Tuesday February 24, 2009

Flexible electronic books to hit market soon

Paul Marks
New Scientist

Gadget-makers have long promised us a flexible electronic book, but actually producing a robust, bendy screen has proved tough - until now.

Plastic Logic, a display technology company based in Cambridge, UK, says it will launch the first flexible electronic book in January.

The two most popular e-books on the market, the Sony Reader and Amazon Kindle, are paperback book-sized devices that use first-generation black and white electronic "ink" displays.
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Tuesday February 24, 2009

We’re a fast-food nation slowly eating ourselves to death

Jay Rayner
The Observer

Every economic cloud has a silver lining apparently, though not perhaps if you’re a chicken. Last week, KFC, which dumps more intensively reared birds in the deep-fat fryer than almost anybody else, announced it was responding to vastly increased demand by creating 9,000 new jobs in this country and opening up to 300 new outlets.

Money might be too tight to mention, but not if you want to fill up on a killer combination of cheap protein, even cheaper carbs and tongue-coating fats. Last month, a new KFC drive-thru took £100,000 in just one week, a record.
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Tuesday February 24, 2009

ID cards create second-class citizens

Henry Porter
The Guardian

Opposition is mounting to the government's ID card scheme. One reader's story demonstrates perfectly why it should not go ahead

Last Saturday marked the day in 1952 when the wartime ID card was abandoned by the British State after Harry Willcock, a dry cleaner from North London, was stopped for a traffic offence and asked by a policeman for his card. He refused on the grounds that it was an affront to his personal liberty.

The case went to appeal where Lord Chief Justice Goddard said: "From what we have been told it is obvious that the police now, as a matter of routine, demand the production of a national registration card whenever they stop or interrogate a motorist for whatever cause. This act was passed for security purposes: it was never intended for the purposes for which it is now being used."
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Tuesday February 24, 2009

An Ode to Voytek: The Most Badass Soldier in WWII

Robert Brockway
Atom

I’m not quite comedically inept enough to make Polack jokes, but if I was, I would apologize for every single one right now. Recently, the Polish have rallied around a cause: To have a memorial built in Great Britain that honors one of their most beloved war heroes, a soldier simply known as “Voytek.”

He was a hard-drinking, hard-smoking, hard-fighting son-of-a-bitch who won his valor in the battle of Monte Cassino, one of the bloodiest conflicts of WWII. Voytek stood about 6’5 tall, and weighed in around 600lbs, which wo-wait, 600 pounds?! Either this Polish war-hero was also undisputed King of the Fatties, or he’s some sort of fucking bear.
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Tuesday February 24, 2009

Legalize It: Ammiano to Introduce Legislation Monday to Allow Pot -- and Tax It

Joe Eskenazi
SFweekly.com

The story SF Weekly broke on Friday is true: Assemblyman Tom Ammiano will announce legislation on Monday to legalize marijuana and earn perhaps $1 billion annually by taxing it.

Quintin Mecke, Ammiano's press secretary, confirmed to SF Weekly that the assemblyman's 10 a.m. Monday press conference regarding "new legislation related to the state's fiscal crisis" will broach the subject of reaping untold -- and much-needed -- wealth from the state's No. 1 cash crop.
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Tuesday February 24, 2009

Schools should adopt back-to-basics discipline, says Ofsted

Graeme Paton
The Telegraph

Schools should adopt a back-to-basics stance on discipline to curb bad behaviour and improve results, Ofsted has said.

The best comprehensives impose order by introducing rules such as a ban on shaven heads, designer trainers and gang colours, according to a report.

One head teacher attempted to "stir up a hornets' nest" among troublemakers by suspending 300 pupils in a week.
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Tuesday February 24, 2009

The Truth About Bioplastics

Fiona Wagner
Green Living Online

Biodegradable plastics are going mainstream, but how green are they?

Plastics have been getting their fair share of bad press lately, especially those ubiquitous grocery bags. Critics argue they’re made with fossil fuels, take anywhere between 100 to 1,000 years to break down and create a massive litter problem worldwide.

Enter biodegradable plastics, eco-solutions for consumer items such as bags, plastic wrap and take-out food containers and cutlery.
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Tuesday February 24, 2009

Straw forced into retreat over ‘Big Brother’ data sharing plan

Andrew Grice
independent

Justice Secretary seeks to allay fears of a drift towards a ‘surveillance society’

The Justice Secretary, Jack Straw, will make a U-turn over sweeping new powers which were to allow public bodies to swap the data they hold on individuals.

In a clear sign the Government is worried about growing criticism that it is creating a “Big Brother Britain”, Mr Straw is to rewrite his Coroners and Justice Bill to build in new safeguards to protect the public. He will table several amendments to the measure when it reaches its report stage in the Commons next month.
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Tuesday February 24, 2009

Sticking to the script

John Pilger
NewStatesman

During the Cold War, Hollywood's anti-Soviet message was loud and clear. Today, the film industry is more likely to censor by omission

When I returned from the war in Vietnam, I wrote a film script as an antidote to the myth that the war had been an ill-fated noble cause. The producer David Puttnam took the draft to Hollywood and offered it to the major studios, whose responses were favourable - well, almost.

Each issued a report card in which the final category, "politics", included comments such as: "This is real, but are the American people ready for it? Maybe they'll never be."
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Tuesday February 24, 2009

Antibodies protect against bird flu and more

Maggie Fox
Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Researchers have discovered human antibodies that neutralize not only H5N1 bird flu but other strains of influenza as well and say they hope to develop them into lifesaving treatments.

The antibodies -- immune system proteins that attach to invaders such as viruses -- also might be used to protect front-line workers and others at high risk in case a pandemic of flu broke out, the researchers said.
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Tuesday February 24, 2009

10 Video Games That Should Be Considered Modern Art

Michael Swaim
Cracked.com

As a lifelong gamer, I’ve often been in the awkward position of defending my hobby to a roomful of sneering artsy types. Although, to be fair, I do attend a lot of wine and cheese mixers at the New Yorker offices. Nevertheless, it’s an experience we’ve all had to confront.

Whether it’s coming from our parents, our local clergymen or the critical voices in our own head, at some point we’ve had to systematically justify the act of spending thousands of hours manipulating an eight-button machine to no demonstrable effect.
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Tuesday February 24, 2009

ID card reviews must be published, rules Information Tribunal again

OUT-LAW

The Government will have to publish controversial reports on its identity card scheme after the Information Tribunal backed the Information Commissioner's order to publish at the end of a protracted legal wrangle.

Anti-ID cards activist Mark Dziecielewski had requested the publication of the reports under the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act. The reports are the result of 'gateway reviews', which are undertaken at certain points in the massive ID cards project.
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Tuesday February 24, 2009

European cops looking to crack Skype immunity

Paul Meller
IDG News Service

Skype phone calls could be targeted for tapping as part of a pan-European crackdown on what law authorities believe is a massive technical loophole in current wiretapping laws, allowing criminals to communicate without fear of being overheard by the police.

The European investigation could also help US law enforcement authorities gain access to Internet calls. The National Security Agency (NSA) is understood to believe that suspected terrorists use Skype to circumvent detection.
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Tuesday February 24, 2009

Suspend Military Aid to Israel, Amnesty Urges Obama After Detailing US Weapons Used in Gaza

Rory McCarthy
The Guardian

White phosphorus shells traced back to America.
Activists call for arms embargoes on both sides.

Jerusalem - Detailed evidence has emerged of Israel's extensive use of US-made weaponry during its war in Gaza last month, including white phosphorus artillery shells, 500lb bombs and Hellfire missiles.

In a report released today, Amnesty International detailed the weapons used and called for an immediate arms embargo on Israel and all Palestinian armed groups. It called on the Obama administration to suspend military aid to Israel.
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Tuesday February 24, 2009

10 Dirty Tricks Wall Street Con Artists Will Pull to Keep the Rip-offs Going

Paul B. Farrell
Wall Street Journal

How traders, lobbyists, PR hot shots will try to limit reform and brainwash America.

Yes, America wants an economic recovery. A brand new bull. And nobody wants it more than Wall Street. It gets rich off bull markets. Yes, Warren Buffett may be buying, but the odds are against Wall Street now.

The financial sector's in the tank: Stocks are huge losers. Earnings stink. Bonuses are down. And if they ask for TARP money, CEO salaries get capped, there are no lavish conferences and you fly commercial -- very humbling for a big boss used to making a million bucks a week.
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Tuesday February 24, 2009

The 100 per cent mortgage set to be outlawed

Jane Merrick
Independent

The era of the 100 per cent mortgage could be at an end after Gordon Brown announced plans to ban the risky loans as part of a major review of banking practices.

The Prime Minister has asked the Financial Services Authority to consider outlawing 100 per cent-plus loans, and called for banks to return to traditional values of responsibility.
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Sunday February 22, 2009

Sociable robots learn to get along with humans

Sandrine Ceurstemont
New Scientist

Robots are not yet ready to mingle freely with humans, but engineers are bringing that day closer by teaching them social tricks used by humans and even chimps.

Robots using those strategies met the public at the Science Museum in London this week.

Lola Canamero from the University of Hertfordshire brought along humanoid and dog robots that develop unique personalities when they interact with humans in a "robot nursery".
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Sunday February 22, 2009

China prepares to clamp down on workers’ protests

Clifford Coonan
Independent

Police undergo training to deal with labour unrest as millions of jobs are lost in economic downturn

The Chinese authorities are training police forces around the country to deal with potential labour unrest as unemployment rises at its fastest rate for decades. President Hu Jintao has called on the army to remain loyal in the face of growing discontent at the first downturn many Chinese have ever experienced.
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Sunday February 22, 2009

Small businesses in England help cooking oil move from restaurants to roads

Elisabeth Rosenthal
Internation Herald Tribune

Nuneaton, England: As he has done frequently over the past 18 months, Andy Roost drove his blue diesel Peugeot 205 onto a farm here, where signs pointed one way for eggs and another for oil.

He unscrewed the gas cap and chatted nonchalantly as Colin Friedlos, the proprietor, poured three large jugs of used cooking oil - tinted green to indicate the environmental benefit - into the car's gasoline tank.
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Sunday February 22, 2009

Big Pharma Quietly Hikes Drug Prices 100 Percent or More

David Gutierrez
Natural News

Without any fanfare, pharmaceutical companies have been raising the prices of many of their drugs by 100 percent or more, according to a study conducted by researchers from the University of Minnesota.

The researchers investigated cases in which drugs had their prices increased by 100 percent or more in a single cost adjustment, finding that drug companies had done so for 26 products in 2006. Questcor Pharmaceuticals, for example, increased the price of its drug Acthar (used to treat spasms in infants) by 1,424 percent, from $1,650 per vial to a whopping $23,000.
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Sunday February 22, 2009

Soros sees no bottom for world financial “collapse”

Reuters

Renowned investor George Soros said on Friday the world financial system has effectively disintegrated, adding that there is yet no prospect of a near-term resolution to the crisis.

Soros said the turbulence is actually more severe than during the Great Depression, comparing the current situation to the demise of the Soviet Union.

He said the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in September marked a turning point in the functioning of the market system.
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Sunday February 22, 2009

Barack Obama Administration Continues US Military Global Dominance

Peter Phillips
Project Censored

The Barack Obama administration is continuing the neo-conservative agenda of US military domination of the world— albeit with perhaps a kinder-gentler face. While overt torture is now forbidden for the CIA and Pentagon, and symbolic gestures like the closing of the Guantanamo prison are in evidence, a unilateral military dominance policy, expanding military budget, and wars of occupation and aggression will likely continue unabated.

