A non-profit news blog, focused on providing independent journalism.

Tuesday 17 February 2015

Good luck! Ukrainian MP "will burn down Crimea, with all its residents"

Yuri Bereza

© Sputnik/ Evgeny Kotenko

"Just look at the photos! Russian tanks are only THIS big. We can take them easy!"



The militantly pro-Ukrainian Dnipro Battalion leader- turned-MP Yuri Bereza has promised to "burn down Crimea, with all of its residents if needed," vociferously refusing to "liberate the peninsula in a somewhat cultural manner." The saber-rattling politician, did not specify who might need the people to be burnt and why.


The threat was voiced in a live broadcast on the Ukrainian national TV channel 1+1.


Bereza has already distinguished himself following the scandal over the false photos illustrating an alleged Russian military presence in Ukraine on German TV.


A recent news segment which aired on Germany's federal ZDF channel showed the alleged movement of Russian tanks and missile systems into eastern Ukraine, illustrating the news with the image taken several years earlier, in 2009, and in South Ossetia, not Ukraine.


The politician first called it "Russian intrigues", but then opted to accredit it to tabloids.


Earlier in November Bereza pledged his battalion was ready to "intrude" into Russia, to "break into it with reconnaissance detachments and sabotage groups". The threats were voice in a live broadcast of the 'Shuster Live' TV show.


The Dnipro Battalion is based in Dnipropetrovsk, which is located near the Donetsk region. It was established in April 2014 to combat pro-independent fighters and is reportedly partially funded by billionaire oligarch Ihor Kolomoyskyi, and is thus nicknamed Kolomoyskyi's battallion.


Chomsky: We Are All – Fill in the Blank.

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at http://bit.ly/1xcsdoI.


Anti-Muslim hate speech scrawled on Rhode Island Muslim school

rhode island hate crime

© courtesy Islamic School of Rhode Island



Federal authorities in the United States being asked to investigate an incident in Rhode Island over the weekend in which a Muslim school was vandalized with anti-Islamic graffiti.

"Now this is a hate crime" was among the slogans that were spray-painted on the back and front entrances of the nonprofit Islamic School of Rhode Island in the town of West Warwick late Saturday.


The Council on American-Islamic Relations, CAIR, is now calling on authorities to investigate the incident after what the group calls a "recent spike in anti-Muslim hate rhetoric and bias-motivated attacks on American Muslims and their institutions."


"This apparently bias-motivated incident should be investigated as a hate crime, with the strongest possible charges brought against the perpetrators once they are apprehended," CAIR National Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper said in a statement on Sunday.


rhode island hate crime



Unless the British or American establishments have recently adopted the name "Allah" for themselves, this graffiti just doesn't make sense.



On Facebook, the Islamic School of Rhode Island said the defacement "is not something that we take lightly," and that evidence has been supplied to local law enforcement as authorities investigate.

The perpetrators went "beyond normal vandalism" and wrote "senseless, hateful comments," West Warwick Police Captain Donald Archibald told NBC News.


"I find it very upsetting," Rabbi Sarah Mack of Temple Beth-El in Providence, RI told the . "The Muslim community in Rhode Island is very open and peaceful."


Hooper, the communications director at CAIR, said the latest incident occurred in the wake of two other tragedies that are being considered possible anti-Islamic hate crimes: three young Muslims were killed earlier this month in North Carolina, and investigators are considering arson in a fire that broke out early Friday at the Quba Islamic Institute in Houston, Texas.


West Warwick is a town of roughly 30,000 people, according to US Census Bureau statistics from 2000, and located around 14 miles south of Providence, RI. The Islamic School of Rhode Island opened 11 years ago and is an independent Islamic institution for students of all cultures and backgrounds, according to its website.


Of Rhode Islanders with a known religious affiliation, less than one percent is Muslim, according to a 2008 Pew study.


Chomsky: We Are All – Fill in the Blank.

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at http://bit.ly/1xcsdoI.


Another snowstorm to pound Turkey - 5-12 inches expected

Barely a week after the last snowstorm pounded Turkey, another is bringing snow across much of the country as a trough of low pressure digs southward.

Moisture being pulled to the north from the Mediterranean Sea will combine with cold air from Russia to produce a widespread and long-lived snowstorm.


While western Turkey was hit hard by the previous storm, the worst of this snowstorm is expected to occur across central and east-central Turkey.


The higher terrain of northwestern Turkey can still get a significant snowfall, while Istanbul experiences rounds of snow squalls.


Additional accumulating snowfall is expected in Istanbul Tuesday night through Thursday. Rain will mix with the snow at times, especially during the afternoon hours and when light precipitation falls, but snow will be the primary problem.


Snow totals will vary greatly across the Istanbul area; however, the hardest hit areas could get total snowfall of 15-25 cm (6-10 inches) through Thursday. The period of heaviest snowfall is expected on Wednesday when low visibility and snow-covered roadways are expected.



Snow began on Monday across many areas in central and eastern Turkey, but the heaviest snow will fall into Wednesday in areas such as Erzincan and Erzurum. Occasional snow may even continue to fall into Thursday in some places.

Snow accumulations of 13-25 cm (5-10 inches) are expected to be widespread in central Turkey with local amounts in excess of 30 cm (12 inches). In the highest terrain, total accumulations could near 60 cm (24 inches), which is great news for the many ski resorts scattered across the region, but bad news for travelers.


Due to the long duration of the snow that is expected in central Turkey, residents that live in smaller towns and villages could be isolated for several days until the snow ends and roads and cleared. Even travel in larger cities will be difficult with schools and some businesses likely to close.


This storm system will have long-lasting and far-reaching effects on the region through the week. While snow falls in Turkey, rounds of showers will move into areas from Syria to Israel during the course of the week. As cold air sinks to the south, snow is expected to fall in the mountains from western Syria to northern Israel Thursday into Friday.


It may not be until the weekend that the region has significantly drier conditions.


Chomsky: We Are All – Fill in the Blank.

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at http://bit.ly/1xcsdoI.


Fifth-largest death row in U.S. places surprise moratorium on executions due to disturbing history of abuses, errors and expense


© Thiscantbehappening.net

Pennsylvania's at least temporarily stilled death chamber, and Gov. Tom Wolf, who issued a moratorium on all executions.



Although Pennsylvania's new Governor Tom Wolf, who last November unseated Republican incumbent Tom Corbett, cited more than 315 million solid reasons to back his surprise order putting an immediate moratorium on executions in Pennsylvania, law enforcement organizations in the state still castigated his action, calling it an outrageous assault on a criminal justice system that they contend works well.

When Wolf announced his imposition of a moratorium on executions due to a disturbing history of abuses and errors in death penalty prosecutions in the state with the fifth largest death row in the country, he cited a damning statistic overlooked in most news media accounts of his recent action.


Operating the death penalty in Pennsylvania over the course of the past thirty-plus-years has cost the state's taxpayers between $315-to-$600-million, Wolf noted in a memorandum his office released that detailed why he halted executions.


The state of Pennsylvania "has received very little, if any, benefit from this massive expenditure," Gov. Wolf said. An exact cost figure for death penalty prosecutions in Pennsylvania remains elusive because state legislators and top officials in its court system have to date resisted compiling specific such figures.


The enormous expenses associated with the death penalty, from trial through appeals to execution, is a reason why many other states that have halted executions. Death penalty prosecutions cost three times as much or more than non-capital murder prosecutions, repeated studies nationwide have documented.


New Jersey, a state adjacent to Pennsylvania, abolished its death penalty in 2007 due largely to costs. Seventeen other states nationwide have abolished the death penalty, too. Four others, now including Pennsylvania, have imposed moratoriums on executions.


While it currently has 185 prisoners on its death row, all housed in a costly supermax prison, Pennsylvania has executed only three people in nearly 40 years, and each of those inmates who were killed had voluntarily dropped their appeals to face execution.


Reactions to Gov. Wolf's moratorium order from that state's associations representing police and prosecutors were shrill and predictable. Law enforcement officials - - in Pennsylvania and across America - - have an odious track record of resisting reforms aimed at correcting lawlessness by law enforcers.


Wolf's order halting, but not eliminating executions in Pennsylvania was immediately blasted as a "travesty" by the state troopers' association and was labeled an abuse of "the law" by the association representing district attorneys.


The not-broke-don't-fix-it defense of the death penalty by law enforcers flies in the face of the fact that misconduct by police and prosecutors, like withholding evidence of innocence, was found in each case of the six persons were released from Pennsylvania's death row since 1978 when that state's death penalty law was re-imposed.


