests research in
BioMed Central’s open access
journal BMC Ecology.
Although they lurk in the
soil, they seem to protect
the plants above ground.
Increasing plant diversity
also decreases the amount of
damage slugs do to
individual plants.
The US dollar saw
quite a rally in the last 24
hours. Here are
some reasons
Alaska’s rural energy
problems have seemed
hopeless at times, but
there’s now a ray of hope on
the horizon: If things stay
on track, renewable energy
projects being built mostly
in small rural villages
could be saving up to 26
million gallons of fuel per
year by 2018.
X2 event observed. There are
currently 9 numbered sunspot
regions on the disk.
Solar activity is expected
to be moderate with a chance
for X-class flares on days
one, two, and three (14 May,
15 May, 16 May). The
geomagnetic field is
expected to be at quiet
levels on day one (14 May),
quiet to active levels on
day two (15 May) and quiet
to unsettled levels on day
three (16 May). Protons have
a slight chance of crossing
threshold on days one, two,
and three (14 May, 15 May,
16 May).
For over 130 years, people
have been able to hear each
other’s voices thanks to
Alexander Graham Bell and
his monumental invention of
the telephone (as well as
other sound-recording
devices). Do you ever wonder
what the inventor himself
sounded like? Now, you can
finally listen to the voice
of Alexander Graham Bell.
-
While Monsanto insists that Roundup is
safe and “minimally toxic” to humans,
new research argues that glyphosate
residues on and in food enhance the
damaging effects of other food-borne
chemical residues and environmental
toxins to disrupt normal body functions
and induce disease
-
Glyphosate inhibits enzymes that
catalyze the oxidation of organic
substances, which, according to the
researchers, is an overlooked component
of its toxicity to mammals
-
The currently accepted dogma is that
glyphosate is not harmful to humans
because the shikimate pathway is absent
in all animals. However, this pathway is
present in both human and mammal’s gut
bacteria, which play a massively
important and heretofore largely
overlooked role in human physiology
The resident told officers
he heard someone trying to
get into the house and saw a
man removing the glass from
a storm door. He confronted
the would-be intruder and
held him until police
arrived.
Former NBA star Dennis
Rodman says he'll go back to
North Korea on Aug. 1 in an
attempt to secure an
American imprisoned there.
Rupert Murdoch weighed in on
the Internal Revenue
Services' admission that
during the 2012 election the
government agency targeted
conservative groups that
included the words "tea
party" or "patriot" in their
tax documents. He said the
agency is out of control.
Saudi Arabia is planning to
move aggressively into
renewable energy, with plans
to install more solar and
wind power in the next 20
years than the rest of the
world has installed to date.
Three pieces of
hydroelectric power
legislation have received
unanimous approval from the
U.S. Senate Energy and
Natural Resources Committee,
positioning them for voting
in the full Senate.
Second Amendment rights
advocates are fuming today
over words from three
Democratic state senators
caught on tape after
Thursday's hearing on the
upper chamber's gun control
package.
"The main challenges that
have been pointed to concern
notably water use, water
pollution, air emissions and
the management of waste
water. To reassure the
public, all of these risks
should be prevented, managed
and reduced," Potocnik said
in his speech, which was
posted online.
Potocnik said he is neither
for nor against shale gas,
but added that it could help
the EU meet its long-term
energy goals if the risks
are properly mitigated.
Potocnik said the
European Commission is
working on legislation to
provide clear rules
regarding the exploration
and exploitation of shale
gas within the EU, but
didn't give any specific
timeframe.
Pick up a newspaper, turn on the
radio or tune into the nightly news
broadcast and you're bound to hear a
reference to shale gas and its impact on the
shifting global energy map.
“The United States is enjoying an energy
bonanza thanks to shale gas, making it a
magnet for industry, reducing import
dependence and challenging Europe as it
battles to dig itself out of recession,"
wrote Reuters's Alexandra Hudson this
February.
Plants and animals adapt to
their world so when the
climate changes they either
change, move, or die. For
plants and animals forced to
tough out harsh winter
weather, the coverlet of
snow that blankets the north
country is a refuge, a place
beneath-the-snow that gives
an essential respite from
biting winds and subzero
temperatures. But in a
warming world, winter and
spring snow cover in the
Northern Hemisphere is in
decline, putting at risk
many plants and animals that
depend on the time beneath
the snow to survive the
chill of winter. Snow, in
this case, is like a warm
blanket.
The most powerful solar
flare of the year erupted
from the Sun today (April
11) sparking a temporary
radio blackout on Earth,
NASA officials say.
The sun has been busy the
past few days. It has now
hurled three X-class solar
flares into the depths of
space, and it's likely that
this activity will only
increase as it approaches
the peak of its 11-year
solar cycle in 2013. On May
12-13 the sun erupted with
an X1.7-class and an
X2.8-class flare as well as
two coronal mass ejections,
or CMEs, off the upper left
side of the sun.
Tesla Motors has altered the competitive
landscape of the fledgling electric car
market.
Not only did its $11-million
first-quarter profit shatter the assumption
that no automaker can make money selling
small numbers of plug-in cars, it posted a
17% gross profit margin, using American
workers, in an industry where 10% is
considered outstanding.
-
Mushrooms contain some of the most
powerful natural medicines on the
planet. About 100 species are being
studied for their health-promoting
benefits, and about a half dozen really
stand out for their ability to deliver a
tremendous boost to your immune system
-
Nine recently presented studies on
mushrooms detail a wide variety of
health benefits, including: improved
weight management, improved nutrition,
increased vitamin D levels, and improved
immune system function
-
One of the active medicinal compounds
found in Cordyceps has been identified
as a potential cancer drug. More recent
studies suggest it also has potent
anti-inflammatory characteristics that
may be helpful for those suffering from:
asthma, rheumatoid arthritis, renal
failure, and stroke damage
Hayden: Few Good Options for
the US in Syria
Eurozone Rate Cut Alone Will
Not Lead to Recovery
Malaysia on Track to Become
High-Income Country by 2020
Following release of the
results of a recent
Fairleigh Dickinson
University poll showing 29%
of registered voters in the
U.S. believe armed
revolution to ‘protect
liberties’ may be necessary
the self-appointed political
‘center’ went into full
conniption in defense of the
established order
One of the very few nations
in the Western Hemisphere
that rivals Argentina in
mismanaging its economy is
Venezuela. The latest
economic results show
Venezuela's inflation
accelerating to recent highs
- while declining in most
other countries.
-
Ugandan President Museveni issued a
warning that parents who choose not to
vaccinate their children will be
punished severely, and the decision
treated as a crime
-
In the US, children have been barred
from attending public education
institutions and adults have been fired
from their jobs for choosing to avoid
vaccination
-
The real issue surrounding vaccine
mandates is not one of public health;
it’s one of money, power and an assault
on your freedom
- Retail spending inched up 0.1% in
April 2013, which was stronger than
market expectations for a 0.3% decline,
following a revised 0.5% (was 0.4%) drop
in March.
- Overall sales were constrained by a
price-led 4.7% drop in nominal sales at
gasoline stations. Auto sales
unexpectedly rose 1.0%.
The use of drones has become
commonplace in the "war on
terror," but future
applications could include
helping US utilities react
and respond to large-scale
power outages caused by
massive storms like last
year's Hurricane Sandy.
Vermont’s legislature on
Monday voted to
decriminalize possession of
small amounts of marijuana,
making the New England state
the 17th to relax
restrictions on the drug.
-
An optimal vitamin D level is critically
important in minimizing your cancer
risk; a study of menopausal women showed
that maintaining vitamin D serum levels
of 40ng/ml cut overall cancer risk by 77
percent
-
GrassrootsHealth founder Carole Baggerly
believes 90 percent of ordinary breast
cancer is related to vitamin D
deficiency; in fact, breast cancer has
been described as a “vitamin D
deficiency syndrome”
-
Vitamin D can stop breast cancer cells
from spreading by replenishing
E-cadherin, one of the glue-like
components giving structure to those
cells
The dark regions on the Moon
were once considered seas
full of water. Well that is
not true but there is some
water on the Moon.
Researchers used a
multicollector ion
microprobe to study
hydrogen-deuterium ratios in
lunar rock and on Earth.
Their conclusion: The Moon’s
water did not come from
comets but was already
present on Earth 4.5 billion
years ago, when a giant
collision sent material from
Earth to form the Moon.
The free interactive website
identifies places in more
than 50 malaria-endemic
countries where mosquitoes
have become resistant to the
insecticides used in bed
nets and indoor sprays.
IR Mapper was launched last
month (25 April) by
Vestergaard Frandsen, a
Swiss firm that makes
disease-control products,
and the KEMRI/CDC research
and public health
collaboration based in
Kenya.
The Moon appears a dead
world. Once it was
geologically active. New
evidence from ancient lunar
rocks suggests that the
moon's own magnetic dynamo
-- a molten, convecting core
of liquid metal that
generated a strong magnetic
field -- lasted 160 million
years longer than originally
estimated and was
continuously active until
well after the final large
surface impacts.
The Marketplace Fairness Act
– a bill that forces online
businesses to collect sales
tax from all 50 states – is
fairly controversial. Some
fear that it will put an
undue burden on small
businesses. It’s a
legitimate concern, but
opponents may not have to
worry as the bill is about
to face its toughest hurdle
yet – the House of
Representatives.
As more of our nation's cities move
toward zero waste policies, the traditional
hauling and disposal industry is faced with
the tough decision: adapt or die.
"There's a lot of room for the industry
to continue to evolve," said Jay Coalson,
executive director of the Zero Waste
Alliance. "I don't think you have to look
any further than Waste Management [Inc.]
They are clearly transforming their business
to be much more of a service provider around
the waste stream than they are a waste
hauler."
May 10, 2013
Two Suffolk second graders have been
suspended for making shooting noises while
pointing pencils at each other.
Media outlets report the 7-year-old boys
were suspended for two days for a violation
of the Suffolk school system’s
zero-tolerance policy on weapons. They were
playing with one another in class Friday at
Driver Elementary.
The zero-emissions bus,
powered by hydrogen fuel
cells, is rolling through
the county's streets and on
Highway 101, part of a state
plan to cut the amount of
diesel pollutants standard
buses spew into the air.
The Arctic ecosystem, already under
pressure from record ice melts, faces
another potential threat in the form of
rapid acidification of the ocean, according
to an international study published on
Monday.
Acidification, blamed on the
transformation of rising levels of the
greenhouse gas carbon dioxide from the air
into carbonic acid in the sea, makes it
harder for shellfish and crabs to grow their
shells, and might also impair fish
reproduction, it said
A federal jury convicted an elderly nun
and two other peace activists on Wednesday
for damage they caused in breaking into a
defense facility where enriched uranium for
nuclear bombs is stored.
Sister Megan Rice, who was 82 at the time
of the incident, Michael Walli and Greg
Boertje-Obed admitted cutting fences and
making their way across the Y-12 National
Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, in
July 2012, embarrassing U.S. officials and
prompting security changes.
Global greenhouse gas
emissions from the
agricultural sector totaled
4.69 billion tons of carbon
dioxide (CO2) equivalent in
2010 (the most recent year
for which data are
available), an increase of
13 percent over 1990
emissions. By comparison,
global CO2 emissions from
transport totaled 6.76
billion tons that year, and
emissions from electricity
and heat production reached
12.48 billion tons,
according to Worldwatch
Institute’s Vital Signs
Online service.