The military expansionists from within the Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Clinton, G. W. Bush administrations put into place solid support for increased military spending.
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Sunday February 22, 2009

Barack Obama Administration Continues US Military Global Dominance

Peter Phillips
Project Censored

The Barack Obama administration is continuing the neo-conservative agenda of US military domination of the world— albeit with perhaps a kinder-gentler face. While overt torture is now forbidden for the CIA and Pentagon, and symbolic gestures like the closing of the Guantanamo prison are in evidence, a unilateral military dominance policy, expanding military budget, and wars of occupation and aggression will likely continue unabated.

The military expansionists from within the Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Clinton, G. W. Bush administrations put into place solid support for increased military spending.
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Sunday February 22, 2009

UK boffin: Social networking causes cancer, heart attacks, lupus, dementia...

Rik Myslewski
The Register

Death by internet

There's mounting evidence that Facebooking, Twittering, and other "social networking" activities can kill you.

A study (PDF) published in Biologist, the journal of the British Institute of Biology, details how face-to-face contacts with friends and family are being replaced by face-to-screen isolation, and how the lack of real-world social interaction can increase your susceptibility to cancer, dementia, heart disease, diabetes, influenza, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus - even the common cold.
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Sunday February 22, 2009

Why the Promise of Biofuels is a Lie

Robert Bryce
Counterpunch

Der Spiegel Exposes the Brazilian Ethanol Madness

For years, the US has been inundated with claims that it should follow Brazil’s lead on biofuels. These arguments have largely been made by a small, but influential group of neoconservatives who claim that the US should quit using oil altogether. They claim that using more ethanol – produced from sugar cane, or corn, or some other substance – will impoverish OPEC and America will once again be returned to prosperity.

But these claims wither in the face of a story by Clemens Hoges in the January 22 issue of the German magazine Der Spiegel. Hoges writes that sugar cane “is considered an effective antidote to climate change, but hundreds of thousands of Brazilian plantation workers harvest the cane at slave wages.”
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Sunday February 22, 2009

The French Cheese Wars

Ullrich Fichtner
Spiegel International

It was a typical globalization-era war that pitted tradition against profits. A large cheese factory wanted to change the Camembert recipe and began a dirty fight against small producers. This time, though, tradition emerged victorious.

When Luc Morelon was still convinced that this was a winnable war, he was willing to give interviews in his office on the 30th floor of the Montparnasse Tower, with its view of the Eiffel Tower and of a deceptively peaceful-looking sea of shimmering Parisian rooftops in the morning mist. Wearing a tie with a pattern of little colorful goats on it, Morelon, a heavy-set, white-haired man, sat at his desk facing a laptop filled with data and charts of his company, Lactalis.
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Sunday February 22, 2009

Alarm over rise of BNP

Nigel Morris
Independent

Take action to stop far-right party winning seats in European elections, Brown is urged

The British National Party is on course to win its first seats in the European Parliament this year, Gordon Brown has been warned. Senior Labour figures have told the Prime Minister they believe two BNP candidates are likely to be sent to Brussels under the proportional representation system of voting, The Independent has learnt.

They fear Labour’s campaign for the European election in June has been too slow to get off the ground and its lack of preparation is allowing the BNP to win over disaffected Labour voters.
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Sunday February 22, 2009

On Capitol Hill, Money Is the Root of All Hypocrisy

Michael Winship
Truthout

The great movie comic and professional curmudgeon W.C. Fields once said, "You can fool some of the people some of the time - and that's enough to make a decent living." Watching the news from Washington unfold this week, the truth of the late comedian's words never seemed more right.

The antics of the august members of the House and Senate remind us once again that money is the root of all hypocrisy - especially in politics.
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Sunday February 22, 2009

There's another Earth out there – and we'll find it

Steve Connor
Independent

Habitable planet could be located in the next four years, scientists say

The first Earth-like planet orbiting a distant star could be discovered within four years, astronomers believe. None of the 300 "extra-solar" planets so far identified beyond our own system is thought to be suitable for life, so the discovery of an Earth-like planet made of rock rather than hot gas or frozen ice would significantly increase the chances of finding the second habitable world, scientists said.
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Sunday February 22, 2009

Still No Rights for Bagram Prisoners

Nedra Pickler and Matt Apuzzo
The Associated Press

Washington - The Obama administration, siding with the Bush White House, contended Friday that detainees in Afghanistan have no constitutional rights.

In a two-sentence court filing, the Justice Department said it agreed that detainees at Bagram Airfield cannot use U.S. courts to challenge their detention. The filing shocked human rights attorneys.
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Sunday February 22, 2009

The Hidden Link Between Factory Farms and Human Illness

Laura Sayre
Mother Earth News

The rising global demand for meat and poultry is putting human health at risk.

You may be familiar with many of the problems associated with concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs. These "factory farm" operations are often criticized for the smell and water pollution caused by all that concentrated manure; the unnatural, grain-heavy diets the animals consume; and the stressful, unhealthy conditions in which the animals live.

You may not be aware, however, of the threat such facilities hold for you and your family's health - even if you never buy any of the meat produced in this manner.
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Sunday February 22, 2009

Bigger trees helping fight against climate change

David Adam
The Guardian

Trees across the tropics are getting bigger and offering help in the fight against climate change, scientists have discovered.

A laborious study of the girth of 70,000 trees across Africa has shown that tropical forests are soaking up more carbon dioxide pollution than originally thought. Almost one-fifth of our fossil fuel emissions are absorbed by forests across Africa, Amazonia and Asia, the research suggests.
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Sunday February 22, 2009

The march of the atheist movement

Jerome Taylor
Independent

First it was a bus, now a student body has been formed to spread the secular word

In the rush-hour traffic on High Holborn, commuters were getting off one of many London buses that carry an advert proclaiming the beginning of Psalm 53: "The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God."

But, in a theatre down the road, hundreds had gathered to proclaim exactly that – that there is indeed no God and those who think there is one are, in fact, the real fools.
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Sunday February 22, 2009

Afghanistan Still World's Opium Capital

Haider Rizvi
Inter Press Service

Despite the heavy military presence of the United States and other Western powers, Afghanistan remains the world's largest illicit producer of opium, according to a new study released by experts who monitor the worldwide trade in narcotics on behalf of the United Nations.

"Afghanistan is the source of over 90 percent of the illicit opium in the world," Mylven Levitsky, a member of the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB), told a news conference after releasing the board's latest study on the global trade in illicit drugs.
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Sunday February 22, 2009

Massive leap in nano-storage within a decade

Stephen Lawson
IDG News Service

Companies may be able to store 250 DVDs on a coin-sized surface within the next years according to a team of university researchers.

The scientists, from the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Massachusetts Amherst, discovered a way to make certain kinds of molecules line up in perfect arrays over relatively large areas.
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Sunday February 22, 2009

UN Seeks a Green Revolution in Food

Thalif Deen
Inter Press Service

United Nations - The food crisis that spilled over from last year could take a turn for the worse in the next decade if there are no explicit answers to a rash of growing new problems, including declining agricultural production, a faltering distribution network and a deteriorating environment worldwide.

"Changing the ways in which food is produced, handled and disposed of across the globe - from farm to store and from fridge to landfill - can both feed the world's rising population and help the environmental services that are the foundation of agricultural productivity in the first place," says a new study titled "The Environmental Food Crisis" released by the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP).
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Sunday February 22, 2009

Kyrgyz Parliament OKs Closing Air Base That's Crucial to US

Tom Lasseter
McClatchy Newspapers

Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan - The Kyrgyz parliament voted Thursday to force the U.S. military to abandon its air base here - part of what many say is a Kremlin-backed initiative - posing a severe setback to American efforts in Afghanistan.

The vote, a resounding 78-1, signaled that Kyrgyzstan's government is ready to follow through on its president's threat to close the Manas Air Base.
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Sunday February 22, 2009

Revealed: the full extent of Labour's curbs on civil liberties

Michael Savage
Independent

Audit report highlights 'permanent erosion' of freedoms since 1997

The full extent of state powers to detain people without charge, cover up Government errors, hold the DNA of the innocent and share personal data between public bodies has been revealed in a devastating analysis of the erosion of civil liberties in Britain over the past decade.

Almost 60 new powers contained in more than 25 Acts of Parliament have whittled away at freedoms and broken pledges set out in the Human Rights Act and Magna Carta, according to a new audit of laws introduced since Labour came to power in 1997.
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Sunday February 22, 2009

Jailing Kids for Cash

Amy Goodman
Truthdig.com

As many as 5,000 children in Pennsylvania have been found guilty, and up to 2,000 of them jailed, by two corrupt judges who received kickbacks from the builders and owners of private prison facilities that benefited.

The two judges pleaded guilty in a stunning case of greed and corruption that is still unfolding. Judges Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. and Michael T. Conahan received $2.6 million in kickbacks while imprisoning children who often had no access to a lawyer. The case offers an extraordinary glimpse into the shameful private prison industry that is flourishing in the United States.
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Sunday February 22, 2009

We must print more money, says Bank

Sean Farrell
Independent

Governor appeals for urgent action to salvage Britain’s shrinking economy

The Bank of England is to start ‘printing’ new money for the first time in 30 years as it runs out of options to kick-start the economy. The Governor of the Bank of England will write to the Chancellor within days to get permission for the unprecedented action.

The Bank will create the money by buying government and corporate bonds from financial institutions for new supplies of sterling.
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Sunday February 22, 2009

Is Economic Recovery Even Possible on a Planet Headed for Environmental Collapse?

Tom Engelhardt
Tomdispatch.com

As the global economy melts down, so is the planet, with droughts threatening food production and
It turns out that you don't want to be a former city dweller in rural parts of southernmost Australia, a stalk of wheat in China or Iraq, a soybean in Argentina, an almond or grape in northern California, a cow in Texas, or almost anything in parts of east Africa right now. Let me explain.

As anyone who has turned on the prime-time TV news these last weeks knows, southeastern Australia has been burning up. It's already dry climate has been growing ever hotter. "The great drying," Australian environmental scientist Tim Flannery calls it.
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Sunday February 22, 2009

Israel Braces for Wave of Lawsuits

Mel Frykberg
Inter Press Servicce

Israel is bracing for a wave of lawsuits accusing the Jewish state of substantial human rights violations during its 22-day military assault on Gaza which left more than 1,300 Palestinians dead and nearly 5,000 wounded, more than half of them civilian.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Amnesty International (AI) and Human Rights Watch (HRW) have confirmed that phosphorous bombs were used over Gaza. It is against international law to use phosphorous in densely crowded civilian areas.

According to Amnesty, Israel tanks also fired flechettes, 4cm long metal darts in civilian neighbourhoods. Shells containing 5,000 to 8,000 flechettes explode in the air and scatter in a conical pattern over an area about 300m wide and 100m long.
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Sunday February 22, 2009

Skype calling added to Nokia's N97

Peter Sayer
IDG News Service

Skype is developing a VoIP software client for Nokia's top-of-the-range N97 smartphone, executives of both companies have announced.

Nokia will load the application onto phones before they ship. It will be integrated into the phone's address book, making it as easy to place a call to a contact's Skype username as to their regular phone number, said Skype Chief Operating Officer Scott Durchslag.
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Sunday February 22, 2009

Natural born heroes?

Ian Sample
The Giardian

People who stay cool in a crisis may be natural born heroes, according to psychiatrists investigating how soldiers behave in stressful situations.

Blood tests on war veterans showed that a minority were almost oblivious to stress and were able to think clearly in spite of the dangerous situations they found themselves in.

