A new virus related to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (Sars) has been found in a patient in Britain who recently visited the Middle East and Pakistan. Officials have confirmed the patient was diagnosed with the coronavirus, which has infected ten people globally and killed five, and is receiving intensive treatment in a Manchester hospital. Britain’s Health Protection Agency (HPA) said in a statement it was providing advice to ensure the British patient was treated appropriately and healthcare staff were protected. ‘Our assessment is that the risk associated with novel coronavirus to the general UK population remains extremely low and the risk to travellers to the Arabian Peninsula and surrounding countries remains very low,’ the HPA said. Sars caused a global alert last September and the new virus makes the victim exhibit similar symptoms, including severe respiratory illness, fever, coughing and breathing difficulties. The bug was identified when the World Health Organisation (WHO) issued an international alert last September saying a virus previously unknown in humans had infected a Qatari man who had recently been in Saudi Arabia. People who have had contact with the patient are also being tracked to check on their health. Coronaviruses are typically spread like other respiratory infections, such as flu but the WHO has said it does not spread easily from person to person.
Biohazard name:
SARS
Biohazard level:
4/4 Hazardous
Biohazard desc.:
Viruses and bacteria that cause severe to fatal disease in humans, and for which vaccines or other treatments are not available, such as Bolivian and Argentine hemorrhagic fevers, H5N1(bird flu), Dengue hemorrhagic fever, Marburg virus, Ebola virus, hantaviruses, Lassa fever, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, and other hemorrhagic or unidentified diseases. When dealing with biological hazards at this level the use of a Hazmat suit and a self-contained oxygen supply is mandatory. The entrance and exit of a Level Four biolab will contain multiple showers, a vacuum room, an ultraviolet light room, autonomous detection system, and other safety precautions designed to destroy all traces of the biohazard. Multiple airlocks are employed and are electronically secured to prevent both doors opening at the same time. All air and water service going to and coming from a Biosafety Level 4 (P4) lab will undergo similar decontamination procedures to eliminate the possibility of an accidental release.
(Reuters) – A new virus from the same family as SARS that sparked a global alert last September has been found in another patient in Britain, health officials said on Monday.
The latest case of infection with the new virus known as a coronavirus brings the total number confirmed globally to 10, of whom five have died.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) said the latest infection was “a sporadic case” and did not alter the WHO’s risk assessment. It added, however, that the new case “does indicate that the virus is persistent”.
The British patient, who recently had traveled to Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, is receiving intensive care treatment in hospital in the city of Manchester, northern England.
The new virus, which the WHO refers to as novel coronavirus or NCoV, shares some of the symptoms of SARS, or Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome – a coronavirus which emerged in China in 2002 and killed about a tenth of the 8,000 people it infected worldwide.
Symptoms include severe respiratory illness, fever, coughing and breathing difficulties.
A woman has died after injecting herself with heroin contaminated with anthrax. An inquest has been opened after Claire Skelton, 42, from Rochester, Kent, died at King’s College Hospital in London on December 9. The cause of death was given as anthrax and intravenous drug abuse. Her death is the third in Britain linked to an outbreak of anthrax among drug users believed to have used contaminated heroin. The Health Protection Agency said 13 cases of anthrax among people who inject drugs have been reported in several European countries since June. Six of the cases have occurred in the UK, including four in England, one in Scotland and one in Wales. Earlier this year, two drug users died in Blackpool after contracting the bacterial infection. The HPA said the source of the infection is presumed to be contaminated heroin. Anthrax is an acute bacterial infection that normally infects humans when they inhale or ingest anthrax spores.
Biohazard name:
Heroin contaminated with antrax
Biohazard level:
4/4 Hazardous
Biohazard desc.:
Viruses and bacteria that cause severe to fatal disease in humans, and for which vaccines or other treatments are not available, such as Bolivian and Argentine hemorrhagic fevers, H5N1(bird flu), Dengue hemorrhagic fever, Marburg virus, Ebola virus, hantaviruses, Lassa fever, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, and other hemorrhagic or unidentified diseases. When dealing with biological hazards at this level the use of a Hazmat suit and a self-contained oxygen supply is mandatory. The entrance and exit of a Level Four biolab will contain multiple showers, a vacuum room, an ultraviolet light room, autonomous detection system, and other safety precautions designed to destroy all traces of the biohazard. Multiple airlocks are employed and are electronically secured to prevent both doors opening at the same time. All air and water service going to and coming from a Biosafety Level 4 (P4) lab will undergo similar decontamination procedures to eliminate the possibility of an accidental release.
The impact of heavy rain is still being felt across Tyne and Wear with disruption to roads and rail services. The Environment Agency issued a number of flood warnings including for the River Wear in Chester le Street, in Durham City, and in its estuary. Northumbria Police said roads were closed because of flooding and standing water affected some others. East Coast Main Line rail services are expected to be disrupted until the weekend because of a landslide. Heavy rain continued to fall across parts of the region, but the wet conditions are expected to ease. Network Rail told the BBC it expected repair work on the East Coast Mail Line would continue until the weekend after damage caused by flooding. An embankment slip at Aycliffe, between Durham and Darlington, damaged 2km (1.2 miles) of overhead line. An embankment slip has also damaged overhead lines at Hartlepool and Dawdon on the East Durham coast. East Coast Trains said it would be running a limited service of three trains an hour. One of the areas affected was Newburn in Newcastle, which was also badly hit in September, forcing the demolition of flats whose foundations were washed away.Newcastle City Council technical director Mick Murphy, said conditions had been “horrendous” over the last few days and had put back work by several days. He said The Winnings area had flooded, but the rock armour – more than 2,000 tonnes of heavy rock which has been put in place over the last few weeks – had worked well and had prevented further problems. Durham County Cricket Club groundsman, David Measer, said: “The water is not coming over the riverbank itself, it is working its way up through any weak point and it’s filling the ground up.” Whitburn Primary School, in South Tyneside, has been closed. Alan Cadas from the Environment Agency warned people to avoid walking through water. “Walking through flood water can be really dangerous if there are manholes which have just popped up underneath, so you could walk through flood water and find there’s a great big hole underneath,” he said. Andrew Greener, from Tanfield Lea in County Durham, said he was concerned about the house he had bought recently. “It should be okay but I’ve moved belongings upstairs to be safe,” he said. “I was speaking to friends as we always hear about bad rain and flooding but this just seems to get worse and worse.”
Latest reports suggest that about 400 properties have been affected in St Asaph, Denbighshire. Denbighshire council says the situation is “stabilising and the rivers have stopped over-topping”. Houses on a new estate at nearby Ruthin were also hit by floods along with homes in Rhuddlan and other villages. The Red Cross says 130 people attended a rest centre in St Asaph Leisure Centre throughout the day and all evacuees have found alternative overnight accommodation. North Wales Fire and Rescue Service have eight fire crews in St Asaph on Tuesday evening with four in Ruthin pumping out homes. Another crew has been sent to Rhuddlan with a volume pump to ensure the road serving Ysbyty Glan Clwyd Hospital, Bodelwyddan, remains open. Welsh-medium Ysgol Glan Clwyd will be closed on Wednesday as parts of the school are being used as an emergency shelter while some roads remain impassable, said the head teacher. And the Bishop of St Asaph, Gregory Cameron, told BBC Radio Wales that an emergency meeting will be held in St Asaph on Wednesday to discuss the clean-up operation. Denbighshire council chief executive Mohammed Mehmet said: “Today has been a difficult day for many people affected by flooding, not only in St Asaph, Ruthin and Rhuddlan, but also in other communities. “Even though we are still in the response stage, work has already started to plan for the recovery phase. Emergency services have been working since the early hours after the river Elwy burst its banks in St Asaph. Severe flood warnings – categorised as a danger to life – are still in place in two stretches of the river, according to the Environment Agency. North Wales Police said the death of the woman – discovered during house-to-house check calls by rescuers – was not thought to be suspicious and an investigation is under way. In some areas of St Asaph, a tiny city with a population of 3,400, water levels reached up to seven feet. On Tuesday evening police said emergency services were continuing to check properties in St Asaph in case any vulnerable people remain in homes in flooded areas.
Emergency workers recovered the body of an elderly woman from her flooded house, one of 500 local properties damaged or evacuated. Photograph: Geoff Abbott/Corbis
Flooding in Britain has claimed a fourth life and brought misery to hundreds more homes, as torrential rain moves away into the North Sea leaving the worst insurance bills for five years in its wake.
Firefighters in the devastated centre of St Asaph, the small but historic north Wales community which was given city status by the Queen to mark her Diamond Jubilee, recovered the body of an elderly woman from her flooded house, one of 500 local properties damaged or evacuated.
The tragedy follows drownings in the West Country earlier in three days of downpours and floods which have seen the number of damaged houses top the 1100 mark. Emergency teams remain on duty at Malton and Norton in North Yorkshire, where six pumps are keeping the river Derwent at bay, and in York where the river Ouse is expected to peak on the morning of Wednesday 28 November.
The historic city is used to flooding in streets beside the river, which bisects the walled core, but a complex defence system involving the smaller river Foss holds all but exceptionally high water at bay. Extra sandbags were deployed by the York Flood Group, an emergency command structure convened when the Ouse rises by over four metres for more than a day.
The Environment Agency repeated warnings elsewhere that the break-up of solid downpours into fragmented showers did not mean that the threat of flooding was over. On Tuesday there were 181 flood warnings and 216 flood alerts covering the whole of England, with the highest total (111) in the Midlands and the smallest (6) in the usually damp north west which this time lay just to the north of the path of the wet fronts. Rising levels in the river Severn and the Thames from Oxford downstream have emergency teams on standby.
John Curtin, Environment Agency head of incident management said: “Further flooding is expected in the next few days and communities across the country, particularly in north east England, north Wales and Northamptonshire, are urged to remain especially vigilant.”
The heaviest insurance bill since 2007 has been estimated by the accountancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) which suggests that damage from flooding so far this year is likely to reach £1bn, compared with losses of £3bn in 2007 when successive severe floods across England and Wales forced thousands of people from their homes.
Mohammad Khan, insurance partner at PwC, said the period from April to June was the wettest since records began and insurance losses from the flooding were then estimated at £500m. Using summer flood damage as a proxy to the recent flooding across the UK, he estimates the total cost this year to now add up to around £1bn.
Since the 2007 floods, the Environment Agency has become more active and more people have signed up to its text message alerts, meaning they are better prepared when the worst weather hits.
But talks between the government and the industry have hit a deadlock. The ABI called on the government to do its bit to ensure affordable flood insurance for high-risk households, following the government’s refusal to provide a temporary overdraft facility to a proposed not-for-profit special insurance fund for 200,000 high-risk households. This would be used to pay claims if there were 2007-style floods in the early years of the scheme before it had built up its reserves.
“No country in the world has a free market for flood insurance with high levels of affordable cover without some form of government involvement,” said the ABI’s director general Nick Starling.
The prime minister, David Cameron, visited the village of Buckfastleigh in Devon, which suffered flash flooding after torrential rain at the weekend.
He said: “It is obviously very traumatic when communities are hit by flooding like this but what I found are people are incredibly steadfast and have behaved incredibly bravely at handling the flood and now we need to help them with the recovery.
“We have to make sure their insurance pays out, make sure the Environment Agency puts in place good flood defences, make sure there are better warning schemes. There are always lessons to learn and I wanted to come here and hear it for myself.”
He defended the coalition government’s record on flood defences in spite of cuts at the Environment Agency overall and in the flood budget specifically. He said: “We are spending over £2 billion on flood defences over the current four-year period, which is 6% less than was spent over the previous four years. As well as that, we are actually encouraging private and other money into flood defences and making sure they are more efficient as we build them. I am convinced we are going to provide flood defences for another extra 145,000 homes over the period ahead.”
The Environment Agency said that defences had generally held up well although unusual conditions outwitted some, especially the back-up of drains from land saturated by one of the wettest summers on record. This caused flooding to three properties in Malton where £9.3 million defences finished in 2002, two years after disastrous flooding swamped 400 homes, have generally proved effective.
Transport disruption also defied the emergency services’ best efforts with standing water from the sheer scale and persistence of the rainfall bringing major roads and rail services to a halt. The East Coast mainline is getting back to normal after almost a day’s breakdown of services between London, York and Scotland and the A1M, whose three day closure after flooding in September cost the economy a estimated £250 million, was only briefly shut in one direction at Catterick in North Yorkshire during the worst of the weather.
A quake measuring magnitude 6.0 hit off the Solomon Islands today, but Australian seismologists said there was little risk of a tsunami.
The US Geological Survey put the quake at 6.0-magnitude some 272 kilometres west-northwest of the capital Honiara. With a depth of about 9 kilometres, it was about 112 kilometres southeast of the western city of Gizo.
Geoscience Australia measured the quake at about 6.2-magnitude but said it was unlikely to create a tsunami or cause serious damage in the capital.
“It’s just off the plate boundary so it’s a normal-sized earthquake and positioning for the area,” seismologist Hugh Glanville told AFP.
