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	Pam Rotella's Vegetarian FUN page -- News on health, nutrition, the environment, politics, and more! NEWS LINK ARCHIVE 2014 News from the Week of 16th to 22nd of February 2014 I've been too busy to process and post news links for the prior few weeks, however I hope to post links from earlier dates soon. - PR DOJ accusations spark outrage at Missoula County Attorney's Office (22 February 2014) At midweek, the county commissioners turned to Montana Attorney General Tim Fox for his take on the Justice Department report, which cited specific cases where victims said their allegations had been ignored or discounted by prosecutors. What they learned surprised them. While he was still attorney general, Montana Gov. Steve Bullock struck an agreement with the DOJ in June of 2012 -- at the outset of the DOJ's investigation into Missoula's and the University of Montana's handling of sexual assault allegations. The pact called on the DOJ to turn over to the state attorney general -- whose office oversees all county prosecutors -- any new allegations of sexual assaults or new information about previously reported sexual assault allegations. Fox, as the current attorney general, sent a letter to the DOJ on Thursday requesting that information, citing the DOJ's allegations that new evidence had been uncovered and that past cases had been mishandled or inappropriately dismissed. [Read more...] Healthcare's hidden costs can take patients by surprise (22 February 2014) When a rheumatologist told Linda Drake of Miami that she might have lung cancer, the former smoker did some research and discovered a study for early detection and treatment of the disease with researchers in South Florida. Drake, 57, decided to participate in the study because there was a $350 flat fee, and she could enroll through UHealth -- the University of Miami's network of clinics and hospitals in Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and Collier counties. She could even go to a UHealth outpatient clinic close to work. That clinic, Sylvester at Deerfield Beach, is about a 40-mile drive north from UM's Miami hospitals, which include UM Hospital, Bascom Palmer Eye Institute, and Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center. Drake's visit last spring took about one hour, she said, including a CT scan. She saw a technician and a nurse practitioner. About a week later, she received an analysis of the images by a radiologist she never spoke with or met. The results were negative. Drake breathed a sigh of relief. But a few days later, an unpleasant surprise arrived in the mail: a bill for $210 from UHealth for "hospital services" labeled as "Room and Board - All Inclusive,'' even though she never set foot in a hospital or spent the night at the clinic. [Read more...] Scott Walker urged county staff, campaign aides to promote him online (22 February 2014) Madison -- In the heat of the 2010 governor's race, Scott Walker urged both county employees and campaign aides to go to news websites and post comments promoting him and his record, newly unsealed documents show. It was just such anonymous posts by a county worker on campaign issues that prompted prosecutors to expand a secret "John Doe" investigation -- launched to probe into missing money in a veterans fund -- to also examine whether taxpayer dollars were being used illegally to finance political operations. In one instance in May 2010, for example, a close ally posted online a portion of a Walker email almost verbatim on a Journal Sentinel story just minutes after receiving the directive. Walker had sent the note to an inner circle that included county administrators as well as campaign operatives. Tapping out a message on his campaign Blackberry on the afternoon of May 4, 2010, Walker urged county aides, campaign staffers and other trusted volunteers to go to an online Journal Sentinel business story and respond to critics of his plan to privatize the airport in the comments section below the story. [Read more...] Document: Month-long traffic study for Fort Lee (22 February 2014) A review of additional documents indicates that Michaels may have known about the planned month-long duration of the lane closures sooner than other high-ranking Port Authority officials. Emails subpoenaed by the N.J. Legislature show that Robert Durando, manager of the George Washington Bridge, learned that the lane closures would be continued into the following day "at a minimum" almost six hours after Michaels told Fort Lee officials that the changes would be in place for a month. And while Michaels told Bendul that Port Authority executives in Jersey City were behind the lane closures, Cedrick Fulton, director for Tunnels, Bridges, and Terminals at the Port Authority's Jersey City offices, actually learned of their day-to-day duration from Durando. Although the lanes were closed for four mornings from September 9 to 12 before being re-opened by Port Authority Executive Director Pat Foye, a New York appointee, it has never been made clear how long Wildstein and Bill Baroni, Christie's top appointee at the agency, planned to restrict access to the bridge from Fort Lee. Thus far, only the notes and our interviews with Bendul about his conversation with Michaels show that the lane closures were planned to last for a month. [Read more...] Thousands of