The research has led to a test that can predict which people will respond well in a stressful situation and those who are more likely to panic.
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Sunday February 22, 2009

Attack of the Killer Robots

Eric Stoner
In These Times

The Pentagon’s dream of a techno army is doomed to fail.

One of the most captivating storylines in science fiction involves a nightmarish vision of the future in which autonomous killer robots turn on their creators and threaten the extinction of the human race. Hollywood blockbusters such as Terminator and The Matrix are versions of this cautionary tale, as was R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots), the 1920 Czech play by Karel Capek that marked the first use of the word “robot.”

In May 2007, the U.S. military reached an ominous milestone in the history of warfare—one that took an eerie step toward making this fiction a reality. After more than three years of development, the U.S. Army’s 3rd Infantry Division based south of Baghdad, deployed armed ground robots.
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Sunday February 22, 2009

Ending the Male Patina in Biology

Mahin Hassibi
On The Issues Magazine

For the past century and a half, every new discovery of biology has left intact, and even crystallized, the myth of women's inferiority. Now, galloping developments in biotechnology may alter this age-old script.

Still, the possibilities for manipulation of genes and genetic engineering are taking place with little or no public attention to the potential consequences in the male-female equation. The future they portent could be truly revolutionary.
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Sunday February 22, 2009

France responsible for sending Jews to concentration camps, says court

Lizzy Davies
The Guardian

First legal admission of country's collaboration in Nazi atrocities

France's highest court put an end to decades of legal timidity and moral taboo yesterday when it issued a ruling recognising the state's responsibility in the deportation of tens of thousands of Jews during the second world war.

Citing "mistakes" made by the collaborationist Vichy regime, the council of state said the government's share of blame was clear in acts which had not been forced on it by the occupiers and which "allowed or facilitated the deportation from France of victims of antisemitism".
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Sunday February 22, 2009

Foiled Rotten

Grist

E.U. foiled in bid to force France, Greece to allow GM crop

The European Commission was foiled Monday in its bid to force France and Greece to allow genetically modified maize from U.S. biotech giant Monsanto to be grown in their fields.

Food chain experts from the E.U. member states, meeting in Brussels, could not reach agreement on whether to back or oppose the French and Greek refusal to allow the maize, which has been given the green light to be grown in Europe.
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Sunday February 22, 2009

Airlines Turn Modern Day Slavers

Marwaan Macan-Markar
Inter Press Service

The presence of East Asian human trafficking victims in places as far-removed as Southern Africa and Central and South America confirm the ease with which modern merchants of slavery exploit international air travel.

This geographic spread makes East Asian victims stand out when compared with victims from other corners of the planet, according to a report released Friday by the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

‘’East Asia was the region of origin of victims trafficked to the widest range of destinations,’’ revealed the ‘Global Report on Trafficking in Persons’, described by the U.N. agency as its first comprehensive report on criminal justice statistics related to human trafficking across the world.
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Sunday February 22, 2009

Criminals using Skype, say Italian police

John E. Dunn
Techworld

The Italian police force has become the latest to voice complaints that the Skype VoIP service is undermining their use of wiretapping in criminal investigations.

According to a BBC report, authorities in Milan have admitted that organised crime in Italy is increasingly turning to encrypted Skype sessions for critical communications as a way of stymieing remote surveillance.
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Sunday February 22, 2009

Whitehall devised torture policy for terror detainees

Ian Cobain and Richard Norton-Taylor
The Guardian

MI5 interrogations in Pakistan agreed by lawyers and government

A policy governing the interrogation of terrorism suspects in Pakistan that led to British citizens and residents being tortured was devised by MI5 lawyers and figures in government, according to evidence heard in court.

A number of British terrorism suspects who have been detained without trial in Pakistan say they were tortured by Pakistani intelligence agents before being questioned by MI5. In some cases their accusations are supported by medical evidence.
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Sunday February 22, 2009

5 of the Most Overrated Legal Highs -- An Attack on Everyday Drugs (and a Few You've Never Heard of)

Manfred Johnson
AlterNet

Have you ever noticed that a lot of the legal drugs out there -- including the popular ones, like alcohol -- are wildly overrated?

Have you ever noticed that a lot of the legal drugs out there -- including the popular ones like alcohol -- are wildly overrated? As in, they don't match their reputations, and have negative side effects that are often far stronger than the drug itself?

I take all kinds of drugs, but these five, even though they are perfectly legal in all 50 states, I'm pretty sure I'm never going to touch again.
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Sunday February 22, 2009

Bad News From America’s Top Spy

Chris Hedges
Truthdig

We have a remarkable ability to create our own monsters. A few decades of meddling in the Middle East with our Israeli doppelgnger and we get Hezbollah, Hamas, al-Qaida, the Iraqi resistance movement and a resurgent Taliban. Now we trash the world economy and destroy the ecosystem and sit back to watch our handiwork. Hints of our brave new world seeped out Thursday when Washington's new director of national intelligence, retired Adm. Dennis Blair, testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee.

He warned that the deepening economic crisis posed perhaps our gravest threat to stability and national security. It could trigger, he said, a return to the "violent extremism" of the 1920s and 1930s.
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Sunday February 22, 2009

Terrorist threat 'exploited to curb civil liberties'

Kim Sengupta
Independent

Security measures brought in after September 11 attacks 'undermined the rule of law'

Dame Stella Rimington, the former head of MI5, has accused the Government of exploiting public fear of terrorism to restrict civil liberties.

Her comments came on the same day as a report published by international jurists suggested that Britain and America have led other countries in "actively undermining" the rule of law and "threatening civil liberties" in the guise of fighting terrorism.
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Sunday February 22, 2009

Scientists: Pace of Climate Change Exceeds Estimates

Kari Lydersen
The Washington Post

Chicago - The pace of global warming is likely to be much faster than recent predictions, because industrial greenhouse gas emissions have increased more quickly than expected and higher temperatures are triggering self-reinforcing feedback mechanisms in global ecosystems, scientists said Saturday.

"We are basically looking now at a future climate that's beyond anything we've considered seriously in climate model simulations," Christopher Field, founding director of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology at Stanford University, said at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
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Sunday February 22, 2009

Former Guantanamo Guard Tells All

Scott Horton
Harper's Magazine

Army Private Brandon Neely served as a prison guard at Guantánamo in the first years the facility was in operation. With the Bush Administration, and thus the threat of retaliation against him, now gone, Neely decided to step forward and tell his story. "The stuff I did and the stuff I saw was just wrong," he told the Associated Press.

Neely describes the arrival of detainees in full sensory-deprivation garb, he details their sexual abuse by medical personnel, torture by other medical personnel, brutal beatings out of frustration, fear, and retribution, the first hunger strike and its causes, torturous shackling, positional torture, interference with religious practices and beliefs, verbal abuse, restriction of recreation, the behavior of mentally ill detainees, an isolation regime that was put in place for child-detainees, and his conversations with prisoners David Hicks and Rhuhel Ahmed. It makes for fascinating reading.
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Sunday February 22, 2009

An American Foreign Legion: Is the US Military Now an Imperial Police Force?

William Astore
TomDispatch.com

A leaner, meaner, higher tech force - that was what George W. Bush and his Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld promised to transform the American military into. Instead, they came close to turning it into a foreign legion. Foreign as in being constantly deployed overseas on imperial errands; foreign as in being ever more reliant on private military contractors; foreign as in being increasingly segregated from the elites that profit most from its actions, yet serve the least in its ranks.

Now would be a good time for President Barack Obama and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to begin to reclaim that military for its proper purpose: to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
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Sunday February 22, 2009

'British jobs for British workers' pledge exposed

Michael Savage
Independent

Ministers admit a third of inter-city train contract's work will go overseas

The British economy will lose £1.35bn after ministers awarded one of the largest-ever train construction contracts to a consortium which will spend almost a third of the investment overseas. Geoff Hoon, the Transport Secretary, claimed 12,500 jobs would be created or safeguarded by the decision to build 1,400 engines and coaches for Britain's inter-city train network.
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Sunday February 22, 2009

What's So Bad About a Banker Brain Drain?

Gerald Epstein
Truthout

The Financial Times reports that U.S. bankers are "enraged" about the pay limitations of the new U.S. recovery plan. Numerous bankers warn that these pay caps will lead to a "brain drain": high paid bankers will flee elsewhere in search of the top dollar.

Should we be quaking in our boots about this threatened drain of bankers' brains?

I don't think so.
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Sunday February 22, 2009

Science unlocks Neanderthal secrets

Steve Connor
Independent

For the first time, the genetic blueprint of an extinct human species has been discovered.

Their lives may have been nasty, brutish and short but their DNA has survived long enough to be almost fully decoded in a pioneering study that has revealed just how closely related were the Neanderthals to modern humans.

For the first time, scientists have deciphered the genetic sequence of the Neanderthal genome.
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Sunday February 22, 2009

Media Hysterics About Supposed Cancer Link Nothing New

Paul Armentano
NORML

So why does the mainstream media continue to get the story wrong when it comes to pot?

It must have been a slow news day.

According to Google News, more than 750 media outlets — that’s 7-5-0, folks — have now weighed in on this week’s pot scare story du jour: “Smoking marijuana causes testicular cancer.”

So is there any truth behind the provocative headline? Some, but hardly enough to justify the media’s feeding frenzy.
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Sunday February 22, 2009

It's PC gone mad! How did taking offence become a national obsession?

Michael Bywater
Independent

I'm sorry. I'm very sorry, but I don't accept those bankers' apologies. I found them offensive. A preening pack of middle-aged white men in suits, parroting the instructions of their PR advisers. Utterly insincere. An apology was not enough.

A heart attack would have been better. One each. Or a stroke, just like the new NHS advertisements: face droops, arms fall limply by the side, meaningless drivel issues from the mouth, and their head catches fire.
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Sunday February 22, 2009

Miliband announces green makeover for every home in Britain by 2030

Alok Jha
The Guardian

Minister unveils 'great British refurb' to cut household emissions one-third by 2020 with insulation and low-carbon technologies

All UK households will have a green makeover by 2030 under government plans to reduce carbon emissions and cut energy bills.

Cavity wall and loft insulation will be available for all suitable homes, with plans to retrofit 400,000 homes a year by 2015. Financial incentives for householders will also be available for low-carbon technologies such as solar panels, biomass boilers and ground source heat pumps, paid for by a levy on utility companies.
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Sunday February 22, 2009

Latin American Leaders Say 'No' to U.S. Drug War

Marina Litvinsky
Inter Press Service

A commission led by three former Latin American heads of state has called the 30-year U.S. "war on drugs" in Latin America a failure and urged a drastic change in policy.

The Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy issued a report Wednesday, "Drugs and Democracy: Toward a Paradigm Shift," which calls for the creation of a Latin American drug policy and proposes three specific actions under the new paradigm: treat addicts as patients in the public health system; evaluate decriminalisation of cannabis possession for personal use; and reduce consumption through public education campaigns primarily directed at youth.
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Sunday February 22, 2009

Microsoft puts bounty on Conficker creator

Robert McMillan
IDG News Service

Microsoft has upped the ante in the attack on the Conficker worm by offering a US$250,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of Conficker's creators.

The software vendor said it was also working with security researchers, domain name registrars and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to try to take down the servers that have been launching the Conficker attacks. ICANN is the non-profit corporation that oversees Internet addresses.
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Sunday February 22, 2009

Israel Treated Gaza Like Its Own Private Death Laboratory

Conn Hallinan
Foreign Policy

Israel tested out a "focused lethality" weapon that minimizes explosive damage to structures while inflicting catastrophic wounds on its victims.