In 1992, for example, Pennsylvania's State Supreme Court released an inmate directly from six years on death row after finding "egregious" misconduct by both State Police and prosecutors from the state Attorney Generals Office. That misconduct was , the state's highest court ruled, that retrying death row inmate Jay Smith would violate state constitutional protections against double jeopardy.


That 1992 ruling made legal history for its order barring the normal recourse of a retrial. Police and prosecutor associations criticized the court's release of Smith but failed to criticize the misconduct that triggered the court's decision, such as withholding evidence that supported Smith's claims of innocence.


One of the two death row cases cited by Gov. Wolf in his memorandum involved Harold Wilson, a Philadelphia man who spent over 16-years on death row, twice facing execution, for a triple murder he was later found innocent of.


The prosecutor at Wilson's trial used illegal tactics to strip blacks from Wilson's jury, courts found. Police used phony evidence against him. For example, the jacket police claimed Wilson had worm during the murders was many sizes smaller than the tall, heavy-set Wilson. Further, the Size 7 shoe print police claimed Wilson left at the crime scene was far smaller than Wilson's size 13. DNA testing on crime scene blood run over a decade after Wilson's conviction confirmed that he was not the killer.


Typical in the case of Wilson and others released from death row, the police and prosecutors responsible for the illegal conduct were not themselves prosecuted for their criminal misconduct in securing the false murder conviction. Critics contend that the failure of courts and other ranking authorities to hold police and prosecutors accountable for their misconduct perpetuates such misconduct and sabotages the constitutional rights of defendants to a fair trial.


The moratorium on executions ordered by Gov. Wolf will remain in effect until the conclusion of a State Senate committee examination of the criminal justice system, a study which will include an examination of the effectiveness of the death penalty. That committee examination began in 2011.


"I take this action because the capital punishment system has significant and widely recognized defects," Wolf said.


"If the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is going to take the irrevocable step of executing a human being its capital punishment system must be infallible. Pennsylvania's system is riddled with flaws, making it error prone, expensive and anything but infallible."


The moratorium announced by Wolf, hinted at during his successful campaign last year to unseat the Corbett, is a belated step that was recommended by a Supreme Court Commission on Race and Gender Bias in the Justice System in 2003 but never implemented by then Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell (a former Philadelphia DA who put many of the state's capital punishment inmates on death row) or by his Republican successor Corbett, a former state attorney general.


The Supreme Court commission in its conclusions, among other things, recommended imposition of a moratorium on all executions until "policies and procedures to ensure that the death penalty is administered fairly and impartially are implemented."


The Commission's report stated that race "plays a major, if not overwhelming, role" in death penalty prosecutions in many Pennsylvania counties, and particularly in Philadelphia, the state's largest population center. That report also criticized the "significant failure" to provide defense counsel services to indigent defendants in death penalty cases - - a problem that "disproportionately impacts minority communities."


Pennsylvania has the fourth highest number of minorities on its death row in the United States. Blacks comprise 103 of the 188 death row inmates in Pennsylvania (55%) compared to 67 whites (36%), this in a state where only 10.8% of the population is black.


Problems arising from inadequate defense provided to indigent defendants facing the death penalty are major elements underlying the reversal of 250 death sentences in Pennsylvania since 1978 when that state's death penalty law was re-instated.


Chomsky: We Are All – Fill in the Blank.

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at http://bit.ly/1xcsdoI.


Who would have believed it? The SNAP program capital of the U.S. is white and Republican

food stamps white republican



Owsley County, Kentucky



In spite of the prevailing stereotypes and assumptions about who uses SNAP Food Stamp benefits the most in the United States, the highest usage is not in Compton, Queens, nor the South Side of Chicago. Instead, a city that is 99.22% white and 95% Republican comes in the lead. Owsley County, Kentucky is a community of about 5,000, residents earning the lowest median household income in the country outside of Puerto Rico, according to the U.S. Census.

The decline in the profits from coal, tobacco and lumber industries led to a harsh toll being taken on the community.


Cale Turner, county executive of Owsley County told ABC back in 2010 that economic hardships have led to a high incidence of drug addiction.



"Those with drug addictions end up in prison without effective treatment. And it happens over and over in this community. The drug problem continues to get worse every year."



Strangely enough, the residents of Owsley County are almost entirely Republican, in spite of the traditional opposition to the Food Stamp program by the GOP. In fact, just last November, residents of Owsley saw their SNAP benefits reduced drastically as a result of Republican opposition to funding the program.
food stamps white republican



Owsley County, Kentucky



This might rank among the greatest of ironies in history: the Food Stamp Capital of the U.S. is almost entirely white Republican.

People of the Book: What the Religions Named in the Qur'an Can Tell Us About the Earliest Understanding of "Islam" Sleeper Cell 2240: Memoires of the 21st Century Interplanetary RevolutionHashlamah Project Foundation and associated global study circles.


Chomsky: We Are All – Fill in the Blank.

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at http://bit.ly/1xcsdoI.


Who would have believed it? The SNAP program capital of the U.S. is WHITE and REPUBLICAN

food stamps white republican



Owsley County, Kentucky



In spite of the prevailing stereotypes and assumptions about who uses SNAP Food Stamp benefits the most in the United States, the highest usage is not in Compton, Queens, nor the South Side of Chicago. Instead, a city that is 99.22% white and 95% Republican comes in the lead. Owsley County, Kentucky is a community of about 5,000, residents earning the lowest median household income in the country outside of Puerto Rico, according to the U.S. Census.

The decline in the profits from coal, tobacco and lumber industries led to a harsh toll being taken on the community.


Cale Turner, county executive of Owsley County told ABC back in 2010 that economic hardships have led to a high incidence of drug addiction.



"Those with drug addictions end up in prison without effective treatment. And it happens over and over in this community. The drug problem continues to get worse every year."



Strangely enough, the residents of Owsley County are almost entirely Republican, in spite of the traditional opposition to the Food Stamp program by the GOP. In fact, just last November, residents of Owsley saw their SNAP benefits reduced drastically as a result of Republican opposition to funding the program.
food stamps white republican



Owsley County, Kentucky



This might rank among the greatest of ironies in history: the Food Stamp Capital of the U.S. is almost entirely white Republican.

People of the Book: What the Religions Named in the Qur'an Can Tell Us About the Earliest Understanding of "Islam" Sleeper Cell 2240: Memoires of the 21st Century Interplanetary RevolutionHashlamah Project Foundation and associated global study circles.


Chomsky: We Are All – Fill in the Blank.

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at http://bit.ly/1xcsdoI.


Robots are replacing chefs at restaurants in Asia


© AP

A robotic chef from Japan's Motoman prepares a dish. Robots have become increasingly popular replacements for human workers across Asia.



U.S. chain restaurants make it their business to create a homey, familiar environment. Places like Applebee's, Cracker Barrel, and T.G.I. Friday's are dedicated to making customers feel like they're eating at a neighborhood institution rather than a replica of a place that can be found in the next town over...and the town after that, and so on.

But in China, there's a restaurant movement that wants diners to feel like they're having an interplanetary interaction as soon as they walk in. "Earth person, hello!" a robot greeter says at Haohai Robot Restaurant in Harbin, China. Diners are then seated at their table, place an order with a robot waiter, have their food prepared by a robot chef, and then pay as their (robot-cleared) dishes are being scrubbed by a robot dishwasher.


Robots are also behind the scenes at Wishdoing in Shanghai, preparing dishes like mapo tofu, Kung Pao chicken, and six other Chinese specialties in under three minutes each. At noodle houses across China, the laborious task of hand cutting noodles is carried out by Chef Cuis, the robot creations of restaurateur Cui Runguan. And at the Dalu Robot Restaurant, the entire wait staff is robotic.


These curious chefs de cuisine are now starting to get jobs overseas. Google employs a 3D printer to custom create pasta for its employees. PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel was behind the funding of a 3D printer that in a few years will crank out replica steaks , hamburgers, and other vegetarian-friendly beef made from protein. 3D printers may lack the presence and personality of their chef counterparts, but their get-down-to-business attitude might be what's needed to make the transition from hometown hangouts to robot restaurants.


Take a food tour through the gallery to watch robots roll rotis, serve up sushi, steam lattes, twirl ramen, and even make pizza from scratch.


Click here to view slldeshow


Chomsky: We Are All – Fill in the Blank.

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at http://bit.ly/1xcsdoI.


Deadly ice and snow bring havoc to U.S. South and East


© H. Darr Beiser,



A wide swath of the nation was digging out Tuesday from a deadly storm that pummeled some areas with heavy snow while others were blasted with treacherous ice.