“It’s not too close to Honiara. There’s a local city with a population of about 6,000 or so that might get a bit of damage,” he said in reference to Gizo.
“But the majority of the population is a bit too far away to suffer more than a bit of shaking. And the population in the area is pretty sparse really.”
Glanville also said the quake was too small to generate a tsunami.
“Generally a local tsunami starts at about 6.5 (magnitude). It’s always possible, but it’s just extremely rare that it would generate a tsunami,” he said.
“It’s just one of the plate boundary earthquakes along the Ring of Fire that normally happens in this area.”
The Solomon Islands form part of the Ring of Fire, a zone of tectonic activity around the Pacific Ocean that is subject to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.
In 2007 a tsunami following an 8.1-magnitude earthquake killed at least 52 people in the Solomons and left thousands homeless.
The San Andreas, Calaveras, and Hayward fault lines -which run underneath Silicon Valley – could set off tremors and aftershocks globally, according to a new study.
Researchers at UC Berkeley and the U.S. Geological Survey found that fault lines of the “strike-slip” type, where plates of land slide past each other, were more likely to set off the worldwide aftershocks.
As an example, the researchers found the 8.6 earthquake in Indonesia this April set off 16 earthquakes with a magnitude of 5.5 or greater within days.
Not only could these “strike slip” faults like the San Andreas, Calaveras, and Hayward faults set off worldwide aftershocks, but the researchers indicate the faults could also be set off if another earthquake’s tremors struck when the fault was ready to rupture.
However, the study indicates a quake powerful enough to do that only happens once every 50 years or so.
Scientists document an episode in the breakup of the Indo-Australian plate into two pieces, an epic process that began roughly 50 million years ago and isn’t done yet.
A woman and her baby evacuate to higher ground after a strong earthquake in Sumatra in April. (Heri Juanda / Associated Press / April 11, 2012)
By Monte Morin, Los Angeles Times
Planet Earth may be 4.5 billion years old, but that doesn’t mean it can’t serve up a shattering surprise now and again.
Such was the case on April 11 when two massive earthquakes erupted beneath the Indian Ocean off the coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra, far from the usual danger zones. Now scientists say the seafloor ruptures are part of a long suspected, yet never before observed, event: the slow-motion splitting of a vast tectonic plate.
The first of the quakes, a magnitude 8.7, was 20 times more powerful than California’s long anticipated “big one” and tore a complex network of faults deep in the ocean floor. The violence also triggered unusually large aftershocks thousands of miles away, including four off North America’s western coast.
“It was jaw-dropping,” said Thorne Lay, a professor of Earth and planetary sciences at UC Santa Cruz. “It was like nothing we’d ever seen.”
At first, Lay wondered whether the computer code he used to analyze earthquakes was wrong. Eventually, he and other scientists realized that they had documented the breakup of the Indo-Australian plate into two pieces, an epic process that began roughly 50 million years ago and will continue for tens of millions more. Lay and other scientists reported their findings online Wednesday in the journal Nature.
Most great earthquakes occur along plate borders, where one plate dives beneath the adjoining plate and sinks deep into Earth’s mantle, a process called subduction. The April 11 quakes, however, occurred in the middle of the plate and involved a number of strike-slip faults, meaning the ground on one side of the fault moves horizontally past ground on the other side.
Scientists say the 8.7 main shock broke four faults. The quake lasted 2 minutes and 40 seconds — most last just seconds — and was followed by a second main shock, of magnitude 8.2, two hours later.
Unlike the magnitude 9.1 temblor that struck in the same region on Dec. 26, 2004, and created a deadly tsunami, the April 11 quakes did not cause similar destruction. That’s because horizontally moving strike-slip faults do not induce the massive, vertical displacement of water that thrust faults do on the borders of plates.
The type of interplate faults involved in the Sumatran quakes are the result of monumental forces, some of which drove the land mass of India into Asia millions of years ago and lifted the Himalayan Mountains. As the Indo-Australian plate continues to slide northwest, the western portion of the plate, where India is, has been grinding against and underneath Asia. But the eastern portion of the plate, which contains Australia, keeps on moving without the same obstruction. That difference creates squeezing pressure in the area where the quakes occurred.
The study authors say that over time, as more quakes occur and new ruptures appear, the cracks will eventually coalesce into a single fissure.
“This is part of the messy business of breaking up a plate,” said University of Utah seismologist Keith Koper, senior author of one of the studies. “Most likely it will take thousands of similar large quakes for that to happen.”
The quakes were also notable for triggering powerful aftershocks thousands of miles away. Though major quakes have been known to trigger aftershocks at great distance, they are usually less than 5.5 in magnitude. The April earthquakes triggered 11 aftershocks that measured 5.5 or greater in the six days that followed, including a magnitude 7. Remote shocks were felt 6,000 to 12,000 miles from the main quakes.
Fred Pollitz, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, Calif., and lead author of one of the studies, said the quakes were extremely effective in transmitting seismic wave radiation around the world. Though Pollitz said the magnitude of the larger Sumatran quake is No. 10 on the list of quakes since 1900, no other temblor has triggered so many strong aftershocks so far away.
“It’s the most powerful earthquake ever in terms of capability of putting stress on other fault zones around the world,” he said.
Pollitz said the quakes were likely to teach seismologists about the physics of earthquakes, particularly those along strike-slip faults. That knowledge, he said, would certainly apply to California’s San Andreas fault, which is also a strike-slip fault.
Lay said that the Sumatran quakes were most surprising in that they were completely unanticipated by seismologists and that he did not expect the event to repeat any time soon.
This map of the Indian Ocean region shows boundaries of Earth’s tectonic plates in the area, and the epicenters (red stars) of two great earthquakes that happened April 11, 2012. A new study from the University of Utah and University of California, Santa Cruz, says the main shock measured 8.7 in magnitude, about 40 times larger than the previous estimate of 8.6. An 8.2-magnitude quake followed two hours later.The scientists explain how at least four faults ruptured during the 8.7 main shock, and how both great quakes are likely part of the breakup of the Indo-Australian Plate into separate subplates. The northeastward-moving plate is breaking up over scores of millions of years because the western part of the plate is bumping into Asia and slowing down, while the eastern part is sliding more easily beneath Sumatra and the Sunda plate. Credit: Keith Koper, University of Utah Seismograph Stations.
Seismologists have known for years that the Indo-Australian plate of Earth’s crust is slowly breaking apart, but they saw it in action last April when at least four faults broke in a magnitude-8.7 earthquake that may be the largest of its type ever recorded.
The great Indian Ocean quake of April 11, 2012 previously was reported as 8.6 magnitude, and the new estimate means the quake was 40 percent larger than had been believed, scientists from the University of Utah and University of California, Santa Cruz, report in the Sept. 27 issue of the journal Nature.
The quake was caused by at least four undersea fault ruptures southwest of Sumatra, Indonesia, within a 2-minute, 40-second period. It killed at least two people, and eight others died from heart attacks. The quake was felt from India to Australia, including throughout South Asia and Southeast Asia.
If the four ruptures were considered separate quakes, their magnitudes would have been 8.5, 7.9, 8.3 and 7.8 on the “moment magnitude” scale used to measure the largest quakes, the scientists report.
The 8.7 main shock broke three faults that were parallel but offset from each other – known as en echelon faults – and a fourth fault that was perpendicular to and crossed the first fault.
The new study concludes that the magnitude-8.7 quake and an 8.2 quake two hours later were part of the breakup of the Indian and Australian subplates along a yet-unclear boundary beneath the Indian Ocean west of Sumatra and southeast of India – a process that started roughly 50 million years ago and that will continue for millions more.
“We’ve never seen an earthquake like this,” says study co-author Keith Koper, an associate professor geophysics and director of the University of Utah Seismograph Stations.
“This is part of the messy business of breaking up a plate. … This is a geologic process. It will take millions of years to form a new plate boundary and, most likely, it will take thousands of similar large quakes for that to happen.”
All four faults that broke in the 8.7 quake and the fifth fault that ruptured in the 8.2 quake were strike-slip faults, meaning ground on one side of the fault moves horizontally past ground on the other side.
The great quake of last April 11 “is possibly the largest strike-slip earthquake ever seismically recorded,” although a similar size quake in Tibet in 1950 was of an unknown type, according to the new study, which was led by two University of California, Santa Cruz, seismologists: graduate student Han Yue and Thorne Lay, a professor of Earth and planetary sciences. The National Science Foundation funded the study.
The 8.7 jolt also “is probably the largest intraplate [within a single tectonic plate of Earth's crust] ever seismically recorded,” Lay, Yue and Koper add. Most of Earth’s earthquakes occur at existing plate boundaries.
The researchers cannot be certain the April great quake was the largest intraplate quake or the largest strike-slip quake because “we are comparing it against historic earthquakes long before we had modern seismometers,” says Koper.
Why the Great Quake Didn’t Unleash Major Tsunamis Koper says the 2012 quakes likely were triggered, at least in part, by changes in crustal stresses caused by the magnitude-9.1 Sumatra-Andaman earthquake of Dec. 26, 2004 – a jolt that generated massive tsunamis that killed most of the 228,000 victims in the Indian Ocean region.
The fact the 8.7 and 8.2 quakes were generated by horizontal movements along seafloor strike-slip faults – not by vertical motion along thrust faults – explains why they didn’t generate major tsunamis. The 8.7 quake caused small tsunamis, the largest of which measured about 12 inches in height at Meulaboh, Indonesia, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
Without major tsunamis, the great earthquake caused “very little damage and death, especially for this size of an earthquake, because it happened in the ocean and away from coastlines,” and on strike-slip faults, says Koper.
The researchers studied the quake using a variety of methods to analyze the seismic waves it generated. Because the same data can be interpreted in various ways, Koper says it is conceivable that more than four fault segments broke during the 8.7 quake – conceivably five or even six – although four fault ruptures is most likely.
Breaking Up is Hard to Do The Indo-Australian plate is breaking into two or perhaps three pieces (some believe a Capricorn subplate is separating from the west side of the Indian subplate). The magnitude-8.7 and 8.2 great quakes on April 11 occurred over a broad area where the India and Australian subplates are being sheared apart.
“What we’re seeing here is the Indo-Australian plate fragmenting into two separate plates,” says Lay.
The breakup of the northeast-moving Indo-Australian plate is happening because it is colliding with Asia in the northwest, which slows down the western part of the plate, while the eastern part of the plate continues moving more easily by diving or “subducting” under the island of Sumatra to the northeast. The subduction zone off Sumatra caused the catastrophic 2004 magnitude-9.1 quake and tsunami.
Seismic analysis shows the April 11 quakes “involve rupture of a very complex network of faults, for which we have no documented precedent in recorded seismic history,” the researchers write.
The analysis revealed this sequence for the faults ruptures that generated the 8.7 quake, and the estimated fault rupture lengths and slippage amounts:
+ The quake began with the 50-second rupture of a fault extending west-northwest to east-southeast, with an epicenter a few hundred miles southwest of Sumatra. The fault ruptured along a roughly 90-mile length, breaking “bilaterally” both west-northwestward and east-southeastward, and also at least 30 miles deep, “almost ripping through the whole plate,” Koper says. The seafloor on one side of the fault slipped about 100 feet past the seafloor on the fault’s other side.
+ The second fault, which slipped about 25 feet, began to rupture 40 seconds after the quake began. This rupture extended an estimated 60 miles to 120 miles north-northeast to south-southwest – perpendicular to the first fault and crossing it.
+ The third fault was parallel to the first fault and about 90 to the miles southwest of it. It started breaking 70 seconds after the quake began and ruptured along a length of about 90 miles. This fault slipped about 70 feet.
+ The fourth fault paralleled the first and third faults, but was to the northwest of both of them. It began to rupture 145 seconds after the quake began and continued to do so for 15 seconds until the quake ended after a total time of 2 minutes and 40 seconds. The fault rupture was roughly 30 miles to 60 miles long. The ground on one side of this fault slipped about 20 feet past ground on the other side.
A volcano has erupted on Indonesia’s Sumatra island, spewing thick grey smoke up to 1.5 kilometres into the sky.
Monitoring official Suparno says Mount Marapi’s eruption on Wednesday is its strongest since August last year, when its status was raised to level three out of four.
Suparno, who uses one name, says there is no plan for an evacuation because the nearest villages are far beyond the danger zone of three kilometres from the crater.
Marapi is among about 129 active volcanos in Indonesia, which is located on the Pacific Ring of Fire, an arc of volcanos and fault lines encircling the Pacific Basin.
Its last major eruption in 1992 killed a climber and injured several others, including two American tourists.
A volcano on the border of China and North Korea is showing signs of increasing activity and could erupt in the next few decades, Chinese researchers say. A massive eruption of Changbaishan around 1,100 years ago spread ash and volcanic gases for 30 miles and left a 3-mile-wide crater atop the volcano, scientists said. Three smaller eruptions have occurred since then, the most recent in 1903, they said. Seismic activity, ground deformation and gas emissions recorded in a period of heightened activity from 2002 to 2006 suggests the magma chamber beneath the volcano is growing. This activity suggests an explosion could occur in the next couple of decades, researchers said. “We need to upgrade our current monitoring system in order to be able to meet the need for the early warning system for Changbaishan,” Jiandong Xu, a vulcanologist at the China Earthquake Administration in Beijing. Of the dozen or so volcanoes located in mainland China Changbaishan is the most likely to experience an eruption with potential catastrophic effects, Xu said.