Erik Fosse, a Norwegian cardiologist, worked in Gaza hospitals during the recent war."It was as if they had stepped on a mine," he says of certain Palestinian patients he treated. "But there was no shrapnel in the wound. Some had lost their legs. It looked as though they had been sliced off. I have been to war zones for 30 years, but I have never seen such injuries before."
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Sunday February 22, 2009

Why Using Sex Toys, Watching Porn, and Going Green Is an Easy Fit

Liz Langley
AlterNet

From pedal-powered sex toy delivery services to recycling vibrators, the adult industry has actually made going green sexy.

On Friday the 13th of August 2004, Florida got the first of a series of hurricanes that would knock us even more senseless than we usually are. Crazy, dangerous days followed Hurricane Charley here in Orlando -- days with power lines littering the streets, Red Cross trucks bringing us ice and in the dark, sweltering nights without power. All news and light was dependent on batteries. I had batteries. Within 36 hours I used them all up in my vibrator.
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Sunday February 22, 2009

The crazy world of categorising drugs

Deborah Orr
Independent

It isn't more illegal to steal gold than to steal silver. So why is it more illegal to take one substance than another?

How illegal should ecstasy be? Extremely illegal? Quite illegal? A bit illegal? The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs says it should be Quite Illegal. The Government is poised to ignore the recommendation of its own group of specialists, and insist that it should remain Extremely Illegal. Any debate on whether the drug should be illegal at all is quite out of bounds.

The chairman of the Advisory Council, Professor David Nutt, did make a modest attempt to launch a debate of that kind, by suggesting in the Journal of Psychopharmacology that in terms of the number of deaths and serious injuries it causes, taking ecstasy is considerably less dangerous than riding a horse.
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Sunday February 22, 2009

Digital time machine to save old data

Siobhan Chapman
Computerworld UK

A software emulator is being developed by computer historians and researchers at Portsmouth University, which will recognise and run all data files from the 1970s through to the present day.

Experts are building the world's first "general purpose emulator", which they hope will be able to read all types of computer file, from Space Invaders and Pacman arcade machines to the floppy discs and minidiscs of more recent years.
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Sunday February 22, 2009

In the wrong hands

Shahan Mufti
GlobalPost

The US Struggle to Keep the Taliban From Stealing What's Inside This Box

Peshawar, Pakistan - Throughout the ages, this ancient Silk Road town near the border of Afghanistan has been the place where the black market thrives and the military spoils of empires are hawked openly.

Here in the storefronts you can still buy antique field rifles left over from the British presence of the 19th century and find uniforms and revolvers from the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s.
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Sunday February 22, 2009

Fishers Learn to Share Shrinking Catch

Stephen Leahy
Inter Press Service

With the oceans in crisis, where will our fish - an important source of protein for billions of people - come from?

Innovative new fisheries management tools called "catch share" have begun in recent years and promise to keep fish on the menu for future generations, according to experts at the recent Seafood Summit in San Diego.

"Adaptation is the key - adaptation and innovation," Kristjan Davidsson, former CEO of Iceland Seafood International, told over 450 conference attendees last week.

"It is not hard to see that sustainability is the way to go but that requires collaboration with all sectors," Davidsson said.
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Sunday February 22, 2009

Gene therapy offers hope of cure for HIV

Jeremy Laurance
Independent

Doctors rid man of the virus with bone marrow transplant breakthrough

Doctors have succeeded in ridding a man of the HIV virus by giving him a bone marrow transplant in what they claim is the closest treatment yet to a cure for the disease.

The remarkable case gives new impetus to the development of gene therapy for HIV which could ultimately replace the need for expensive and toxic antiretroviral drugs. Instead of taking drugs for life, HIV sufferers might instead have a one-off treatment that would leave them virus-free.
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Sunday February 22, 2009

UN moves to charge Israel with war crimes

Press TV

The United Nations moves to set up a commission to look into Israeli war crimes and respond to its human rights violations in Gaza.

After the United Nations Works and Relief Agency (UNRWA) compound became the target of GPS-guided Israeli mortars on January 15, the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned "in the strongest terms this outrageous attack" and called for an inquiry into suspected Israeli war crimes.
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Sunday February 22, 2009

Hacker challenge to take aim at browsers and smartphones

Gregg Keizer
Computerworld (US)

A high profile hacking contest is set to return next month with hackers being offered a cash prize in order to crack browsers and smartphones, according to the security company that sponsors the "PWN2OWN" challenge.

"We're still in the planning stages for how the competition will be structured," said Terri Forslof, the manager of security response for 3Com's TippingPoint, regarding discussions she's had with organisers of CanSecWest, the security conference slated to begin 16 March in Vancouver, British Columbia.
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Sunday February 22, 2009

Questioning Authority: A Rethinking of the Infamous Milgram Experiments

Liliana Segura
AlterNet

A famous 1970s experiment was recently replicated, revealing what it takes for us to question and resist those in positions of authority.

Between 1963 and 1974, Dr. Stanley Milgram conducted a series of experiments that would become one of the most famous social psychology studies of the 20th century. His focus was how average people respond to authority, and what he revealed stunned and disturbed people the world over.

Under the pretense of an experiment on "learning" and "memory," Milgram placed test subjects in a lab rigged with fake gadgetry, where a man in a lab coat instructed them to administer electrical shocks to a fellow test subject (actually an actor) seated in another room in "a kind of miniature electric chair."
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Sunday February 22, 2009

Obama's Legal Team Copies Bush's 'State Secrets' Trick to Cover Up Torture and Renditions

Liliana Segura
AlterNet

Attorneys representing the Obama administration are defending one of the most controversial practices of the Bush administration.

On Monday in San Francisco, attorneys representing the Obama administration did what many of the president's supporters would have considered unthinkable on election day: they arrived in a federal courtroom and defended one of the most controversial practices of the Bush administration.
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Sunday February 22, 2009

Video games are good for children - EU report

Robert Booth
The Guardian

Children who spend hours every day on their Playstation or Xbox video consoles may not be rotting their brains, as many parents fear. A report from the European parliament concluded yesterday that computer games are good for children and teach them essential life skills.

Contrary to fears about the violent reputation of some games, there is no firm proof that playing them has an automatic negative impact on children's behaviour, for example by causing aggression, said the report from the committee on the internal market and consumer protection.
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Sunday February 22, 2009

NASA plans to take the boom out of supersonic flight

Jeff Hecht
New Scientist

NASA has completed a delicate set of flight tests to measure how modifications to an F-15 jet can affect the way shock waves form. The results could help turn sonic booms into distant rumbles.

The measurements will be used to calibrate a computer model of shock wave propagation which will be a crucial aid for engineers designing a new generation of quieter supersonic aircraft. "We're pretty close to being able to control sonic booms," says Peter Coen of NASA's Langley Research Center in Virginia, principal investigator for the agency's supersonic research programme.
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Sunday February 22, 2009

Crash of US, Russian satellites a threat in space

Seth Borenstein and Douglas Birch
Associated Press

U.S. and Russian officials traded shots Thursday over who was to blame for a huge satellite collision this week that spewed speeding clouds of debris into space, threatening other unmanned spacecraft in nearby orbits.

The smashup 500 miles (800 kilometers) over Siberia on Tuesday involved a derelict Russian spacecraft designed for military communications and a working satellite owned by U.S.-based Iridium, which served commercial customers as well as the U.S. Department of Defense.
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Tuesday February 17, 2009

A Torture Report Could Spell Big Trouble for Bush Lawyers

Michael Isikoff
Newsweek

An internal Justice Department report on the conduct of senior lawyers who approved waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics is causing anxiety among former Bush administration officials.

H. Marshall Jarrett, chief of the department's ethics watchdog unit, the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), confirmed last year he was investigating whether the legal advice in crucial interrogation memos "was consistent with the professional standards that apply to Department of Justice attorneys."
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Thursday February 12, 2009

Chiefs of bailed-out banks admit they will be paying staff £1bn in bonuses

Michael Savage
Independent

THE BOSSES of two major British banks that had to be saved from collapse by a £37bn bailout by the taxpayer have admitted that some senior staff will be paid bonuses.

Stephen Hester, the new chief executive of Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), which needed a £20bn cash injection from the Government, told the Treasury Select Committee that he took "no joy whatsoever" in paying out an estimated £1bn in bonuses.

He said that none of the RBS board would be given bonuses for last year and that they would also be withheld from "anyone at all associated with losses we've made".
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Wednesday February 11, 2009

'Stallion of the south' to greet travellers

Arifa Akbar
Independent

A monumental sculpture of a white stallion looming 50-metres high was yesterday picked to be one of the first sights to greet Eurostar passengers as they travel into London from mainland Europe.

Mark Wallinger's giant sculpture, which has been described as the "Stallion of the south" and is set to overshadow Antony Gormley's 20-metre Angel of the North in Gateshead, will be erected in Kent on the site of a former chalk pit.
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Wednesday February 11, 2009

UK Politician Urges Video Game Manufacturers to Include Global Warming Message

Jeff Poor
Business & Media Institute

If you want a preview of tactics that could be on the way in the name of curbing global warming, take a look across the pond at what they’re doing in Europe.

In Britain, Lord Puttnam, the founding chairman of the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts and a former chairman of the Joint Parliamentary Committee on the Draft Climate Change Bill issued a statement ahead of his speech slated for the end of this month at the Terra future conference, urging video games to be used to spread the message about climate change.
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Wednesday February 11, 2009

For East Europe, geothermal can replace some gas

Krisztina Than
Reuters

Lajos Barath last year took an ancient route to energy for his hospital. Switching the heating and hot water entirely to geothermal energy, he was building on a Roman discovery continued by the Turks.

Besides saving energy costs, the two wells 2,150 meters (7,000 feet) deep from which hot water is pumped proved a good investment last month, when Russia cut off gas supplies through Ukraine in freezing midwinter.
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Wednesday February 11, 2009

Social networking firms sign up to kids' protection deal

OUT-LAW

The major social networking companies have signed a European Commission-brokered agreement to do more to protect under 18s using their services.

Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Yahoo!, Microsoft and others have all committed to change the way their services operate to help to give young people and children extra protection from privacy violations and from predatory contacts from potential sexual abusers.
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Wednesday February 11, 2009

Sex education films: they don't make them like they used to

Peter Bradshaw
The Guardian

In our oversexed age, sex education films from earlier decades still have the power to shock and awe with their freedom and frankness

There can't be many new DVD releases of short film anthologies which are unstintingly riveting all the way through. But here's one. For the past couple of days, I have been glued to the BFI's incredible collection The Joy of Sex Education, which is a compendium of sex education films from 1917 to 1973.
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Wednesday February 11, 2009

Hey Kids, Wanna Play Security Checkpoint: The Terrifying Marketing Of Police State Normalacy To Children

Lucinda Marshall
Feminist Peace Network

When I flew home from Washington, DC after a business trip last week, the TSA agent asked to test my laptop. I politely asked what they were testing for. It was just routine she told me. And she’s right, it has become routine, a much too routine standard operating procedure designed to make us believe that the usurping of our privacy and human rights is normal and necessary if we are to be secure and free.

The obvious irony is that we are not secure and free if government agents have a right to violate our privacy and deny our rights without cause. I considered protesting but I figured that the best outcome of that would be missing my flight, the worst case being detained incommunicado in an undisclosed location
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Wednesday February 11, 2009

Sensitive data found on eBay hard drives

Lucas Mearian
Computerworld (US)

Forty percent of the hard drives purchased by a computer forensics firm from eBay contained personal, private information, ranging from corporate financial data to the web surfing downloads of a man with a foot fetish.