-
A recent report by a public health
lawyer exposes the deep conflicts of
interest between the processed food
industry and the trade organization for
food- and nutrition professionals
-
Virtually all of the major junk food
purveyors buy sponsorships to be at the
Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics’
annual trade meetings. Besides
showcasing their food products in the
largest booths on the expo floor,
they’re also allowed to hold educational
sessions, teaching dieticians about
everything from the virtues of aspartame
to the appropriate place of sugar in a
child’s diet
-
Food companies are equally as powerful
and pervasive as the pharmaceutical
industry, and perhaps even more
pernicious in their influence on
people’s health because more often than
not it’s your food choices that produce
the disease
Half the world's
population—5.2 billion
people—could be doomed to an
insecure and greenhouse
gas-causing reliance on food
imports by 2050, according
to a new study.
US corporations are
enjoying some of the lowest
borrowing costs in history.
Even the more leveraged
(high debt to earnings
ratio) large and middle
market companies are
"fighting off" lenders
willing to provide cheap
credit. Junk loans now yield
3-5% and spreads are
continuing to tighten.
The decision to shutter
Kewaunee in the second
quarter of 2013 was
announced in October 2012,
after Dominion failed to
find a buyer for the plant.
The low price of natural gas
and of power prices
generally were blamed for
the plant’s demise.
A
fresh outbreak of violence
in Bangladesh followed a
tribunal that sentenced a
top Islamist opposition
party politician to death.
But those radical Islamist
groups currently challenging
the government, experts say,
pose a wide regional threat.
Handling batteries is
unavoidable for many scrap
processors, whether
dedicated electronics
recyclers or other recyclers
that only see the occasional
battery, he said. Improperly
handled batteries — even
undamaged ones — can result
in fires and personal
injury.
A Belgian fisherman has caught a
potentially lethal piranha in a lake near
his home, prompting wildlife authorities to
warn against the careless disposal of exotic
pets.
Bjorn Vancant, 20, caught the meat-eating
South American fish while angling near
Mechelen, in northern Belgium.
A new technique that allows the release
of life-saving medicines into the brain
has been developed by researchers in
Florida.
It paves the way to help patients
fight HIV, cancer, Alzheimer’s,
Parkinson’s, and epilepsy.
Brazil
Work at the controversial
Belo Monte hydropower plants
has been delayed once more
as representatives from a
number of indigenous groups
have occupied one of the
project's three construction
sites.
China's central bank
signaled on Wednesday it was
prepared to change its
monetary strategy to fend
off inflows of speculative
capital, as Beijing
struggles to control a tide
of cash washing in from
overseas markets.
Part of local clean energy
advocates' wish came true
Tuesday night. The Minnesota
House of Representatives
passed its clean energy and
jobs legislation, which will
establish a 4 percent solar
energy standard by 2020 and
a 40 percent renewable
electricity standard for
investor-owned utilities by
2030. The bill passed by a
narrow margin, 70-63.
This past summer, the media
broadcast cries of alarm
from farmers suffering
through the worst drought in
decades. Large swaths of
genetically engineered and
chemical-intensive crops
literally burned in the
fields. And what didn’t
burn, was ravaged by disease
and superweeds. What the
mass media and most
non-organic farmers and
ranchers have yet to
acknowledge is that at the
root of the accelerating
global warming that has
disrupted the climate and
the farm economy, with
alternating periods of
extreme drought and
flooding, are the misguided
and self-destructive
practices of modern
agriculture itself.
Researchers studying a
filament of hydrogen between
the Andromeda and Triangulum
galaxies found rotating
clumps of gas the size of
dwarf galaxies. But
questions remain.
Composting is a major job creator,
according to a new report released from the
non-profit Institute for Local
Self-Reliance.
Based on a survey of Maryland composters,
the report found that 1,400 new full-time
jobs could be supported for every million
tons of yard trimmings and food scraps
converted into compost that is used locally.
Exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai
Lama on Tuesday decried Buddhist monks'
attacks on Muslims in Myanmar, saying
killing in the name of religion was
"unthinkable."
The Dalai Lama, a foremost Buddhist
leader, told an audience at the University
of Maryland at the start of a U.S. tour that
the root of seemingly sectarian conflict was
political, not spiritual.
On April 26, the Senate
Committee on Health,
Education, Labor, and
Pensions (HELP) released
draft legislation that would
“clarify” the FDA’s ability
to regulate both compounding
pharmacies and the
compounded medications
themselves. It’s
our understanding that the
draft bill was written with
the specific intent of
giving the FDA broad
authority to remove
compounded medications from
the market in one of two
ways: either by putting bulk
ingredients on a list of
“banned” compounded drugs,
or by redefining compounded
variations of approved drugs
as illegal “copies.”
Duke Energy has submitted to
the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission (NRC) its plans
to suspend its application
for two proposed nuclear
units on its Harris site in
Wake County, North Carolina.
Progress Energy Carolinas
submitted the combined
construction and operating
license application to the
NRC in February 2008.
U.S. commercial crude oil
stocks rose 230,000 barrels
over the week ended May 3,
data from the U.S. Energy
Information Administration
(EIA) showed Wednesday,
bringing total commercial
crude levels to 395.514
million barrels, a fresh
high.
Electric utilities are
facing a tipping point in
how to best deal with
several issues including
cybersecurity, aging power
plants and pressure to keep
rate hikes down, according
to a new survey by Black &
Veatch Corp.
During April 2013,
ENSO-neutral continued, with
near-average sea surface
temperatures (SSTs) observed
across most of the
equatorial Pacific Ocean,
and below average SSTs
confined to the far eastern
equatorial Pacific
A report indicating the European Commission
has decided to recommend duties on Chinese
solar panels appears to usher in the final
stage of the European/Chinese version of
solar trade wars.
European Trade Commissioner Karel
De Gucht "is ready to go ahead" with
a proposal on Wednesday, initially
seeking tariffs of at least 30
percent
Our government is currently
paying farmers to grow
virtually the opposite of
what it recommends that
Americans eat—including
billions to subsidize items
such as corn syrup that go
into processed food. Not
only do these policies
undermine our health, they
damage our air, soil, and
water.
Southern California may not
go dark this summer. But the
future of the nuclear power
plants that provide the
power there are in doubt.
During a conference call,
Edison International said
that the San Onofre Nuclear
Generating Station, or
SONGS, may retire both of
its reactors along the
Pacific coastline.
With the U.S. inflation rate
about half of the Federal
Reserve's 2.0 percent
target, the central bank is
facing a major test and some
experts wonder whether it
will eventually need to ramp
up its already aggressive
bond buying program.
If ever there was a time for
activist networks and the
body politic to cooperate
and unite forces, it's now.
Global warming, driven in
large part by the reckless
business-as-usual practices
of multi-billion-dollar
fossil fuel and agribusiness
corporations, has brought us
to the brink of a global
calamity.
The 3D printing boom has
been changing the medical
field in recent years.
Engineers have discovered
ways to print viable organ
tissue and mini organs that
have the potential to impact
drug and surgical testing as
well as save lives.
One group of engineers took
organ printing a step
further and set out to merge
electronics and biology by
printing a fully operational
ear.
The GAO found almost 1,300
records of people whose
recorded age of death was
between the unlikely ages of
111 and 129, and records of
almost 1,800 people who
received Social Security
numbers before the
government had put them into
use. In addition, 130 people
were counted as dead before
they were born.
The continuation of a false
narrative for weeks after
the terrorist attack on the
U.S. mission in Benghazi,
Libya that left U.S.
Ambassador Chris Stevens and
three other Americans dead
is "not understandable and
is not forgivable," former
director of the National
Security Agency and Central
Intelligence Agency Gen.
Michael Hayden told Newsmax
TV.
While ibuprofen is a popular
pain remedy (such as Advil
or Motrin), in this study it
showed no effect on cytokine
production. Cytokines are
immune-regulating substances
that can have inflammatory
effects on the body, and are
therefore linked to pain.
In this study, both
betamethasone and ginger
extract reduced cytokines in
comparable amounts. The
authors of the study
indicate that,n “ginger
extract was as effective an
anti-inflammatory agent as
betamethasone in this in
vitro model.”
“Crossing 400 ppm is
not a reason for
celebration,” said Pieter
Tans, a scientist with
NOAA’s Global Monitoring
Division, after the latest
reading was released from
the Mauna Loa
Observatory in Hawaii. “Once
emitted, the added CO2 does
not disappear from the
atmosphere and oceans for
thousands of years, making
it progressively more and
more difficult to avoid a
degree of climate change
that would likely force
painful adaptation.”
Stitches and staples may be
on their way to becoming a
thing of the past, thanks to
a developing technology
known as laser tissue
welding. Now, a new
gold-based solder has been
created, that could make
tissue welds in regions such
as the intestines much
stronger and more reliable.
After opening the Wayne
National Forest to
shale-drilling companies
last year, federal officials
say they are considering the
same for coal mining.
Water quality experts have
been noting in recent years
that nitrate trends in
streams and rivers do not
match their expectations
based on reduced regional
use of nitrogen-based
fertilizer. The long travel
times of groundwater
discharge, like those
documented in this study, is
the likely cause.
As the traditional mining
industry slows down year on
year, Green Technology
Solutions, Inc. (OTCBB:
GTSO) believes that a major
shift toward e-waste
recycling is the solution to
keeping manufacturers
worldwide supplied with the
commodities they need to
create the next wave of
electronic innovations.
National rates of gun
homicide and other violent
gun crimes are strikingly
lower now than during their
peak in the mid-1990s,
paralleling a general
decline in violent crime,
according to a Pew Research
Center analysis of
government data. Beneath the
long-term trend, though, are
big differences by decade:
Violence plunged through the
1990s, but has declined less
dramatically since 2000.
One year ago, the Home Affordable
Refinance Program (HARP) opened up for U.S.
homeowners whose mortgages are "severely
underwater".
HARP loans for ultra-high LTVs -- defined
as loans for which the loan-to-value (LTV)
exceeds 125% -- now account for more than
one-fifth of all HARP refinances completed
nationwide.
Almost since the beginning
of their existence, robots
have taken inspiration from
one of nature's wonders:
insects. Technological
limitations typically
prevents robots from
matching the size of their
many-legged muses, resulting
in larger-than-life examples
like Festo's BionicOpter
dragonfly.
-
Research has shown that pesticides and
other agricultural chemicals can cause
disruptions to your neurological system
and your brain. Your best bet is to buy
only organic fruits and vegetables, as
synthetic agricultural chemicals are not
permissible under the USDA organic rules
-
For conventional produce, the
Environmental Working Group has released
its updated annual Shopper’s Guide to
Pesticides in Produce, detailing the
foods that have the highest and lowest
amounts of pesticide residues
While economic
uncertainty topped the list
of in-house counsel’s
organizational growth
threats, regulatory
compliance and enforcement
was considered the
second-highest threat to
growth according to Grant
Thornton LLP’s Survey of
Current Organizational
Threats and the Role of the
In-House Law Department.
Despite the one-way nature
of the trip, it seems
there’s no shortage of
people willing to pack their
bags and experience life on
Mars. Just two weeks after
putting out the call for
potential Mars settlers,
Mars One had received over
78,000 applications from
people in over 120
countries. With the
application period set to
last 19 weeks, the Mars One
selection committees face a
daunting task in whittling
the numbers down to the four
individuals that will
ultimately make the journey
that is planned for
September 2022.
Iran is preparing a modified
oil contract formula to
attract foreign investment
into its energy sector to
improve on the terms of its
so-called buyback contracts,
deemed unattractive to oil
companies even before the
latest international
sanctions came into effect
last year.