More than a foot of snow fell in parts of Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky and West Virginia. Arkansas, Tennessee, North Carolina and South Carolina were among states where sleet and freezing rain made roads hazardous.


Near-record low temperatures swept through the South, and some areas were encrusted in at least 1/2 inch of ice, the National Weather Service said. More than 200,000 customers lost power in Arkansas, Georgia and the Carolinas, AccuWeather reported.


The National Weather Service warned that the bitter cold temperatures would remain deep into the week.


"This is not your typical North Carolina winter storm where the sunshine melts the snow and ice in a day or two," Gov. Pat McCrory said Tuesday. "The extended low temperatures and black ice likely will make this a dangerous situation for several days."


In North Carolina, Charlotte-Douglas International Airport officials said more than 2000 passengers spent the night in the terminal; cots, mats, pillows and blankets were distributed. Airlines grounded about 1,500 flights due to the storm — and more than 5,700 flights have been grounded nationwide since Sunday due to back-to-back winter storms.


Washington, D.C., and its environs were hit with 4 to 8 inches of snow, enough to shut down federal offices in the region.


The Tennessee Emergency Management Agency called on the Tennessee National Guard for assistance in several counties where interstate crashes occurred . Icy road conditions and crashes resulted in a 12-mile backup on I-40 late Monday, TEMA said.


In Franklin, Tenn., a mother and son were hit by a truck and killed after they got out of their car to aid people trapped in an SUV that flipped on an icy roadway, police said. The Weather Channel reported three other road deaths related to the ice -- one each in Tennessee, North Carolina and Kansas.


Two Northern Kentucky cities were mourning the deaths of community leaders who died shoveling snow Monday -- Jack Fischer, in his early 60s, longtime city attorney in Dayton, and R.G. Bidwell, 72, retired assistant fire chief for the City of Florence.


In Virginia, Gov. Terry McAuliffe warned residents to stay off the roads and placed the National Guard on standby.


In Mount Carbon, W.Va., a train carrying scores of crude oil tankers derailed in the storm, sending a fireball into the sky and starting a fire that burned for several hours.


The mountains of West Virginia and Kentucky had the biggest snow totals, according to the weather service. The small town of Logan, W. Va., picked up 15 inches, while in Kentucky, the towns of Beattyville, Estill and Pikeville all had 14 inches.


As Tuesday progressed, signs of hope emerged, Louisville emergency management official Matt Goins said.


"The roads are in really good shape, considering where we were yesterday at this time," Goins said.


Still, more records were likely to fall as the cold spell lingered. Monday saw records fall in several cities: Erie, Pa., dropped to minus-18 degrees, tying the city's all-time record low temperature, according to the National Weather Service. Cleveland's minus-8 degree reading broke a daily record low previously set in 1904.


Daily record lows were also tied or broken in Detroit, Baltimore, Syracuse, Toledo, Trenton, N.J., and Wilmington, Del., the Weather Channel reported.


Boston fell to minus-3 degrees, its coldest reading since January 2004, while Philadelphia bottomed out at 3 degrees, its coldest since January 2005, meteorologist Matt Lanza reported.


Chomsky: We Are All – Fill in the Blank.

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at http://bit.ly/1xcsdoI.


Staying on the same page: CNN executive hosts Obamas for dinner


During a CNN internal town hall Tuesday, network chief Jeff Zucker said it's not a conflict of interest for an executive of the network to host the president and First Lady in their home, an insider familiar with the event told TheWrap.

Responding to an anonymous email question from a CNN staffer regarding an unnamed D.C. executive who hosted the Obamas — along with other parents — in their home for dinner, Zucker said there's no issue.


"Zucker said no [it's not a conflict] because he goes to cocktail parties all the time with different parents of his children's friends," the insider told TheWrap.


An insider familiar with the gathering told TheWrap, "The dinner was for parents and kids from Sidwell Friends School [in D.C.], where President Obama sends his kids to school," adding that it wasn't a private dinner for the Obamas.


A CNN D.C. bureau spokesperson did not immediately respond to TheWrap's request for comment.


Chomsky: We Are All – Fill in the Blank.

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at http://bit.ly/1xcsdoI.


Serial creep Biden emerges again to grope the wife of new Defense Secretary at press conference


© REUTERS/Gary Cameron





Vice President Joe Biden clearly takes a approach when it comes to his day job.

Tuesday, at Defense Sec. Ash Carter's swearing-in ceremony, Biden got all touchy feely with Carter's wife, Stephanie. From the pictures, it looks like he's whispering sweet nothings into her right ear. He's also getting a good whiff of her shampoo.


Let's give him the benefit of the doubt: Perhaps he was trying to be comforting after her spill on the ice at the Pentagon this morning while she was accompanying her husband on his first day on the job.



She doesn't necessarily uncomfortable, but then again we're not mind readers.

In December, 2013, Biden grabbed the waist of The Hill's White House reporter Amie Parnes at a White House holiday party. As she appeared to protect her underboob, he veered dangerously close to her abdomen. The picture quickly went viral.


Clearly laughs were had by all. Happy holidays!





Chomsky: We Are All – Fill in the Blank.

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at http://bit.ly/1xcsdoI.


Separate Valentine's Day vacations for Obamas cost taxpayers $2.5 million




The Obamas have spent an estimated $2.5 million after Barack and the rest of his family took separate weekend breaks.

President Obama spent Valentine's weekend in California, where he managed to squeeze in three rounds of golf at a California course owned by Oracle chief executive Larry Ellison.


Meanwhile, his wife Michelle and daughters Sasha and Malia flew to Aspen in Colorado for a skiing trip on board a separate presidential aircraft.


According to the White House, President Obama flew to San Francisco on Thursday afternoon where he had several events, before taking Saturday, Sunday and Monday off. He delivered a speech at a summit on cyber security before attending a round-table meeting with business leaders. His final official engagement of the weekend was a fundraiser for the Democratic National Committee at the home of venture capitalist Sandy Robinson.


Guests paid $10,000 for dinner and a photograph with the president or $32,400 to co-chair the fundraiser.


While President Obama was in California, his wife was in Aspen, Colorado, where she has spent several Presidents' Day holidays away from her husband.


President Obama used his weekly television address to wish his wife a happy Valentine's Day.


The trips come as it emerged Michelle Obama and daughters Malia and Sasha were reportedly jetting off to Japan in a few weeks.


The Asahi Shimbun, reported that the mother and teen daughters will visit Tokyo and Kyoto in March but without the President who was in Japan last April.


Last March, Mrs Obama and her girls visited China and have previously taken trips to Ireland and Germany.


According to figures obtained by Judicial Watch, President Obama's VC-25A jet, better known as Air Force One, costs $228,288 per hour while it is in the air.


It is estimated that the jet, which has a cruising speed of 575mph, spent approximately 10 hours in the air during its four-day trip to the West Coast, at a cost of $2,228,000.


Previous golfing trips on Presidents' Day cost $50,000 in hotels and a further $16,000 in car rental.


Mrs Obama's skiing trip in 2013 cost more than $81,000 according to figures released to Judicial Watch under the Freedom of Information Act. The earlier trip cost $13,000 in flights, $4,000 in car hire and a further $64,000 for renting an exclusive lodge.


According to , President Obama played the Porcupine Creek Golf Course in Palm Springs, owned by Oracle chief executive Larry Ellison.


The President had two days of engagements in northern California before playing three rounds of golf.


He returned to Washington on Monday.


The US Air Force has announced that the current pair of jets used to fly the president will be replaced by a pair of new Boeing 747-8 aircraft.


Mr Obama has enjoyed 219 rounds of golf since he took office, according to a website that tracks the amount he plays.


Mrs Obama's skiing trip is the fourth time she and her daughters visited the exclusive Colorado skiing resort.


The visit was meant to be private, but visitors to the local airport spotted a private jet in presidential livery parked on the ramp.


Chomsky: We Are All – Fill in the Blank.

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at http://bit.ly/1xcsdoI.


SOTT Exclusive: Debaltsevo almost controlled by NAF, Zakharchenko wounded


debaltsevo



The road to Debaltsevo



The situation in Debaltsevo, Donetsk, arguably prompted the Minsk talks. The UAF were getting absolutely hammered by the NAF during their January offensive and eventually ended up getting a huge number of their troops encircled in the city: at least 5000 men (with estimates up to 8000). While the Minsk talks were proceeding, Kiev launched a large but ultimately failed attempt to break into the area to free up a corridor for its troops. But there wasn't a word about Debaltsevo in the final Minsk agreement, leading to differing interpretations by both sides of the conflict.