Kessler International conducted the survey over a six-month period, buying up disk drives from the United States and Canada ranging in size from 40GB to 300GB. The firm, which completed its survey about two weeks ago, bought a total of 100 relatively modern drives, the vast majority of them serial ATA
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Wednesday February 11, 2009

The Big Question: Do we need a new debate about relaxing drugs policy in Britain?

Ed Howker
Independent

Why are we asking this now?

Today, the Government's Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) publishes a report proposing the downgrading of Methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) or "Ecstasy" from a Class A to Class B substance with the same legal penalties for possession and dealing as crack-cocaine and heroin.

Only last month, however, the Home Office reiterated its intention to maintain the drug's status as Class A – on 4 January – so the report is likely to have very little effect on government policy.
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Wednesday February 11, 2009

Obama's Legal Team Copies Bush's 'State Secrets' Trick to Cover Up Torture and Renditions

Liliana Segura
AlterNet

Attorneys representing the Obama administration are defending one of the most controversial practices of the Bush administration.

On Monday in San Francisco, attorneys representing the Obama administration did what many of the president's supporters would have considered unthinkable on election day: they arrived in a federal courtroom and defended one of the most controversial practices of the Bush administration.
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Wednesday February 11, 2009

A Commodity Called Misery

Joe Bageant
JoeBageant.com

Our authorized sanities are so many Nembutals. "Normal" citizens with store-dummy smiles stand apart from each other like cotton-packed capsules in a bottle. Perpetual mental out-patients. Maddeningly sterile jobs for strait-jackets, love scrubbed into an insipid "functional personal relationship" and Art as a fantasy pacifier ... And we all know this ... Slowly, very slowly we are led nowhere.

Sitting down here in Central America happily abusing my health, occasionally, between the hangovers and the bouts with sand fleas and mosquitoes comes an insight or two, or at least what passes for insight in my lowbrow take on life. One of these is just how damned lucky the Third World is that it cannot afford a sophisticated mental health system.
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Wednesday February 11, 2009

Eating less meat could cut climate costs

Jim Giles
New Scientist

Cutting back on beefburgers and bacon could wipe $20 trillion off the cost of fighting climate change. That's the dramatic conclusion of a study that totted up the economic costs of modern meat-heavy diets.

The researchers involved say that reducing our intake of beef and pork would lead to the creation of a huge new carbon sink, as vegetation would thrive on unused farmland.
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Wednesday February 11, 2009

In new procedure, artificial arm listens to brain

Pam Belluck
International Herald Tribune

Amanda Kitts lost her left arm in a car accident three years ago, but these days she plays football with her 12-year-old son, and changes diapers and bearhugs children at the three Kiddie Cottage day care centers she owns in Knoxville, Tennessee.

Kitts, 40, does this all with a new kind of artificial arm that moves more easily than other devices and that she can control by using only her thoughts.
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Wednesday February 11, 2009

Senior HBOS executive 'sacked for warning of banking crisis'

Andrew Porter
The Telegraph

Paul Moore, a senior executive at HBOS, was sacked by one of Gordon Brown's favoured bankers after warning his bosses they were taking excessive risks, MPs were told.

The former head of risk at HBOS - one of the biggest casualties of the banking meltdown - told the Treasury Select Committee how he predicted the bank's practices could "lead to disaster".
He informed the bank's board of his concerns, but was later sacked by Sir James Crosby, the bank's former chief executive.
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Wednesday February 11, 2009

Irish minister bans climate change adverts

Chris Green
Independent

An advertising campaign urging people to help tackle climate change has been banned by Northern Ireland's Environment minister because he does not believe humans are the main cause of global warming.

Sammy Wilson said the ads suggested that turning off a television rather than putting it on standby could help save the planet, a notion he described as "patent nonsense".
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Wednesday February 11, 2009

Church of England votes to ban BNP clergy

Riazat Butt
The Guardian

General Synod moves overwhelmingly to bar clergy from membership of far-right party

The Church of England today voted overwhelmingly in favour of banning clergy from belonging to the British National Party .

On the second day of the General Synod, the legislative body that meets twice a year, more than 300 of the 418 members gathered in Westminster endorsed a motion asking the House of Bishops to keep BNP members out of the church.
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Wednesday February 11, 2009

Fraudsters cream opposition in cybercrime wars

John Leyden
The Register

Fraudsters cream opposition in cybercrime wars

Unsafe Internet Day

The celebration of Safer Internet Day on Tuesday was marked by warnings that cybercriminals are staying ahead of defenders in their attempts to defraud or otherwise abuse internet users.

Safer Internet Day is part of wider efforts to promote the safe and responsible use of the internet and mobile technologies, especially among youngsters. Reports of incidents of online child abuse and financial fraud are both on the increase.
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Wednesday February 11, 2009

Popular Rage Grows as Global Crisis Worsens

Spiegel International

As the global economic crisis deepens, tempers around the world are getting shorter. French and British trade unions are organizing strikes, Putin is sending troops into the streets and Beijing is trying to buy itself calm.

In the cabinet of French President's Nicolas Sarkozy, there was talk of a "Black Thursday," and from Sarkozy's perspective, that was exactly what Jan. 29, 2009 turned out to be. Schools were closed, and so were railroads, banks and stock markets.
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Wednesday February 11, 2009

As Israelis Vote, It's All About War and Peace

Ilene R. Prusher
The Christian Science Monitor

Benjamin Netanyahu, the Likud party hawk, leads in polls ahead of Tuesday's parliamentary election.

When Israelis go to polls Tuesday, the impact of the country's two wars in less than three years will be a deciding factor for many.

Gaza still smolders after the 22-day assault on Hamas that killed 1,300 Palestinians but didn't stop rockets from falling on Israel. That operation rekindled many of the painful memories from Israel's 2006 failed war in Lebanon against Hezbollah.
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Wednesday February 11, 2009

Multivitamin supplements a 'waste of time'

Jeremy Laurance
Independent

Healthy diet provides all the vitamins needed to prevent serious deficiencies

Middle-aged women who swallow multivitamin supplements are not doing their health any favours – and are just creating expensive urine, according to the world's largest study into the subject.

Researchers who examined the pill-popping habits of nearly 162,000 American women aged 50 to 79 found that although they swallowed dietary supplements by the bucketload, there was no sign that they reduced common cancers, heart disease or deaths.
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Wednesday February 11, 2009

56-year-old becomes 1st woman to swim Atlantic

Danica Coto
Associated Press

Jennifer Figge pressed her toes into the Caribbean sand, exhilarated and exhausted as she touched land this week for the first time in almost a month.

Reaching a beach in Trinidad, she became the first woman on record to swim across the Atlantic Ocean — a dream she'd had since the early 1960s, when a stormy trans-Atlantic flight got her thinking she could don a life vest and swim the rest of the way if needed.
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Wednesday February 11, 2009

US Using British Atomic Weapons Factory for Its Nuclear Program

Matthew Taylor and Richard Norton-Taylor
The Guardian

The US military has been using Britain's atomic weapons factory to carry out research into its own nuclear warhead programme, according to evidence seen by the Guardian.

US defence officials said that "very valuable" warhead research has taken place at the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston in Berkshire as part of an ongoing and secretive deal between the British and American governments.
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Wednesday February 11, 2009

Torture Chic: Why Is the Media Glorifying Inhumane, Sadistic Behavior?

Maura Moynihan
AlterNet

During the Bush years there was an increase in torture imagery in popular culture -- a growing acceptance of violence as routine and effective.

In his first days in office, President Barack Obama took a pen and signed executive orders halting the use of torture, shutting Guantanamo and banning secret CIA prisons overseas, as he vowed to fight terrorism "in a manner that is consistent with our values and our ideals.
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Wednesday February 11, 2009

Mozilla joins EU anti-trust suit

Paul Meller
IDG News Service

The European Commission has granted Mozilla the right to join its anti-trust case against Microsoft.

The Commission, Europe's top antitrust authority, charged Microsoft last month with distorting competition in the market for web browsers by bundling IE with the Windows operating system.

If the charges stick, then Microsoft could be forced to change the way it distributes IE, as well as pay a fine for monopoly abuse.
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Wednesday February 11, 2009

Army victims’ lawyer ‘had death threats’

Robert Verkaik
Independent

MoD accused of waging 'black propaganda' campaign against human rights activists

Police are investigating death threats made against a British human rights lawyer who claims to be the victim of a hate campaign stirred up by the Ministry of Defence. It is the second time in two days that the MoD has been blamed for "black propaganda" against human rights activists.
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Wednesday February 11, 2009

US leads the spam field

Melba-Jean V. Bernad
Computerworld Philippines

Spammers have turned their attention to Twitter and Facebook and the US is leading the list of shame.

That's according to security company Sophos which stated in its recent report that cybercriminals have shown an increased attraction to social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter during this last quarter, a sign that spammers are successfully adapting their methods to suit the current environment.
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Wednesday February 11, 2009

Can Crazy Techno Schemes Actually Save Us from Climate Change?

Gwen Schantz
AlterNet

From blocking out the sun with "space shields" to fertilizing the oceans with carbon-consuming algae, will the magic of science save us?

Temperatures are rising, ice caps are melting, seas are swelling and if we don't do something soon (yesterday?), we're sure to find ourselves huddled together on a mountaintop in Utah, a little place we will lovingly refer to as "dry land."
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Wednesday February 11, 2009

What's the Matter With Teen Sexting?

Judith Levine
American Prospect

Sex and predatory adults are not the biggest dangers teenagers face online. Their main risk is garden-variety kid-on-kid meanness.

A couple of weeks ago, in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, prosecutors charged six teenagers with creating, distributing, and possessing child pornography. The three girls, ages 14 and 15, took nude or seminude pictures of themselves and e-mailed them to friends, including three boys, ages 16 and 17, who are among the defendants.

Police Captain George Seranko described the obscenity of the images: They "weren't just breasts," he declared. "They showed female anatomy!"
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Wednesday February 11, 2009

Doctors: Under the Drug Industry's Influence?

Julie Steenhuysen
Reuters

Reports of undisclosed financial ties between researchers and drugmakers have eroded public confidence, and restoring it will require an end to some "free" perks, health policy experts said on Tuesday.

Doctors may have to give up not just pens and prescription pads, but cozy seminars put on by drug companies in the guise of education, while the companies may need to give up direct-to-consumer ads, the experts wrote in a series of commentaries in the British Medical Journal.
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Wednesday February 11, 2009

The Cia’s Uprising In Afghanistan

Jim Hightower
JimHightower.com

You’ve gotta love the CIA for always giving it the old college try. The “it” can be highly questionable, even criminal, but the agency’s operatives keep trying all sorts of dandy, innovative tricks to do whatever the it is.

Take the plan years ago to assassinate Fidel Castro by getting him to light up an exploding cigar. Obviously, it fizzled, but the gambit did show a sense of humor. Or, was it stupidity? Whichever.
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Wednesday February 11, 2009

The age of the dinosaurs: how a race of terrible lizards came to dominate life on land all over the planet

Independent

Nine out of 10 species that existed on the Earth were killed off by the Permian Mass Extinction.

After those catastrophic years, the most successful species were nature's loyal brigade of cleaners and recyclers – the fungi. When times get really tough, history shows it's best to be small – like insects, bacteria and fungi. For a while, the Earth belonged to them.