The majority of
mainstream Americans know
little to nothing of the
violent and unjust history
of the colonization of
Native America. Anytime such
truth is revealed to the
public on the big screens,
it should be done fairly
since these are rare
opportunities to reach the
masses. The brutality of the
Sand Creek Massacre of 1864
is one of the most horrific
events in American history,
but it is so shameful and
remains out of sight,
ignored, and therefore out
of the minds of the majority
of Americans. Shane Black’s
Iron Man 3 includes
the story of Sand Creek in
the first real
acknowledgement of the
massacre in the modern
mainstream film industry,
but Black miserably fails to
take advantage to shed some
light on the dark and
shameful history of the U.S.
Israel warned the United States in recent
days that Russia plans to sell advanced
ground-to-air missile systems to Syria
despite Western pressure on Moscow to hold
off on such a move, the Wall Street Journal
reported on Wednesday.
Managing and
mitigating risk surrounding
cyber security, IT strategy,
regulatory compliance, and
concerns over leadership
succession operations top
the list of worries for U.S.
directors and general
counsel...The 2013 findings
reflect a continued
escalation of concern over
data security and IT risk,
as well as the onus on
public companies with regard
to new regulation stemming
from the Dodd-Frank Act. The
survey also suggests that
directors and general
counsel worry about the need
for strong leadership
continuity to manage
companies through many new
and growing challenges.
...product manufacturer,
announced that it has
provided 804 kW of highly
efficient solar panels to
the largest rooftop PV solar
installation located on a
desalination plant. The
location is in Murcia,
Spain. The desalination
plant is operated by the
Spanish state-owned water
company called Acuamed.
With European new-build
programmes stalling,
long-term operation of
existing plants offers a
simple and relatively cheap
way to keep nuclear going
for the greater good.
Researchers at the
University of Utah have
discovered a method for
creating solar cell material
using the same microwave
found in most kitchens
Research at UNSW increases
the conversion efficiency of
solar cells made using
lower-cost, low-grade
silicon
An armed robbery on Watts
Road was stopped by a
resident carrying his own
firearm, and police are
still searching for two
suspects.
-
Newly released statistics show that more
Americans now commit suicide than die in
traffic accidents. The sharpest rise in
suicides over the past decade is seen
among the middle-aged. The suicide rate
for men in their 50’s has risen by 50
percent, to nearly 30 suicides per
100,000; among women between the ages of
60-64 the suicide rate rose by nearly 60
percent
-
Studies have repeatedly demonstrated
that antidepressants are no more
effective than a placebo, and in some
case less effective
Minnesota could become the
17th state to mandate that
major power companies
generate more electricity
from the sun.
Since 1976, over 1,600
documented NASA technologies
have worked their way into
everyday life, creating jobs
and improving the quality of
life in the United States.
The Space Shuttle Program,
which was the United States
government's manned launch
vehicle program from 1981 to
2011, has generated at least
120 technology spinoffs that
many Americans rely on every
day.
Natural gas has already been
blamed for shuttering of
coal plants and slowing wind
and solar financing.
Evidence suggests nuclear is
also falling victim to the
glut of cheap natural gas.
The closure of a nuclear
plant in Wisconsin Tuesday
is exhibit A.
PPL Electric Utilities is
proposing some power lines
in northeastern
Pennsylvania. The would-be
project is not going over
too well with neighbors.
That’s to be expected. Such
deals are never easy. Still,
by everyone’s standards, the
lines are necessary. It’s
just that the path they
would take is not.
A new U.S. Bureau of Land
Management (BLM) regulation
will make it easier to
approve necessary
right-of-way (ROW) requests
for solar and wind
development sites located on
public lands.
A new bill introduced late
Wednesday to the US Senate
aimed at strengthening
Washington's sanctions
against Iran could affect
Asian countries that pay for
Iranian crude in foreign
currencies, sources familiar
with the matter said
Thursday.
Now that we know that
Hillary knew that Benghazi
was a terrorist attack three
hours after it started and
that somebody in Washington
barred sending
reinforcements to the
beleaguered consulate, it's
time to ask why. The best
way to do that -- the only
way to do that -- is through
a special committee of the
House of Representatives
armed with subpoena power
and focused solely on
Benghazi.
The Water Authority earned
the award based on its
implementation of a
comprehensive smart water
multi-application
communication network
consisting of a meter data
management (MDM) platform
and online customer portal.
New Yorkers pay some of the
highest utility rates in the
nation and with the possible
dismantling of the Long
Island Power Authority
(LIPA) looming, even higher
rates are likely.
It may be buried in the
news. But it is atop the
minds of those in the energy
world, especially those at
the Tennessee Valley
Authority and its utility
neighbors that would like to
own a piece of it. President
Obama has said that the
federal government will
undergo a “strategic review”
of the nationally-owned
utility.
Material could have major
impact on solar cell technology
Researchers from MIT have published a
proof-of-concept paper that proves an
organic dye called “pentacene,” when applied
to a photovoltaic cell, can generate two
electrons from a single photon.
The Pentagon has accused
China of trying to extract
sensitive information from
U.S. government computers,
the latest in a series of
rhetorical skirmishes
between the two countries on
the issue of cyberattacks.
Peru is trying to quash the ability of
companies to avoid paying environmental
fines by lodging judicial appeals that
linger for years, part of a push to crack
down on polluters in a top exporter of
minerals.
Many of the appeals filed by mining and
energy firms in Peru effectively suspend
penalties indefinitely, rendering
environmental sanctions nearly pointless,
said Hugo Gomez, the head of Peru's
environmental enforcement agency, OEFA.
We've got the rocket of
economic data filled with
fuel. The question now is if
we can achieve lift off,
according to Mohamed
El-Erian, CEO and co-CIO of
fund giant Pimco...
"The question now, and it is
an important one, is whether
positive interactions among
the two will create
sufficient momentum for the
U.S. economy to attain
escape velocity," El-Erian
writes in an article for
Fortune.
New technology out of the
University of Georgia allows
energy generated by plants
through photosynthesis to be
captured before the plants
can make use of it .
Poachers have entered one of
Africa's most unique
elephant habitats on Monday,
threatening to cause one of
the biggest elephant
massacres in the region
since poachers killed at
least 300 elephants for
their ivory in Cameroon's
Bouba N'Djida National Park
in February 2012.
There are currently 9
numbered sunspot regions on
the disk. Solar
activity is expected to be
low with a chance for
M-class flares on day one
(10 May) and likely to be
low with a slight chance for
an M-class flare on days two
and three (11 May, 12 May).
The geomagnetic field is
expected to be at quiet
levels on days one and two
(10 May, 11 May) and quiet
to unsettled levels on day
three (12 May).
Mortgage rates ended their multi-month
winning streak last week, finally rising
after 6 weeks of improvement. The average
30-year fixed rate mortgage rate is now
3.42% nationwide, on average.
This is the highest average mortgage rate
since mid-April.
Utility leaders say they
expect state or federal
officials to take action on
carbon regulations in the
next eight years, and that
grid reliability is still a
major concern, according to
Black & Veatch’s seventh
annual U.S. electric utility
industry report.
...a breakthrough discovery,
researchers at Harvard
University have pinpointed a
protein that, when injected
into the blood of mice, is
able to reverse aging in the
heart within 30 days –
effectively turning old
hearts young again.
The Department of the
Interior is releasing
$475.25 million in emergency
Hurricane Sandy disaster
relief appropriations to 234
projects that will repair
and rebuild parks, refuges
and other Interior assets
damaged by the storm.
An independent panel of
judges will decide whether a
local group can stop
Sequoyah Nuclear Plant from
operating two decades past
its current license.
Researchers have developed a
quadcopter that can attach
to walls and ceilings with a
dry adhesive before taking
off again
The Sonoma County Board of
Supervisors on Tuesday will
consider zoning changes that
would open up more land,
including some agricultural,
industrial and business
parcels, to commercial-scale
renewable energy projects.
-
One in four teens has misused a
prescription drug at least once in their
lifetime, a 33 percent increase in the
last five years
-
Many teens and their parents believe
prescription drugs are “safer” than
illegal street drugs, when in reality
they are just as deadly – and often more
so
The future of clean
coal has been
postponed. Technologies to
make the burning of coal
cleaner are progressing, but
the business case for using
these technologies is not
keeping pace.
Rocked by a Close Vote,
Malaysia Faces Uncertain
Path
Is $93 Billion in US Aid
Making Things Worse in
Afghanistan?
New Unrest in Nigeria
Threatens Oil Production
Syria Unlikely to Retaliate
for Israeli Airstrikes
Why the Sinaloa Cartel May
Be Winning Mexico’s Drug War
Bangladesh: Uprisings Signal
More Turbulence Ahead
UK: Natural Gas Shortages,
Huge Price Swings to
Continue
Two Singapore universities
top the world in water
research while a set of
geographically widespread
players specialize in key
subsets of the water space
as water efficiency attains
global priority. The
National University of
Singapore and Nanyang
Technological University
took the top two spots,
respectively, in a ranking
of the top global water
research institutes by Lux
Research. Both focus mostly
on desalination, reuse and
membranes, the latter two
topping global agendas as
well.
Texas can help ensure the
reliability of its
electricity supply by
deploying more solar energy,
especially during the coming
summer months which could be
marked by extreme heat and
drought conditions,
according to the Electric
Reliability Council of
Texas' (ERCOT) Seasonal
Assessment of Resource
Adequacy (SARA) and the
semiannual update to its
long-term Capacity, Demand
and Reserves (CDR) report.
The United States' new
proposal to let countries
draft their own emissions
reduction plans rather than
working toward a common
target can unlock
languishing U.N. climate
negotiations, the U.S.
climate change envoy said on
Tuesday.
New Hampshire was home to the first wind
farm in history, 20 small turbines that
operated atop Crotched Mountain in 1980.
And in recent years, almost a dozen wind
farms have been proposed throughout the
state.
Yet only two wind farms of any size
actually operate in New Hampshire, with a
third ready to open this year.
Amid continued Republican
attacks on federal subsidies
for solar, wind and other
sources of renewable power,
US House Republicans on
Thursday took aim once
again, arguing those tax
credits could make the
electricity grid less
reliable.
The U.S. and Russia agreed
Tuesday to try to convene an
international conference
this month to come to a
political solution to end
the two-year Syrian civil
war but gave no indication
how they would convince
President Bashar Assad into
talks with the rebels
seeking to overthrow him.
The US Senate could vote
this month on a pair of
hydropower bills and an
energy efficiency bill,
Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon
Democrat, said May 8.
"Designs for a 3D-printed
gun must be taken offline,
the US government has
demanded. The US State
Department has written to
the gun's designer, Defense
Distributed, saying that
publishing such designs,
which enable anyone with a
3D printer to produce their
own plastic gun, could
breach arms-control
regulations. The order,
however, comes after the
blueprints were downloaded
more than 100,000 times, and
cannot prevent their further
redistribution by others who
have already downloaded
them."
Passionate opposition to the
continued operation of the
Pilgrim Nuclear Power
Station may have swayed the
majority of voters to
approve an article
requesting it be shut down
Monday night at Mashpee High
School.
Founded in 1963, WASSER
BERLIN INTERNATIONAL takes
place every two years and
brings together hundreds of
diverse water industry
associations from private
and public sectors across
the globe.
Anthropology has from
the beginning been
influenced and dominated by
European males. They set the
criteria of hierarchically
ordered level descriptions,
giving themselves the power
to dictate the boundaries of
group membership by defining
race in terms of biology. As
a consequence, the last
Indian dies not by blunt
force, expulsion or disease,
but by the social
construction of race imposed
upon us— terminating our
existence by blood.
Twenty-two Republicans sold
us out yesterday and voted
to tax sales on the
Internet. They mostly had
signed no tax pledges which
they broke when they cast
their votes.
They
say that there is no
difference between an
Internet tax and a sales tax
in the store. But they are
wrong. With 11,000 separate
tax jurisdictions and rates
in the US, taxing sales
online is a huge burden on
net firms. And, government
regulation, oversight,
retaliation, and discipline
will invade the Internet
under the guise of
collecting back taxes.