Novorossiya interprets it this way: Since the town is encircled, and thus within territory under NAF control, the Ukrainian troops trapped inside have two options: break the ceasefire in order to fight their way out (and die in the process), or surrender their arms and make their way back to the front peacefully (and thus retain their lives if not their heavy weaponry). Sounds reasonable. However, Kiev has denied the troops are encircled. For them, it is an important strategic 'bridgehead' into Donetsk, and thus 'theirs'. Too bad for them, it isn't, and the rest of the world knows it. The troops there encircled and have been since days before the Minsk talks. By denying this fact, Kiev has made a safe withdrawal next to impossible, in the hopes that they could break them out without admitting they were doing so. By failing to do so, they have consigned the troops there to death or surrender.


Now, some details about the truth of the situation are coming to light. The spokesperson for the Ukrainian General Staff, Vladislav Seleznev, confirmed earlier today that the chain of command has completely broken down in Debaltsevo and UAF headquarters has been destroyed. Mothers of Ukrainian soldiers (often the only reliable source for information on what's really going on) are saying troops have received orders to abandon positions and equipment, so they have been left to break out of the cauldron on their own. Poroshenko's adviser, Biryukov, is saying, We have to get used to the fact that we don't have the resources for large-scale offensive operations, but we need defensive lines in any event so we should dig them."


The deputy commander of the 25th Kievan Rus battalion called in to pro-Kiev TV news Channel 24 to say:



"There is street fighting in Debaltsevo. The enemy is using Russian Federation [sic] special operations units and Kadyrovites [sic] to storm Debaltsevo. They control 90% of it. Our forces are defending strongpoints. The sector HQ [i.e., the commander of the entire Debaltsevo grouping] and the sector commander have abandoned us, they do not control the situation, they don't know where are troops are," said "Gross."


He noted that his troops need immediate help. They tried to reach the General Staff several times, but there has been no reaction.


"Our troops are facing annihilation," said the deputy battalion commander.


"They are searching for the sector commander. Nobody knows where he is," he added.



Hundreds of Ukrainian troops have reportedly already surrendered. One unit of approximately 70 men surrendered to Lugansk. The wounded are receiving medical aid, the rest food and clothes.

[embedded content]




DPR's foreign minister has reported 80% of Debaltsevo is now controlled by the NAF (see video above). The rest of the city will be probably be taken by the end of the day.

zakharchenko

Also, the Saker is reporting that Zakharchenko received a light shrapnel would in the leg while in Debatlsevo. He is currently resting in the hospital in Lugansk, and he will be back at work in 3 days.

[embedded content]




Even Ukrainian media is now commenting on the absurd sea of lies that is the same Ukrainian media. This came from the weekly magazine :

We don't have censorship or dungeons, but nevertheless one can drown in the flood of lies coming out of our media. It's not even the question of media bias, news being written to order, or other violations of professional ethics. Official press releases and speeches by the country's leaders are dripping with lies which the media are obligated to repeat. It's another matter than one has to read between the lines. Whenever some office general reports that the army began a de-blocking operation, you can expect battalion commanders to announce they are fully surrounded and they need help, but you'll hear that only on tactical radios. In general, whenever the government says that things are under control, expect something to blow, either on the front or in the rear areas.



As Fort Russ translator J. Hawk comments, considering recent legislation in Kiev, this is the kind of talk that can land a journalist in prison for a few years. After all, telling the truth about how dire the situation is for Ukrainian troops is clearly "giving aid and comfort to terrorists". So no, despite the bit of truth in the above quote, there is censorship in Ukraine. It's just getting started. And that bit about dungeons? Maybe the author just missed all those reports and testimony of civilian and militia captives been kept in holes in the ground, and tortured. But hey, it's easy to miss that kind of thing, especially when the media is "obligated to repeat" Kiev's official press releases.

As for real news, here are the latest updates from South Front:


[embedded content]


[embedded content]


[embedded content]




Avatar

Harrison Koehli (Profile)


Harrison Koehli hails from Edmonton, Alberta. A graduate of studies in music performance, Harrison is also an editor for Red Pill Press and has been interviewed on several North American radio shows in recognition of his contributions to advancing the study of ponerology. In addition to music and books, Harrison enjoys tobacco and bacon (often at the same time) and dislikes cell phones, vegetables, and fascists.



Chomsky: We Are All – Fill in the Blank.

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at http://bit.ly/1xcsdoI.


Neediest Americans left out of federal aid despite 74 percent increase over two decades


© Reuters/Tim Shaffer



Over a period of two decades, 2.5 million single parent families experienced a 35 percent decline in federal assistance while those earning slightly more saw aid rise 74 percent, the reported.

The findings come from research that covers the 15 largest social safety net programs of the period between 1983 and 2004. They demonstrated that aid spending had dramatically increased. Despite this news, those earning as little as 50 percent below the federal poverty level, or $11,925 a year, were getting less support even though those earning 200 percent above the poverty level, or $47,700 were experiencing an increase in support.


Additionally, the review found that the elderly and disabled were benefiting more than younger individuals and the non-disabled, though families with married parents saw more support than single-parent families. In 2004, single-parent families received 20 percent less support than they did in 1983.


The period of study hints at the possible consequences of welfare reform legislation enacted during the presidency of Bill Clinton with the help of a Republican Congress, after which the amount of aid delivered to single-parent families decreased.


"You would think the government would offer the most support to those who have the lowest incomes and provide less help to those with higher incomes," Johns Hopkins University Economics Professor Robert A. Moffitt said in a statement. "But this is not the case."


The findings come from a new study, called "The Deserving Poor, the Family, and the US Welfare System by Moffitt," which is set to be published in the journal .


The reported "that working families across the US account for nearly three quarters of the people enrolled in major public benefits program and 63 percent of the costs."


The shift in aid away from the neediest families could have been affected by welfare reforms passed during the Clinton administration. The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996 created the state-based Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, (TANF), which imposed time limits and work rules for recipients. These restrictions narrowed the pool of candidates eligible for benefits.


Three assistant secretaries of the Department of Health and Human Services resigned over the legislation, saying the law destroyed the safety net and would lead to increased poverty, would lower income for single parents, put people from welfare into homeless shelters and leave states free to eliminate welfare entirely.


In an interview with , Charles Constance, a parent of a nine-year-old boy, said he couldn't find work or the help he needed to raise his son. Recently the two have been living in a homeless shelter.


Constance has a prison record; he qualified for $123 a month in TANF assistance in exchange for community service, though the time and money needed to commute for it made the situation unworkable.


Some 3.4 million Americans draw on TANF, which provides cash benefits to families with children. The program requires parents to keep immunizations and health checks up to date for children, keep their children in school, cooperate with Child Support Services to establish paternity and participate in a work/training program for at least 30 hours a week.


The Food Stamp program, which also expanded greatly, does help everyone but only provides about $5 per day per person. Some 46 million Americans are qualified for the program.


Overall, Moffitt discovered a distinct trend of welfare benefits going to those who are regarded as "deserving" of support. Put more directly, Moffitt said, the government and voters prefer that aid go to those who work, who are married and who have kids.


Chomsky: We Are All – Fill in the Blank.

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at http://bit.ly/1xcsdoI.


Why did Russian cosmonauts carry shotguns and machetes in space?




© Wikipedia



Russian cosmonauts carried a convertible shotgun which doubled as an axe and machete into space.

The 'myth' about Soviet spacemen being armed with shotguns was a topic of great interest on Russian forums for the past few years. Recently it has been revealed that the myth is actually, true.


Russian cosmonauts weren't gearing up for a fight with aliens or NASA astronauts, though.


Despite numerous assumptions as to why the Russians took such a risk, the reason was quite modest.


The shotgun was there to kill bears in case the crew landed in a remote area in the Taiga region of Russia. The three barreled shotgun which also had a sharp blade could be used as a machete in jungle areas, or as an axe to chop wood.


Soviet scientist Boris Chertok in his book describes an event that occurred in 1965 with the lander "Voskhod-2" carrying cosmonauts Alexei Leonov and Pavel Belyaev. The astronauts landed in the Taiga of the Northern Urals, and rescuers could not get to them for a few days due to the dense forest and snow. The writer describes moments when they saw bears from the helicopter who were walking towards the fire where the cosmonauts were camping.


Recently, writer James Simpson told the , "Having a gun inside a thin-walled spacecraft filled with oxygen sounds crazy but the Soviets had their reasons."