families left out of state funding to help with developmental disabilities (22 February 2014) She listened to their story about how a recent trip to a nearby pharmacy ended with Rowan clearing a shelf of supplements and scratching Amy's arm so hard it bled. She watched the boy cling to his mother, unable to talk or make eye contact, a wash cloth dangling from his mouth for him to chew to calm his anxiety. She typed their wishes into the laptop -- access to a behavior program, help paying for needed therapies, an occasional visit from a trained caregiver to give them a break. Six weeks later, the results of the update evaluation arrived by mail: Rowan still met the state's criteria for receiving services. But still, the letter reported, "there is no funding available." [Read more...] Maersk confirms drugs found with 2 dead U.S. guards (22 February 2014) Update: An autopsy is planned next week for the bodies of the two security guards to determine their cause of death, according to The Associated Press. Police in the Seychelles found drugs and hypodermic needles alongside the bodies of two American security guards who died aboard the Maersk Alabama this week, raising concerns about drug abuse aboard the ship, the shipping company confirmed. The two men, identified by police and the Navy as Mark Kennedy and Jeffrey Reynolds, both worked for the Trident Group, a Virginia Beach-based maritime security firm. Maersk Line Ltd., the Norfolk-based shipping company, said that based on its experience, "this is an isolated incident." Still, the company is taking steps to prevent substance abuse in the future. [Read more...] Australian TV star Charlotte Dawson found dead (22 February 2014) SYDNEY (AP) -- Australian TV star and former model Charlotte Dawson, who became an anti-bullying activist after she was targeted online, has been found dead at age 47. Famed for TV shows such as "Australia's Next Top Model," the New Zealand-born star had a history of depression. She was found dead in her Sydney apartment on Saturday morning. Police said there were no suspicious circumstances, which is how they usually describe suicide. Sydney's The Sunday Telegraph newspaper reported that she was found hanged. In 2012, she was admitted to a Sydney hospital after a suicide attempt following an ongoing tirade of abuse on Twitter. She had taken prescription tablets with wine and tweeted: "you win" in a suicide note to her cyber tormentors. [Read more...] Mexico becoming a driving force in auto production (22 February 2014) The first Honda Fit rolled off the assembly line Friday at a new $800-million factory near Celaya, Mexico, a symbol of the growing might of the country's auto industry. Honda's U.S. factories spit out hundreds of thousands of Accords and Civics each year. But when the automaker redesigned the Fit for North America, it turned to Mexico for an increasingly skilled workforce and favorable export rules. Mexico already accounts for about 18% of North American auto production, but that's expected to jump to 25% by 2020 as automakers pour billion of dollars into factories, said Joe Langley, an analyst at IHS Automotive. The nation has joined Germany, Japan and the U.S as one of the heavyweights of auto production, he said. U.S. auto factories have also kicked into a higher gear since the recession as auto sales have rebounded. But Mexico's plants are adding jobs and production even more quickly. Mexico's auto industry employment has soared 46% to about 580,000 jobs since 2009, according to the Brookings Institution. U.S. auto employment has gained 16% in the same period. [Read more...] Mexico's billionaire drug kingpin 'El Chapo' caught (22 February 2014) The head of Mexico's Sinaloa Cartel -- who was widely considered the world's most powerful drug lord -- was captured overnight by U.S. and Mexican authorities at a hotel in Mazatlan, Mexico, ending a bloody and decades-long career that terrorized large swaths of the country. Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera was taken alive during the night by Mexican marines in the beach resort town, Mexican and U.S. official said Saturday. Guzman's nickname means "Shorty," but he towered over the world's illegal drug trade. He is believed to be the main supplier of drugs to the United States and many other countries, according to The New York Times. Despite his capture, it is likely that new leaders are waiting to take his place. [Read more...] How Avocado Can Help with Weight Management (22 February 2014) According to research published in the Nutrition Journal,1 eating just one-half of a fresh avocado with lunch may satiate you if you're overweight, which will help prevent unnecessary snacking later.2 The study also found that avocados appear helpful for regulating blood sugar levels, which is important for most people, considering that one in four American are either diabetic or pre-diabetic. As reported by the featured article in Medical News Today:3 ""For their study, the researchers wanted to see how avocado consumption impacted a person's satiety, blood sugar and insulin response, and food consumption following a meal." [Read more...] North Carolina coal ash spills 'permanently plugged.' officials say (21 February 2014) Duke Energy Corp., a North Carolina-based energy company, successfully halted a second leak at its decommissioned power plant in Eden that was found