A volcano has erupted on Indonesia’s Sumatra island, spewing thick grey smoke up to 1.5 kilometres into the sky. Monitoring official Suparno says Mount Marapi’s eruption on Wednesday is its strongest since August last year, when its status was raised to level three out of four. Suparno, who uses one name, says there is no plan for an evacuation because the nearest villages are far beyond the danger zone of three kilometres from the crater.
27.09.2012
Volcano Eruption
Mexico
States of Puebla and Mexico, [Popocatepetl Volcano]
At least 26 eruptions accompanied by steam and gas, as well as a volcano tectonic quake were registered as a consequence of the Mexican volcano Popocatépetl activity during the last hours, it was reported Tuesday. The National Center of Disaster Prevention (Cenapred) said eruptions were of low and medium intensity with no ash expulsion in any of them. According to the institution, the volcano tectonic quake was registered at 11.54 local time (16:54 GMT). At this moment, the alert light of volcano activity remains yellow phase 2 and the surrounding population to keep informed as to alerts on the activity of the volcano also known as Don Goyo. Traffic between Santiago Xalitzintla and San Pedro Nexapa, via the Cortes passage, is under control. The Popo is located at the center of the country, in the territorial limits of the Morelos, Puebla and Mexico states. Located 55 kilometers Southeast of the Federal District, the Popocatépetl is the second highest volcano in Mexico, with a maximum height of five thousand 458 meters above sea level, only second to the Pico de Orizaba (Veracruz) with five thousand 610 meters.
Taiwan on Thursday issued a warning over a strong typhoon approaching the island which could bring torrential rains and trigger landslides, a month after another heavy storm left six dead.
Residents in the north and east of the island were asked to take precautions against Typhoon Jelawat which is gaining momentum and approaching the island, the Central Weather Bureau said in a statement.
As of 0900 GMT, Jelawat was 380 kilometres (236 miles) southeast of the island’s southern-most tip.
With a radius of 250 kilometres and packing winds of up to 191 kilometres an hour, the typhoon was moving north-northwest at 14 kilometres per hour.
Typhoon Saola pounded Taiwan with fierce winds and torrential rain in August that left six people dead and forced nearly the entire island to shut down.
Britain’s most severe September storms for 30 years flooded homes and businesses in the historic city of York on Thursday and threatened chaos for much of northern England.
Residents took to boats to navigate the picturesque streets of the city dating from Roman times but officials said flood defences would cope as the River Ouse reached near record levels, three metres (10 feet) higher than normal.
City of York Council insisted the centre was “very much open for business” despite 80 properties being flooded while defences in the nearby village of Cawood were bolstered overnight by 4,000 sandbags.
“Loads of staff have been working through the night to protect the city,” said Sally Burns from the council, who said experts believed the river levels had peaked.
“We need to be careful and make sure we are giving (sandbags) to the people who are a priority, we can see on the monitors where the problems are.”
The Met Office issued more than 50 flood warnings — indicating flooding is expected — and 80 flood alerts – meaning flooding is possible — in England and Wales.
Further rain was forecast for Thursday, putting thousands of home in northern England at risk.
In Newburn, northeast England, a four-storey block of flats teetered on the brink of collapse after floodwaters destroyed its foundations.
Police arrested a man and a woman in connection with the looting of �20,000 ($32,300, 25,000 euros) worth of bicycles from a nearby shop.
Elsewhere, police were investigating the discovery of two bodies on the banks of the swollen River Clywedog in north Wales.
The body of a 27-year-old woman was found on Wednesday and the second body, believed to be male, was discovered on Thursday. Police believe they are linked.
An 11-year-old boy was fighting for his life after being struck by lightning in storms in Swindon, southwest England.
The storms have been caused by an unusually deep area of low pressure but conditions are expected to improve over the next 24 hours.
A family that fled to Tonga’s main island Tongatapu after the devastating tsunami hit the northern island of Nuiatoputapu three years ago had its house destroyed by a tornado on Wednesday. The house in the village of Makaunga was wrecked but no one was hurt. Radio Tonga says the family is now living in tents provided by the Red Cross. The town officer, Siosifa Lamipeti, says the tornado also damaged five power poles affecting supply for about 24 hours. He says there was minor damage to four other houses.
Bas-Congo virus after the province where it was found just west of Kinshasa, the teeming capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The discovery was announced today in the journal PLoS Pathogens. So far only three people in the remote village of Mangala are known to have contracted Bas-Congo hemorrhagic fever, two of whom died. One was a health care worker who cared for the other two villagers, which means it can apparently be transmitted from person to person, although no one knows how easily. But the small number of known cases is actually one of the important things about this finding. It signifies that scientists may have found an emerging disease very soon after it made its jump from whatever species it came from into humans. We’ll come back to its most likely origins a little later. The reason for thinking Bas-Congo only recently began infecting humans is that researchers have run blood tests on people throughout the DRC and found no evidence of antibodies that would indicate any of them has been exposed to the new virus. “It doesn’t appear to be widespread throughout the Congo,” study co-author Charles Chiu of the University of California San Francisco told Shots. He says the team is planning to do more blood tests on people in the DRC and neighboring countries, such as Congo-Brazzaville right next to Bas-Congo province. “I would say we caught it fairly quickly,” said another study author, Joseph Fair, in a telephone interview from the other side of the DRC, where he’s helping to track down the origin of an ongoing outbreak of Ebola hemorrhagic fever that has so far afflicted 51 people and killed 20.
“This wasn’t HIV, where we’re 15 years into a pandemic before we actually find that we have a pandemic,” says Fair, who’s with a group called Metabiota that contracts with governments and health agencies to track disease outbreaks. The three known cases of Bas-Congo fever actually occurred three years ago. But tissue samples from the victims languished in a laboratory freezer in Kinshasa until an astute doctor called the cases to Fair’s attention. That time lag, along with the inability to keep some tissue samples from thawing out, has hampered the researchers’ ability to track the virus through other possible cases in Mangala village. There are some other striking things about the new virus. It doesn’t belong to any of the four families of previously known hemorrhagic viruses – Arenaviridae, Bunyaviridae, Filoviridae and Flaviviridae. These families harbor such notorious bugs as Ebola, Marburg, Lassa fever, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, dengue fever and Rift Valley Fever. Instead, Bas-Congo belongs to the Rhabdovirus family, which has never been known to include human hemorrhagic fever viruses, although it does contain one that affects fish. “That in itself is astonishing,” Chiu says, “but even within the rhabdovirus family, it’s very divergent.” That is, it doesn’t resemble any other rhabdovirus.
Biohazard name:
Bas-Congo hemorrhagic fever
Biohazard level:
4/4 Hazardous
Biohazard desc.:
Viruses and bacteria that cause severe to fatal disease in humans, and for which vaccines or other treatments are not available, such as Bolivian and Argentine hemorrhagic fevers, H5N1(bird flu), Dengue hemorrhagic fever, Marburg virus, Ebola virus, hantaviruses, Lassa fever, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, and other hemorrhagic or unidentified diseases. When dealing with biological hazards at this level the use of a Hazmat suit and a self-contained oxygen supply is mandatory. The entrance and exit of a Level Four biolab will contain multiple showers, a vacuum room, an ultraviolet light room, autonomous detection system, and other safety precautions designed to destroy all traces of the biohazard. Multiple airlocks are employed and are electronically secured to prevent both doors opening at the same time. All air and water service going to and coming from a Biosafety Level 4 (P4) lab will undergo similar decontamination procedures to eliminate the possibility of an accidental release.
Global grain production is expected to reach a record high of 2.4 billion tons in 2012, an increase of 1 percent from 2011 levels, according to new research conducted by the Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet project (www.worldwatch.org) for the Institute’s Vital Signs Online service.
According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the production of grain for animal feed is growing the fastest – a 2.1 percent increase from 2011. Grain for direct human consumption grew 1.1 percent from 2011, write report authors Danielle Nierenberg and Katie Spoden.
In 2011, the amount of grain used for food totaled 571 million tons, with India consuming 89 million tons, China 87 million tons, and the United States 28 million tons, according to the International Grains Council.
The world relies heavily on wheat, maize (corn), and rice for daily sustenance: of the 50,000 edible plants in the world, these three grains account for two-thirds of global food energy intake. Grains provide the majority of calories in diets worldwide, ranging from a 23 percent share in the United States to 60 percent in Asia and 62 percent in North Africa.
Maize production in the United States – the largest producer – was expected to reach a record 345 million tons in 2012; however, drought in the Great Plains has altered this estimate severely. Maize yields for the 2012-13 growing season are now expected to decrease 13 percent from 2011 production, for a total production of 274.3 million tons.
The reliance on grain crops for food security is threatened by more-extreme climatic events, especially droughts and floods. According to the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Risk Reduction, the World Food Programme, and Oxfam International, some 375 million people will be affected by climate change-related disasters by 2015.
By 2050, the FAO notes, 10-20 percent more people will be subject to hunger based on the changing climate’s effects on agriculture, and 24 million more children are expected to be malnourished – 21 percent more than if there were no climate change.
“The relationship between food security, grain production, and climate change is especially important in 2012,” said Nierenberg, a Worldwatch senior researcher and Nourishing the Planet project director.
“The recent drought affecting the United States and the rest of the world show the need to reduce price volatility, move away from fossil fuel-based agriculture, and recognize the importance of women farmers to increase resilience to climate change.”
The drought taking place in the Midwest and Great Plains of the United States is considered the country’s worst in 50 years, coming close to matching the late-1930s Dust Bowl.
The drought is expected to cost many billions of dollars and could top the list as one of the most expensive weather-related disasters in U.S. history. The global market will be most affected by this drought, as so much of the developing world relies on U.S. corn and soybean production.
Food prices have already begun to increase due to lower yields, and price fluctuations will inevitably affect food security around the globe.
Further highlights from the report:
+ The FAO expects global maize production to increase 4.1 percent from 2011, reaching an estimated 916 million tons in 2012.
+ Global rice production achieved an all-time high of 480 million tons in 2011, a 2.6 percent increase from 2010.
+ World wheat production is projected to drop to 675.1 million tons in 2012, down 3.6 percent from 2011, with the largest declines in feed and biofuel utilization.
+ Since 1961, grain production has increased 269 percent and grain yield has increased 157 percent, while the grain harvest area has increased only 25 percent.
+ This is due largely to the Green Revolution and the introduction of high-yielding grain varieties.
High biodiversity acts as an insurance policy for nature and society alike as it increases the likelihood that at least some species will be sufficiently resilient to sustain important functions such as water purification and crop pollination in a changing environment.
“It’s the same principle as an investment portfolio – you’d be mad to put all your eggs in one basket,” says researcher Johan Eklof.
Experiments with eelgrass meadows in shallow inlets on the west coast of Sweden are now showing that climate change can exacerbate the negative effects of losing sensitive species, and that the insurance effect of biodiversity may be weaker than what we typically assume.
Eelgrass meadows in shallow inlets are important nursery habitats for cod, for example. Since the early 1980s the prevalence of eelgrass has fallen dramatically along the Bohuslan coast.
This is thought to be due partly to eutrophication, which favours mats of filamentous “nuisance” algae which shade and suffocate the eelgrass, and partly to the loss of cod, which has resulted in a huge increase in numbers of smaller predatory fish.
These predatory fish, in turn, reduce numbers of Grammarus locusta, herbivorous crustaceans which are effective grazers that normally control the filamentous algae.
This type of cascade effect has become increasingly common both onshore and off as many types of predator have been wiped out by hunting or fishing. Worryingly, theory and observations would indicate that these effects could magnify the effects of global warming, which favours heat-tolerant but grazing-sensitive plants such as filamentous algae.
At the Sven Loven Centre for Marine Sciences’ Kristineberg research station on Gullmarsfjorden, researchers from the University of Gothenburg’s Department of Biology and Environmental Sciences have developed miniature ecosystems in outdoor aquariums and have been investigating how future ocean warming and ocean acidification could affect the balance between eelgrass and filamentous algae.
The effects were unexpectedly clear and unambiguous: it was the diversity of algal herbivores that determined the extent to which the ecosystem was affected by warming and acidification.
“High diversity meant that neither warming nor acidification had any real effect as the algae were eaten before they managed to grow and shade the eelgrass,” says researcher and biologist Johan Eklof, who headed up the study.
“But when we simultaneously simulated the effects of fishing and removed the effective but vulnerable herbivor Grammarus locusta, the algae took over the ecosystem – especially in the warmer conditions.”
The researchers believe that we should be concerned about the results.
“Most management is based on the assumption that we afford to lose the most sensitive species because other, more resilient species will take their place,” says Johan Eklof. “But this may not be the case with future climate changes, as it can reduce the net efficiency of the resilient species – without directly affecting them.”
However, the researchers are also careful to point out that there is still hope if society does decide to take action.