With the recent technology and GPS navigation, the space travelers see less reason to carry weapons on board, but back in the day the guns were a part of a 'survival kit'.


Russian cosmonauts were armed with the TP-82 shotgun until as recent as 2007.





Comment: You gotta love those highly pragmatic Russians. Here's another famous space related, if not exactly factual anectode:

When NASA started sending astronauts into space, they quickly discovered that ball-point pens would not work in zero gravity. To combat this problem, NASA scientists spent a decade and $12 billion developing a pen that writes in zero gravity, upside-down, on almost any surface including glass and at temperatures ranging from below freezing to over 300 C.


The Russians used a pencil.




Chomsky: We Are All – Fill in the Blank.

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at http://bit.ly/1xcsdoI.


New Brunswick resident shares viral video of insane snowfall


© Reuters/Nathan Rochford

A man walks near a snow plow after a winter storm hit Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island February 16, 2015. Canadian media reported that 80 cm (2.6 feet) of snow hit the province, breaking a single storm record.



One New Brunswick man made it his mission to prove the East Coast has it worst than the rest of the country by uploading a YouTube video documenting just how much snow they've received.

It worked. You win, East Coast. We concede.


Kevin McGrath, a resident of Dieppe, probably wasn't expecting his home video showing off the amount of snow congregating around his house to hit almost 84,000 views on YouTube in two days but that's precisely what happened.


[embedded content]




In the video, McGrath starts off by showing the "9-foot" snow bank that has built up in front of his door. He tries to dig his way out of it, but after about 30 seconds admits defeat and moves to another potential exit point.

In the garage, the situation is a little less dire, but not by much. McGrath is able to see the top half of his car and figures he and his wife can jump and squeeze their way out of the house.


With a perfect amount of dad jokes and cussing thrown in for a soundtrack, the video is a terrifying hoot.


Chomsky: We Are All – Fill in the Blank.

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at http://bit.ly/1xcsdoI.


The closest known (so far) flyby of a star to the Solar System

Scholz's star

© Michael Osadciw/University of Rochester

This is an artist's conception of Scholz's star and its brown dwarf companion (foreground) during its flyby of the solar system 70,000 years ago. The Sun (left, background) would have appeared as a brilliant star. The pair is now about 20 light years away.



Astronomers from the US, Europe, Chile and South Africa have determined that 70,000 years ago a recently discovered dim star is likely to have passed through the solar system's distant cloud of comets, the Oort Cloud. No other star is known to have ever approached our solar system this close -- five times closer than the current closest star, Proxima Centauri. They analyzed the velocity and trajectory of a low-mass star system nicknamed "Scholz's star."

In a paper published in , lead author Eric Mamajek from the University of Rochester and his collaborators analyzed the velocity and trajectory of a low-mass star system nicknamed "Scholz's star."


The star's trajectory suggests that 70,000 years ago it passed roughly 52,000 astronomical units away (or about 0.8 light years, which equals 8 trillion kilometers, or 5 trillion miles). This is astronomically close; our closest neighbor star Proxima Centauri is 4.2 light years distant. In fact, the astronomers explain in the paper that they are 98% certain that it went through what is known as the "outer Oort Cloud" -- a region at the edge of the solar system filled with trillions of comets a mile or more across that are thought to give rise to long-period comets orbiting the Sun after their orbits are perturbed.


The star originally caught Mamajek's attention during a discussion with co-author Valentin D. Ivanov, from the European Southern Observatory. Scholz's star had an unusual mix of characteristics: despite being fairly close ("only" 20 light years away), it showed very slow tangential motion, that is, motion across the sky. The radial velocity measurements taken by Ivanov and collaborators, however, showed the star moving almost directly away from the solar system at considerable speed.


"Most stars this nearby show much larger tangential motion," says Mamajek, associate professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Rochester. "The small tangential motion and proximity initially indicated that the star was most likely either moving towards a future close encounter with the solar system, or it had 'recently' come close to the solar system and was moving away. Sure enough, the radial velocity measurements were consistent with it running away from the Sun's vicinity -- and we realized it must have had a close flyby in the past."


To work out its trajectory the astronomers needed both pieces of data, the tangential velocity and the radial velocity. Ivanov and collaborators had characterized the recently discovered star through measuring its spectrum and radial velocity via Doppler shift. These measurements were carried out using spectrographs on large telescopes in both South Africa and Chile: the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) and the Magellan telescope at Las Campanas Observatory, respectively.


Once the researchers pieced together all the information they figured out that Scholz's star was moving away from our solar system and traced it back in time to its position 70,000 years ago, when their models indicated it came closest to our Sun. Until now, the top candidate for the closest flyby of a star to the solar system was the so-called "rogue star" HIP 85605, which was predicted to come close to our solar system in 240,000 to 470,000 years from now. However, Mamajek and his collaborators have also demonstrated that the original distance to HIP 85605 was likely underestimated by a factor of ten. At its more likely distance -- about 200 light years -- HIP 85605's newly calculated trajectory would not bring it within the Oort Cloud.


Mamajek worked with former University of Rochester undergraduate Scott Barenfeld (now a graduate student at Caltech) to simulate 10,000 orbits for the star, taking into account the star's position, distance, and velocity, the Milky Way galaxy's gravitational field, and the statistical uncertainties in all of these measurements. Of those 10,000 simulations, 98% of the simulations showed the star passing through the outer Oort cloud, but fortunately only one of the simulations brought the star within the inner Oort cloud, which could trigger so-called "comet showers."


Mamajek et al. 2015

© E. E. Mamajek et al.

Lower left: Density plot of the distribution of mini-

mum separations between W0720 and the Sun (in pc) versus time of minimum separation (in thousands of years ago) for 10,000 Galactic orbit simulations. Right red solid line: maximum semi-major axis for retrograde orbiting Oort Cloud comets at ~ 0.58 pc. Left red solid line: Dynamically active inner Oort Cloud at <0.10 pc. Upper left: Histogram of simulated closest W0720-Sun separations (pc). Lower right: Histogram of simulated times of closest W0720-Sun separation (kya).



While the close flyby of Scholz's star likely had little impact on the Oort Cloud, Mamajek points out that "other dynamically important Oort Cloud perturbers may be lurking among nearby stars." The recently launched European Space Agency satellite is expected to map out the distances and measure the velocities of a billion stars. With the data, astronomers will be able to tell which other stars may have had a close encounter with us in the past or will in the distant future.

Currently, Scholz's star is a small, dim red dwarf in the constellation of Monoceros, about 20 light years away. However, at the closest point in its flyby of the solar system, Scholz's star would have been a 10th magnitude star -- about 50 times fainter than can normally be seen with the naked eye at night. It is magnetically active, however, which can cause stars to "flare" and briefly become thousands of times brighter. So it is possible that Scholz's star may have been visible to the naked eye by our ancestors 70,000 years ago for minutes or hours at a time during rare flaring events.


The star is part of a binary star system: a low-mass red dwarf star (with mass about 8% that of the Sun) and a "brown dwarf" companion (with mass about 6% that of the Sun). Brown dwarfs are considered "failed stars;" their masses are too low to fuse hydrogen in their cores like a "star," but they are still much more massive than gas giant planets like Jupiter.


The formal designation of the star is "WISE J072003.20-084651.2," however it has been nicknamed "Scholz's star" to honor its discoverer -- astronomer Ralf-Dieter Scholz of the Leibniz-Institut für Astrophysik Potsdam (AIP) in Germany -- who first reported the discovery of the dim nearby star in late 2013. The "WISE" part of the designation refers to NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission, which mapped the entire sky in infrared light in 2010 and 2011, and the "J-number" part of the designation refers to the star's celestial coordinates.


Chomsky: We Are All – Fill in the Blank.

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at http://bit.ly/1xcsdoI.


Fish with 2 mouths caught in Australian lake




The South Australian fisherman uncovered the double mouthed bream on Monday



A string of rare and freakish fish have been emerging from Australian seas of late.

In the wake of the discovery of Goblin shark in New South Wales and prehistoric frill shark in Victoria, another rare and unusual fish has been uncovered in South Australia.


On Monday afternoon, a Riverland fisherman was taken aback when he netted a bony bream with two mouths.


Garry Warrick, of Barmera in South Australia, told Australia that after 30 years of fishing in the area he had never come across a double mouthed bream.


'It was very unusual. I have been fishing here for 30 years, and I have come across a few deformed fish, but never anything quite like this.'


'The two mouths are actually joined together. The top one opens and closes while the bottom one stays closed. It's amazing it was alive.'