to be threatening a river already tainted by toxic sludge weeks earlier, state environmental regulators told Al Jazeera Friday. After discovering the leak on Tuesday, the state's Department of Natural Resources (DNER) ordered Duke Energy to plug a 36-inch pipe that was allowing coal ash and slurry -- the waste product of burning coal -- to spill into the Dan River. The first leak, which was plugged on Feb. 8, occurred when a 48-inch pipe at the same plant broke under a 27-acre coal ash pond, spilling thousands of tons of the pollutant into the river. DNER told Al Jazeera that Duke Energy packed the second pipe with 40 feet of concrete at about 2:30 a.m. on Friday. [Read more...] Fish in Gulf of Mexico experience heart attacks due to oil contamination (21 February 2014) (NaturalNews) Swimming majestically in the open seas, with eyes wide on both sides of its face, the bluefin tuna gazes into... a curtain of crude oil. When the 2010 BP oil spill contaminated the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, beautiful wild fish like the bluefin tuna were forced to face new challenges for survival. Now, researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and Stanford University are discovering that oil pollution can elicit early heart attacks in this species of fish. Bluefin tuna cannot escape or hide from heart-debilitating oil pollution These fish, which can weigh up to 550 pounds and measure 6.5 feet long, are not immune from the damaging effects of oil pollution. As one of the world's largest fish species in the world, the bluefin tuna is also built for both speed and endurance. With the ability to retract their dorsal and pectoral fins, bluefin tuna can reduce drag and swim up to 43 miles per hour. Their gorgeously colored metallic blue top and silver-white bottom help keep the fish camouflaged in the open seas, from top to bottom. But what the fish can not hide from or swim faster than is a massive oil spill. In this new study, oil pollution is found to block the bluefin tuna's cardiac tissues from receiving needed calcium and potassium, causing early heart attacks. The early die-off of these bluefin tuna in the Gulf of Mexico could mean shortages of food for those who depend on the species for survival. The oil pollution could possibly be passed upward through the food chain. Since bluefin tuna swim from the tropical Gulf of Mexico to the cold climate near Europe several times a year, the early death of these fish may spell consequences for other parts of the world. Aggressive commercial fishing is also pushing these fish closer to extinction, so the early die-offs from the oil are not helping. [Read more...] The dark side of acetaminophen (21 February 2014) There is a drug -- probably sitting in your purse, desk drawer or medicine cabinet -- that is widely considered one of the world's safest painkillers. But over the last decade, it has killed hundreds of Canadians, hospitalized tens of thousands and cost the health-care system tens of millions, a Toronto Star investigation has found. Acetaminophen has spent more than half a century as one of Canada's top-selling non-prescription drugs. It can be found in nearly 500 products and billions of doses are taken safely every year. But few Canadians appreciate the potential dangers of acetaminophen -- the ingredient that made Tylenol famous but can be found in everything from Nyquil and NeoCitran to prescription painkillers such as Percocet. This is a drug many consumers take as casually as M&Ms -- both of which can be bought at any gas station or drugstore, sometimes in packages containing hundreds. While Health Canada tried to address these issues by updating label warnings in 2009, it ignored stronger changes recommended by its own scientists, according to internal documents obtained by the Star -- language that was also opposed by the non-prescription drug industry. Canadians' lack of understanding, compounded by a culture of overmedicating, can turn a safe drug into something dangerous. Acetaminophen is often used in suicides -- nearly 300 between 2000 and 2009, according to a Statistics Canada database -- but a Star investigation has found that Canadians are also dying by accident. [Read more...] NY Attorney General confirms real-life conspiracy among drug companies (21 February 2014) (NaturalNews) The office of the New York Attorney General and the American units of Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd. and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. have come to terms on a settlement involving claims that an agreement between the two Big Pharma companies restricted competition unlawfully. Both companies agreed to pay a small fine (by comparison) of $150,000 to New York State and to cease making similar agreements in the future as part of the settlement, Reuters reported. Neither company admitted or denied the allegations, but the settlement absolves them of having to do so. By settling, the companies have ended an investigation that was being conducted by the state into an agreement that was signed by both in 2010 to sell a generic version of Pfizer, Inc.'s cholesterol-lowering drug Lipitor in the U.S., while not horning in on the exclusivity rights of other generic drugs sold by the pharmaceutical companies. Per Reuters: "The agreement was drawn up as a contingency plan to allow Israel's Teva to sell the generic