“If we protect the local biodiversity we still have, and restore the diversity we’ve lost, by for example protecting predatory fish stocks in coastal areas and reducing nutrient loading, then we’ll probably be able to increase the ecosystems’ resilience to climate change.”
Nine people were taken to the hospital following a chemical spill at West Knox Co. Veteran’s Home. All of the victims were suffering from respiratory problems, one of them was being treated as an emergency. Authorities called it a concentrated chlorine spill. They said it happened shortly after 9:30 a.m. at Ben Atchley State Veterans’ Home in Karns. The home was evacuated and the scene is being treated as a hazmat situation.
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Children drinking from around half the UK’s private water supplies are almost five times more likely to pick up stomach infections – according to research from the University of East Anglia (UEA). Research published in the journal PLOS ONE shows children under 10 who drink from contaminated supplies are suffering around five bouts of sickness or diarrhoea a year.
This figure is similar to the rates of infection among children in the developing world.
Around 1 per cent of the UK population are served by private supplies – such as wells and boreholes. In Europe the number is as much as one in 10. And many more drink from such water supplies as visitors and while on holiday.
But half of all private water supplies in the UK do not meet water safety regulations. And while water-borne bacteria does not appear to affect adults and older children, the under 10s are particularly at risk of picking up stomach infections.
Researchers investigated whether people drinking from contaminated supplies are more at risk than those drinking from supplies that comply with safety standards – and particularly whether children are more susceptible to disease.
They studied more than 600 consumers in Norfolk, Suffolk and Herefordshire for 12 weeks. Those surveyed kept a diary of symptoms including diarrhoea, vomiting, stomach pains, nausea, headache, and fever.
They also collected samples of drinking water from each household which were tested for the faecal bacteria E. coli, Coliform and Enterococci.
Prof Paul Hunter, from UEA’s Norwich Medical School, said: “We found a particularly high incidence of diarrhoea in children under 10 in homes provided by water which was contaminated with bacteria. The results showed that these children would suffer almost five incidents a year – a risk of illness similar to that reported in developing countries.
“This is a serious concern. As well as children being more at risk, they also suffer the most from an episode of diarrhoea – with greater rates of hospitalization and higher mortality rates.
“It is very important that households reliant on private water supplies, where children under 10 live or visit, are identified and frequently tested for pollution. Our recommendation to parents is to either ensure adequate well-maintained treatment such as chlorination or filtration, or provide alternate sources such as drinking bottled water.”
‘Risk of infectious intestinal disease in consumers drinking from private water supplies: A prospective cohort study’ is published by the journal PLOS ONE.
32 people have been arrested in Libya in connection with recent bomb attacks in the capital. All those detained are said to belong to a network of loyalists of the country’s former leader Muammar Gaddafi and have reportedly been receiving financial backing from abroad. RT talks to political analyst and Middle East consultant Peter Eyre.
The United Nations has issued a 102-page report, alleging that both sides on the Syrian conflict have carried out numerous “war crimes.” Now the trouble is in danger of spreading into Lebanon. The leader of Lebanon’s Progressive Socialist Party, Walid Jumblatt, has said that this could all herald the unraveling of Sykes-Picot, a reference to the secret agreement between the British and the French in 1919 that was meant to define their spheres of influence and control in the Middle East during World War I.
Separately, Indians celebrated on Wednesday the 65th anniversary of their country’s independence from Britain. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said the country would send a rocket to Mars next year. India has one of the fastest growing economies in the world even if many of its people do not have a safe drinking water. In 2008, India sent a successful probe to the moon and detected evidence of water on the lunar surface for the first time. “A note to Mr. Singh, providing reliable water for your own people at home might be a better achievement,” said George Galloway.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Iran could soon sign a deal on the UN agency investigating suspected weapons activities connected to the country’s nuclear programme.
Yukiya Amano, the head of the UN nuclear watchdog, said on Tuesday that he reached an agreement with Iran’s government after talks in Tehran, but failed to seal the deal because of “remaining, unspecified differences”.
Al Jazeera’s Imran Khan reports from Tehran, Iran.
BEIJING, May 21 (Xinhua) — China on Monday voiced its opposition to a defense spending bill passed last week by the U.S. House of Representatives that pushed for sales of F-16 jets to Taiwan.
“We have taken note of the bill,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei at a news briefing, adding that China firmly opposes U.S. lawmakers’ exaggeration of China’s military development and push for arms sales to Taiwan.
The House of Representatives voted Friday to require the United States to sell F-16 C/D fighter-jets to Taiwan.
“China sticks to the path of peaceful development,” said the spokesman, adding it is baseless and irresponsible for anyone to play up the “China threat theory.”
“To push for weapons sales to Taiwan severely violates the one-China policy and the three joint communiques between China and the United States, which severely interferes with China’s internal affairs,” Hong said.
During the briefing, Hong urged “some U.S. lawmakers” to get rid of their Cold War mentality and stop pushing for arms sales to Taiwan and all wrongdoings of interfering with China’s internal affairs.
“(They should) do more to help China-U.S. relations and the mutual trust between the two nations, not the contrary,” he added.
Europe’s food safety agency EFSA on Monday rejected the grounds for a temporary French ban on a genetically modified strain of maize made by US company Monsanto.
“Based on the documentation submitted by France, there is no specific scientific evidence, in terms of risk to human and animal health or the environment,” EFSA said in a scientific opinion issued on its website.
A spokesman for Europe’s health commissioner John Dalli said the EU executive “will consider how to follow up on this ruling, though technically we could ask France to raise its ban” on MON 810.
“The commission will wait for the conclusions of the next environment ministers’ meeting June 11 in Luxembourg and hopes for a positive outcome to its proposals for cultivation, which have been blocked for almost two years by France and others,” spokesman Frederic Vincent told AFP.
Paris had asked Brussels in February to suspend the cultivation of MON 810 on the basis of new scientific evidence after France’s top administrative court in November overturned a government order banning the planting of genetically modified crops from Monsanto.
The court said that in a November 2008 ban, the government had failed to prove that Monsanto crops “present a particularly elevated level of risk to either human health or the environment”.
Monsanto markets MON 810 maize — which has been modified at a genetic level to include DNA from a bacteria — under the trade name YieldGuard as being resistant to insect pests that can threaten harvests.
But some governments believe it could pose a danger to plants and animals.
France in February pointed to a recent study by EFSA that raised concerns over another form of GM crop, BT11, that it said could also be applied to MON 810.
The European Commission at the time requested EFSA’s opinion on France’s request, but said it would not take any steps in the meantime.
Monsanto said in January that it had no intention of selling GM maize in France as it felt the market was not ready.
Egyptian presidential candidate, Abdel-Moneim Abolfotoh, waves to his supporters in front of Egyptian presidency logo ” falcon” during television interview at MISR University for Science and Technology in Cairo, Egypt, Sunday, May 20, 2012. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil)
An Islamist who believes that the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States were an American conspiracy is the front-runner in Egypt’s presidential race, a new poll shows.
“It was too big an operation …. They [the United States] didn’t bring this crime before the U.S. justice system until now. Why? Because it’s part of a conspiracy.”
Egyptians will vote Wednesday and Thursday in their first presidential election since the toppling of Hosni Mubarak last year. If none of the candidates wins a majority, the two top vote-getters will compete in a runoff next month.
Chinese conglomerate Dalian Wanda Group has agreed to buy AMC Entertainment for 2.6 billion dollars (USD), including debt, making it the biggest theater operator in the United States.
The deal, the largest overseas acquisition by a privately held Chinese company, reflects the warming ties between the U.S. and Chinese movie industries after China agreed in February to open its cinemas to more American films.
The purchase will mark Wanda’s first investment outside of China and its first foray into the United States and Canada, the world’s biggest film market with ticket sales of more than 10 billion.
Lucas Shaw, a media reporter for the online entertainment site, The Wrap described this purchase as giving the Dalian Wanda conglomerate a lot more power in the U.S. market.
“It is already a huge theater owner in China, but in the U.S. market, by acquiring the second biggest, it gives them a foothold in these two different markets. China has rapidly become the second biggest box office market behind the U.S., still far behind the U.S., but still the second biggest. So, it gives them a lot of negotiating power with the studios and distributors, as the biggest exhibitor in the world.”
Wanda, which has interests in commercial properties, luxury hotels, tourism and department stores, holds 35 billion in assets, with annual revenue reaching 16.7 billion.
Shaw expects Wanda to provide a cash infusion into the existing AMC theaters in an effort to provide consumers with a better theater experience.
“The key to all this is to make sure that consumers have a reason to leave there home to watch movies,” said Shaw, adding that he doesn’t believe ticket prices should be impacted. “With all the different offerings you have at home, whether it is on-demand, netflicks there is a growing reluctance by the consumer to go out and pay 12 or 15 dollars to see a movie. Theaters need to do everything they can to keep them coming.”
The deal also highlights the rising partnership between China and Hollywood.
“The speed is somewhat surprising,” said Shaw. “In the last year or two, you have seem a number of large co-productions, investments, Disney is opening a large theme park in China, there is a large production facility opening in China. But, I don’t think it is surprising if you look at the trend at the box office where overseas in worth way more than domestic.”
AMC’s management team at its Kansas City, Missouri headquarters and the company’s 18,500 employees will not be affected by the deal. The movie chain is owned by an investment group that includes Bain Capital, CCMP Capital Advisors and Spectrum Equity Capital.
http://www.euronews.com/ China is reportedly to speed up approvals for spending on infrastructure in response to a slowdown in the economy.
A state-backed newspaper says the government has asked for project proposals by the end of June, even for those initially due for the end of the year.
China is heading for a sixth straight quarter of slowing growth and investment in roads, bridges and property is at its weakest in nearly a decade.
Citing government sources, the newspaper article in China Securities Journal, said Beijing did not rule out bringing forward next year’s projects, if it thought more investments would be needed to stimulate the economy.
The newspaper also cited media reports saying the central government will speed up budget allocations to various construction projects, including highway construction.
News of Beijing’s latest efforts to bolster growth lifted stock markets. Australian shares rose 1.2 percent and Britain’s FTSE 100 gained as investors bought mining companies on the prospects of more sales to China.
Chinese infrastructure stocks outperformed, while benchmark copper prices rose to a one-week high.
The five top movers on the China Enterprises Index of Chinese companies listed in Hong Kong were all infrastructure related; China Communications Construction, China Railway Construction Group, China Railway Group, Anhui Conch Cement and Zoomlion Heavy Industry.
http://www.euronews.com/ Annual inflation in Britain fell to its lowest in more than two years in April. It dropped to 3.0 percent from March’s 3.5 percent.
That makes it more likely the UK central bank will be able to introduce extra stimulus – that is essentially printing more money – to support the economy.
Core inflation, which excludes food and fuel costs, fell to 2.1 percent, the lowest since November 2009.
Economists had been expecting a sizeable fall in inflation due to a spike in some prices in April 2011 not being repeated this year.
The Office for National Statistics said the fall was driven by lower inflation for air and sea transport, clothing and alcohol.
Inflation has now been above the Bank of England’s 2.0 percent target for almost two and a half years and Tuesday’s data come a week after the central bank’s economists predicted it would say there for at least another year before falling to 1.6 percent by mid-2014.
Until April, British inflation had fallen more slowly than the BoE expected this year – a factor which many economists said lay behind its decision not to expand its 325 billion pound quantitative easing programme this month, despite the UK economy having fallen back into recession.
The eurozone financial crisis could threaten the global economy, according to Organisation for Economic Development and Co-operation.
The 17-nation eurozone will see its economies shrink by 0.1 per cent, before rebounding to 0.9 per cent next year, the Paris-based organisation said in its latest report released on Tuesday.
Nick Spicer reports from Berlin.
As critics lay siege to Facebook, Zuckerberg is MIA
Mark Zuckerberg had a high profile as Facebook’s IPO began on Friday. Since then he’s been hard to find.
By Matthew J. Belvedere, CNBC.com
Aside from the weekend wedding pic, the last time investors saw the social network icon was on Friday morning — just before the rocky debut of his company’s stock. Zuckerberg was high-fiving Nasdaq Chief Executive Bob Greifeld and ringing the opening bell remotely from Facebook’s sprawling headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif.
But since then, a lot’s gone wrong including the Nasdaq’s botched opening of the stock; its precipitous slide since Friday to levels well below the $38 a share offering price; and allegations that lead underwriter Morgan Stanley shared negative news about Facebook with institutional investors before the IPO.
Through it all, Zuckerberg’s been MIA.
Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a senior dean at the Yale School of Management, thinks Zuckerberg is making a mistake by not publicly addressing the problems. “It’s important now to actually show the execution, show the plan, show the new vision,” Sonnenfeld told CNBC’s “Street Signs” on Tuesday.
While Washington’s rhetoric has focused recently on the coming end to the war in Afghanistan, its spending on the conflict is not at all waning.
Between this year and next, the federal government plans to spend nearly $200 billion on the war. If it does so, the U.S. will have spent about $642 billion since 2001 on fighting the Taliban, al-Qaeda and allied groups, local militias and warlords in Afghanistan.