He said he once caught a fish that had a dolphin shaped head.


Warrick usually stores packs packs the deformed fish away for fertiliser, but this time he put it in the freezer and took some images which his wife uploaded online


Chomsky: We Are All – Fill in the Blank.

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at http://bit.ly/1xcsdoI.


Chemical contaminants suspect in mystery of Alaska chickadee and other bird beak deformities


© John Schoen

A black-capped chickadee with a deformed beak in the Hillside area of Anchorage, 2010. About 7 percent of Alaska black-capped chickadees have the beak deformity, which is spreading to other birds such as ravens and crows, and to other parts of the world, including Great Britain.



When black-capped chickadees and some other birds in the Anchorage area began turning up in the late 1990s with elongated, weirdly curved or twisted beaks, biologists and bird lovers began to worry.

The deformities range from slight to gross and can have severe consequences for the birds if they are unable to use their beaks to pick up food or groom feathers so their bodies retain heat.


"People, a lot of times when they first see them, think the bird is carrying a twig in its beak," said Colleen Handel, a U.S. Geological Survey biologist who has devoted several years to studying the problem.


The tiny black-capped chickadees are the most afflicted, with 7 percent of Alaska adults developing deformed beaks. The deformities are also showing up in other birds, including ravens and crows, though not as frequently, Handel said.


Now the beak-deformity outbreak has spread north to Fairbanks, south to the Puget Sound region and -- for an unknown reason -- across the globe to Great Britain, where it is showing up among starlings, tits and other species, Handel said.


"It looks like it might be a global problem and not strictly located in Alaska," she said.


Scientists still do not know the cause. But new research by Handel and Caroline Van Hemert, another USGS biologist, suggests that environmental contaminants -- specifically, organochloride compounds -- might be linked to the deformities. It's a broad category of contaminants that includes pesticides like DDT and related chemical formulas, PCBs, chemical compounds used in fire retardants and numerous substances that are no longer used or targeted for phase-out under the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants.


The new research is detailed in a study published in the journal Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry.


Handel and Van Hemert analyzed data collected over several years. They and fellow scientists took blood samples from the chickadees in Anchorage. They tested unhatched eggs left behind in nest boxes after the parents and newborn chicks had departed. They tested tissues of several euthanized birds.


They found that several organochloride compounds were "ubiquitous in chickadee tissues at all life stages," in the words of their study, but that levels were very low.


Two specific contaminants -- heptachlor epoxide and PCB-123 -- were significantly associated with the birds that had beak deformities, but they have not been known in the past to be linked to such deformities. Aside from those results, nothing obvious about contaminant levels jumped out, but there was one key difference between deformed-beak birds and normal birds: The birds with deformed beaks had higher incidences of chromosomal damage of a type associated with toxic substances introduced into the environment.


But if contaminants are the problem, what is their source? Even though Southcentral Alaska is the most densely populated and developed region, it is still not heavily industrialized, Handel notes.


"There's no smoking gun in this study, which is frustrating," she said.


Possible contaminant sources might be old wastes from the area's military bases and training sites, pesticides used to combat the region's spruce-bark beetle infestation or compounds to quell wildfires, her study said. Also possibly involved is far-away pollution that is transported in global atmospheric currents to the cold north, Handel said.


Some possible causes of the beak deformities appear to be ruled out, or on the verge of being ruled out.


The problem is not something encountered in southern wintering grounds because black-capped chickadees and the other affected birds are year-round residents. "So whatever is happening to these guys is happening in Alaska," Handel said.


It is not something in the sunflower seeds that are shipped up from the Lower 48 and placed by local bird lovers in outdoor feeders. The new study considered the possibility that commercial birdseed holds dangerous levels of contaminants, but tested samples did not back up that theory.


It is not selenium from agricultural drainage, which was identified as the cause of beak deformities suffered by birds in the 1980s in California's San Joaquin Valley.


It is not the collection of contaminants that birds ingested in the Great Lakes region in the 1970s and 1980s, when beak deformities were among a suite of physical impairments showing up in the region's birds. Those problems were blamed on various types of industrial pollution, including PCBs and hydrocarbon contaminants. Birds with deformed beaks included terns, herons and cormorants -- birds that acquired environmental contaminants from the fish they ate and then passed on those contaminants to the eggs they laid.


In the California and Great Lakes cases, chicks with deformed beaks were emerging from their eggs. That is not the case in Alaska, where the only birds with the deformed beaks are adults, Handel said.


"It seems to be something that's happening to them as adults, and not when they're in the egg," she said.


The search for a cause of the beak deformities continues. There is likely to be a more precise examination of the possible role of contaminants, and even viruses are being studied as a possible cause, Handel said.


The USGS Alaska Science Center has a program dedicated to studying the deformities and is taking reports from the public about sightings of affected birds.


Chomsky: We Are All – Fill in the Blank.

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at http://bit.ly/1xcsdoI.


BEST OF THE WEB: Putin: West already supplying Kiev with weapons - still "optimistic" Minsk agreement will hold


© RIA Novosti / Aleksey Nikolskyi)



Vladimir Putin said that Kiev is being armed by Western allies, according to Moscow's information, but insisted he was "optimistic" about implementing the Minsk agreement, noting that the intensity of fighting has declined.

"According to our data, weapons are already being supplied [to Kiev]," the Russian leader said at a press conference following his meeting with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. "This is not surprising. I am convinced that whoever is supplying the weapons, the number of victims may grow, but the outcome will not change. The vast majority of soldiers serving in the Ukrainian army have no motivation to participate in an internecine conflict away from home, while the Donbass militia have every reason to defend their families."


Putin urged the Ukrainian government "not to prevent the soldiers in the Debaltsevo cauldron from surrendering, or at least not punish those who simply want to save their lives."


Up to 5,000 Ukrainian troops are thought to be surrounded in this key area deep inside rebel territory.


"Our mission is to save the lives of those caught in the cauldron, and to make sure that the situation does not inflame relations between Kiev and the rebels further," Putin said.




Nonetheless, Putin repeatedly emphasized that the situation was "more or less quiet" elsewhere on the front, and said that he was"more of an optimist than a pessimist" about the implementation of the Minsk agreement.

Putin believes that last week's negotiations between Germany, France, Ukraine and Russia laid out a long-term framework for the resolution of the conflict.


"It's extremely important that the authorities in Kiev have agreed to carry out a deep constitutional reform, to satisfy a desire for self-rule in certain regions - whether that reform is called decentralization, autonomization or federalization. This is the deeper meaning of the Minsk accords."


Chomsky: We Are All – Fill in the Blank.

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at http://bit.ly/1xcsdoI.


Truth teller? Sudan's President says CIA and Mossad 'stand behind' Isis and Boko Haram




Omar al-Bashir says 'there is no Muslim who would carry out such acts'



Sudan's President has claimed the CIA, America's intelligence agency, and Israel's Mossad are behind the Islamist militant groups Boko Haram and Isis.

Omar al-Bashir used an interview with Euronews to claim there was a connection between the American and Israeli intelligence organisations and both extremist groups.


He spoke after Isis released a video purporting to show the beheading of 21 Coptic Christians in Libya, an act that prompted Egypt to respond with air strikes avenging the massacre.


[embedded content]




Al-Bashir told the broadcaster: "I said CIA and the Mossad stand behind these organisations; there is no Muslim who would carry out such acts."

Boko Haram abducted 300 girls from a school in Nigeria last year and recently claimed responsibility for the massacre in the north-east Nigerian town of Baga, warning in the video that the killings were "just the tip of the iceberg".


Isis militants have killed thousands during their bloody insurgency across Syria and Iraq.


He also cautioned against taking violent measures to fight militants, claiming it could lead to an even more severe extremist response.


"Our policy has been largely successful, after we arrest these young people we bring a group of young scholars to engage in dialogue with them about their thoughts, and we succeed to bring a lot of them back from their radical ideas," he added.


His remarks come after the leader of Lebanon's Hezbollah group also claimed the CIA and Israel's Mossad are behind the extremist group, according to the Associated Press.


In January, Melih Gokcek, the mayor of the Turkish city Ankara, claimed Mossad was involved in the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris, committed by Islamist militants.


Explaining his conspiracy theory, he suggested Israel was behind the mass shooting because it wanted to "boost enmity towards Islam", the reports.


The wide-ranging discussion also saw the President challenge a report by Human Rights Watch claiming more than 200 women and girls were raped by Sudanese troops in an assault on the north Darfur town of Tabit, which the group said happened on 30 October.