On May 1 the site of the Wounded Knee
massacre was put on the open market by owner
James Czywczynski with a price tag of $4.9
million. He says three of the five standing
offers he has could benefit the Oglala Sioux
Tribe, who he would prefer to sell to but
have not yet made an offer.
“All five are looking for additional time
to put their funding together,” he said. “It
appears that three of the five are acquiring
this property for or on behalf of the Oglala
Sioux Tribe.
The yen weakened past 100 per dollar, giving
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe a
symbolic victory for his easy money
policies, with markets bracing for further
declines in the currency that could raise
tensions with trading partners.
The yen broke through resistance to fall
as low as 101.43 per dollar, down nearly
three percent from Thursday's high around
98.65, and the weakest level in over
four-and-a-half years.
May 7, 2013
The potential for 3D-printed
guns has (unsurprisingly)
generated a great deal of
controversy, and the
Liberator is no exception.
Named after the WWII single
shot pistol, this 3D-printed
.380 caliber pistol is made
almost entirely of plastic
and looks more like a nozzle
for a water hose than a gun.
The weapon has survived
multiple firings with very
little damage, inspiring
enough confidence that
designer Cody Wilson has now
tested the gun by hand.
The project involves an
investment of approximately
USD $110 million and will
create about 50 jobs
directly and indirectly.
The Obama administration is
pushing to protect public
lands that could be used for
producing renewable energy.
As the season for storms
opens, Ameren Illinois wants
to make sure its customers
feel safe from lengthy power
outages.
The fuel cell industry has
been dogged by high
expectations and
disappointing results,
leading to claims that
profitability in this sector
remains a distant, and
possibly unachievable, goal.
Tens of thousands turned out
for today's protest, but
their numbers have dwindled
from Putin's inauguration 12
months ago – likely due to
the Kremlin's criminal cases
against the protest leaders.
A new trend in the electric
vehicle industry is
emerging. Several states are
proposing a gas tax on
vehicles produced in 2015 or
later that get 55 miles per
gallon or more. Cars like
the Chevy Volt, Nissan Leaf,
and Toyota Prius are just
some of the cars that will
incur this per-mile fee.
Honey bees, which play a key role in
pollinating a wide variety of food crops,
are in sharp decline in the United States,
due to parasites, disease and pesticides,
said a federal report released on Thursday.
Genetics and poor nutrition are also
hurting the species, which help farmers
produce crops worth some $20 billion to $30
billion a year.
The heated discussion
of recent economic research
that challenges evidence of
a clear link between high
levels of public debt and
slow economic growth has
served as a focus for
growing hostility to the
"austerity first" approach
that has been one of the
principal elements of euro
zone economic policy since
the start of the Greek
crisis. Some observers see a
change in tone of recent
statements from the European
Commission as a signal that
euro zone policy is about to
shift decisively to a more
pro-growth stance, playing
down the need for budget
consolidation. In practice,
the extent of any change is
likely to be limited.
he share of alternative and renewable
energy sources will be doubled up to 20 per
cent in Azerbaijan by 2020, deputy head of
the State Agency for Alternative and
Renewable Energy Sources Jamil Melikov said
at the symposium 'Risk insurance in
alternative and renewable energy sources'
today.
He said that almost a half -- 9.7 per
cent of all alternative energy sources will
fall to renewable.
In Baghdad, bombs
planted at two entrances to
the Husseiniya
neighborhood exploded,
killing six people and
wounding 21 others. Grenades
killed six people and
wounded 13 more at a Sunni
mosque in Mansour.
Four civilians were killed
and 11 others were wounded
in a blast at a Doura
restaurant. A Kurdish
lawmaker was targeted in a
bombing, but two of his
bodyguards were wounded
instead.
Over the past two weeks,
regulators have closed five
more banks which now double
the total failures for the
year at 10. At this rate,
2013 is on pace for 30 bank
failures; well behind the
total for 2012 at 51 and 92
in 2011. And, well below
the financial crises high
reached in 2009 and 2010.
The second-ranking U.S.
official in Libya during
last year’s deadly attack on
the mission in Benghazi
immediately considered it a
terrorist attack rather than
a spontaneous event,
according to a transcript of
his interview with
congressional investigators.
U.S. production of biodiesel
was 68 million gallons in
February 2013. This was an
increase from production of
66 million gallons in
January 2013. Biodiesel
production from the Midwest
region (Petroleum
Administration for Defense
District 2) was 74% of the
U.S. total. Production came
from 110 biodiesel plants
with operable capacity of
2.1 billion gallons per
year.
The younger of the two
brothers accused of the
Boston Marathon bombings has
said that the pair were
inspired by watching online
videos of Anwar al-Awlaki,
an American citizen who was
killed by a U.S. drone
strike.
Warren Buffett said the U.S.
economy is gradually
improving, helped by the
efforts of Federal Reserve
Chairman Ben Bernanke to
stimulate it, but that low
interest rates have made
bonds "terrible
investments." He also sees
stocks going "far higher"
from recent record levels.
Over 5000 children’s
products contain toxic
chemicals linked to cancer,
hormone disruption and
reproductive problems,
including the toxic metals,
cadmium, mercury and
antimony, as well as
phthalates and solvents. A
new report by the Washington
Toxics Coalition and Safer
States reveals the results
of manufacturer reporting to
the Washington State
Department of Ecology.
The fight over Proposition 39 didn't end
at the ballot box.
Six months after voters overwhelmingly
approved a change in the corporate tax code
that's expected to net the state an
additional $1 billion in revenue for five
years, lawmakers are wrangling over how to
spend an estimated $500 million a year the
measure earmarks for energy efficiency
projects.
The proposal is an attempt
to avoid disruption to
Xcel's Solar*Rewards program
for small-sized solar
installations, which
encourages the growth of
solar energy and offers
customers incentives to
install solar panels
electric systems on their
homes and businesses.
Carbon dioxide is the prime
culprit in global warming
but how twill that affect
other aspects of climate
such as rainfall? A NASA-led
modeling study is providing
new evidence that global
warming may increase the
risk for extreme rainfall
and drought. The study shows
for the first time how
rising carbon dioxide
concentrations could affect
the entire range of rainfall
types on Earth
- Carbon dioxide is
the greenhouse gas that is responsible
for 63% of global warming
- For the past
800,000 years, CO2 levels never exceeded
300 parts per million
- Increasing amounts
of carbon dioxide and other gases are
enhancing the natural "greenhouse
effect"
“It has been the objective
of the Fed over the past few
years to make even more
innovative forms of money by
supporting stock and bond
prices at a cost at an ever
ascending scale,” Gross
wrote in his monthly
investment outlook posted on
Newport Beach,
California-based Pimco’s
website. “Current policies
come with a cost, even as
they magically float asset
prices higher. Negative real
interest rates, inflation,
currency devaluation,
capital controls and
outright default” are among
the costs, or ”haircuts”
from global central banks’
unprecedented monetary
stimulus.
The Atom converts your
hard work into sustainable energy
The hamster-on-the wheel power supply
receives a 21st century upgrade
via human-on-bicycle; the Atom is part bike
generator and part rechargeable battery
pack. It charges your mobile devices by
converting the kinetic energy produced
during cycling into usable electricity
accessible via USB.
China is awash with
liquidity. New domestic bank
loans have seen some of the
strongest growth in years
and broad money supply is
increasing at nearly 16% per
year. Furthermore, property
loans have risen 16.4% from
the previous year to 13
trillion yuan ($2 trillion).
“Take only what you
need and use everything you
take,” my dad would say as
we hunted game in the woods
or walked the riverbank
while casting a line. He
explained that our way has
always been to be careful
custodians of the gifts
bestowed by the Creator. As
I grew up, I heard many
elders talk about our
responsibility as
protectors. The iconic image
of Iron Eyes Cody shedding a
tear at the littered
landscape emphasized what I
heard; I never questioned
the truth of these
statements. Growing up, I
was proud of our role as
“the protectors of our
Mother Earth.”
Comments made by Senator Jim Inhofe
stating Oklahoma's recent cold snap was
evidence against global warming may have
been an exaggeration, according to Associate
State Climatologist Gary McManus.
"When we look at things like a cold snap
here or there, those are instances of
weather vs. climate," McManus said. "When
you about these sort of things on global
scale, like the warming patterns we've seen,
you have to consider, if its warm somewhere,
it's going to be cold somewhere else."
Colorado has voted to
strengthen its Renewable
Portfolio Standard (RPS),
one of the few states to do
so.
A bill to raise
the RPS for rural
electricity coops to 25% by
2020, up from 10%, passed
both the state Senate and
House and is supported by
Governor Hickenlooper. Over
100,000 households are
served by rural coops.
There are 26 million
unemployed and underemployed
Americans, and we've just
suffered the worst terrorist
strike in this country since
9/11. So our Congress has
snapped into action by
concentrating on critical
initiatives to push our
nation forward.
Let's
begin with the House moving
to reauthorize the Federal
Helium Program.
When it comes to renewable
energy, Culver Duck of
Middlebury has, well — all
its ducks in a row.
Beginning with a 10-acre
wetlands project in 2011,
the duck-processing company
has embarked on a $6 million
journey to become a zero
discharge plant by utilizing
duck waste to generate
methane gas to power the
plant.
Healthcare reform should be the signature
Democratic achievement of President Barack
Obama's presidency.
But with "Obamacare" five months from
show time, Democrats are worried about
whether enough Americans will sign up to
make the sweeping healthcare overhaul a
success - and what failure might mean for
Congress heading into the 2016 presidential
race.
Although New England uses
more electricity in the
summer than in winter due to
air conditioning, the
regional power grid should
not face the near-brownout
situation that arose in
January because in
summertime, power plants
don't have to compete with
heating contracts to get
enough natural gas.
Rather than using their
properties as ATM machines
to boost spending,
homeowners increasingly are
paying down the principal
and shortening the
maturities of their
mortgages in a move Florida
banker Rob Nunziata calls
"forced savings." Cash-in
refinancings – in which
borrowers invest more of
their own money in the house
– outnumbered cash-outs by
more than two-to-one in the
fourth quarter, according to
Freddie Mac.
Today, solar energy is under
assault and our opponents
are pulling out all of the
stops. But this kind of
trickery by North Carolina
State Senator Bill Rabon
even astounded us. And it
was all caught on video.
After hearing testimony
opposing a bill that would
end the state’s renewable
portfolio standard, he
refused to count votes with
a show of hands. Instead,
senators had to shout out
their votes.
It sure sounds like the
“no’s” have it, yet Senator
Rabon passed the bill out of
his committee. Is that
democracy?
The union representing
workers at the Department of
Water and Power filed a
lawsuit against the agency
this week, seeking to block
the release of employee
salary information.
Both reactors at Edison’s
San Onofre Nuclear
Generating Station, located
between San Diego and Los
Angeles, have been offline
since January 2012 following
the discovery of serious
system flaws. Keeping the
combined 2,250 MW units
offline has come at a price
tag of $574 million, a cost
that has been passed on to
power customers and
shareholders.
Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi
increased the influence of his Muslim
Brotherhood over government in a cabinet
reshuffle that replaced two ministers
involved in crucial talks with the IMF over
a $4.8 billion loan.
The changes fell well short of the
opposition's demand for a complete overhaul
of Prime Minister Hisham Kandil's
administration and the installation of a
neutral cabinet to oversee parliamentary
elections later this year.
The Energy Department
announced today up to $13
million in funding to
develop and test advanced
components and technologies
to boost the performance of
marine and hydrokinetic
(MHK) energy systems. The
Department plans to select
up to 10 awards aimed at
developing advanced
controls, power systems, and
device structures
specifically for MHK
applications, which harness
energy from waves, tides, or
currents.