One think tank, the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS), characterized the spending commitment for 2012 and 2013 as “incredible” given the lack of controls, plans, auditing and effectiveness employed by the Obama administration to win the war.
In its new report, the CSIS added that Washington’s “end effect has been to sharply raise the threshold of corruption in Afghanistan, to make transition planning far more difficult, and raise the risk that sudden funding cuts will undermine the Afghan government’s ability to maintain a viable economy and effective security forces.”
Meanwhile, support among Americans for the war effort has continued to shrink. Only 27% of respondents to a new Associated Press-GfK poll said they back the war, while 66% oppose it.
However there appears to be a major disconnect between the public and their leaders. On Thursday the House of Representatives voted 303-113 against an amendment that would have hastened the exit of U.S. combat troops from Afghanistan by limiting funding to the “safe and orderly withdrawal of U.S. troops and military contractors.” There are currently 88,000 American troops in Afghanistan.
Deadly suicide attack on Yemeni capital leaves 90 soldiers dead, two Lebanese killed in heavy clashes as Syrian conflict spills over, NATO agrees to hand over security lead to Afghan troops by mid-2013, and more.
Today’s headlines in full:
Deadly suicide attack on Yemeni capital leaves 90 soldiers dead
Al Jazeera, Qatar
Two Lebanese killed in heavy clashes as Syrian conflict spills over
Dubai TV, UAE
NATO agrees to hand over security lead to Afghan troops by mid-2013
BBC Arabic, UK
Syria: Thirteen killed in Homs, Hama, Daraa clashes
BBC Arabic, UK
Bahraini security forces attack protestors as crackdown continues
Al-Alam, Iran
NATO urges Pakistan to reopen supply route
Press TV, Iran
IAEA chief in Iran to press for nuclear cooperation
Press TV, Iran
New video shows Jewish settlers shooting Palestinians as Israeli soldiers stand idle
Press TV, Iran
Tourism, African migrants are main focus of Jerusalem Day Israeli Cabinet session
IBA, Israel
Palestine Heritage Museum reopens in Jerusalem
Palestine TV, Ramallah
Image: A boy holds a candle during a protest to show solidarity with a Yemeni journalist jailed over alleged links with al-Qaeda and to condemn a suicide attack that killed over 90 soldiers in Sanaa May 21, 2012: REUTERS/Mohamed al-Sayaghi
Mosaic is a Peabody Award-winning daily compilation of television news reports from the Middle East, including Egypt, Lebanon, Israel, Syria, the Palestinian Authority, Iraq and Iran. Watch more Mosaic at http://www.linktv.org/mosaic
UN peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous speaks during a press conference in Damascus, Syria, May 21, 2012. Ladsous on Monday warned here of the presence of terrorist groups in Syria, who are trying to capitalize on the current unrest to achieve certain gains. (Xinhua/Hazim)
DAMASCUS, May 21 (Xinhua) — The visiting UN peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous on Monday warned here of the presence of terrorist groups in Syria, who are trying to capitalize on the current unrest to achieve certain gains.
“We know that there are … a third party, terrorist groups, who are trying to gain advantage for themselves… but we have to see this as an issue within Syria, between the Syrians,” he said during a press conference in Damascus.
“These people are not committed to the cause of the Syrian people… They are committed to their own agenda… So we have to keep a watchful eye but what we are dealing with and what we must deal with is the issue between the Syrians themselves,” he said.
“We do know that there had been terrorist attacks and bombings and that is something to be taken very seriously,” he added. “Any further militarization of the crisis is not to be accepted… it’s a crisis between the Syrians and there is no justification in fueling the fire.”
Ladsous said that main objective of his visit to Syria is to examine the deployment of the UN Supervision Mission in Syria, adding that he has been “very pleased by the rapidity by which they have been deployed.”
He noted that the number of UN military observers is now 270, adding that they are now deployed in six cities and soon they will be deployed in 10 cities.
“I am not saying that the violence ceased altogether but clearly it diminished,” he said, adding that he had met with the government and the opposition in Syria.
He said the job of the UN observers aims also to work on the issue of the detainees and to gain access to the prisons. “We simply do not know how many people are detained.”
Ladsous said there are still some unresolved issues, stressing, however, that the Syrian government has confirmed its commitment to Annan’s six-point plan.
“I think it’s necessary to talk to all those who are involved, about how to get further towards a peaceful solution and how to stop violence,” he said.
For his part, head of the UN observer mission Maj-Gen Robert Mood said He is sending Ladsous back to New York “with a different understanding of what Syria is about.”
We’ll speak with two men who were held at gun point by the Chicago police for live streaming. Then, in one of the most watched antiwar protests in decades, dozens of Veterans tossed their medals into the streets. And it’s Monday Hangover, so we’ll talk about why the Obama campaign is going after Mitt Romney’s time at Bain Capital when Private Equity donations favor Obama.
BP Coverup, Coverup
Bio
Greg Palast is a BBC investigative reporter and author of Vultures’ Picnic. Palast turned his skills to journalism after two decades as a top investigator of corporate fraud. Palast directed the U.S. governmentʼs largest racketeering case in history– winning a $4.3 billion jury award. He also conducted the investigation of fraud charges in the Exxon Valdez grounding.
Transcript
PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I’m Paul Jay in Washington.
The BP gulf oil disaster has been the subject of a lot of examination, and recent examination shows that there’s more of a coverup then perhaps we have known. One of the people who’s done a lot of work on this is investigative journalist Greg Palast. And he now joins us from New York City. Greg’s a BBC investigative reporter, author of Vultures’ Picnic, and author of The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and Armed Madhouse and many other pieces of investigative work. Thanks very much for joining us, Greg.GREG PALAST, JOURNALIST AND AUTHOR: Glad to be with you, Paul.JAY: So, first of all, what is the—I mean, people know the basic story of what happened, but what is the real essence of the coverup here?PALAST: Yeah, they don’t know the real story, not in the U.S. press. For British television, I investigated what really happened. Actually, right after Deepwater Horizon exploded on April 20, 2010, I get a message from a witness, an insider from the Caspian Sea, which is, you know, the other side of the planet, in Asia, saying, I know exactly what happened here, ’cause the exact same thing happened in the Caspian Sea two years earlier: there was another BP rig—another BP rig blew out, just like the Deepwater Horizon. And BP covered it up. BP hid it because it occurred offshore off the nation of Azerbaijan, which is what I call—in my book Vulture’s Picnic I call it the Islamic Republic of BP. They own that place. They bought it—bribery.JAY: Now, the point here is that the cause of the Caspian Sea blowout, you’re saying, is essentially the same as what happened in the Gulf.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act has gone through many changes since it came to be in 1978, but some of the most recent changes to FISA give the US government permission to eavesdrop on Americans’ electronic communications without a warrant. President Obama has argued that wiretapping programs may not be challenged in court, but should they be? Amie Stepanovich, associate litigation counsel for EPIC, joins us with more on the FISA.
NGOs take issue with UN take on sustainable development Rio De Janeiro (AFP) May 21, 2012 – A month before a UN meeting on sustainable development, civil society is taking issue with the gathering’s approach.The United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, known as Rio+20, takes place in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro June 20-22. In parallel, NGOs will gather for the People’s Summit for Social and Environmental Justice.”The discussions focus on a set of fake proposals called ‘Green economy,’” organizers of the alternate event said on their website. “The ‘Green economy,’ contrary to what its name suggests, is one more stage of capitalistic accumulation.”The document — titled “What is at stake at Rio+20″ — also alleges that the negotiation strategy at the upcoming conference favors rich governments and threatens the rights of indigenous people.At least 116 government officials and 50,000 participants are expected to take part in Rio+20, including heads of companies and representatives of social movements.
The People’s Summit will take place June 15-23.
Food shortages have worsened in North Korea, even in the southwestern rice belt where some residents have starved to death, a Seoul-based online newspaper said Monday.
“Because of worsening food shortages this year there were reports of people starving to death even in South and North Hwanghae provinces,” a Daily NK reporter told AFP, referring to the country’s agricultural heartland.
Six people — children or the elderly — died in just one village in Shingye county after the authorities released an emergency supply of only one or two kilograms (2.2-4.4 pounds) of corn to each household, the paper said.
It quoted another source as saying that about 10 people had died of starvation on each collective farm in and around the coastal city of Haeju by April, following shortages in late winter.
Good Friends, a Seoul-based aid group, also said on its website that starvation continued to claim victims throughout South Hwanghae. At Hwanghae Steelworks some workers had died because food rations stopped, it said.
The South’s unification ministry, which handles cross-border affairs, said it had no information.
Daily NK said North and South Hwanghae saw rice production fall last year due to flooding, and most of the autumn harvest was diverted to military stores or for citizens of Pyongyang.
In South Hwanghae shortages were aggravated by restrictions on market trading and travel during the 100-day mourning period for leader Kim Jong-Il, who died on December 17, it said.
Near the border with the South soldiers were mobilised for farming because many farm workers left to seek help from relatives in other areas, it said.
The North’s official food distribution system, part of its state-directed economy, largely collapsed during the famine years of the mid to-late 1990s.
Severe food shortages have persisted. But donations to UN programmes have dwindled due to international irritation at the North’s missile and nuclear programmes.
The United States suspended a plan to deliver 240,000 tonnes of food after the North’s latest rocket launch on April 13.
On Monday the North’s official Korean Central News Agency expressed concern about drought in western areas, which it said had received little rainfall in the past few weeks.
Water levels in the country’s major irrigation reservoirs stood at just over 55 percent of normal because of unusually high temperatures, which were expected to last until early June, it said.
The European Commission is set to launch a substantial review of rules governing personal documents with the aim of making electronic identities take off across the EU. But the proposal faces likely opposition from civil rights groups and member states where identity cards do not exist.
Neelie Kroes, the EU’s Digital Agenda Commissioner, will present by the beginning of June a new legislative proposal which aims “to facilitate cross-border electronic transactions” through the adoption of harmonised e-signatures, e-identities and electronic authentication services (eIAS) across EU member states, according to an internal document seen by EurActiv.
“A clear regulatory environment for eIAS would boost user convenience, trust and confidence in the digital world,” reads the paper. “This will increase the availability of cross-border and cross-sector eIAS and stimulate the take up of cross-border electronic transactions in all sectors.”
Brussels has long been trying to facilitate the emergence of a parallel system of electronic identification, on top of the the real-world existing documents. This has mainly been linked to the struggle for establishing a truly functioning single market, rather than on security grounds.
A directive was adopted in 1999 establishing a common framework for electronic signatures. The rationale for the legal text is that if EU citizens feel comfortable in signing documents online, they will increasingly move to the immaterial world of the e-commerce to do business and shopping, regardless of national borders.
Resistance expected at national level
Despite the EU’s efforts to increase the security of e-signatures and the confidence in the emergence of virtual identities, citizens and governments have been slow to adopt electronic IDs.
Indeed, e-signatures are still confined to a few sectors, such as universities, while most EU nations have not yet introduced electronic identity cards.
Even if chip-embedded passports are becoming the norm across Europe, e-ID cards have been adopted in only in a handful of countries – Belgium, Estonia, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands. But there is no common system of mutual recognition among states using electronic IDs.
Perhaps more frustrating for the European Commission is that some member states like the United Kingdom do not even have paper identity cards, and the idea of adopting them causes widespread public opposition.
The UK briefly introduced ID cards during the second world war but abolished them afterwards. The use that the Nazi regime made of identity documents to single out Jewish people and send them into concentration camps has been a powerful argument against introducing ID documents across the Channel.
When Tony Blair’s Labour government discussed the idea of ID cards, a citizen movement sprang up overnight to block the plans.
ID cards are also not used in Denmark and Ireland.
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DemocracyNow.org – In a rare move, a federal judge has struck down part of a controversial law signed by President Obama that gave the government the power to indefinitely detain anyone it considers a terrorism suspect anywhere in the world without charge or trial — including U.S. citizens. Judge Katherine Forrest of the Southern District of New York ruled the indefinite detention provision of the National Defense Authorization Act likely violates the First and Fifth Amendments of U.S. citizens. We speak with Chris Hedges, a journalist who filed the suit challenging the NDAA along with six others, and Bruce Afran, the group’s attorney. “This is another window into the steady assault against civil liberties,” Hedges says. “What makes [the ruling] so monumental is that finally, we have a federal judge who stands up for the rule of law.”
To watch the complete daily, independent news hour, read the transcript, download the podcast, and for more information, visit http://www.democracynow.org/
Homeland Battlefield: Congress still ok with indefinite detention and torture of Americans
On Wednesday, activists and journalists across America rejoiced in a federal judge’s ruling that the National Defense Authorization Act is unconstitutional. The judge sided with the plaintiffs when it came to section 1021 of the act, which allows for the military to indefinitely detain Americans at home and abroad without due process. But now Congress is seeking to create a new NDAA. On Friday, the US House of Representatives approved the 2013 NDAA and even shot down an amendment that would cancel the indefinite detention provisions. Carl Mayer, attorney for The Mayer Law Group representing the plaintiffs, joins us for more on the NDAA.