He dismissed the report as "a radio news item from Radio Dabanga which is hostile to us," and "opposition-run and Israeli funded", Euronews reports.


The full interview with al-Bashir will air on Wednesday.


Chomsky: We Are All – Fill in the Blank.

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at http://bit.ly/1xcsdoI.


4 teens face life in prison after terrorizing grocery store


Four juveniles who allegedly rampaged through a Marysville supermarket face up to life in prison after they were charged as adults in Yuba County Superior Court.

Yuba County prosecutors charged the teens on Friday with seven felonies and one misdemeanor.


Superior Court Judge Julia Scrogin set bail at $1 million each for Shateemah Harrison, Alexandria Petrondla Evans and Elias Esquivel, all 15, and Sarah Murphy, 14.



The teens, who pleaded not guilty, wore Juvenile Hall jumpsuits and were chained at the waist as they appeared in Scrogin's courtroom.

They were charged with felony counts of second-degree robbery, dissuading a witness, criminal threats, assault with a deadly weapon, second-degree burglary and vandalism. Esquivel also faces a felony charge of resisting an executive officer.


They also face a misdemeanor count of resisting arrest.





Revenge: Investigators say they believe the teens were trying to get revenge on the store, where three of them had been arrested for shoplifting on Monday





The criminal counts also carry an enhancement alleging the teens carried out the offenses for the benefit of the Crips criminal street gang. The charge of assault with a deadly weapon involved use of frozen chicken, according to the criminal complaint.

Prosecutor Mechele Cook said the teens face a maximum sentence of 45 years to life if they are convicted on all counts with the enhancement.


Scrogins appointed the public defender and other attorneys to represent the defendants. She set their preliminary hearing for Feb. 27.


One spectator left the courtroom in tears after the arraignment.


A fifth defendant, 13 years old, appeared in Juvenile Court on Friday. Details about that proceeding were not released.


The teens are accused of entering the Marysville Save Mart on Wednesday and "terrorizing citizens," according to police.


Four juveniles — all girls — entered the supermarket together at about 1:40 p.m. and ran through the aisles, knocking down and destroying merchandise while shouting profanities and gang slogans, police said. Damage was estimated at about $1,000.


After destroying property inside, the teens walked outside and continued to knock over Save Mart property. When the store manager attempted to stop one of the teens from re-entering the Save Mart, the male teen punched the store manager in the face, police said.


Three of the girls had been arrested for trespassing and resisting arrest on the Monday before, Save Mart employees told police.


During the Wednesday incident, two police officers were injured, as was a retired Air Force staff sergeant, who police said slipped in a puddle of oil on the floor near the meat department. Officers believed the oil was purposely spilled on the floor by the teens.


Chomsky: We Are All – Fill in the Blank.

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at http://bit.ly/1xcsdoI.


Both sides accusing each other of violating Ukraine ceasefire agreed to in Minsk


© Reuters / Gleb Garanich



Ukrainian troops and rebels in the country's east have been blaming each other for sporadic ceasefire violations. Both sides say they only respond to attacks launched by adversary forces and question the possibility of heavy artillery withdrawal.

The ceasefire is largely holding in eastern Ukraine, the head of the OSCE mission there, Ertugrul Apakan, said Monday. He added that the one exception was Debaltsevo, a town where an estimated 5,000 Ukrainian task force remains trapped, surrounded by rebel forces.



Ceasefire holds in E.#Ukraine, except for Devaltsevo - head of @OSCE monitoring mission http://bit.ly/1Aiz946 http://bit.ly/1AB5aHI


— RT (@RT_com) February 16, 2015



"The situation in Debaltsevo is still tense," the envoy of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR), Denis Pushilin, said Monday, Tass reported. "The Ukrainian forces continue shelling. And they are still trying to break through the encirclement from the outer side. It is impossible to cease fire completely there. That is why the self-defense forces have to respond."

He also said the rebels were "ready to provide a 'green corridor'" for the troops to be able to exit Debaltsevo. They only want them to leave with no weapons and ammunition.


Kiev has refused to acknowledge it has trapped military forces in Debaltsevo, a strategic railway hub that connects the breakaway regions of Lugansk and Donetsk. Military spokesman Vladislav Seleznyov also said the army would not leave.


"There are the Minsk agreements, according to which Debaltsevo is ours. We will not leave," he told Reuters by phone.


The Ukrainian military accused the rebels of shelling army positions 112 times over the first day of the ceasefire. They said five soldiers were killed and 25 wounded.


The rebels reported 27 attacks in their direction. They accused Ukrainian troops of firing on Donetsk airport, while journalists were there.


The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) said that that the ceasefire has been in place for its first 18 hours.


The ceasefire "has been adhered to despite some incidents in Sievierodonetsk (90km northwest of Lugansk, government-controlled), Lugansk, Debaltsevo (80 km north of Donetsk) and in Donetsk City," the OSCE said in a report published Monday.


Both sides want the other to stop shooting so that the withdrawal of the heavy artillery from the frontline, scheduled for Tuesday, can begin.


"The major condition for heavy weaponry withdrawal from the frontline is a ceasefire. One hundred and twelve attacks is not a ceasefire,' Andrey Lysenko, Kiev's military spokesman, told journalists.


"The heavy weaponry withdrawal starts only after the ceasefire. And if the Armed Forces of Ukraine do not stop the shelling, which come in violation of the Minsk agreements, the DPR [Donetsk People's Republic] militias will not pull back their weaponry," said Eduard Basurin, deputy commander of the DPR's Defense Ministry's corps.


[embedded content]




German Chancellor Angela Merkel, one of the four leaders who negotiated the current ceasefire, said the path to peace would be "extremely difficult."

"The situation is fragile. Particularly with regard to Debaltsevo this is not unexpected," Merkel said during a news conference in Berlin.


Kremlin adviser Yury Ushakov was cautiously optimistic on Monday, saying the situation in eastern Ukraine was developing "not badly," especially if compared to what was going on before the Minsk agreement was signed.


"We hope that all of the provisions of the February 12 Minsk agreements will be implemented," Ushakov told journalists.

He however believes the additional sanctions announced against Russia on Monday were in no way contributing to peace.


"Our attitude remains the same - sanctions are illegal. They prevent the solution of problems, I mean Ukrainian problems, and hinder the development of relations between the European Union and Russia," Ushakov said.


The latest UN estimate puts the number of casualties in the war in eastern Ukraine at 5,600 people.


Chomsky: We Are All – Fill in the Blank.

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at http://bit.ly/1xcsdoI.


What scientists see as the most likely causes of the Apocalypse


© Reuters





Filmmakers, authors, and media have widely speculated about how human life on Earth will end. Now scientists have come up with the first serious assessment, presenting 12 possible causes of the Apocalypse.

Scientists from Oxford University's Future of Humanity Institute and the Global Challenges Foundation have compiled the first research on the topic, drawing a list of 12 possible ways that human civilization might end.


The idea of the study is not quite new. However, due to its treatment in popular culture, the possibility of the world's infinite end provokes relatively little political or academic interest, making a serious discussion harder, according to researchers.


"We were surprised to find that no one else had compiled a list of global risks with impacts that, for all practical purposes, can be called infinite," said co-author Dennis Pamlin of the Global Challenges Foundation. "We don't want to be accused of scaremongering but we want to get policy makers talking."


Below is the list of threats, ranked from least to most probable.