Lipitor, or atorvastatin calcium, in case Ranbaxy's version was not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration before Lipitor lost its patent protection on November 30, 2011." [Read more...] The Shadow Lobbying Complex: How Corporations Are Hiding Vast Influence Peddling Efforts (21 February 2014) [DemocracyNow.org] LEE FANG: Good morning. My new story for The Nation looks into federal lobbying laws and the state of American lobbying. As you mentioned, on paper, the lobbying industry is decreasing. The number of registered lobbyists are shrinking. The amount spent is going down precipitously every year. But in reality, the influence industry, as it's known, is growing very quickly. It's becoming more sophisticated. Companies are spending more and more to influence policy. And in many ways, corporations are extending their reach and hiring as many lobbyists as they can as this industry grows. JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, when President Obama was campaigning in 2008 and he came into office, he declared a virtual war, supposedly, on lobbyists, had an executive order banning lobbyists from his administration. Has that had anything to do with these lobbyists attempting now to go underground in terms of how they spend their money and how they influence legislation? LEE FANG: That's right. And this is one of the big ironies of the Obama administration. President Obama campaigned vigorously in 2008 against the influence and the outsized influence of corporate lobbyists in American politics. He promised to drain the swamp and to come into office and enact stronger ethics reforms. But the only real enforcement or official action that he took was an executive order right when he got into office to not allow registered lobbyists into his administration. The catch was, many lobbyists simply de-registered, pushing the system more into the shadows, more into the darkness, and leading to where we are today. And the administration, at the same time, started issuing exemptions to still allow registered lobbyists into the Obama administration. So, little has changed. If anything, Obama's only action on lobbying has made the system worse. AMY GOODMAN: Lee Fang, you encountered Zach Wamp, a former Republican politician, telling members of Congress he manages operations for Palantir, a controversial big data company that does work for intelligence agencies. I want to play a clip of the video of you questioning him about the scandals associated with the firm, which include allegations that they spied on activists. This is a clip of your encounter. [Read more...] Silencing the Scientist: Tyrone Hayes on Being Targeted by Herbicide Firm Syngenta (21 February 2014) [DemocracyNow.org] AMY GOODMAN: And, Professor Hayes, talk about exactly what you found. What were the abnormalities you found in frogs, the gender-bending nature of this drug atrazine? TYRONE HAYES: Well, initially, we found that the larynx, or the voice box, in exposed males didn't grow properly. And this was an indication that the male hormone testosterone was not being produced at appropriate levels. And eventually we found that not only were these males demasculinized, or chemically castrated, but they also were starting to develop ovaries or starting to develop eggs. And eventually we discovered that these males didn't breed properly, that some of the males actually completely turned into females. So we had genetic males that were laying eggs and reproducing as females. And now we're starting to show that some of these males actually show, I guess what we'd call homosexual behavior. They actually prefer to mate with other males. AMY GOODMAN: And so, where did you go with your research? TYRONE HAYES: Well, eventually, what happened was the EPA insisted that--the Environmental Protection Agency insisted that the manufacturer release me from the confidentiality contract. And we published our findings in pretty high-ranking journals, such as Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. We published some work in Nature. We published work in Environmental Health Perspectives, which is a journal sponsored by the National Institutes of Health. JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And when did you begin to get a sense that the company was organizing a campaign against you? What were the signs that you saw post the period when you published your findings? [Read more...] Emails show how Scott Walker blurred lines between campaign and county business (21 February 2014) In May 2010, when Scott Walker learned one of his employees was promoting his gubernatorial campaign on county time, he told his staff in the Milwaukee County executive's office that it could not happen again. Internal documents collected as part of a criminal investigation show county staffers then ditched a secret wireless router that had allowed them to trade campaign-related emails from their personal laptops without leaving traces on the county's computer system. But they and Walker continued to use private email accounts to conduct campaign business during regular work hours, a State Journal review of more than 28,000 pages of emails released Wednesday shows. Even county business was conducted largely on private emails, often with the Friends of Walker campaign staff included. Hiring and firing decisions, crafting the county budget and responding