Iranian protesters denounce Saudi-Bahrain union plan
* Cleric: Union is “ill-fated plot” Muslims won’t tolerate
May 18 (Reuters) – Thousands of Iranians rallied on Friday against plans for union between Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, state television showed, and an influential cleric denounced the idea as an “ill-fated plot” that will never be tolerated by Muslims.
Tension between Iran and U.S.-allied Gulf Arab states has run high in recent months with Arab leaders accusing Tehran of fomenting Shi’ite Muslim unrest in Bahrain – a charge that Shi’ite Iran and the protesters deny.
The dispute worsened when Tehran denounced efforts by six Gulf Arab states at a summit earlier this week to forge closer political and military union, largely to counter Iran’s growing regional power. The talks ended inconclusively.
In the run-up to the Riyadh meeting, speculation was rife that an initial union would be announced between Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, where anti-government protests led by majority Shi’ites have gripped the island state since last year.
“This plot is an ill-fated plot that is taking place with the American and Zionist (Israeli) green light but they should know that the people of Bahrain and the region, Muslims around the world and in Iran will never tolerate it,” cleric Kazem Sediqi said in a Friday sermon broadcast live on state radio.
Iranian state television aired footage of thousands of people holding rallies around the country and chanting slogans against the ruling royal families in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia to protest against the proposed Manama-Riyadh union.
“Instead of surrendering to its own people, it (the Bahraini government) is surrendering its identity, with total abjectness, to another country,” Sediqi said.
Tehran summoned the Bahraini charge d’affaires on Thursday to complain about a statement from the small Gulf island state – strategically sensitive as the base for the U.S. Fifth Fleet – that accused Iran of violating its sovereignty.
Blind activist Chen Guangcheng said Thursday China had agreed to issue him a passport within 15 days, allowing him to go to the United States after a bitter row between Beijing and Washington.
It was the first indication of when Chen would be allowed to leave the country since he left the US embassy more than two weeks ago after seeking refuge there following his dramatic escape from house arrest.
Speaking to AFP by telephone from the hospital where he is being treated, Chen also said authorities had promised to investigate murder charges brought against his nephew that he has said are motivated by revenge.
“Officials visited yesterday, we filled out passport application forms for myself, my wife and children,” said the 40-year-old legal campaigner, who triggered a diplomatic crisis when he fled to the US embassy last month.
“They said the passports should be issued within 15 days,” he added. The couple have a nine-year-old son and a six-year-old daughter.
Chen, one of China’s best-known dissidents, has won plaudits for exposing rights abuses including forced sterilisations and late-term abortions under China’s “one-child” family planning policy.
His activism earned him a four-year prison sentence that ended in 2010 when he was placed under extra-judicial house arrest in his home village of Dongshigu in the eastern province of Shandong, where he languished until his escape.
Wednesday’s meeting with government officials was his first since May 7, when they told Chen they were processing papers for him to leave for the US, where he has been offered fellowships to study law.
Details of his dramatic flight from house arrest have gradually emerged during his time in hospital, and on Thursday, he told how he feared for his life and for the safety of the villagers who helped him.
“After I escaped from home, that is when I was the most worried,” Chen said.
“There were at least 60 or so people guarding me in the village. If they had discovered I had escaped they could have beaten me to death. At that time it was very, very dangerous.”
News of Chen’s escape broke just days before US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in Beijing for pre-arranged talks and made headlines around the world, causing major embarrassment for the Chinese government.
As Clinton arrived in China, Chen left the US embassy and was taken by diplomats to a Beijing hospital after Chinese authorities guaranteed his safety.
Since then, he has accused local officials in Shandong of targeting his relatives out of revenge for his escape.
His nephew, Chen Kegui, is in detention charged with “intentional homicide” over an attack on a local official who broke into the family’s home after discovering that Chen had escaped from under the noses of his guards.
The official was said at the time to have survived the attack and the charge has baffled lawyers representing Chen Kegui, who say it will not stand up in court. Police in Yinan county, which includes Dongshigu, refused to comment on the case when contacted by AFP.
Chinese Human Rights Defenders, a rights group, said police had detained and tortured Chen Guangcheng’s older brother Chen Guangfu, the father of Chen Kegui, on April 27 — the day of the break-in.
“Authorities handcuffed Chen Guangfu and shackled his legs, and then whipped his hands with a leather belt, struck him in the ribs, and stomped hard on his feet,” the group said in a statement late Wednesday.
“The abuses against Chen Guangfu represent the most physically violent treatment to surface so far among the spate of retaliatory acts towards those with links to Chen Guangcheng after his flight from house arrest.”
Chen Guangfu remains “under strict control” and cannot contact other family members, including many who are also being monitored by authorities, the group said, citing local sources in Yinan.
Chen Guangcheng said the government officials who visited him on Wednesday had promised to investigate the situation.
Two lawyers had tried to visit Chen Kegui on Wednesday but were turned away by police.
“Yinan police said the person in charge was not there and did not allow them to see Chen Kegui,” Chen Guangcheng told AFP, adding he feared authorities were refusing visits because his nephew had been beaten.
The phrase ‘political action committee’ has become a four letter word to many Americans and thanks to Citizen’s United, PACs can throw as much money as they wish into political campaigns. Critics of PACs say money shouldn’t control politics and it leaves the average citizen voiceless, but what if you could start your own super PAC? John Ramsey, founder of Liberty for All Super PAC, and Preston Bates, executive director for the same organization, joins us to explain why they started their own super PAC.
DemocracyNow.org – The European economic crisis is expected to top the agenda at the G8 meeting tomorrow at Camp David. In Greece, voters will soon head to the polls for another round of elections which will be viewed by many as a referendum on the Euro. Our guest today, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, warns the current bank run in Greece could spiral into the end of the Eurozone. “It is really quite shocking,” Krugman says. “I hate to sound apocalyptic.” Meanwhile, France’s new finance minister has reiterated that the country’s new socialist government will not ratify the European Union’s fiscal pact calling for greater austerity.
To watch the complete daily, independent news hour, read the transcript, download the podcast, and for more information, visit http://www.democracynow.org/
UK’s David Cameron: Greece Is On The Brink, Survival Of The Euro In Question
By Matt Falloon
MANCHESTER, England, May 17 (Reuters) – Prime Minister David Cameron urged Europe’s rulers on Thursday to do more to quell the euro zone debt crisis and raised the prospect of a Greek default to argue he must stick to his unpopular attempt to cut spending and reduce debt at home.
Warning that the survival of the euro was now in question, Cameron showed growing alarm and frustration that the crisis was spinning out of control, threatening Britain’s $2.5 trillion economy and his own electoral prospects in 2015.
“Greece is on the brink, the survival of the euro in question,” Cameron told business leaders on a grey and damp morning in the northern English city of Manchester.
“Faced with this, I have a clear task: to keep Britain safe. Not to take the easy course – but the right course,” he added.
Echoing the words of Bank of England Governor Mervyn King, Cameron said the crisis in the European Union – Britain’s biggest trading partner – had lasted more than two years but the “storm” was far from over.
“We are in unchartered territory which carries huge risks for everybody. As I have consistently said, it is in Britain’s interest for the euro zone to sort out its problems.”
He said Europe’s problems showed the dangers of scrapping his government’s attempt to cut Britain’s vast budget deficit, though he called on the European Central Bank to stimulate demand to help peripheral euro members.
Euro crisis: Run on nationalised Spanish bank sees customers withdraw €1BILLION… as French government slashes its own pay by 30%
A €1billion run on a recently nationalised Spanish bank has sparked further fears that the 17-nation eurozone is about to implode.
European markets fell as fears of a continent-wide contagion from goverment-less Greece’s economic crisis also spread.
Shares in Bankia, Spain’s fourth biggest bank formed in 2010 through a merger of seven struggling regional savings institutions, today plummeted by 27 per cent.
The pan-European FTSE 300 index was down 0.9 per cent at 984.22 points by 10.26.am, close to a four-and-a-half-month low of 983.95 points reached yesterday.Spain’s benchmark IBEX index fell nearly 2 per cent to its lowest level since mid-2003.It came following a report in El Mundo newspaper that its customers had withdrawn more than €1billion from their accounts over the past week.
National Nurses United calls for international campaign for financial transaction tax
Transcript
VOICEOVER: On Friday, May 18th, several thousand nurses belonging to the National Nurses United union rallied in downtown Chicago’s Daley plaza to host what they have dubbed the people’s G8. The action coincides with a number of mobilizations planned over the weekend in Chicago, which was set to host both the G8 and NATO summits. The federal government decided to move the G8 Summit to Camp David in a remote part of Maryland, citing security concerns over the large protests planned against the economic and military conferences.
DAVID DOUGHERTY: The nurses are continuing their demands for what they’re calling a Robin Hood tax, which would charge half of 1 percent for all financial transactions on Wall Street over 100 dollars, which they say could generate an estimated 350 billion dollars per year. VOICEOVER: RoseAnne DeMoro is the executive director of National Nurses United, the largest registered nurse union in the country. She says that rather than spending public funds on the military and US interventions abroad, the Robin Hood tax could be used to pay for a variety of social services at home that have been slashed in the wake of austerity measures.
John Williams: The Recovery Is An Illusion (GLD, SLV, TZA, SDS, INDEXSP:.INX)
JT Long: John Williams, author of the ShadowStats.com newsletter, shines light on his interpretations of the GDP, CPI, unemployment and other government statistics in this exclusive Gold Report interview from the recent Recovery Reality Check conference. Highlights include what the money supply measures tell him and why QE3 will be a hard sell.
The Gold Report: John, at the recent Casey Research Recovery Reality Check conference you described the economic recovery heralded by the Obama administration as an illusion based largely on skewed inflation data. Can you walk us through why, based on your calculations, a recovery is impossible?
John Williams: We can start with the gross domestic product (GDP), which like most economic reports is adjusted for inflation. If you take inflation out of it, what is left should be changes in economic activity, as opposed to changes from prices going up or down.
The Federal Reserve System: The Ultimate Disorganizing Organization
Jeff Harding: In the remarks below I evaluate the Federal Reserve System — and the institution of central banking more generally — from the perspective of an organizational economist. While I strongly disagree with many of the key policies of the Federal Reserve Board both before and after the financial crisis and Great Recession, my argument does not focus on particular actions taken by this or that chair and board. The problem is not that the Fed has made some mistakes — perhaps addressed by restating its statutory mandate, scrutinizing its behavior more carefully, and so on — but that the very institution of a central monetary authority is inherently destabilizing and harmful to entrepreneurship and economic growth. …
Instead, market forces should determine levels of borrowing and saving, owning and renting, and entrepreneurial activity. Put differently, the monetary system is so important that it cannot be entrusted to a government agency — even a scientifically distinguished, nominally independent, prestigious organization like the Federal Reserve System.— Peter G. Klein.
This quote comes from Professor Peter Klein’s blistering critique of the Fed’s role as central economic planner in his May 8 testimony before the House Financial Services Committee’s Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy and Technology. This is a brilliant analysis of the causes of our economic woes and I urge you to read it. If you wish to see his testimony on C-SPAN, go here. It includes testimony by Professors Jeffrey Herbener and John Taylor. Klein gives a good lesson in Austrian economic theory in practice. His testimony was published on Mises.org.
Russia’s continuing protest movement that began in 2011 against alleged corruption and vote-rigging by the ruling United Russia party of President Vladimir Putin has caused many wealthy Russians to move their financial assets abroad amid widespread fears of a looming economic crisis.
The outflow of capital from Russia was more than $80.5b in 2011 and $42b so far in this year, prompting economists to urge the government to tackle corruption and become more business-friendly.
Chris Ciovacco: The gravity of the global debt crisis can be seen in the flip-flop game plans from policymakers. The reaction to the 2008 crisis was to try to “spend our way out of this”. That didn’t work, but it did succeed in pushing debt levels even higher. The second approach, championed by Germany’s Angela Merkel, is based on the “cut spending and restore confidence” theory. That isn’t working either.
Now we have come full circle with Tim Geithner and the IMF again calling for “pro-growth” policies. Pro-growth is a politically correct way of saying “spend money we don’t have.” According to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), the Keynesian approach of the government leading the private sector to the promise land of growth, is now being embraced by the most broke nation of them all – Greece:
Mr. Tsipras, the head of Greece’s left party and an engineer by training, recommends a stimulus package to boost the Greek economy and has called for tearing up the country’s existing austerity-for-loans program. He has suggested scrapping plans to lay off 150,000 public-sector workers by 2015, and repealing recent measures to push down private-sector wages. He favors nationalizing the banking system so as to better direct lending policies, and speaks favorably of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Depression-era New Deal program and President Barack Obama’s stimulus package—something Mr. Tsipras said is lacking in Europe.
As the United States considers the Islamic jihadi threats confronting it from all sides, it might do well to focus on its southern neighbor, Mexico, which has been targeted by Islamists and jihadists, who, through a number of tactics—from engaging in da’wa, converting Mexicans to Islam, to smuggling and the drug cartel, to simple extortion, kidnappings and enslavement—have been subverting Mexico in order to empower Islam and sabotage the U.S.