Tribal lands comprise nearly
2% of U.S. land, but contain
about 5% of the country's
renewable energy resources.
With more than 9 million
megawatts of potential
installed renewable energy
capacity on tribal lands,
these communities are well
positioned to capitalize on
our domestic renewable
energy resources—thereby
enhancing U.S. energy
security and protecting our
air and water.
With the country now awash
in energy, the United States
should sell the contents of
its Strategic Petroleum
Reserve (SPR) and use the
proceeds to reduce the
budget deficit, says oil
economist Phil Verleger, a
visiting fellow at the
Institute for International
Economics.
Natural gas has been a
valuable source of energy
for hundreds of years, but
over the last decade or so,
the use of this resource has
intensified. In its early
stages, natural gas was
mainly used for street
lights and powering a small
number of homes.
-
The US Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA) has failed to protect bees from
neonicotinoid pesticides, according to a
lawsuit against the agency, filed by
beekeepers and environmental groups
-
The lawsuit alleges the EPA has ignored
warnings that neonicotinoid pesticides
are poisoning bees, and acted outside
the law by allowing “conditional
registration” of the pesticides
-
Neonicotinoid pesticides are a newer
class of chemicals that are applied to
seeds and taken up through the plant’s
vascular system as it grows, where it is
expressed in the pollen and nectar,
which bees depend on for food
-
The EPA acknowledges that “pesticide
poisoning” may be one factor leading to
colony collapse disorder, and the
European Food Safety Authority has
singled out risks to bees from
neonicotinoids, but the EPA has been
slow to act to protect bees from this
threat
Confidence amongst
CEOs within the European
Union slumped over the first
quarter of 2013, as the
fallout from the financial
turmoil in Cyprus led to
uncertainty about the future
of the euro. The YPO Global
Pulse Confidence Index for
the European Union fell 4
points to 51.4, wiping out
the gains made in the final
quarter of 2012.
The German finance minister
who was a leading voice in
launching the euro now says
it was a big mistake, and
the currency should be
scrapped before it leads to
disaster.
-
The US Food and Drug Administration
(FDA) is looking to increase their
budget by $821 million next year, which
would make their proposed 2014 budget a
hefty $4.7 billion
-
Out of the extra $821 million the FDA is
seeking, 94 percent, or $770 million,
would come from user fees paid by the
drug industry
-
User fees allow the drug industry to
have major leverage over the FDA, and
that control is continuing to increase
year after year
-
The FDA has repeatedly allowed
potentially dangerous drugs to remain on
the market, even after it revealed that
their approvals were based on fraudulent
data, with no warnings to the public
California and federal
public health officials say
valley fever, a potentially
lethal but often
misdiagnosed disease
infecting more and more
people around the nation,
has been on the rise as
warming climates and drought
have kicked up the dust that
spreads it.
With close to $17 trillion in debt, the
U.S. government is on the verge of a major
bust-up, Stockman warns.
The stock market will collapse along with
the dollar (taking your entire savings with
it).
-
The U.S. Pharmacopeial Convention's
(USP) Food Fraud Database contains more
than 1,300 records of food fraud
published from 1980 to 2010
-
A recent update, which added in cases
from 2011 and 2012, increased the number
of records by 60 percent, or nearly 800
new records, and includes some foods you
may eat everyday, like olive oil, honey,
fish and orange juice
-
Food fraud, in which foods are
intentionally diluted with other
ingredients or misrepresented on the
label, is common among milk, spices,
fruit juice, seafood and oils
-
Whole, unprocessed foods – ideally
purchased from a local farmer, farmer’s
market or food coop – are those that
will be best for your health as well as
least vulnerable to fraud
More than 70 years ago, a
chemical attack was launched
against Washington State and
Nevada. It poisoned people,
animals, everything that
grew, breathed air, and
drank water. The Marshall
Islands were also struck.
This formerly pristine
Pacific atoll was branded
“the most contaminated place
in the world.” As their
cancers developed, the
victims of atomic testing
and nuclear weapons
development got a name:
downwinders. What marked
their tragedy was the
darkness in which they were
kept about what was being
done to them. Proof of harm
fell to them, not to the
U.S.
government agencies responsible.
This is by far one of my
favorite times of the year.
There is something so
satisfying about finally
getting outdoors, digging in
the dirt, and sowing a new
batch of seeds for the
season. I have missed the
simple pleasure of working
outside in my garden.
The fact that the Boston
Marathon bombings were the
work of "homegrown
terrorists" shouldn't
surprise anyone in the
United States, former New
York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani
says.
"This has been
going on since 2005, 2006,"
Giuliani said on NBC's "Meet
the Press" on Sunday. The
London attack in 2005 was
the result of homegrown
terrorists, he noted. "That
should have said to us,
we’re going to have the same
problem here."
The declaration warns that
climate change is a real
threat and urges action so
that the United States can
"remain a true superpower in
a competitive world,"
although it does not endorse
specific proposals.
The Deepwater Horizon oil
spill in the Gulf of Mexico
happened over three years
ago, but according to
scientists, crude oil
toxicity still continues to
sicken a sentinel Gulf Coast
fish species.
Hawaii's largest electric
utility says a record high
13.9 percent of its energy
came from renewable sources
last year.
-
KFC recently rolled out Original Recipe
boneless chicken, and is considering
eliminating on-the-bone chicken from its
menu altogether. Regardless of brand,
processed chicken nuggets or shaped
boneless “wings” are far more likely to
contain less meat and more additives and
fillers
-
Scientists have been working on
bioengineering "cultured" lab-grown meat
for the past decade, and are getting
closer to perfecting the process.
Normalizing the idea that chicken
doesn’t have bones will make it easier
to eventually exchange the meat used in
processed nuggets and boneless wings for
bioengineered meat, without anyone
noticing the difference
A number of researchers have studied the link between diet,
exercise, and brain health.
Among other things, they
found that when we exercise,
the brain produces more of a
special brain-growth repair
hormone called brain-derived
neurotrophic factor (BDNF)
that stimulates the increase
in brain connections —
dendrites and synapses —
especially in the
hippocampus.
The uneven progress
associated with fossil fuel
pipeline projects on Turtle
Island has taken on
international dimensions
recently. Eminent domain
protests and leaking piped
networks now routinely are
in the news.
Three-dimensional terrain
mapping that aids in laying
out these pipeline projects
ignores international
borders, seeking only the
most efficient routes. A new
era among North American
Indian border nations to
restring historical
confederacies and
efficiently work together,
may also be a timely
development.
"Watering hole" attack
targets workers browsing
federal government website.
Attackers exploited a
previously unknown and
currently unpatched security
bug in Microsoft's Internet
Explorer browser to
surreptitiously install
malware on the computers of
federal government workers
involved in nuclear weapons
research, researchers said
on Friday.
GE and Invenergy announced
today the purchase of the
first 2.5-120 brilliant wind
turbines in the world.
Invenergy has ordered three
units as part of an
86-turbine deal with GE for
its Mills County, Texas,
wind farm. The 2.5-120,
announced in January,
harnesses the power of the
Industrial Internet to
analyze tens of thousands of
data points every second.
This helps manage wind
variability and provides
reliable, short-term
predictable power, while
communicating seamlessly
with neighboring turbines,
service technicians and
operators.
Oil extraction in the Amazon
rainforest has been linked
to severe environmental
degradation — including
deforestation and pollution
— which in some areas has
spurred violent social
conflict. Yet a vast extent
of the Colombian, Peruvian,
Ecuadorian, Bolivian, and
Brazilian Amazon is
currently under concession
for oil and gas exploration
and production — hundreds of
billions of dollars are
potentially at stake. It
seems clear that much of
this hydrocarbon development
is going to proceed whether
environmentalists and human
rights groups like it or
not.
-
According to the World Health
Organization, a new strain of bird flu,
H7N9, is “one of the most lethal” flu
viruses. While it has killed 22 in
China, researchers have found NO
evidence of sustained transmission
between people, which is a prerequisite
for a pandemic flu virus
-
Pandemic vaccines are a high-profit,
low-risk venture for vaccine makers.
They make billions of dollars in revenue
while being shielded from liability if
the vaccine turns out to be hazardous,
like it turned out to be in 2009. They
also save money on development, since
they can forgo either animal- or human
testing—or in an emergency situation,
both
-
So far, pandemic flu threats have never
been, and likely never will be, anywhere
near as lethal as predicted.
The lawyer for Benghazi
"whistleblower" Gregory
Hicks is hinting the State
Department threatened her
client with retaliation if
he kept insisting the
assault on the U.S. Embassy
in Libya was known to be a
terrorist attack "from the
get-go."
The good things that should happen after
marijuana is legalized are happening in
Colorado. In November, voters in Colorado —
and Washington state — legalized pot for
recreational use. (Many states allow medical
use of marijuana.)
What are the good things?
For starters, money, money, money for the
state coffers.
E-Cat: 3 reactors shipped
from Rossi to U.S. partners
-
Andrea Rossi would be
sending three reactors in
cold fusion, in this case an
E-Cat, a Cat and a Hot-Gas
Cat, from Italy to the U.S.
intelligence partners. (GreenStyle.it;
April 30, 2013)
Fears that China will overtake the U.S.
in the race to put electric vehicles on the
road have fizzled.
Despite choking pollution in big Chinese
cities, consumers here see EVs as too
expensive or too difficult to recharge.
Lipsticks and lip glosses apparently give you more than colorful
kissers, according to a new
study by California
scientists that contends the
products contain lead,
cadmium, chromium, aluminum
and five other toxic metals.
The most recent
LENR-to-Market Monthly
included some major teaser
information regarding Andrea
Rossi's E-Cat and a delivery
of the first
publicly-viewable 1 MW
plant. April 30, the date of
that report, had been set as
the date things were
supposed to materialize.
A U.S.-led plan to let all
countries set their own
goals for fighting climate
change is gaining grudging
support at U.N. talks, even
though the current level of
pledges is far too low to
limit rising temperatures
substantially.
Up to 1,000 people could die
of the human form of “mad
cow” disease through
infected blood given to them
in British hospitals,
ministers have been told.
Support the Defeat of UN
Depopulation Agenda 21!
Suppose they Gave a Pandemic
And No One Came? That's OUR
Game Plan!
Governor Deval Patrick today
joined Energy and
Environmental Affairs
Secretary Rick Sullivan and
other energy officials to
celebrate 250 megawatts of
solar energy installed –
reaching the Patrick-Murray
Administration’s goal four
years early – and announced
a new goal
If you're feeling exhausted, a new study
suggests giving meditation a try. Even
meditating for a few minutes a day has
been found to boost the activity of
genes that promote good health.
"It's not New Age nonsense," Herbert
Benson of the Massachusetts General
Hospital in Boston told New Scientist in
a report published May 2.
The Antelope Valley Solar
Projects make up the world's
largest solar power
development under
construction. When complete,
the projects will provide
enough energy to power
approximately 400,000
average California homes.
Renville County could become
host to the first
large-scale commercial
project to produce hydrogen
from wind in the U.S.
Mortgage rates are rising.
The April Non-Farm Payrolls report beat
Wall Street expectations, and the government
upwardly revised results from February and
March.
Just one day after Freddie Mac reported
near-lifetime lows, U.S. mortgage rates are,
once again, reversing higher.
What if everything you’ve been told about
the harmful health effects of salt is wrong?
For decades, salt has been cast as a
dietary demon. The National Institutes
of Health advises Americans to cut back
on sodium to combat high blood pressure.
And the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention this year said 9 in 10 people
eat too much.