to several crises during his 2010 run for the governor's office all were coordinated between Walker's campaign and county staff. [Read more...] Federal judge tosses out legal challenge over NYPD surveillance of Muslims (21 February 2014) The first legal challenge to the New York police department's blanket surveillance of Muslims in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks has been dismissed by a federal judge in New Jersey in a ruling that lawyers acting for the plaintiffs have described as preposterous and dangerous. Judge William Martini, sitting in the US district court for the district of New Jersey, threw out a lawsuit brought by eight Muslim individuals and local businesses who alleged their constitutional rights were violated when the NYPD's mass surveillance was based on religious affiliation alone. The legal action was the first of its type flowing from the secret NYPD project to map and monitor Muslim communities across the east coast that was exposed by a Pulitzer prize-winning series of articles in 2011 by the Associated Press. In his judgment, released on Thursday, Martini dismisses the complaint made by the plaintiffs that they had been targeted for police monitoring solely because of their religion. He writes: "The more likely explanation for the surveillance was a desire to locate budding terrorist conspiracies. The most obvious reason for so concluding is that surveillance of the Muslim community began just after the attacks of September 11, 2001. The police could not have monitored New Jersey for Muslim terrorist activities without monitoring the Muslim community itself." Baher Azmy, legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights that represented the plaintiffs along with attorneys from the civil rights group Muslim Advocates, said that the ruling was dangerous. He equated it with the now widely discredited US supreme court ruling in 1944, Korematsu v United States, that declared constitutional the blanket internment of Japanese Americans during the second world war. [Read more...] Republican Scott Walker faces potential fallout from incriminating email trove (21 February 2014) Most embarrassingly for Walker, who faces in an uphill battle to attract minority voters in any presidential campaign, are a clutch of racist emails shared between his former aides. One, forwarded from Walker's ex-chief of staff, Thomas Nardelli to Rindfleisch -- his deputy -- is a joke about an African American "negro" who discovers he is a minority in other ways. "I can handle being a black, disabled, one armed, drug-addicted Jewish homosexual," the email says, "but please, oh dear God, don't make me a Democrat". Another, sent to Rindfleisch from someone outside Walker's staff, joked that welfare recipients were "mixed in color, unemployed, lazy, can't speak English and have no frigging clue who the r [sic] Daddys [sic] are". "That is hilarious," Walker's deputy chief of staff replied. "And so true!" The emails were discovered by American Bridge 21st Century, one of the several Democratic and liberal groups sifting through the cache of emails since they were released on Wednesday. [Read more...] UAW demands labour board review Volkswagen plant vote (21 February 2014) Union officials filed an appeal on Friday against a vote that denied labour representation at a Tennessee Volkswagen plant, blaming a "firestorm of interference" for the no vote. The United Auto Workers (UAW) narrowly lost a vote last week to represent workers at VW's Chattanooga plant, the German car company's only factory in the US and one of the company's few in the world without a works council. The vote was seen as a major blow for the UAW and union representation in southern manufacturing states. It came after months of intense lobbying against the UAW from rightwing pressure groups and Republican politicians. "A firestorm of interference from politicians and special interest groups threatening the economic future of the plant occurred just before and during three days of voting," the UAW said in a statement. [Read more...] Virginia coal miner pinned by machine, killed (21 February 2014) GRUNDY, Va. (AP) - State mining inspectors are investigating the death of a coal miner who was pinned by a coal-extracting machine he was operating in a southwest Virginia mine. A spokeswoman for the state Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy says 24-year-old Arthur David Gelenster sustained fatal injuries Friday afternoon at a mine in Buchanan (buhk-AN'-un) County. Tarah Kesterson says the death of the Buchanan County man occurred at Dominion Coal Corp. Mine No. 30 near the unincorporated town of Whitewood. Kesterson said Gelenster was operating a machine called a continuous miner to extract coal from the underground mine. [Read more...] Fracking infrastructure? Not in my backyard, says Exxon CEO (21 February 2014) Woe is Rex Tillerson, CEO of ExxonMobil. Public utility Cross Timbers Water Supply Corp. has had the nerve to plan a water tower in Bartonville, Texas -- right next to Tillerson's own personal horse ranch! Not only is the tower a blight on Tillerson's very own piece of Texas forever, but it's also going to bring all kinds of noise, traffic, and plebeians to his driveway. Oh, and one more thing -- it's also going to supply the energy companies that are quickly growing their fracking operations in the area. Included among these companies is XTO Energy, which ExxonMobil acquired in 2009. Tillerson and his wife have brought suit against Cross Timbers to block the proposed water tower, and they're not alone. Former U.S. House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R) and his wife are the lead plaintiffs in the suit. Armey's impressive track record includes a stint as chairman of Tea Party-affiliated FreedomWorks, a D.C.