Only one species of mammal-like reptile survived at all: the Lystrosaurus. If this creature had perished, evolution would almost certainly have shunted yet-to-come mammals and humans into life's might-have-beens, consigning our ancestors to the waste bucket of life, an experimental cul-de-sac. No matter, then, that our reptilian saviour wasn't exactly blessed with good looks, being something like a cross between a hippopotamus and a pig.
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Wednesday February 11, 2009

Obama Seeks Nuclear Disarmament Deal With Russia

Ian Traynor and Luke Harding
The Guardian

Hillary Clinton to head US efforts to reduce warheads to about 1,000

The Obama administration is looking for a quick deal between the US and Russia to more than halve their nuclear weapons stockpiles, reversing the Bush White House's refusal to be bound by international treaties.

Diplomats and officials say they are optimistic Washington and Moscow can quickly agree to cut warheads to about 1,000.
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Wednesday February 11, 2009

War on Words

Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball
Newsweek

Why Obama may be abandoning Bush's favorite phrase

In another effort to undo the legacy of George W. Bush's presidency, the Obama administration is searching for alternatives to the term "war on terror."

In recent days, Obama's national-security officials have had brainstorming sessions to come up with different ways to describe the U.S. government's efforts to defeat Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan, according to administration sources who asked not to be identified talking about private discussions.
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Wednesday February 11, 2009

Mystery of an Indian Missile Test Flop

J. Sri Raman
Truthout

On January 20, 2009, a cruise missile test, which India's security establishment had billed as crucial, failed. It did so in a curious manner, though the cause of the failure is yet to be officially announced.

The questions raised by the failure may appear to be only technical at first glance. They, however, can serve to highlight a military trade war between far-off powers fueling a missile race in South Asia.
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Wednesday February 11, 2009

Now Apple has designs on the television market

Martin Hickman
Independent

Apple is developing a television set that will transform home entertainment by playing films or TV shows straight from the internet, according to a report that has created a buzz among the Californian company's online fans.

A technology pundit with a US finance house said that the inventive firm would launch a stylish premium television with a Digital Video Recorder (DVR), allowing people to record and download content without a DVD player or set-top box.
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Wednesday February 11, 2009

Why Military Responses to Terror Attacks Are Always Doomed to Fail

Deepak Chopra and Ken Robinson
AlterNet

Our only hope against Islamic terrorism is to police it in the short run, and offer a more enticing idea in the long run.

It's a sore temptation to hunt down Osama bin Laden -- one of the most consistent campaign promises made by President Obama -- and yet there are strong arguments against it. U.S. forces would have to penetrate deep into provincial Pakistan and perhaps even conduct house-to-house searches. Such incursions would destabilize Pakistan's already shaky regime and inflame the extremist element.
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Friday February 06, 2009

'We must protect privacy from over-zealous state'

Afua Hirsch
The Guardian

Today's far-reaching report on surveillance in Britain highlights six crucial areas where the balance between the powers to spy and privacy are under the greatest strain.

The National DNA Database

The report is highly critical of the current arrangements that allow the state to store and retain indefinitely the DNA data of anyone questioned by the police, with the result that an estimated 7.39% of the population are now included on the national database.
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Friday February 06, 2009

The politics of bollocks

John Pilger
New Statesman

Supporters of the new US president refuse to admit that the "man of change" is, in fact, changing very little. It's time the Obama lovers grew up

Growing up in an Antipodean society proud of its rich variety of expletives, I never heard the word bollocks. It was only on arrival in England that I understood its magisterial power. All classes used it. Judges grunted it; an editor of the Daily Mirror used it as noun, adjective and verb. Certainly, the resonance of a double vowel saw off its closest American contender. It had authority.
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Friday February 06, 2009

How to spot the six sins of greenwashing

Susan Campbell
Green Living Online

Though it has a clean and pleasant ring to it, "greenwashing" is anything but! The Oxford Dictionary added its definition in 1999: Disinformation disseminated by an organization so as to present an environmentally responsible public image.

Growing problem

As long as there have been consumers, there have been salespeople out to befuddle the public about the true nature of their wares. Even the ancient Greeks warned their citizens about "caveat emptor".
Greenwashing" is the newest problem in the marketplace.
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Friday February 06, 2009

Prefab Friday: Riken Yamamoto’s Ecoms House

Haily Zaki
Inhabitat

Riken Yamamoto’s Ecoms House exemplifies a new kind of home economics. Constructed out of aluminum panels, this diminutive 24-foot by 24-foot box demonstrates how economy in size and fabrication can lead to surplus in style and coolness.

A prototype residence for SUS Corporation, a manufacturer of aluminum precision machine parts and furniture, this home was initially an experiment to create something out of aluminum that could not be expressed with steel. The exterior is inspired by the traditional use of tatami mats in Japanese homes — each of the four sides featuring transparent, opaque, and glass-covered aluminum lattice panels.
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Friday February 06, 2009

6 Everyday Words With Disturbing Alternate Meanings

Malcolm Christiansen
Cracked.com

So the whole news world was up in arms recently because of this newscast referring to Barack and Michelle Obama "fisting" each other in the White House, the speaker blissfully unaware of the unsettling slang definition of the term.

And while we can all laugh at that lady and her obliviousness, the truth is there are all sorts of everyday words that, in the right crowd, will draw the same muffled laughter as the fisting gaffe up there. Such as...
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Friday February 06, 2009

UN halts aid into Gaza after 'Hamas theft'

Associated Press

Agency blames Islamist government for stealing thousands of tonnes of food

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees said today it has halted all aid shipments into the Gaza Strip after the Hamas government seized thousands of tonnes of food and other provisions.

The UN Relief and Works agency said it made the decision after Hamas personnel intercepted an aid shipment for the second time this week.
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Friday February 06, 2009

British bank adapts to life on a leash

Landon Thomas Jr.
International Herald tribune

Wall Street's finest may be grumbling over the new bonus restrictions imposed by the Obama administration, but it could be worse: they could be working for the Royal Bank of Scotland.

After a bailout that has made the British government its largest and most influential shareholder, the bank's once cosseted executives are adjusting to a life that is both leaner and meaner.
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Friday February 06, 2009

Blue if you want to be creative, red if you want to be diligent

Steve Connor
Independent

Scientific study reveals the different effects that colours have on the brain.

Paint it red if you want attention to detail, paint it blue to prompt creative thinking. This is the conclusion of a study into how colour is likely to spark the various passions and sensibilities of the human mind.

Scientists who monitored the performance of more than 600 people as they underwent a battery of psychological tests found that red stimulated a person's attentiveness, whereas blue fertilised the imagination and inspired a more risk-taking attitude.
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Friday February 06, 2009

Homeowners spied on by councils ’should get compensation’

Christopher Hope
The Telegraph

Homeowners who are spied on by councils using anti-terror legislation should be paid compensation for the invasion of their privacy, peers said.

An influential House of Lords committee warns that the increasing use of surveillance to monitor the public risks undermining the “cornerstone of democracy”.

No figure is set on the compensation but it could run into thousands of pounds.
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Friday February 06, 2009

Could this be Far Worse than the GREAT DEPRESSION?

The Coming Depression

There is a high chance a majority of the States within the United States of America could file for Chapter 9 bankruptcy. There are currently 46 states with high budget deficits, Arizona being one of them.

In fact, Jan Brewer, the newly appointed Governor of Arizona has a major crisis on her hands, one that Arizona and national media isn’t covering.

The alarming news is the State of Arizona has 90 to 120 days before they completely run out of money. After that, all bills and tax refunds owed to the citizens will go unpaid.
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Friday February 06, 2009

Obama Administration Moves to Heal Rift With Europe

Ross Colvin
Reuters

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden will seek to break with the unilateralist tilt of the Bush years by emphasizing cooperation and diplomacy in a major weekend foreign policy speech in Germany, U.S. officials said.

His remarks on Saturday to the Munich Security Conference, a gathering of defense and security experts, will be scrutinized for more details on the new administration's policies on Russia, Afghanistan, the Middle East and NATO expansion.
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Friday February 06, 2009

Peers warn surveillance state is threat to freedom

Ben Russell
Independent

Lords committee seeks dramatic reduction of intrusion into private life

The vast growth of surveillance and data collection risks undermining freedoms vital to the British way of life, a group of eminent peers is warning today.

In a devastating critique of the spiralling use of CCTV, databases and information sharing, they warn that the growth of information collected about every man, woman and child in Britain is a "serious threat" to principles at the heart of the constitution.
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Thursday February 05, 2009

The truth is out there: UFO sightings ‘double in one year’

Graham Smith
Daily Mail

The number of UFO sightings in Britain last year was more than double the amount reported in 2007, according to a new dossier released by the Ministry of Defence.

There were 285 reports of Unidentified Flying Objects in 2008, including one floating above the Houses of Parliament in London, compared to just 135 for the preceding 12 months.

The mystery craft hovering in the skies opposite Parliament was spotted on 12 February last year.
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Thursday February 05, 2009

Is Facebook just a passing fad?

Rhodri Marsden
Independent

After five years of astonishing success, the youngest self-made billionaire in history is fighting off pretenders to ensure the future remains Facebook

It's a tale of entrepreneurial flair that provokes awe and envy in equal measure. A student at Harvard creates a website for the amusement of his fellow undergraduates so they can exchange notes and keep tabs on upcoming events.

It catches on with their friends, and their friends' friends, so he rolls out invitations to other Ivy League colleges and schools and selected corporations.
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Thursday February 05, 2009

Bohemians, farewell

Harry Mount
New Statesman

They were a peculiarly British breed: talented, intellectual, often alcoholic (but usually harmless) eccentrics. Where old pubs and shabby bookshops were to be found, there they flourished. But sadly no more

The man in the white gloves doesn't have his lunch in the King's Arms in Oxford any more. Sixteen years ago, he'd be in there every day - pristine gloves, bottle-green suit, cream waistcoat, watch chain, stick-thin, pencil moustache, blanched complexion, in his late forties, a bit like Dirk Bogarde in Death in Venice.
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Thursday February 05, 2009

Interest rates: Bank of England accused of 'assault' on savers

The Telegraph

The Bank of England was accused of launching an "assault" on savers as it slashed interest rates to a new record low.

Consumer groups and trade bodies expressed anger at the latest 0.5 per cent reduction, arguing that it penalised savers, while doing little to help the majority of borrowers.

They also voiced concerns that with the returns on deposit accounts already at a record low, people would be put off saving, further reducing the supply of funds available to banks and building societies for mortgage lending.
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Thursday February 05, 2009

Disparate privacy features devalue ID cards, warns EU security agency

Out-Law

The failure of European Union nations to co-ordinate the privacy features of identity cards will be a major barrier to their usefulness, an EU agency has said. The EU's network security agency hopes countries will co-ordinate cards' privacy features.

The European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA), which is funded by the EU, has studied all 10 ID card systems in the EU and the 13 in development and has found that they each adopt different standards of privacy and methods of protecting it.
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Thursday February 05, 2009

Jacqui Smith cracks down on gangs via computers, closets

Joe Fay
The Register

You really could be nicked for wearing a loud shirt in a built-up area

The government will hit gangs where it hurts - on the internet and in their wardrobes.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith today announced plans to insert provisions into the Policing and Crime Bill that would allow courts to impose a range of restrictions on individuals.

These include not allowing individuals to enter a "specified place", for example a gang's "territory", and banning them from using and threatening to use violence.
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Thursday February 05, 2009

Russia Becomes A ‘Gangster State’

Sky News

Democracy campaigners claim Russia has become a ‘gangster state’ after a human rights lawyer and a journalist were killed in broad daylight on a Moscow Street.

The murders are the latest in a series of attacks on the media.

Stanislav Markelov was one of Russia’s most famous human rights lawyers.