The mythical narrative
taught by the colonists is
that progress is an
inevitable march in one
direction. In the debate
over the Texas annexation
treaty, the colonial
narrative acquired the
majestic title of “Manifest
Destiny,” taken to mean that
the Protestant God had
decreed North America should
become the domain of the
WASP. White Anglo-Saxon
Protestants were on a divine
mission to rule over not
just indigenes, but also
brown Roman Catholics.
New, more flexible ways to
fight climate change were
sketched out on Friday at
the end of a week of talks
between 160 nations, but
there was no breakthrough in
bridging a deep divide
between China and the United
States.
The North Carolina Mining
and Energy Commission has
delayed final approval of
new hydraulic fracturing, or
"fracking", disclosure rules
after facing pushback from
industry giant Halliburton.
Most of us take water for
granted. If we want a drink,
we turn a tap or twist a cap
and there it is. But if you
find yourself off the beaten
track in triple-digit heat
without it, locating some
can mean the difference
between life and death.
Finding a pool of water in
the shade of a rock may seem
like a godsend, but then the
question of waterborne
diseases raises its head.
That’s where the NDūR
Survival Straw comes in.
The study shows that a
dietary supplement
consisting of an extract of
aloe vera and other key
nutrients seems to improve
cognitive and immune
functioning in those with
dementia. Lead researcher
John E. Lewis, associate
professor at the University
of Miami Miller School of
Medicine, recently visited
Newsmax Health to discuss
his surprising findings.
When it’s alive and in the
ocean, seaweed serves as a
habitat, spawning ground and
food source for marine life.
Once it gets washed ashore,
however, it pretty much just
rots. Typically, along
beaches in tourist areas,
that dead seaweed is simply
gathered and taken to a
landfill. Now, however,
researchers from Spain’s
University of Alicante have
conceived of a new
seaweed-removal system that
has less environmental
impact, and that allows the
seaweed to be used as an
energy source.
No one said that life was going to be
easy. In fact, God just about guaranteed it
when He kicked us out of the Garden of Eden.
He said we’d get our food by the sweat of
our brow and that has proven true since the
beginning of time.
In addition to the hard labor of being
self-sufficient, however, the weather is
just not cooperating either.
Bringing the facility online
allows the company to
immediately retire two units
at its Contra Costa
Generating Station that
relied on once-through
cooling, netting nearly 50
MW of power gain. The new
plant will use at most 50
acre-feet of water annually,
a 99.99 percent decrease
from Contra Costa’s maximum
annual use, NRG stated in a
release.
Over the strenuous
opposition of eBay and
allied advocacy groups, the
Senate on Monday passed a
bill that would authorize
states to begin collecting
sales taxes on purchases
from out-of-state Internet
retailers.
Everything we do can affects
something else.
Globalization, with its ever
increasing demand for cargo
transport, has inadvertently
opened the flood gates for a
new, silent invasion. New
research has mapped the most
detailed forecast to date
for importing potentially
harmful invasive species
with the ballast water of
cargo ships. Scientists from
the Universities of Bristol,
UK, and Oldenburg, Germany,
have examined ship traffic
data and biological records
to assess the risk of future
invasions. Their research is
published in the latest
issue of Ecology Letter.
No matter how a judge rules
on Patriot Coal Corp.'s
request to cut union wages
and benefits, the coal
producer and employees could
face a grim future, the
company and the United Mine
Workers of America told a
judge overseeing Patriot's
bankruptcy.
All bets are off. A
prominent physicist has just
announced that he’s
developed a proof for “time
crystals” that can move
thanks to a break in the
symmetry of time. And now
he’s about to test his proof
in the real world.
A new storage facility for
spent nuclear fuel that has
been accumulating at Plant
Vogtle for decades will go
into operation a few months
later than planned,
according to Southern
Nuclear officials.
Fifty-eight percent of U.S.
residents believe global
warming is affecting the
country's weather and a
substantial number of people
say it has made various
extreme weather events “more
severe.”
It's been nearly a month
since ice-coated power lines
caused thousands of wooden
poles to snap and
transmission structures to
tumble, yet a drive through
the countryside shows the
massive amount of
restoration work yet to be
done.
An unseasonable May storm
system dropped more than a
foot of snow across the
central Plains and the upper
Midwest on Thursday, closing
roads and causing power
outages in Iowa, Minnesota
and Wisconsin.
Rep. Darrell Issa of
California charged on Sunday
that the Obama
administration made a
political decision to deny
that terrorists were
responsible for the Sept.
11, 2012 attack on the U.S.
diplomatic mission in
Benghazi, Libya.
"We
can't find a classified
reason for it. We can't find
a diplomatic reason for it,"
said the Republican,
appearing on CBS' "Face the
Nation."
There are currently 8
numbered sunspot regions on
the disk. Solar activity is
expected to be low with a
chance for M-class flares on
days one, two, and three (07
May, 08 May, 09 May).
The geomagnetic field is
expected to be at quiet to
unsettled levels on day one
(07 May) and quiet levels on
days two and three (08 May,
09 May).
The Southwest's power grid
could become more vulnerable
to climate change over the
coming decades, says a new
report led by University of
Arizona researchers.
The Extended Policies case,
released yesterday as part
of the U.S Energy
Information Administration
(EIA)’s Annual Energy
Outlook 2013 (AEO2013),
shows that extending certain
federal energy efficiency
and renewable energy laws
and regulations could reduce
annual energy-related carbon
dioxide emissions in the
U.S. in 2040 by roughly 6
percent relative to a
reference case projection
that generally assumes
current laws and policies.
Between 2013 and 2040, this
reduction adds up to a
cumulative emission savings
approaching 5 billion metric
tons.
Dayton Power & Light is
joining utilities throughout
the state to kick off Ohio's
Oldest Refrigerator Contest.
The winning customer gets a
$1,250 prize for the state's
most ancient refrigerator or
freezer.
The City of San Bruno, the
City and County of San
Francisco and The Utility
Reform Network yesterday
filed the penalties and
fines -- $2.25 billion --
they believe Pacific Gas &
Electric (PG&E) should pay
for its alleged "gross
mismanagement and failure to
safely operate a gas
pipeline" in the 2010 San
Bruno explosion and fire.
The incident resulted in the
death of eight, injuries to
66 and the destruction of 38
homes in San Bruno.
...beginning the first leg
of its planned flight across
the U.S.
The aircraft was piloted by Bertrand
Piccard (and still is, at the time of this
posting). He will be sharing piloting duties
throughout the course of the 2013 Across
America mission with fellow Solar Impulse
team member André Borschberg. The mission
will be broken into five legs, with the
plane making stops at select American cities
between each one. It is expected that the
final leg of the journey will begin in early
July.
A fierce wildfire
threatening 4,000 homes
northwest of Los Angeles was
about 30 percent contained
on Saturday as higher
humidity and cooler
temperatures helped
firefighters, fire
department spokesmen said.
The 2010 San Bruno gas
pipeline explosion that
killed eight and injured
many more is still making
headlines, putting both
Pacific Gas & Electric
(PG&E) and the California
Public Utilities Commission
(CPUC) squarely on the hot
seat in front of local
advocacy groups and state
lawmakers. The incident
gained further momentum
recently after a planned
safety symposium sparked
conflict of interest cries
from the City of San Bruno.
The utility and the
Commission are both facing
media scrutiny over their
handling of the explosion
and the subsequent
investigations. The City of
San Bruno is seeking more
than $1 billion in fines
against the utility.
A new study indicates that
ethanol production is
continuing to reduce its
energy and environmental
footprint.
Hydrocarbons, a chemical
compound commonly found in
household items from
cleaning products to
gasoline, are among the top
10 causes of pediatric
poisoning deaths in the
United States. A new study
by researchers at the
Central Ohio Poison Center
and the Center for Injury
Research and Policy, both at
Nationwide Children's
Hospital, found these
injuries are most likely to
occur during months when the
weather is warm and are
associated with activities
such as mowing lawns, use of
Tiki torches and use of
lighter fluid for outdoor
cooking.
If you've driven down Highway 177 in
Marston past the Rockingham Speedway, you
have no doubt seen the sea of solar panels.
Approximately 26,000 solar panels will
sit on a total of 40 acres owned by Claude
Smith by the time the construction is
completed, according to Tri-City, Inc.
Although countless small
companies have tried to
commercially develop flying
cars over the past several
decades, we’re still not
seeing Blade Runner-esque
vehicles cruising over our
rooftops ... yet. Terrafugia
is one of the groups
currently trying to change
that situation – a
fully-functioning prototype
of its Transition fixed-wing
“roadable airplane” is
currently undergoing flight
tests, and was recently
cleared for civilian use by
the US Federal Aviation
Authority.
The Texas House approved a
batch of bills Saturday to
further soften gun laws that
were already among the
country's most
firearms-friendly, allowing
college students to carry
handguns in class, putting
potentially armed marshals
in public schools and
exempting the state from any
future federal bans on
assault rifles,
high-capacity magazines or
universal background checks.
Instead of traipsing through
Florida in search of the
Fountain of Youth, Spanish
explorer Juan Ponce de León
might have been better off
turning his search inwards.
More specifically, he should
have turned his attention to
a region of the brain called
the hypothalamus.
Despite decades of
discussion, the issue of
nuclear waste has not seen a
viable solution. Most
recently in 2010, federal
authorities scrapped a plan
to create a nuclear waste
dump at Yucca Mountain in
Nevada to store the
nationwide spent nuclear
fuel capacity that now
stands at 65,000 tons.
Japanese Nuclear
Reprocessing Plans Stir
Fears in Asia
Canada Facing Backlash for
Refusal to Abandon Values
Demand in Liquefied Natural
Gas Carriers Creating a
Global Commodity
New Swiss Immigration Quotas
May Signal End of Modern
Europe
China: Is Debt Spinning Out
of Control?
Compared to the lifetime of
grieving ahead for the
people of West, Texas, a few
years of reduced crop yields
is a small price to pay for
converting from
"conventional" to organic
farming.
Year-to-date, the U.S.
dollar is up. Does that mean
we are in a rising-dollar
environment? Or is it an
opportunity to diversify out
of the greenback?
Last year, with all the
turmoil in the eurozone, the
euro was up 1.79 percent
versus the dollar. That
appeared to be the best the
U.S. dollar could do in
times of turmoil. Of the
major currencies, only the
Japanese yen was down versus
the U.S. dollar:
A mere eight trading days
ago, the CBOE Volatility
Index (VIX) looked like it
was ready to make a run to
the 20 level or possibly
even higher.
Now the
VIX has drifted back down
below the 15 level and
closed at 13.71 Monday.
This decline in the VIX
is indicative of investor
complacency and that is
something that has been
going on for several months
now. The VIX has only closed
above the 15 level eight
times so far this year.
Colossal numbers of cicadas,
unhurriedly growing
underground since 1996, are
about to emerge along much
of the U.S. East Coast to
begin passionately singing
and mating as their
remarkable life cycle
restarts
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service is preparing to
remove a population of
grizzly bears from the
Endangered Species Act,
under which they are now
listed as a threatened
species.
The long awaited and much
delayed Tres Amigas electric
power superstation is again
poised to take a giant leap
toward becoming reality in
Clovis.
The research from IT security solutions
provider Tripwire also found that:
- Almost 10 percent think smart meters
will be targeted by cybercriminals
- More than 10 percent believe smart
meter consumer data will include
personally identifiable information such
as bank details, date of birth and
addresses
- Almost 80 percent believe this data
will require additional security
- 73 percent believe consumers should
own their personal smart meter data
“Our investigators have been
in neighboring countries
interviewing victims,
doctors and field hospitals
and, according to their
report of last week which I
have seen, there are strong,
concrete suspicions but not
yet incontrovertible proof
of the use of sarin gas,
from the way the victims
were treated,” Carla Del
Ponte, a member of the
independent commission of
inquiry on Syria, told
Swiss-Italian television.