Mexican authorities have rolled up a Hezbollah network being built in Tijuana, right across the border from Texas and closer to American homes than the terrorist hideouts in the Bekaa Valley are to Israel. Its goal, according to a Kuwaiti newspaper that reported on the investigation: to strike targets in Israel and the West. Over the years, Hezbollah—rich with Iranian oil money and narcocash—has generated revenue by cozying up with Mexican cartels to smuggle drugs and people into theU.S. In this, it has shadowed the terrorist-sponsoring regime in Tehran, which has been forging close ties with Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, who in turn supports the narcoterrorist organization FARC, which wreaks all kinds of havoc throughout the region.
Another 2010 article appearing in the Washington Times asserts that, “with fresh evidence of Hezbollah activity just south of the border [in Mexico], and numerous reports of Muslims from various countries posing as Mexicans and crossing into the United States from Mexico, our porous southern border is a national security nightmare waiting to happen.” This is in keeping with a recent study done by Georgetown University, which revealed that the number of immigrants from Lebanon and Syria living in Mexico exceeds 200,000. Syria, along with Iran, is one of Hezbollah’s strongest financial and political supporters, and Lebanon is the immigrants’ country of origin.
A jihadist cell in Mexico was recently found to have a weapons cache of 100 M-16 assault rifles, 100 AR-15 rifles, 2,500 hand grenades, C4 explosives and antitank munitions. The weapons, it turned out, had been smuggled by Muslims from Iraq. According to this report, “obvious concerns have arisen concerning Hezbollah’s presence in Mexico and possible ties to Mexican drug trafficking organizations (DTO’s) operating along the U.S.—Mexico border.”
(Reuters) – A private door opens from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office in central Jerusalem directly into a long, modestly furnished, half-paneled room decorated with modern paintings by Israeli artists and a copy of Israel’s 1948 declaration of independence. It contains little more than a long wooden table, brown leather chairs and a single old-fashioned white projector screen.
This inner sanctum at the end of a corridor between Netanyahu’s private room and the office of his top military adviser, is where one of the decade’s most momentous military decisions could soon be taken: to launch an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear program.
Time for that decision is fast running out and the mood in Jerusalem is hardening.
Iran continues to enrich uranium in defiance of international pressure, saying it needs the fuel for its civilian nuclear program. The West is convinced that Tehran’s real objective is to build an atomic bomb – something which the Jewish state will never accept because its leaders consider a nuclear armed-Iran a threat to its very existence.
Adding to the international pressure, U.S. ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro said this week American military plans to strike Iran were “ready” and the option was “fully available”.
The central role Iran plays in Netanyahu’s deliberations is reflected in the huge map of the Middle East hanging by the door of his office. Israel lies on one edge, with Iran taking pride of place in the centre.
Experts say that within a few months, much of Iran’s nuclear program will have been moved deep underground beneath the Fordow mountain, making a successful military strike much more difficult.
SANAA, Yemen — Government troops killed 11 al-Qaida fighters in southern Yemen on Friday, as the army battled its way into the outskirts of a key town under the militants’ control, military officials said.
FILE – In this Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2010 file photo, an anti-terrorist unit from the Central Security Forces of the Ministry of Interior trains in the Sarif area on the eastern outskirts of the capital Sana, in Yemen. Yemeni warplanes and troops backed by heavy artillery waged a four-front assault on al-Qaida militants Tuesday, trying to uproot their hold in the southern desert with the help of a team of U.S. troops at a nearby air base. (AP Photo, File)
Al-Qaida-linked fighters have taken over a swath of territory and several towns in the south over the past year, pushing out government forces and establishing their own rule. In recent weeks, the army has launched a concerted effort to uproot the militants from their strongholds — and is closely coordinating with a small contingent of U.S. troops who are helping guide the operations from inside Yemen.
On Friday, Yemeni troops moved in on Jaar in Abyan province, killing eight al-Qaida fighters in clashes about 10 kilometers (six miles) north of the town. Recapturing Jaar would better position the military to take back Zinjibar, the provincial capital that has been under al-Qaida control for more than a year.
Mosaic News : Renewed Clashes Erupt in Lebanon’s Tripoli as Hezbollah is Blamed
Today’s headlines in full:
Massive demonstrations in Syria’s Aleppo University ahead of UN visit
BBC Arabic, UK
Renewed clashes erupt in Lebanon’s Tripoli as Hezbollah is blamed
BBC Arabic, UK
Israel and Iran beat the drums of war ahead of nuclear talks in Baghdad
Al Jazeera, Qatar
White House threatens to target anyone ‘obstructing’ transition in Yemen
Al-Alam, Iran
US to give Israel another USD 70 million for Iron Dome missile defense system
Press TV, Iran
Bahrain’s al-Wefaq opposes proposed Saudi-Bahrain union
Press TV, Iran
Egypt’s military ruler pledges fair presidential elections
Dubai TV, UAE
Israeli interior minister says African migrants in Israel should be jailed
IBA, Israel
South Sudanese minister of agriculture appeals to Israel amid growing food crisis
IBA, Israel
Iraqis mark national day for the martyrs of the mass graves
Al-Forat TV, Iraq
Image: Lebanese soldiers point their rifles as they are deployed after clashes between Sunni Muslim Salafists and supporters of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP) in the old souk of the port-city of Tripoli, northern Lebanon, May 15, 2012: REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir
Mosaic is a Peabody Award-winning daily compilation of television news reports from the Middle East, including Egypt, Lebanon, Israel, Syria, the Palestinian Authority, Iraq and Iran. Watch more Mosaic at http://www.linktv.org/mosaic
The fighting in the Democratic Republic of Congo has displaced hundreds of thousands people, something the UN’s refugee agency has described as a disaster.
The fighting between DRC troops and rebel soldiers has been most intense in the hills of North Kivu region.
Many of the refugees have headed to neighbouring Rwanda.
Al Jazeera’s Nazanine Moshiri reports from Goma in the eastern DRC, on the border with Rwanda.
A car bomb has exploded in the eastern Syrian city of Deir Ezzor, causing an unknown number of casualties, according to state-run media and an opposition group.
The blast reportedly struck a parking lot for a military intelligence complex on Saturday.
Demonstrations have taken center stage in the Gulf, where tens of thousands rallied in Iran and Bahrain against the latter’s integration plans with Saudi Arabia. In Bahrain crowds chanted that their country was ‘not for sale’, while Tehran said the proposed deal was a plot aimed at wiping the entire state off the map.
Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich, US independent researcher talks to RT. She says the United States has typically used Saudi Arabia similar to the Roman Empire used gladiators.
Wink and a nod: Hilary Clinton walks past MEK activists
The Munafiqeen [Hypocrites] will be in the lowest depths of the Fire: no helper wilt thou find for them.
~ Sura 4 (An-Nisa), ayah 145, Qur’an
A couple of months ago, one of those dubious leaks made by “unnamed US officials” caught my eye. US media did something it doesn’t often do; it publicised ‘secret’ Israeli government policy. Giving five minutes of prime time TV to Iranian scientist Mohammad Javad Larijani, brother of Ali Larijani, philosopher and chairman of the Parliament of Iran, two “senior U.S. officials” confirmed for NBC News what Mohammad Larijani was telling them: that Israel was behind the assassinations of Iranian scientists.
Specifically, the US officials stated that Israel’s Mossad was financing, training and arming an Iranian dissident group that goes by many names, but which we’ll call the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (MEK) for now. In return, the MEK is “providing Israel with information.” Speaking through NBC, these unknown officials confirmed what Larijani and the Iranian government have been saying for years: that Israel, through the MEK, carried out the attacks in which motorcycle-borne assailants attached sophisticated magnetic bombs to the exterior of the victims’ cars. The US officials further stated that the Obama administration is aware of the assassination campaign but has no direct involvement.
No sooner had the story been leaked than a series of car bombings took place outside Israeli embassies in India, Georgia and Singapore. The same types of bombs used in the assassinations of Iranian scientists were used to blow up vehicles near Israeli diplomats. The Israelis never actually intended to kill any of their own, because the Mossad warned the embassies ahead of time. Israel of course blamed Iran for the bombings. But these stunts were clearly intended to deflect attention from the US government’s confirmation that Israel is murdering Iranian scientists through its surrogate, the MEK, and, once again, portray Israel as the eternal victim.
The Obama administration may not have had direct involvement in the assassination of Iranian scientists, but it is the height of hypocrisy for the US government to pretend that it isn’t involved in subverting Iran’s civilian nuclear program. The CIA was kidnapping Iranian scientists and bribing them to ‘defect’ as recently as 2010 and as far back as 2007. Since at least 2005, the US regime has been uptoitsneck in dealings with multiple terrorist organisations based in countries encircling Iran, of which Jundullah, in the region of Balochistan on the Pakistani border, is arguably the most notorious.
Have a listen to this NBC commentary on the Israeli assassinations program ‘leak’ and take note of the ‘expert view’ at the end:
72-year-old Austin veteran is held at gunpoint, home seized because of underground bunker
By J. D. Heyes,
(NaturalNews) If ever there were an example of government adding insult to injury, this is it. What else could you call it when a city government fills in your underground bunker with concrete then bills you$90,000 to do it?Two years ago, Austin, Texas, resident Joe Del Rio awoke to find city officials demanding he let them in to inspect his home. Before it was all over, the local media reported, a police SWAT team and a host of firefighters had been called in as well.
Del Rio’s crime? City officials had a problem with what they described as a “multi-level bunker-type space” under his home that supposedly held suspicious materials.
Detained and questioned for the next 10 hours, authorities eventually let Del Rio, then 70, go free. But over the course of the next few years, his case took some bizarre twists. For one, the city wound up billing him $90,000 for sending a small army of cement trucks to his home to fill in the bunker, saying such action was necessary and prudent in order to make his home “safe.”
Across Egypt there are millions of people living in slums.
Last year’s revolution focused on Egyptians demanding their rights in Tahrir Square – but have the country’s slum-dwellers gained anything from the uprising?
With just a few days to go before the Presidential election, Al Jazeera’s Jamal Elshayyal went to find out.
[In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit, for research and/or educational purposes. This constitutes 'FAIR USE' of any such copyrighted material.]
” data-mce-href=”http://theextinctionprotocol.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/01.png?w=640″>May 19, 2012 – CHILE – A 5.9 magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Antofagasta, Chile. The depth of the earthquake was 25 km (15.5 m) and was downgraded from a 6.2 magnitude quake by the USGS. The epicenter of the earthquake was 54 km (33 miles) SW of Taltal, Antofagasta, Chile and 849 km (527 miles) N of Santiago, Chile. This is the third moderate earthquake to strike along the Chilean coastline in five days. A 6.2 magnitude earthquake struck off the southern coastal region of Aisen, Chile on May 18. A 6.2 earthquake also struck near Tarapaca on May 14. Tension continues to mount on the very dangerous Nazca plate which is violently diving or undergoing subduction under the South American plate. The absolute motion of the Nazca Plate has been calibrated at 3.7 cm/yr east motion (88°), some of the fastest absolute motion of any tectonic plate. The subducting Nazca Plate, which exhibits unusual flat-slab subduction, is tearing as well as deforming as it is subducted under the land mass. No tsunami warnings were issued with today’s 5.9 earthquake and there have been no reports of damage or injuries. Today’s earthquake, however, is one more indication tension along the Nazca tectonic plate is building. This region should remain alert for the potential occurrence of a stress-break or sizable release of seismic tension that could be manifested in a major earthquake. –The Extinction Protocol
A report, published in the Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research, has unveiled recently that a volcano, namely Indonesia’s Mount Marapi, erupted early Friday at 7:15 a. m. local time, lasting for nearly ten minutes.
It has been found that the volcano has had several such eruptions since when its alert status was updated last August. Also, the same has erupted for a total of around 454 times since the late eighteenth century till 2008.
While a majority of these were minor eruptions, fifty of them were significant, last in the year 2005, found the team of researchers from Oregon State University.
The erupted volcano is located in the province of West Sumatra, near the cities and town of Bukittinggi, Padang Panjang and Batusangkar in West Sumatra. As per the findings, the volcano is the most active one.
It is being said that its eruptions had killed 300 people between October and November and had caused around 300,000 people to relocate as well. “Our study found some of the first evidence that the region has a much more explosive history than perhaps has been appreciated”, said Morgan Salisbury, lead author.
May 19 (Reuters) – Guatemala’s Fuego volcano belched burning lava and black ash into the sky early Saturday, leading the government to issue an airplane advisory and close sections of highway.
The volcano, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) southwest of the capital, erupted about 2:45 a.m. (0745 GMT), spewing a column of ash up to 16,400 feet (5,000 meters) above the crater and launching burning red lava nearly 1,300 feet (400 meters) high.
The national emergency commission issued an advisory, warning planes not to fly within a 25-mile (40 kilometer) radius of the volcano. The La Aurora international airport in Guatemala City remained open.
The commission also closed two stretches of highway threatened by lava flows that reached the base of the mountain.