The fearless 34-year-old had handled cases on military abuses in Chechnya and had also represented the murdered journalist Anna Politkovskaya.
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Thursday February 05, 2009

Europe Warns against 'Buy American' Clause

Spiegel International

Fears over US stimulus package

Washington is planning billions in subsidies for the ailing automobile industry, and the US Senate is debating a 'Buy American' provision in its economic stimulus package. The European Union fears the US is trying to seal off its market -- and is using its diplomatic arsenal in a bid to stop the move.

The European Union is unhappy about a "Buy American" clause in the United States bailout program making its way through Senate this week that officials say reeks of protectionism and could threaten to spark renewed trade wars between the US and Europe.
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Thursday February 05, 2009

'Osama bin Laden' makes his pitch for a place in paradise

Sam Jones
The Guardian

Prankster posing as the world's most wanted man says he is best candidate for job of looking after tropical Australian island

The opportunity to earn £66,500 for spending six months lounging on the beach and blogging about the staggering beauty of the tropical island paradise you're looking after was always going to attract the odd eccentric applicant.

But the people at Queensland's department of tourism were still a little taken aback when the world's most wanted man sent in a video explaining why he was the perfect candidate to act as caretaker of Hamilton Island in the Great Barrier Reef.
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Thursday February 05, 2009

Why the sun shines on summer babies

James Woodward
Independent

Ultraviolet rays make pregnant women have taller offspring with stronger bones

Women who are pregnant during the summer have taller, stronger-boned babies because they benefit from the sun's vitamin-boosting rays, a study suggested yesterday.

Children born in late summer or early autumn are about 5mm taller and have thicker bones than those born in winter or spring, an 18-year research project found.
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Thursday February 05, 2009

The War on Terror is a Hoax

Paul Craig Roberts
Counterpunch

Endless Propaganda

According to US government propaganda, terrorist cells are spread throughout America, making it necessary for the government to spy on all Americans and violate most other constitutional protections. Among President Bush’s last words as he left office was the warning that America would soon be struck again by Muslim terrorists.

If America were infected with terrorists, we would not need the government to tell us. We would know it from events. As there are no events, the US government substitutes warnings in order to keep alive the fear that causes the public to accept pointless wars, the infringement of civil liberty, national ID cards, and inconveniences and harassments when they fly.
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Thursday February 05, 2009

Many Westerners Are Adopting Children Bought or Stolen from Their Parents

E.J. Graff
Foreign Policy

Parents might never know if their adopted child is truly an orphan.

We all know the story of international adoption: Millions of infants and toddlers have been abandoned or orphaned -- placed on the side of a road or on the doorstep of a church, or left parentless due to AIDS, destitution, or war.

These little ones find themselves forgotten, living in crowded orphanages or ending up on the streets, facing an uncertain future of misery and neglect. But, if they are lucky, adoring new moms and dads from faraway lands whisk them away for a chance at a better life.

Unfortunately, this story is largely fiction.
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Thursday February 05, 2009

The snake that was so big it ate crocodiles

Steve Connor
Independent

It grew up to 45 feet long, weighed more than a ton and dined on giant turtles and fearsome crocodiles. It was also the biggest known snake to have ever lived - even dwarfing the Hollywood snake that tried to eat Jennifer Lopez in the film Anaconda.

Scientists discovered the fossilised backbones of the super-sized snake in a giant open-cast coal mine at Cerrejon in northern Colombia and estimated that at the fattest point on its very long body the snake would have been about three feet wide.
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Thursday February 05, 2009

Stopping Wall Street's Culture of Excess

Jim Hightower
Creators.com

Bankers have never been much loved, but gollies, this Wall Street bunch seems hell-bent on being loathed.

As a consequence of their avaricious grab for outrageous personal enrichment during the past decade, these arrogant titans of financial gimmickry have caused a vast economic collapse that is presently costing million of Americans their homes, jobs, pensions and dreams — while also bringing down the banks themselves.

As you would expect, the Wall Streeters who did this to us are now humbled and filled with deep remorse. HA! Just kidding.
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Thursday February 05, 2009

Obama Taking Hands-On Approach to Mideast

Helena Cobban
Inter Press Service

During the three weeks of the Israel-Gaza war, then President-elect Barack Obama vowed he would be ready to engage on the Palestinian question "on Day One" of his presidency.

Now, 10 days into his term, he looks to have made good on that promise. Along the way, he has deftly taken over effective control of the Palestinian file from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, signaling very clearly that he judges this issue to be -along with the economic crisis - one of the two top priorities of his presidency.
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Wednesday February 04, 2009

Google offers free software to track people

John Byrne
Raw Story

A new piece of free Google software released today allows people to keep track of each other using their cell phones — and while it’s opt-in, it’s sure to create a privacy firestorm.

CNET, owned by CBS News, debuted the product on the Early Show Wednesday. It’s designed to work on any phone with Internet capabilities — except the iPhone, one of Google’s competitors (Google launched their own phone, Android, for T-Mobile last year).

Latitude “uses GPS systems and what’s called cell tower triangulation to do the job,” CBS reports. “The software seeks the closest three cell towers and, with GPS, combines the data to show where someone is.”
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Wednesday February 04, 2009

Born believers: How your brain creates God

Michael Brooks
New Scientist

While many institutions collapsed during the Great Depression that began in 1929, one kind did rather well. During this leanest of times, the strictest, most authoritarian churches saw a surge in attendance.

This anomaly was documented in the early 1970s, but only now is science beginning to tell us why. It turns out that human beings have a natural inclination for religious belief, especially during hard times.

Our brains effortlessly conjure up an imaginary world of spirits, gods and monsters, and the more insecure we feel, the harder it is to resist the pull of this supernatural world. It seems that our minds are finely tuned to believe in gods.
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Wednesday February 04, 2009

Intrepid treasure-hunters – or archaeological vandals?

Cahal Milmo and Jerome Taylor
Independent

A marine exploration company has found HMS Victory's remains. But not everyone is pleased

At 3.30pm on 4 October 1744, the Royal Navy flotilla accompanying HMS Victory caught what was to be their last glimpse of their flagship as it drifted over the horizon in stormy seas off the Channel Islands.

Laden with four tons of Portuguese gold, the pride of the British navy – and direct predecessor to Admiral Nelson's vessel of the same name – sank with all 1,150 of its crew.
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Wednesday February 04, 2009

President Obama Seeks Russia Deal to Slash Nuclear Weapons

Tim Reid
The Times

The radical new treaty would reduce the number of nuclear warheads to 1,000 each.

President Obama will convene the most ambitious arms reduction talks with Russia for a generation, aiming to slash each country's stockpile of nuclear weapons by 80 per cent.

The radical treaty would cut the number of nuclear warheads to 1,000 each, The Times has learnt.
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Wednesday February 04, 2009

Campaigners question sums behind falling UK emissions

Juliette Jowit
The Guardian

Official figures show a 1.7% decline in greenhouse gas emissions in the UK in 2007 but campaigners accuse government of 'creative accounting'

The annual controversy over whether the UK's greenhouse gas emissions are rising or falling began again today with the publication of the latest official figures showing a 1.7% decline in 2007.

The government said the fall in the last full year, for which figures were available, meant the country was on track to reduce emissions by double the target set by the international Kyoto protocol.
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Wednesday February 04, 2009

Senior judges attack US refusal to disclose evidence

Stephen Howard and Mike Taylor
Press Association

Two senior judges today launched a scathing attack on the US authorities over their suppression of evidence of allegations of torture of a British resident.

But the judges decided not to release the evidence because the US had threatened to withdraw cooperation over terrorist intelligence and "the public of the United Kingdom would be put at risk".
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Wednesday February 04, 2009

The Death of American Leadership

Paul Craig Roberts
Counterpunch

A Bankrupt and Discredited Country

Vast numbers of people in the United States and abroad are hoping that President Obama will end America’s illegal wars, halt America’s support for Israel’s massacre of Lebanese and Palestinians, and punish, instead of reward, the shyster banksters whose fraudulent financial instruments have destroyed economics and imposed massive sufferings on people all over the world.

If Obama’s appointments are an indication, all of these hopeful people are going to be disappointed.
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Wednesday February 04, 2009

Kyrgyzstan May Close Key US-Afghan Airbase

Mike Eckel
The Associated Press

Kyrgyzstan's president said Tuesday that his country is ending U.S. use of a key airbase that supports military operations in Afghanistan.

A U.S. military official in Afghanistan called President Kurmanbek Bakiyev's statement "political positioning" and denied the U.S. presence at the Manas airbase would end anytime soon.
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Wednesday February 04, 2009

It's Not Going to Be OK

Chris Hedges
Truthdig

The economic crisis could plunge the U.S. into a long period of social instability. Our democracy is in peril; the threat of totalitarianism is real.

The daily bleeding of thousands of jobs will soon turn our economic crisis into a political crisis. The street protests, strikes and riots that have rattled France, Turkey, Greece, Ukraine, Russia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria and Iceland will descend on us. It is only a matter of time.

And not much time. When things start to go sour, when Barack Obama is exposed as a mortal waving a sword at a tidal wave, the United States could plunge into a long period of precarious social instability.
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Wednesday February 04, 2009

IBM to build new monster supercomputer

Tom Jowitt
Techworld

IBM is to build a hugely powerful supercomputer capable of performing at 20 petaflops per second, twenty times faster than the current record holder, namely the 1 petaflop Roadrunner machine it delivered back in June to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

IBM has been contracted by the US government to build the machine, dubbed Sequoia, and is still developing the technology needed. It has also been asked to build a smaller computer called Dawn. Both machines will be constructed at its Blue Gene facilities in Rochester, Minnesota.
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Wednesday February 04, 2009

UK drug rehabilitation service is 'collapsing'

Nina Lakhani
Independent

Private clinics struggle to get funding as government policy favours less effective – but cheaper – methadone clinics.

Britain's rehab services are facing collapse. No fewer than 15 of the UK's 100 rehab centres have closed in the past 15 months, despite an increase in the number of people seeking help for addictions.

Because of changes in government health policy, private rehab centres are finding fewer and fewer health authorities are willing to foot the bill for addicts to have residential treatment, despite that fact that it is much more effective in getting them off drugs, according to the Addiction Recovery Foundation.
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Wednesday February 04, 2009

Studies Find Mercury in Much US Corn Syrup

Reuters UK

Many common foods made using commercial high fructose corn syrup contain mercury as well, researchers reported on Tuesday, while another study suggested the corn syrup itself is contaminated.

Food processors and the corn syrup industry group attacked the findings as flawed and outdated, but the researchers said it was important for people to know about any potential sources of the toxic metal in their food.
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Wednesday February 04, 2009

Iceland's Prime Minister Marks Gay Milestone

Vanessa Buschschluter
BBC News

Johanna Sigurdardottir, named as Iceland's prime minister on Sunday, is the first openly lesbian head of government in Europe, if not the world - at least in modern times.

The 66-year-old's appointment as an interim leader, until elections in May, is seen by many as a milestone for the gay and lesbian movement.
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Wednesday February 04, 2009

Biofuels More Harmful to Humans Than Petrol and Diesel, Warn Scientists

Alok Jha
The Guardian

Corn-based bioethanol has higher burden on environment and human health, says US study.

Some biofuels cause more health problems than petrol and diesel, according to scientists who have calculated the health costs associated with different types of fuel.

The study shows that corn-based bioethanol, which is produced extensively in the US, has a higher combined environmental and health burden than conventional fuels.
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Wednesday February 04, 2009

Leasing America's Rooftops for Solar Energy

Bruce Allen
Miller-McCune

Analysis: Massive solar projects are sexy but bring a raft of land-use, technical and distribution headaches with them. Perhaps tapping America's roofs could provide some cover.