“This was use on the part of
the opposition, the rebels,
not by the government
authorities.”
The architects of Congress'
looming tax policy reform
have a lot of choices when
it comes to energy tax
breaks and federal
subsidies, the US House of
Representatives' Ways and
Means Committee said Monday.
The US Navy and 40 allies
gathered in Bahrain Monday
to begin two weeks of naval
anti-mine exercises designed
to keep the Persian Gulf
open to oil shipping.
Although the exercises,
billed as the largest ever
in the region, have been
scheduled for some time,
they are taking place
against the backdrop of
threats by Iran to shut the
Strait of Hormuz oil
chokepoint at the mouth of
the Persian Gulf if attacked
and coincide with rising
tensions over developments
in Syria, Iran's primary
ally in the Middle East.
After seven years of
planning, Vermont Technical
College has broken ground on
an anaerobic digestion
project that will generate
heat for the campus, and
power that will be sold to
the grid.
Audubon Area Community
Services is taking
applications for its
Weatherization Program,
which is designed to help
eligible homeowners with
energy improvements.
The Senate will soon vote on
the nomination of Gina
McCarthy to lead the
Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA), the agency
responsible for setting
standards under our nation's
environmental laws that
protect our health and
climate. As we face
ever-greater threats from
global warming and air
pollution, the EPA needs a
strong leader who will act
on the best available
science.
The most powerful
permanent magnets
Contrary to their name, rare-earth
magnets are not made from rare materials;
they are nevertheless the most powerful
permanent magnets. The term "rare-earth"
originates from the 17 elements in the
periodic table used in making the magnets:
the 15 lanthanides, scandium, and yttirum.
Most reliability
professionals agree that the
reliability of a system is
only as good as the weakest
link in that system. In both
instances above, the weakest
link caused the unplanned
outage. In recent years, the
transformer, considered the
heart of the electrical
system, has increasingly
become that weak link.
A Red Flag Warning for high fire danger
remains in effect for much of Southern
California due to high temperatures, low
humidity and gusty winds.
Across the state, more than 3,000
firefighters are battling six major
wildfires Friday, California fire officials
said.
The May 1 deadline
came and went without a word
from the Oglala Sioux Tribe,
so James Czywczynski, who
owns the site of the Wounded
Knee massacre, has put the
land on the open market.
“I gave the tribe 30
years and five months to buy
this property, and it isn't
as if they didn't have the
money, they could have done
a bond issue—I have a friend
who could have done a bond
issue for them,” he said.
May 3, 2013
With the economic recovery wobbling,
mortgage rates are dropping again — with
implications for family budgets across
America.
Rates are falling for all types of
mortgages, and the average 15-year fixed
loan has hit an all-time low of 2.56%,
according to Freddie Mac.
The relationship between jobs and housing
is one which not only foreshadows an
expanding housing market through the rest of
the year, but also one which may also push
mortgage rates higher.
Today's low mortgage rates may be as good
as it gets -- especially with the latest
jobs report due for release Friday morning.
State regulators on
Wednesday approved an annual
renewable- energy plan for
Tucson Electric Power Co.
that further slashes
incentives for residential
rooftop solar installations
and for now eliminates
incentives for commercial
renewable-energy
installations.
Algerian oil minister Youcef
Yousfi has asked Russian oil
and gas companies to bolster
their participation in the
OPEC state's energy sector
during talks with his
Russian counterpart
Alexander Novak, Yousfi's
office said in a statement
late Tuesday.
U.S. commercial crude oil
stocks surged 6.696 million
barrels over the week ended
April 26 to hit a
record-high level of 395.284
million barrels, data from
the Energy Information
Administration (EIA) showed
Wednesday.
More people are taking
action in their communities
to meet their basic needs
because of government
corruption at all levels
that protects the status quo
when urgent change is
needed. People are moving on
many fronts to challenge the
system and create the world
they want to see.
Gunmen surround the Libyan
justice ministry demanding a
ban against those who worked
under the former regime of
ousted leader Gaddafi from
holding senior positions.
The Arab League's
decision to sweeten its decade-old proposal
offering comprehensive peace with Israel has
placed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in
a bind and swiftly exposed fissures in his
new government.
Netanyahu's chief
peace negotiator on Tuesday welcomed the
modified Arab proposal, while the prime
minister remained silent
...
Arizona Senate Bill 1180
would require that all food
sold in the state that
contain genetically
engineered ingredients be
clearly labeled.
We've received a
number of emails pointing to
what looks like a slowdown
in lending by US-chartered
banks. The amount of loans
and leases on balance sheets
of US banks has stopped
growing.
The cleric preached in his tiny Yemeni
village about the evils of al-Qaida, warning
residents to stay away from the group's
fighters and their hard-line ideology. The
talk worried residents, who feared it would
bring retaliation from the militants, and
even the cleric's father wanted him to stop.
But in the end it wasn't al-Qaida that
killed Sheik Salem Ahmed bin Ali Jaber.
The victim of the robbery stated that two
male subjects had approached him as he stood
in front of his trailer and demanded his
money. The victim stated that one of
the subjects had been armed with a handgun.
The victim had also been armed with a
legally concealed handgun, and upon being
threatened, the victim and the suspect
exchanged gunfire.
A major casualty of
China's slowdown has been
one of its key natural
resources supplier,
Australia. Many Australians
feel misled by all the
projections of China's
growing demand, believing
that China will continue
beating its yearly 8% growth
projections.
The Rainforest Action Network (RAN) and
Sierra Club have released their fourth
annual coal report card, calling bank
investments in coal "extreme."
The report evaluates the 10 largest U.S.
banks based on their financing of coal,
ranking the three largest banks -- Bank of
America, Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase -- as
the top three financiers of the "worst of
the worst" companies, including the
operators of coal-fired power plants and
mountaintop removal coal mines.
Alan Shaw, the chemist and
executive who led a six-year
effort to turn inedible
crops into fuels to displace
gasoline, has renounced the
industry he helped pioneer
and decided the future
instead lies with natural
gas.
Ben Whitford reveals why
numerous birds fall dead and
injured from the skies over
urban areas each year, and
asks what can be done to
prevent this ongoing avian
tragedy. 1 million bird
deaths a year is just a drop
in the bucket
Filed Wednesday in U.S.
District Court in
Birmingham, the lawsuit
addresses the company’s
self-reported violations of
its National Pollutant
Discharge Elimination System
Permit, NPDES, No. AL0076597
dating back to February
2010.
BMW’s sustainable
mobility-focused sub-brand
BMW i has announced it is to
join forces with German
photovoltaic firm SOLARWATT
GmbH, in a bid to supply
consumer-friendly
solar-powered carport and
rooftop charging systems to
future i3 and i8 owners.
Simply continuing federal
tax incentives for
renewable-energy and
fuel-efficiency standards
past their expiration dates
will do little to lower
overall US energy
consumption through 2040,
the Energy Information
Administration said in an
analysis Tuesday.
Calpine has put in a bid to state
regulators to nearly double the amount of
electricity it produces from its Mankato
natural gas plant.
Houston-based Calpine is one of five
companies seeking permission from the Public
Utilities Commission to meet the state's
increasing power demand, said Dan Wolf,
assistant executive secretary at the PUC.
Arrests of illegal
immigrants crossing into the
United States have nearly
tripled in recent months —
in anticipation of
Congressional efforts to
enact comprehensive
immigration legislation,
border patrol agents told
CBS News Wednesday.
The Chevrolet Volt was under
siege in April, being
outsold by the smaller and
less-expensive Nissan Leaf,
while the twice-as-expensive
Tesla Model S may have
surpassed it, too.
Central Maine Power Co. is
asking state regulators to
approve a new rate plan that
would add roughly $2 a month
to the average home bill
each year for the next five
years.
A coal company has acquired
over 10,000 acres of coal
seams on the Meadow River in
Fayette, Nicholas, and
Greenbrier counties, as well
as the former site of Songer
Whitewater Rafting on U.S.
19 in Fayette County.
The latest studies on solar
geoengineering to tackle
climate change are
reinforcing the case for a
global governance system and
further study before
deployment, as they show
that the approach may have
little effect on preventing
rainfall changes in the
tropics — and may even lead
to widespread drought in
Africa. Several
geoengineering initiatives
plan to tackle climate
change by cutting incoming
sunlight, through methods
such as spreading reflective
aerosols in the
stratosphere.
A new system being developed
at MIT would store excess
energy in concrete spheres
on the sea floor
In our first-ever lab
analysis of ground turkey
bought at retail stores
nationwide, more than half
of the packages of raw
ground meat and patties
tested positive for fecal
bacteria. Some samples
harbored other germs,
including salmonella and
staphylococcus aureus, two
of the leading causes of
foodborne illness in the
U.S. Overall, 90 percent of
the samples had one or more
of the five bacteria for
which we tested.
The U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency must meet
a court-ordered deadline to
issue regulations that clean
up power plant water
pollution, the U.S. Court of
Appeals for the District of
Columbia ruled today. The
decision turns back an
attempt by the utility
industry to avoid the
financial and operational
burdens of the regulations.
-
Tears that are shed due to an emotional
response, such as sadness or extreme
happiness, contain a high concentration
of a chemical linked to stress. One
theory of why you cry when you’re sad is
that it helps your body release some of
these excess stress chemicals, thereby
helping you feel more calm and relaxed
-
According to recent research, higher
heart rate is tied to earlier death,
even in those who exercise regularly
A new documentary suggests
that a former U.S. Army
veteran is alive and living
in a remote village in
Vietnam more than four
decades after he was shot
down and presumed dead.
Earth’s climate heated up
more between 1971 and 2000
than during any other 30
year period in the last
1,400 years, scientists have
found using new regional
temperature reconstructions
covering all continents.
The European Central Bank
cut its key interest rate to
a record low as the
17-nation euro region
struggles to emerge from
recession.
Economic development can lead to
increased biodiversity restoration in
Sub-Saharan Africa, on a similar scale to
its loss due to development, according to a
study.
Biodiversity loss is one of the important
environmental threats that humanity faces,
the study says, and it disproportionately
harms the world's poorest people, who are
less able to adjust to it, as they have
limited access to alternatives then using
natural resources for livelihoods.
The prospects for the United
States to implement a 21st
century gold standard are
rising sharply, according to
economist and author Ralph
Benko.
Coda Automotive, a Los
Angeles-based automaker that
once planned to open a
Columbus battery factory
with 1,000 or more workers,
filed for Chapter 11
bankruptcy yesterday.
The European Parliament
non-binding resolution that
all safety improvements
recommended following stress
on nuclear reactors across
the EU must be carried out
urgently estimates EUR 25bn
in reparations must be paid
for by nuclear operators.
The ongoing discussion
surrounding tax reform
continues to be a topic of
interest and debate
according to survey findings
released today at Ernst &
Young LLP’s Eighth Annual
Domestic Tax Conference in
New York.
Exxon Mobil Corp's near
70-year-old Pegasus oil
pipeline leaked a small
amount of crude into a
residential yard in Ripley
County, Missouri on Tuesday,
a month after the same pipe
spewed thousands of barrels
of crude in Arkansas.
The Mozilla Foundation —
responsible for the Firefox
browser — accuses Britain's
Gamma International Ltd. of
hijacking the Firefox brand
to camouflage Gamma's
electronic espionage
products.