-based nonprofit committed to "helping activists fight for lower taxes, less government, and more freedom." The Cross Timbers case has been going on since 2012, and was recently sent back to the district court after a ruling reversal by an appellate judge, according to The Wall Street Journal. The Tillersons, Armeys, and their co-plaintiffs argue that they were promised that utility construction would not come near their homes. Cross Timbers' position has been that, as a public utility, they can build wherever they goddamn please. [Read more...] Obama to host Dalai Lama amid strained China-US ties (21 February 2014) Barack Obama is to meet the Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, at the White House on Friday -- with the Chinese government immediately condemning it is a "gross interference" in China's internal affairs that will "seriously damage" relations with Washington. Obama's announcement of a midmorning session with the Dalai Lama was sure to draw a reprimand from China, which views him as a violent separatist because he seeks more autonomy for Tibet. In its announcement the White House said the Dalai Lama was "an internationally respected religious and cultural leader" and noted Obama had met with him twice before, in February 2010 and July 2011. In what appears to be a small concession to the Chinese, Obama will see the Dalai Lama in the White House Map Room, a historically important place but of less significance than the Oval Office, the president's inner sanctum. A senior Chinese official vowed this week to ignore foreign pressure on human rights and said foreign leaders who meet with the Dalai Lama should "pay a price" for it. [Read more...] Transcripts show Federal Reserve's struggle to deal with 2008 financial crisis as it unfolded (21 February 2014) The nation was nearly a year into the Great Recession before then-Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke accepted the magnitude of the country's economic distress. The financial system was rapidly unraveling in September 2008. Investment bank Lehman Brothers had collapsed, and the Fed was rescuing insurance giant AIG from the brink of insolvency with an $85 billion bailout. Wall Street was panicking, with stock markets falling more than 4 percent in a day. More than a million workers had lost their jobs. Even so, Bernanke thought the Fed had probably done enough, according to newly released transcripts. So he recommended that the central bank leave its key interest rate unchanged -- a move the Fed would come to regret. "I think that our policy is looking actually pretty good," he told his colleagues around the mahogany table at the Fed's headquarters in Washington. [Read more...] Virginia Medicaid dispute is a shutdown in the works (21 February 2014) If the high stakes of a fractious Medicaid expansion debate that threatens a state government shutdown weren't clear before, they were after marathon legislative debates ended Thursday with one side of the state Capitol accepting the idea and the other rejecting it. Sharp divisions between the Republican House of Delegates and the Democratic Senate - highlighted by the day's action - set up the potential for a protracted staring contest that could delay approval of Virginia's proposed two-year, $96 billion budget to fund an array of public programs. Virginia's next budget cycle starts July 1. Reaching that date without an approved spending plan could force the state to shutter operations. No money could be paid out of the state treasury, said Del. Chris Jones, R-Suffolk, chairman of the budget-writing House Appropriations Committee. Teachers and police would not get paid, the Virginia Department of Transportation would shut down, and state employees would be laid off. [Read more...] Thai farmers call off airport protest (21 February 2014) Thai farmers called off a tractor drive to Bangkok's main airport to protest against not being paid under a rice subsidy scheme after an assurance they would get their money, a spokesman said, welcome news for Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra. The rice subsidy program was among the populist policies pioneered by Yingluck's billionaire brother, Thaksin Shinawatra, a former prime minister central to a conflict that has divided Thais for years and triggered protests and sometimes violence that have paralyzed parts of the capital for weeks. The farmers had said they wanted to make a symbolic protest, with no plans to block air traffic as in 2008, when protesters forced Bangkok's two main airports to close for more than a week. Former member of parliament Chada Thaiseth, speaking for the farmers gathered in Ayutthaya province, said they had been assured of payment. "The government will make payment next week. The farmers will head back now and will see whether the government will pay as promised," he told Reuters. "If it isn't delivered, we will return." [Read more...] Africa: Young Scientists Neglected