Guatemala’s four active volcanoes have a history of causing shut downs. In 2010, an explosion at the Pacaya volcano about 25 miles (40 kilometers) south of Guatemala City coated the city in a thick layer of black ash and rock, forcing hundreds of families to evacuate and closing the international airport. (Reporting By Mike McDonald; Editing by Bill Trott)
MIAMI — The National Hurricane Center is keeping an eye on a low pressure system off the South Carolina coast to see if it will develop into a tropical depression or storm.
An advisory issued Saturday said satellite and radar images shows the system about 120 miles southeast of Myrtle Beach, S.C., has begun to acquire more tropical characteristics as showers and thunderstorms increased near the circulation center.
Forecasters say additional development of the system is possible, meaning it could become a tropical depression or a tropical storm over the next day or so. The hurricane center says the system has a 50 percent chance of becoming a tropical cyclone, and could move either to the south or west during the next 48 hours.
MessageToEagle.com – Scientists are still unable to determine what is causing the “warming hole” over United States.
Some have suggested natural variations in sea surface temperatures could be responsible, but recent studies indicate the hole has been created due to air pollution.
Temperatures are increasing on global scale, but in the central and eastern United States warming has not kept pace with other parts of the world over much of the last century.
As shown in the lower map, which is based on data from NASA’s Surface Temperature Analysis (GISTEMP), parts of the United States even cooled between 1930 and 1990. Areas of the greatest cooling are blue; those that warmed are red.
Climate scientists have taken to calling the large area of cooling a “warming hole” because the areas surrounding it have warmed at a faster rate.
While working at Harvard University, Eric Leibensperger used global climate models to estimate the cooling effect sulfates have had on the climate of the United States since 1950.As seen in the top map, they found that between 1970 and 1990-the period when sulfates were at their highest levels-average temperatures were nearly 1°Celsius (1.8°Fahrenheit) cooler in a core area centered on Arkansas and Missouri and about 0.7°Celsius cooler in a larger tear-drop region throughout the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic.
The cooling effect extended into the North Atlantic Ocean as well; sulfate pollution lowered sea surface temperatures there by 0.3°Celsius.
Image credit: NASA
Leibensperger’s research also shows that the cooling effect from sulfates is diminishing.
The amount of the pollutant in the atmosphere has declined significantly in the last few decades due to the Clean Air Act.
According to Environmental Protection Agency estimates, the amount of sulfur dioxide (a precursor to sulfates) released into the atmosphere fell by 58 percent between 1980 and 2010. Satellites have confirmed the decrease; the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) on the Aura satellite observed a sharp decline in sulfates over the eastern United States between 2005 and 2010.
As a response to the declining sulfate levels, Leibensperger’s modeling shows temperatures over the central and eastern United States have increased by 0.3°Celsius between 1980 and 2010. How much more warming can we expect as sulfate concentrations continue to decline? Not much, according to Leibensperger.
Sulfate concentrations have declined so much already that the impact of future decreases won’t be nearly as substantial.
MessageToEagle.com based on material provided by NASA.
On Sunday, May 20th, the Moon will pass in front of the Sun, producing an annular solar eclipse visible across the Pacific side of Earth. The path of annularity, where the sun will appear to be a “ring of fire,” stretches from China and Japan to the middle of North America:
An animated eclipse map prepared by Larry Koehn of ShadowandSubstance.com shows the best times to look. In the United States, the eclipse begins at 5:30 pm PDT and lasts for two hours. Around 6:30 pm PDT, the afternoon sun will become a luminous ring in places such as Medford, Oregon; Chico, California; Reno, Nevada; St. George, Utah; Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Lubbock, Texas. Outside the narrow center line, the eclipse will be partial. Observers almost everywhere west of the Mississippi will see a crescent-shaped sun as the Moon passes by off-center.
Because this is not a total eclipse, some portion of the sun will always be exposed. To prevent eye damage, use eclipse glasses, a safely-filtered telescope, or a solar projector to observe the eclipse. You can make a handy solar projector by criss-crossing your fingers waffle-style. Rays of light beaming through the gaps will have the same shape as the eclipsed sun. Or look on the ground beneath leafy trees for crescent-shaped sunbeams and rings of light.
Something special is happening to Venus in the evening sky. The second planet is diving toward the sun for a much-anticipated transit on June 5-6. As Venus turns its night side toward Earth, the planet is transforming into a beautifully slender and colorful crescent:
John Chumack of Dayton, Ohio, took the picture on May 14th using a 10-inch telescope. “I was blown away by the sight of Venus,” he says. “The planet was 14% illuminated, 47 arcseconds in diameter, and blazing at -4.43 magnitude.”
The crescent shape of Venus is easy to see in good binoculars or small telescopes. No special observing experience is required. Just find Venus in the western sky after sunset (you can’t miss it), point and look. A good tripod to hold the optics steady is recommended.
As the evening wears on and Venus sinks toward the horizon, the refractive effect of Earth’s atmosphere splits the crescent into the colors of the rainbow. Kevin R. Witman of Cochranville, Pennsylvania, observed the phenomenon on May 11th: “Earth’s atmospheric refraction of Venus’s ample light made a beautiful image through my 10-inch telescope.”
MessageToEagle.com – A fascinating accretion phase of a supermassive black hole in the centre of a galaxy tens of millions of light years away, was observed by researchers using the light of three powerful infrared telescopes.
The resolution at which they were able to observe this highly luminescent active galactic nucleus (AGN) has given them direct confirmation of how mass accretes onto black holes in centres of galaxies.
The observation was led by Gerd Weigelt, a director of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany.
“This three-telescope interferometry is a major milestone toward directly imaging the growth phase of supermassive black holes,” said Sebastian Hoenig, a postdoctoral researcher at the UC Santa Barbara Department of Physics, and one of the astrophysicists who utilized this technique to observe the AGN at the centre of galaxy NGC 3783.
Hoenig described their findings as a ring of hot dust that marks the transition from a more-distant mixture of gas and dust in a toroidal (doughnut-shaped) structure, to a gaseous disk closer to the black hole.
The dusty part, he said, is interesting because it dominates the infrared emission of active galactic nuclei and can be easily observed.
However, observing the ring of hot dust in NGC 3783 was a challenge for the astrophysicists.
Not only is the ring distant and faint, but the ability of individual infrared telescopes to resolve distances between actively accreting objects is also highly limited.
Artist’s view of a dust torus surrounding the accretion disk and the central black hole in active galactic nuclei. Credit: NASA E/PO – Sonoma State University, Aurore Simonnet
Even the largest optical/infrared telescopes in the world, the Keck telescopes, were not powerful enough, though they can show objects in the infrared comparable to about the size of a football field at the distance of the moon.
To achieve that angular resolution in a single telescope, it would have to be 130 meters in diameter.
“In order to spatially resolve the accretion process onto supermassive black holes in nearby galaxies, we have to be at least a factor of ten better,” said Hoenig.
However, by using the AMBER interferometry instrument to simultaneously combine the light from three 8-meter telescopes at the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) at the Paranal Observatory in Chile, the research team was able to achieve the angular resolution needed to observe the hot dust ring.
The combination of the light from the three telescopes was no small feat, as the tiny differences in the arrival of light in the individual telescopes have to undergo constant correction with an accuracy of a few micrometers ?” roughly ten times smaller than the thickness of a hair, according to Hoenig.
Very Large Telescope Interferometer at the ESO/Paranal Observatory in Chile. Credit: Sebastian Hoenig
“The ESO VLTI provides us with a unique opportunity to improve our understanding of active galactic nuclei,” said lead researcher Weigelt.
“It allows us to study fascinating physical processes with unprecedented resolution over a wide range of infrared wavelengths. This is needed to derive physical properties of these sources.”
“Our main interest is to learn how supermassive black holes in the centers of galaxies are fueled, so that they grow to the enormous million to billion solar mass objects we see today,” added Sebastian Hoenig. @ MessageToEagle.com via
http://sheilaaliens.net/?p=710 “A huge hole in the road has appeared just yards from people’s homes in Newburn, near Newcastle. The 10ft deep crater appeared suddenly on the afternoon of Thursday, May 17, taking an 8ft section of brick wall with it.
Police closed off the road for a while as experts from Newcastle City Council and Northumbria Water were called in to find the cause. Workmen were later called in to fill in the hole.
A police spokesman said: “There are a lot of mine workings around here. Possibly it is a coal working. We are still trying to work out what’s happened. “
Lynsey McMeekin, 28, of Spencer Court, whose flat looks onto the hole, said: “It is just crazy.
“When I saw all the police cordons I thought there must have been an accident. “
The crater expanded from Millfield Lane into land belonging to Just Brickwork Ltd after a dividing wall dramatically collapsed into the hole. Newburn Dene and a water culvert run underneath Millfield Lane and the Spencer Court flats, which were built in 2006.
The lane is one of the main access routes to the nearby Newburn Manor Primary School and is regularly used by parents dropping off their children at school.
Robert Lowes, 41, who lives on the nearby Manor Grove estate said the area had been blighted by sink holes for years. Just a few months ago a post box collapsed into a hole that appeared overnight.
He said: “There is subsidence all around here. “We have had other big dips in the tarmac all over the place.
MessageToEagle.com – Earth is an amazing planet and our nature is full of wonders. We have previously written about incredible singing plants.
This time we would like to focus our readers’ attention on another amazing geological phenomena, namely so-called growing stones.
It is difficult to image that stones can really grow, but these stones seem to be alive!
The Romanian Trovants Museum Natural Reserve is located in Valcea County, close to the road connecting Ramnicu Valcea and Targu Jiu, 8 km far from Horezu.
Here in a small village named Costesti, there are some fascinating and mysterious stones, called trovants, which are believed to have a life in them. Trovant is a geological term used often in Romania. It means cemented sand.
Trovants are geological phenomena which consist in spherical shapes of cemented sand, appeared due to some powerful seismic activity.The earthquakes that led to the creation of the first trovants are supposed to have taken place 6 million years ago.
What makes these trovants unique and mysterious is that are reproducing after coming in contact with water.
After heavy raining the stones grow starting with 6-8 millimetres and ending with 6-10 meters.
It’s really remarkable!
Trovants in Romania are stones that grow.
One of the strangest aspects about these stones is that although they vary in size, from a couple of millimeters to even 10 m, they are very similar, taking into account a natural law that states there are no such things as identical stones.
In addition, just like the famous rocks in Death Valley, California, the trovants often move from one place to another place.
Scientists believe that the stones increase in size due to high content of various mineral salts, which are under their shell. When the surface becomes wet, these chemicals start spreading and put pressure on the sand, making the stone “grow”.
A “living” stone.
A trovant having a strange shape.Today trovants are protected.
However, despite their best efforts, scientists have failed to come up with a logical explanation why the stones have extensions that remind of roots. If they are cut, their sections have colored rings, just like trees.
These stones behave almost like some kind of unknown inorganic life-form! We cannot deny that our planet is truly amazing!
Local residents have been aware of the stones unusual properties for more than 100 years, but they have never paid the trovants any special attention. The stones were often used as building materials and tombstones.
Today, the Trovants Museum in Romania is protected by UNESCO.
An explosion at a school in Italy Saturday injured killed one person and six students, two seriously, according to reports and officials.The blast happened at 7:45 a.m. at a school in Brindisi as students were waiting to go inside, NBC News reported.The school is opposite a court in the city.A Civil Protection Authority official told Reuters that one person had been killed and six injured.There were unconfirmed reports that the dead person was a student.
19.05.2012
Chemical Accident
USA
State of California, Los Angeles [Los Angeles harbor]
Fire officials say a large cargo ship has been evacuated in Los Angeles harbor as firefighters work to find the source of a gas leak.The incident began early Friday afternoon. Fire spokesman Matt Spence says the type of gas is unknown and may be coming from a container at the bottom of a deep stack of containers.About 25 firefighters, wearing gas masks, are working to find the source of the gas by removing the containers piece by piece.Spence says the ship was outbound from the Port of Los Angeles, and it’s unclear what its haul is.Spence says there’s no immediate cause for alarm or immediate indication of terror threat as firefighters investigate the situation.
[In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit, for research and/or educational purposes. This constitutes 'FAIR USE' of any such copyrighted material.]
The San Andreas, Calaveras, and Hayward fault lines -which run underneath Silicon Valley – could set off tremors and aftershocks globally, according to a new study.
A woman and her baby evacuate to higher ground after a strong earthquake in Sumatra in April. (Heri Juanda / Associated Press / April 11, 2012)
MessageToEagle.com – Scientists are still unable to determine what is causing the “warming hole” over United States.
Image credit: NASA
MessageToEagle.com – A fascinating accretion phase of a supermassive black hole in the centre of a galaxy tens of millions of light years away, was observed by researchers using the light of three powerful infrared telescopes.
Very Large Telescope Interferometer at the ESO/Paranal Observatory in Chile. Credit: Sebastian Hoenig
MessageToEagle.com – Earth is an amazing planet and our nature is full of wonders. We have previously written about 
Trovants in Romania are stones that grow.
A “living” stone.
A trovant having a strange shape.