Asteroid impact


If an asteroid about five kilometers in size were to collide with our planet, the main destruction would be from clouds of dust projected into the upper atmosphere - which would affect climate change and food supplies, and cause political instability. Larger sized objects could cause immediate extinction on the planet. Large asteroid collisions happen about once every 20 million years, the report says.Probability: 0.00013%



© Reuters / NASA



Super-volcano eruption

A volcano capable of causing an eruption with an ejecta volume greater than 1,000 km3 could cause a global catastrophe. The dust projected into the atmosphere would absorb the Sun's rays and cause global freezing. The effects of possible eruptions can be compared to those of a nuclear war, only without the firestorms. Probability: 0.00003%



© RIA Novosti / Alexander Sokorenko

The Plosky Tolbachik Volcano erupts on the Kamchatka Peninsula



Global pandemic

A high impact epidemic is more probable than is widely believed, as all the features of an extremely devastating disease already exist in nature, the report says, giving examples of several devastating illnesses including Ebola, rabies, an infectious cold, and HIV. If all were combined, "the death toll would be extreme." Probability: 0.0001%



© Reuters / Baz Ratner



Nuclear war

The possibility of a deliberate or accidental nuclear conflict in the next century or so is estimated at 10%. The larger impact would depend on whether the conflict would trigger a "nuclear winter" - a climatic effect that would plunge temperatures below freezing, destroy most of the ozone layer, and start firestorms, which would likely lead to mass starvation and state collapse. Probability: 0.005%



© Reuters



Extreme climate change

The report warns that climate change could be more extreme than some estimates suggest. The world's poorest countries could become completely uninhabitable. Climate change could lead to mass deaths, famines, social collapse, and mass migration. Probability: 0.01%



© AFP Photo / Nelson Almeida



Synthetic biology

The most damaging impact from synthetic biology to human civilization would come from an engineered pathogen targeting humans or a crucial component of the ecosystem, the report states. Such would emerge from military or commercial bio-warfare, bio-terrorism, or leaked pathogens.Probability: 0.01%



© Reuters / Eddie Keogh



Nanotechnology

Atomically precise manufacturing would create smart or extremely resilient materials, and allow many different groups to manufacture a wide range of things - including large arsenals of novel weapons, such as nuclear ones. Probability: 0.01%



© RIA Novosti / Alexey Danichev



Unknown consequences

These are all the unknowns that could lead to the end of the world, scientists say, urging for extensive research into the matter. One resolution to the Fermi paradox - the apparent absence of alien life in the galaxy - is that intelligent life destroys itself before beginning to expand into the galaxy." Probability: 0.1%


There are also a few potential causes of the Apocalypse which have not had a probability assessed to them.



© Wikipedia



Ecological collapse

In this scenario, the ecosystem would suffer a drastic change that would lead to mass extinction. Species extinction is now far faster than the historic rate, and attempts to quantify a safe ecological operating space place humanity well outside it. Probability: N/A



© Reuters / Cheryl Ravelo



Global system collapse

The world economic and political systems are interconnected, and are prone to system-wide failures caused by the structure of the network. Economic collapse is usually accompanied by social chaos, civil unrest, and a breakdown of law and order. Probability: N/A



© Reuters / Toru Hanai



Future bad governance

A disaster could be caused by failing to solve major problems; for example, a failure to alleviate global poverty, or actively causing worse outcomes - like constructing a global totalitarian state. Probability: N/A



© Reuters / Gary Cameron



And lastly, the most probable of all the mentioned causes of the Apocalypse is...

Artificial Intelligence


The creation of human-level intelligence can result in the possibility that this intelligence will be driven to construct a world without humans. There is also a possibility of artificial intelligence waging war or creating that would give machines human minds.


On the other hand, the report also says it is probable that such intelligence could counter other apocalyptic causes presented in the study. Probability: 0-10%


[embedded content]


Chomsky: We Are All – Fill in the Blank.

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at http://bit.ly/1xcsdoI.


Weird animal behaviour: Residents claim hippo killed and 'ate' 3 goats in Kenya




Hippo charging



Residents have called on the Kenya Wildlife Service to remove a hippo that has been terrorizing them. They said it killed and ate three goats on Sunday (Hippos are herbivourous and can not eat meat). Francis Ndwiga, who works at a firm in Gachuriri village, said the hippo ate the goats and dragged one to River Thiba. He said he woke up when he heard the goats bleating. Assistant chief David Njagi said residents are living in fear.

Chomsky: We Are All – Fill in the Blank.

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at http://bit.ly/1xcsdoI.


Close passage of Scholz's star through Solar System 70,000 years ago

A group of astronomers from the US, Europe, Chile and South Africa have determined that 70,000 years ago a recently discovered dim star is likely to have passed through the solar system's distant cloud of comets, the Oort Cloud. No other star is known to have ever approached our solar system this close - five times closer than the current closest star, Proxima Centauri.

In a paper published in , lead author Eric Mamajek from the University of Rochester and his collaborators analyzed the velocity and trajectory of a low-mass star system nicknamed "Scholz's star."


Scholz's star

© Michael Osadciw/University of Rochester

This is an artist's conception of Scholz's star and its brown dwarf companion (foreground) during its flyby of the solar system 70,000 years ago. The Sun (left, background) would have appeared as a brilliant star. The pair is now about 20 light years away.



The star's trajectory suggests that 70,000 years ago it passed roughly 52,000 astronomical units away (or about 0.8 light years, which equals 8 trillion kilometers, or 5 trillion miles). This is astronomically close; our closest neighbor star Proxima Centauri is 4.2 light years distant. In fact, the astronomers explain in the paper that they are 98% certain that it went through what is known as the "outer Oort Cloud" - a region at the edge of the solar system filled with trillions of comets a mile or more across that are thought to give rise to long-term comets orbiting the Sun after their orbits are perturbed.

The star originally caught Mamajek's attention during a discussion with co-author Valentin D. Ivanov, from the European Southern Observatory. Scholz's star had an unusual mix of characteristics: despite being fairly close ("only" 20 light years away), it showed very slow tangential motion, that is, motion across the sky. The radial velocity measurements taken by Ivanov and collaborators, however, showed the star moving almost directly away from the solar system at considerable speed.


"Most stars this nearby show much larger tangential motion," says Mamajek, associate professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Rochester. "The small tangential motion and proximity initially indicated that the star was most likely either moving towards a future close encounter with the solar system, or it had 'recently' come close to the solar system and was moving away. Sure enough, the radial velocity measurements were consistent with it running away from the Sun's vicinity - and we realized it must have had a close flyby in the past."


To work out its trajectory the astronomers needed both pieces of data, the tangential velocity and the radial velocity. Ivanov and collaborators had characterized the recently discovered star through measuring its spectrum and radial velocity via Doppler shift. These measurements were carried out using spectrographs on large telescopes in both South Africa and Chile: the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) and the Magellan telescope at Las Campanas Observatory, respectively.


Once the researchers pieced together all the information they figured out that Scholz's star was moving away from our solar system and traced it back in time to its position 70,000 years ago, when their models indicated it came closest to our Sun.


Until now, the top candidate for the closest known flyby of a star to the solar system was the so-called "rogue star" HIP 85605, which was predicted to come close to our solar system in 240,000 to 470,000 years from now. However, Mamajek and his collaborators have also demonstrated that the original distance to HIP 85605 was likely underestimated by a factor of ten. At its more likely distance - about 200 light years - HIP 85605's newly calculated trajectory would not bring it within the Oort Cloud.


Mamajek worked with former University of Rochester undergraduate Scott Barenfeld (now a graduate student at Caltech) to simulate 10,000 orbits for the star, taking into account the star's position, distance, and velocity, the Milky Way galaxy's gravitational field, and the statistical uncertainties in all of these measurements. Of those 10,000 simulations, 98% of the simulations showed the star passing through the outer Oort cloud, but fortunately only one of the simulations brought the star within the inner Oort cloud, which could trigger so-called "comet showers."


While the close flyby of Scholz's star likely had little impact on the Oort Cloud, Mamajek points out that "other dynamically important Oort Cloud perturbers may be lurking among nearby stars." The recently launched European Space Agency Gaia satellite is expected to map out the distances and measure the velocities of a billion stars. With the Gaia data, astronomers will be able to tell which other stars may have had a close encounter with us in the past or will in the distant future.


Currently, Scholz's star is a small, dim red dwarf in the constellation of Monoceros, about 20 light years away. However, at the closest point in its flyby of the solar system, Scholz's star would have been a 10th magnitude star - about 50 times fainter than can normally be seen with the naked eye at night. It is magnetically active, however, which can cause stars to "flare" and briefly become thousands of times brighter. So it is possible that Scholz's star may have been visible to the naked eye by our ancestors 70,000 years ago for minutes or hours at a time during rare flaring events. The star is part of a binary star system: a low-mass red dwarf star (with mass about 8% that of the Sun) and a "brown dwarf" companion (with mass about 6% that of the Sun). Brown dwarfs are considered "failed stars;" their masses are too low to fuse hydrogen in their cores like a "star," but they are still much more massive than gas giant planets like Jupiter.


The formal designation of the star is "WISE J072003.20-084651.2," however it has been nicknamed "Scholz's star" to honor its discoverer - astronomer Ralf-Dieter Scholz of the Leibniz-Institut für Astrophysik Potsdam (AIP) in Germany - who first reported the discovery of the dim nearby star in late 2013. The "WISE" part of the designation refers to NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission, which mapped the entire sky in infrared light in 2010 and 2011, and the "J-number" part of the designation refers to the star's celestial coordinates.


Chomsky: We Are All – Fill in the Blank.

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at http://bit.ly/1xcsdoI.