Solar power, always a popular subject but a tiny piece of America's energy puzzle, could be looking up — literally — as power drawn from America's roofs could provide juice without the carbon, trade balance and security concerns of fossil fuels and the huge upfront costs and land-use hassles of bigger solar projects.
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Wednesday February 04, 2009

Water - Another Global "Crisis"?

Richard Black
BBC News

If you look at the numbers, it is hard to see how many East African communities made it through the long drought of 2005 and 2006.

Among people who study human development, it is a widely-held view that each person needs about 20 litres of water each day for the basics - to drink, cook and wash sufficiently to avoid disease transmission.
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Wednesday February 04, 2009

Companies warned over 'aging' firewalls

John E. Dunn
Techworld

Firewalls become more of a security risk as they ‘age', a security assessment company has advised at the launch of a new service it claims can strip out the risk posed by out-of-date rules.

According to UK-based Pentura, firewalls are typically managed by a succession of admins who create their own rules, which then accumulate over a period of years. This creates rule duplication, which can impinge on performance, but also brings risks such as the use default or open passwords.
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Wednesday February 04, 2009

Under the Black Flag

Uri Avnery
Counterpunch

Israeli War Crimes

A Spanish judge has instituted a judicial inquiry against seven Israeli political and military personalities on suspicion of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The case: the 2002 dropping of a one ton bomb on the home of Hamas leader Salah Shehade. Apart from the intended victim, 14 people, most of them children, were killed.

For those who have forgotten: the then commander of the Israeli Air Force, Dan Halutz, was asked at the time what he feels when he drops a bomb on a residential building. His unforgettable answer: “A slight bump to the wing.”
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Wednesday February 04, 2009

Yours for £7, the laptop that will put India online

Andrew Buncombe
Independent

World’s cheapest computer will be available in six months, government hopes

First, India gave us the world’s cheapest car. Now comes the world’s most affordable laptop.

Officials in India are scheduled today to unveil a prototype for a laptop which the government hopes will be available for just 500 rupees (£7.25). In a stroke, it is hoped that getting online will become affordable to hundreds of thousands of people previously without access to the internet.
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Wednesday February 04, 2009

'Green' gas could help heat homes

Roger Harrabin
BBC News

Gas from waste could heat almost half the homes in the UK, according to a new report from National Grid.

It says obtaining more gas from waste will help cut carbon emissions, improve energy security and compensate for the shortage of landfill sites.

Renewable gas from landfill sites and sewage works provide 1% of the UK's gas at present.
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Tuesday February 03, 2009

Britain slips, slides and smiles to a halt

Mark Hughes, Jerome Taylor, Terri Judd and Arifa Akba
Independent

Snow up to a foot deep blankets much of the country as 25,000 schools are closed, 7,000 buses cancelled – and M25 grinds to a halt with 53-mile-long jam

The heaviest snowfall to hit Britain in nearly 20 years brought chaos yesterday, crippling the transport network, closing thousands of schools and potentially costing the economy more than £1bn.

A blanket of snow, up to 31cm deep in some areas, covered much of the country in what the Met Office said was the deepest snowfall in the UK since February 1991.
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Tuesday February 03, 2009

Google Earth, Google Ocean: mysteries of the seafloor are mapped for the first time

Bobbie Johnson
The Guardian

Since Google Earth launched in 2006 millions of people have used its virtual globe to "travel" around the planet without leaving home, climbing a digital version of Mount Everest and even flying into space thanks to the website.

Now the internet company plans to take on one of the last bastions of the unknown: the depths of the ocean.

At a high-profile event in San Francisco, Google is expected to announce the addition of vast amounts of underwater imagery and seabed maps to the Google Earth project.
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Tuesday February 03, 2009

Early humans evolved to crack a nutty problem

Ewen Callaway
New Scientist

Our earliest ancestors might have been crackers - specialised crackers of tough nuts and seeds, that is. Australopithecines boasted mouths ideal for accessing such well-protected food, suggests a new calculation of the ancient, upright hominin's bite.

Australopithecus possessed jaws and teeth larger and more powerful than those of its ape ancestors, says David Strait, a palaeoanthropologist at the University of Albany in New York, who led the study. "It's been thought that these unique facial features are adaptations for chewing or feeding."
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Tuesday February 03, 2009

Plight of the humble bee

Richard Girling
Times

Native British bees are dying out — and with them will go flora, fauna and one-third of our diet. We may have less than a decade to save them and avert catastrophe. So why is nothing being done?

Midwinter. In a garden not far from the sea in Plymouth, there is a splash of pale sunlight and a sound both familiar and strange. Familiar, because if we close our eyes and think of English gardens it’s the sound that fills our heads. Strange, because now it should be silent.
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Tuesday February 03, 2009

Why Do People Believe in God?

Larry Beinhart
AlterNet

Many people continue to clutch to their belief in God, even though there's no evidence of a higher power.

We're doing that because if we start with the idea that if God does exist, then we have to explain why there are so many versions of Him (her or it) and why we can't figure out the right one. Historically, that's a dead end, stuck in the same battle as Saladin and Richard the Lionheart in the Crusades.
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Tuesday February 03, 2009

Facebook aims to market its user data bank to businesses

Richard Wray
The Guardian

Facebook intends to capitalise on the wealth of information it has about its users by offering its 150 million-strong customer base to corporations as a market research tool. The appearance, later this year, of corporate polls targeted at certain parts of the Facebook audience because of the information they have posted on their pages, is likely to infuriate privacy campaigners.

Last week Mark Zuckerberg, the company's 24-year-old founder and chief executive, showed the audience at the World Economic Forum in Davos how the social networking site could be used to poll specific groups of users.
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Tuesday February 03, 2009

Charts Predict: Oil May Whip Back up to $100

CNBC.com

Oil prices could bounce back toward $100 a barrel as the huge decline over the past twelve months looks set to give back up to half of its fall, Robin Griffiths, technical strategist at Cazenove Capital, told CNBC.

“After a major fall like that you would expect it to retrace a quarter, a third or a half of the previous fall and as that was an enormous fall, quite a decent bounce is likely to come,” he said.
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Monday February 02, 2009

Parched: Australia faces collapse as climate change kicks in

Geoffrey Lean and Kathy Marks
Independent

Leaves are falling off trees in the height of summer, railway tracks are buckling, and people are retiring to their beds with deep-frozen hot-water bottles, as much of Australia swelters in its worst-ever heatwave.

On Friday, Melbourne thermometers topped 43C (109.4F) on a third successive day for the first time on record, while even normally mild Tasmania suffered its second-hottest day in a row, as temperatures reached 42.2C.

Two days before, Adelaide hit a staggering 45.6C. After a weekend respite, more records are expected to be broken this week.
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Monday February 02, 2009

Firms' secret tax avoidance schemes cost UK billions

The Guardian

Investigation into the complex and confidential world of tax

British taxpayers are being left to plug a multibillion-pound hole in the public finances as hundreds of the country's biggest companies increasingly employ complex and secretive tax arrangements to limit the amount they hand over to the exchequer.

An extensive Guardian investigation has examined the accounts of the UK's biggest companies - many of them household names - and discovered a series of sophisticated tax strategies which, critics say, amount to an almost unstoppable tide of perfectly legal corporate tax avoidance.
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Monday February 02, 2009

How Google Earth Is Helping to Save the Real Earth

E.B. Boyd
Conscious Choice

From an Amazonian rainforest to a Santa Cruz Canyon, activists are discovering if you can map it, you can save it.

The map didn't make sense. It was one of those grainy, black-and-white topographical maps, the kind of 8 ½ x 11 photocopy you get in the mail to inform you of an upcoming construction project near your home.

The kind you turn this way and that until you give up trying to figure out what it corresponds to in the real world and just toss it into the trash instead.
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Monday February 02, 2009

Iraq's Shocking Human Toll: About 1 Million Killed, 4.5 Million Displaced, 1-2 Million Widows, 5 Million Orphans

John Tirman
The Nation

Now that Bush is gone, perhaps we can honestly face the damage we have wrought and the responsibilities we must accept from it.

We are now able to estimate the number of Iraqis who have died in the war instigated by the Bush administration. Looking at the empirical evidence of Bush's war legacy will put his claims of victory in perspective. Of course, even by his standards -- "stability" -- the jury is out.

Most independent analysts would say it's too soon to judge the political outcome. Nearly six years after the invasion, the country remains riven by sectarian politics and major unresolved issues, like the status of Kirkuk.
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Monday February 02, 2009

Obama Preserves Renditions as Counter-Terrorism Tool

Greg Miller
The Los Angeles Times

The role of the CIA's controversial prisoner-transfer program may expand, intelligence experts say.

The CIA's secret prisons are being shuttered. Harsh interrogation techniques are off-limits. And Guantanamo Bay will eventually go back to being a wind-swept naval base on the southeastern corner of Cuba.

But even while dismantling these programs, President Obama left intact an equally controversial counter-terrorism tool.
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Monday February 02, 2009

Half of Britons do not believe in evolution, survey finds

Riazat Butt
The Guardian

More than one-fifth prefer creationism or intelligent design, while many others are confused about Darwin's theory

Half of British adults do not believe in evolution, with at least 22% preferring the theories of creationism or intelligent design to explain how the world came about, according to a survey.

The poll found that 25% of Britons believe Charles Darwin's theory of evolution is "definitely true", with another quarter saying it is "probably true". Half of the 2,060 people questioned were either strongly opposed to the theory or confused about it.
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Monday February 02, 2009

Schools urged to teach good parenting skills

Richard Garner
Independent

All children should be taught good parenting in school, the Church of England's Children's Society said in the most far-reaching inquiry into childhood in the UK.

Today's youngsters are under more stress than any previous generation, because of family breakdown, increasing commercial pressures and exam stress, leaving them "anxious and troubled", says the report, by the former Downing Street adviser Richard Layard and Judith Dunn, a developmental psychologist.
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Monday February 02, 2009

Thermal computing is heating up

Colin Barras
New Scientist

Waste heat from computers could be used to add to their processing power, say physicists working in an emerging field known as phononics. The latest advance is a design for a thermal memory device that stores data as heat, not magnetism or electricity like existing computing devices.

The search for ever-faster hardware has in recent years sent physicists and engineers exploring more complex ways to perform calculations.
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Monday February 02, 2009

FDA Admits Cloned Meat, Milk May Have Already Entered Food Supply

David Gutierrez
NaturalNews

The FDA has admitted that meat and milk from the offspring of cloned mammals such as cows, pigs, goats and sheep could very well have already entered the food supply in the United States.

“It is theoretically possible,” agency spokesperson Siobhan DeLancey said.

In January, the FDA declared that foods derived from cloned animals and their offspring were safe for human consumption. The U.S. Department of Agriculture, however, asked food companies to voluntarily maintain a ban on products from clones.
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Monday February 02, 2009

Wildcat wildfire: Frantic bids to stop strikes spreading

Ian Griggs, Jane Merrick and David Randall
Independent

Whitehall crisis team meets, and Acas tries to resolve dispute as Europe joins recession protests.

Strenuous efforts were being made this weekend by ministers, officials, unions and conciliators to stamp out the wildcat strikes now threatening to become a nationwide protest. Senior civil servants were ordered to an emergency Cobra meeting on Friday to plan the Government's response to the disputes.

Police, army and immigration services have been put on alert, and mediators are talking with unions and employers in an effort to resolve the unofficial strikes that erupted at 13 locations last week.
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