-
Certain foods and beverages can
significantly interfere with your sleep;
alcohol, spicy foods, fatty foods,
coffee and dark chocolate are five such
examples
-
Research suggests that people with the
most food variety in their diets have
the most normal and healthful sleep
The Florida House on Tuesday
rejected attempts to repeal
a controversial state law
that allows utility
companies to charge
customers for nuclear power
plant development in advance
of construction.
The Florida House of
Representatives on Thursday
passed by a vote of 116-2 a
tax incentive package
designed to encourage
companies to buy natural gas
vehicles, according to Ed
Criss, chairman of the
Florida Natural Gas Vehicle
Coalition.
By a 54-41 percent margin,
American voters would get
rid of the sweeping 2010
health care law if given the
option, according to a new
Fox News poll.
“Benghazi is eight months
old, nobody has been
arrested, and the survivors
have never been allowed to
be talked to by the
Congress. This
administration is
investigating itself,”
Graham said Wednesday in an
interview with Fox News’
Sean Hannity.
Kamakura Corporation
reported Thursday that the
Kamakura troubled company
index ended the month of
April at 7.99%, a jump of
0.56% since the end of
March. The index reflects
the percentage of the
Kamakura 31,000 public firm
universe that has a default
probability over 1.00%. An
increase in the index
reflects deteriorating
credit quality. The index
hit an intra-month high of
8.63% on April 15 in the
wake of the tragedy at the
Boston marathon.
A search for evidence in the deadly
Boston Marathon bombings at a landfill has
led to charges against three more people who
are friends of the alleged terrorist.
Authorities, today, revealed that they
recovered a black plastic trash bag at the
Crapo Hill landfill in New Bedford, Mass.,
that contained fireworks emptied of their
gunpowder that authorities believe was used
to make the bombs.
Virtually eliminating the
carbon footprint from Latin
America's power sector by
2050 would require $66
billion in annual
investments, with spending
on renewable energy making
up half that amount,
according to a new report
analyzing full "climate
stabilization" in the
region.
[Hawaii] State lawmakers for
the second consecutive year
failed in the waning days of
the legislative session to
agree on a bill reforming
Hawaii's renewable energy
tax credit law.
Although small
businesses and mid-sized
companies can hardly be
described as bullish in
their economic outlook, new
research from Greenwich
Associates shows new signs
of optimism among this
critical group.
In total, 2,808 reported
outages occurred in 2012,
down from 3,071 reported
outages in 2011. The amount
of people affected decreased
from 41.8 million in 2011 to
25 million last year.
However, the data shows an
upward trend of reported
outages affecting 50,000 or
more people, with 42 in
2009; 52 in 2010; 109 in
2011 and 65 in 2012.
In its post-meeting press release, the
Fed described the U.S. economy as expanding
"at a moderate pace" over the past six
weeks, buoyed by strengthening housing and
labor markets.
Mortgage markets are gaining on the news
Most of the world's largest
companies do not report
their greenhouse gas
emissions fully or correctly
and do not have the data
independently verified, a
study by an environmental
research body showed on
Wednesday.
Two billboards in which images of Native
Americans are used to make a gun rights
argument are causing a stir with some
Colorado residents who say the image is
offensive and insensitive.
The billboards in this northern Colorado
city show three men dressed in traditional
Native American attire and the words "Turn
in your arms. The government will take care
of you."
After six years of
searching, an entomologist
has concluded that three
varieties of butterflies
native to south Florida have
become extinct, nearly
doubling the number of North
American butterflies known
to be gone.
The Nuclear Regulatory
Commission (NRC) said on
Tuesday it will increase
oversight of Exelon Corp's
805-megawatt Three Mile
Island nuclear power plant
in Pennsylvania, to ensure
that safety equipment is
protected from flooding.
The Florida Senate has
passed a bill that attempts,
for the first time, to
address the "early cost
recovery" law passed in 2006
allowing Florida power
companies to place the
financial costs of building
new nuclear reactors on
customers.
The New York State Senate
has unanimously passed
legislation to extend the
NY-Sun Initiative through
2023 and solidify the
state's long-term commitment
to solar energy, indicating
growing support among
lawmakers for comprehensive
solar policy.
A US school has cut a
six-figure sum from its
winter energy bill by
replacing its oil-burning
boiler with woodchip biomass
ones. The switch has reduced
the school's carbon
footprint by between 35 and
45 percent. The boilers are
housed in a brand new
green-roofed building which
has become only the third
LEED-certified power
facility in the US.
Average compensation for
North American-based oil and
gas professionals declined
four percent year-over-year
to $94,722 in 2012,
according to Rigzone, an
online career resource for
oil and gas professionals.
Bellucci Premium supports
the push towards eating
organic as one way to be
environmentally conscious.
Patriot Coal Corp. will run
out of cash early next year
and be forced to sell itself
in pieces if a bankruptcy
judge doesn't approve
proposals to cut union wages
and retiree benefits, the
company's chief executive
told the court on Wednesday.
Israeli President Shimon
Peres warned Pope Francis
Tuesday that the Middle East
is “disintegrating” and that
the pontiff “has an
important role” to play in
bringing peace to the region
and the world.
We knew distrust of government was high.
But a new poll shows that suspicion reaching
new levels.
According to a survey from Fairleigh
Dickinson University, nearly a third of
registered voters -- 29 percent -- believe
an "armed revolution" might be necessary in
the next few years in order to protect
liberties.
Why write about a $249
programmable thermostat?
Because it just may be the
device that finally engages
the public in the idea that
energy can be more than a
commodity and that they can
become active in managing
their energy use. The smart,
attractive, interactive
thermostat from Nest Labs
could turn out to be the
switch that turns the smart
utility on for the average
consumer.
"The evidence is
absolutely consistent with dismemberment and
de-fleshing of this body" - Doug Owsley,
forensic anthropologist
Newly discovered human bones prove the first
permanent English settlers in North America
turned to cannibalism over the cruel winter
of 1609-10, US researchers have said.
It’s natural after an attack
such as the Boston Marathon
bombings to want to ratchet
up security, but Americans
are starting on a “slippery
slope” when they start
allowing more cameras in
public places, claims Sen.
Rand Paul.
“If the
government’s going to use
cameras to watch us they
need to have probable
cause,”..
The largest solar event of
the period was a M1 event.
There are currently 5
numbered sunspot regions on
the disk. Solar
activity is expected to be
low with a chance for
M-class flares on days one,
two, and three (03 May, 04
May, 05 May). The
geomagnetic field is
expected to be at quiet to
unsettled levels on days one
and two (03 May, 04 May) and
quiet to active levels on
day three (05 May).
The stock and bond markets
can rise for another two
years, as the Federal
Reserve maintains its
massive easing program, says
New York University
economist Nouriel Roubini.
But then the trouble
begins. The Fed’s
accommodative policy is
sparking the same problems
that led to the financial
crisis in 2008, he said at
the Milken Institute Global
Conference in Los Angeles
Monday, CNNMoney reports.
Sewage enough to fill 17,000
Olympic-sized pools flowed
into public waterways and
roadways in the months after
Superstorm Sandy laid waste
to the East Coast,
researchers said on Tuesday.
Bee populations have been declining
steadily in recent decades but there is
scientific disagreement over the
contribution of pesticides called
neonicotinoids to falling bee numbers.
Europe is expected to impose a temporary
ban on the pesticides after EU governments
failed on Monday to agree whether or not
their use should be halted.
A poll conducted for the
Sierra Club shows that most
Minnesota Power customers
surveyed support a
"fundamental change" in the
generation of electricity,
away from coal and toward
solar and wind power and
energy efficiency.
A number of environmental
groups joined forces on
Tuesday in a call for the
city of Los Angeles to
increase the amount of
rooftop solar installations
in the city, aiming for 20
percent of all energy by the
year 2020.
Tucson-based solar-energy
developer Solon Corp. has
turned on one of its biggest
solar plants in the state, a
10-megawatt (DC)
photovoltaic plant near
Kingman.
The South Carolina state
House on Wednesday passed a
so-called “nullification”
bill that is declares
President Barack Obama’s
health care reform law to be
“null and void,” and
criminalizes it’s
implementation.
The state's largest power grid says
electricity supplies could be tight during
the hottest days this summer but also said
its longer-term outlook is improving.
In its final summer forecast, the
Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which
serves about 85 percent of the state's
demand, said it could initiate calls for
conservation on the hottest days.
Italy: A New Prime Minister,
But Maybe Not a New Day
Grim Religious Freedom
Report Unlikely to Change US
Policy
Joint US-South Korean
Military Exercise Ends Amid
Ebbing Tensions
Egypt: Morsi Moves Could
Lead to ‘Summer of Flames’
Cybersecurity Threat Likely
to Kill SoftBank’s Bid for
Sprint
South Africa’s ANC
Strengthens Grip During
Crisis
Four Reasons Why Obama Won’t
Close Guantanamo
Is Algeria at Risk of a Late
Arab Spring Uprising?
IMF Loan Delay Putting Egypt
in Danger of Collapse
Argentina: Politics Turning
Toxic with Kirchner Power
Grab
UK Hedge Fund Manager:
Chinese Model is
Unsustainable
Kosovo Agreement Could Bring
Peace to the Balkans,
Finally
Despite Global Slowdown,
'Poor' Countries Adding Jobs
It’s a natural marriage that
is catching on: High-tech
and green-tech are getting
together, giving companies
greater reliability and
cleaner processes while also
allowing alternatives
energies to scale up. The
latest such deal is being
spearheaded by Verizon,
which will invest $100
million in solar panels and
fuel cells.
Turkey is testing blood
samples taken from Syrian
casualties brought over the
border from fighting in
recent days to determine
whether they were victims of
a chemical weapons attack,
local government and health
officials said on Wednesday.
- US consumer confidence jumped 6.2
points to a five-month high of 68.1 in
April 2013 from a reading of 61.9 in
March. Market expectations were for an
April reading of 61.0.
- Despite the improved headline, the
current employment differential
deteriorated to -27.3 from -25.9 in
March because consumers became more
pessimistic about labour market
conditions.
US commercial crude stocks
surged 6.696 million barrels
over the week ended April 26
to hit a record high level
of 395.284 million barrels,
data from the Energy
Information Administration
showed Wednesday.
The Libyan militia group
that the State Department
hired to defend its
embattled diplomatic mission
in Benghazi had clear
al-Qaida sympathies, and had
prominently displayed the
al-Qaida flag on a Facebook
page for months before the
deadly attack.
Natural gas production in
the US Lower-48 states in
February rose to 73.22
Bcf/d, up 1.3%, or 920,000
Mcf/d, from January's
output, the US Energy
Information Administration
said in its monthly gross
production report, released
Tuesday.
- The US trade deficit was smaller
than expected in March 2013 at $38.8
billion from a revised $43.6 billion
(previously was $42.96 billion) in
February. Market expectations had been
for a $42.3 billion deficit.
- The narrowing in the trade balance
in March reflected a $1.7 billion
(-0.9%) decline in exports with imports
slumping by 2.8% or $6.5 billion.
Verizon said on Tuesday it
plans to invest $100 million
in solar power and fuel
cells at 19 facilities in
seven U.S. states to cut its
carbon footprint and make
its operations more
resilient to storms and
other disasters.
Legislation that would allow
the Illinois biggest private
water companies, Illinois
American Water and Aqua
Illinois, to fast-track
takeovers of municipal water
systems and automatically
charge current customers
higher rates to fund those
acquisitions has moved
quickly through Springfield,
Ill. House Bill 1379 has
passed the Illinois House
77-31, and could be voted on
by the Senate as early as
next week.
With income inequality
rising in the United States,
there are two popular
conceptions about which
people make up the
wealthiest one percent of
Americans: that they were
born into wealth or that
they mainly include the CEOs
of the largest public
companies. Both of these are
wrong.