in Developing World (21 February 2014) Cairo -- A lack of resources, training and funding opportunities are the most cited obstacles facing young researchers in the developing world, according to a survey by the Global Young Academy (GYA), a group that supports young scientists. The Global State of Young Scientists (GloSYS) report, published last month (21 January), assessed the needs of young researchers around the world. Its authors say they hope that providing a "snapshot of what is known and not known about young scholars around the world" will help decision-makers identify "where to focus their energies, and how best to direct limited resources to supporting young researchers and the innovation system of which they are a part". Irene Friesenhahn, a GloSYS project officer and co-author of the report, says they found that researchers in the developing world lack resources on several fronts, including research grants and training opportunities. [Read more...] These blind rescued cows are best friends, and our hearts just exploded (21 February 2014) Eight-year-old Sweety, who also has a hoof infection, was saved from slaughter in Ontario and shipped to New York's Farm Sanctuary as a companion for Tricia, a 12-year-old blind cow who's been blind since birth. Cows are herd animals and get lonely easily, and Tricia had lost her last companion a year ago. Luckily, Sweety and Tricia hit it off instantly, first mooing at each other from their stalls and then bumping noses and nuzzling when they got to meet. Before long, they were eating and sleeping together, and Tricia (who's more experienced in being blind) was guiding Sweety around obstacles. And suddenly, we were also having a hard time seeing clearly. Must be something in our eyes. [Read more...] What Edward Snowden Leaked Was Nothing Compared to What He Didn't (20 February 2014) Here, at least, is a place to start: intelligence officials have weighed in with an estimate of just how many secret files National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden took with him when he headed for Hong Kong last June. Brace yourself: 1.7 million. At least they claim that as the number he or his web crawler accessed before he left town. Let's assume for a moment that it's accurate and add a caveat. Whatever he had with him on those thumb drives when he left the agency, Edward Snowden did not take all the NSA's classified documents. Not by a long shot. He only downloaded a portion of them. We don't have any idea what percentage, but assumedly millions of NSA secret documents did not get the Snowden treatment. Such figures should stagger us and what he did take will undoubtedly occupy journalists for months or years more (and historians long after that). Keep this in mind, however: the NSA is only one of seventeen intelligence outfits in what is called the US Intelligence Community. Some of the others are as large and well funded, and all of them generate their own troves of secret documents, undoubtedly stretching into the many millions. And keep something else in mind: that's just intelligence agencies. If you're thinking about the full sweep of our national security state (NSS), you also have to include places like the Department of Homeland Security, the Energy Department (responsible for the US nuclear arsenal), and the Pentagon. In other words, we're talking about the kind of secret documentation that an army of journalists, researchers, and historians wouldn't have a hope of getting through, not in a century. We do know that, in 2011, the whole government reportedly classified 92,064,862 documents. If accurate and reasonably typical, that means, in the twenty-first century, the NSS has already generated hundreds of millions of documents that could not be read by an American without a security clearance. Of those, thanks to one man (via various journalists), we have had access to a tiny percentage of perhaps 1.7 million of them. Or put another way, you, the voter, the taxpayer, the citizen--in what we still like to think of as a democracy--are automatically excluded from knowing or learning about most of what the national security state does in your name. That's unless, of course, its officials decide to selectively cherry-pick information they feel you are capable of safely and securely absorbing, or an Edward Snowden releases documents to the world over the bitter protests, death threats, and teeth gnashing of Washington officialdom and retired versions of the same. [Read more...] Big Antarctic glacier to keep raising seas, even without warming (20 February 2014) (Reuters) - A thawing Antarctic glacier that is the biggest contributor to rising sea levels is likely to continue shrinking for decades, even without an extra spur from global warming, a study showed on Thursday. Scientists said the Pine Island Glacier, which carries more water to the sea than the Rhine River, also thinned 8,000 years ago at rates comparable to the present, in a melt that lasted for decades, perhaps for centuries. "Our findings reveal that Pine Island Glacier has experienced rapid thinning at least once in the past, and that, once set in motion, rapid ice sheet changes in this region can persist for centuries," they wrote in the U.S. journal Science. A creeping rise in sea levels is a threat to low-lying coasts from Bangladesh to Florida, and to cities from London to Shanghai. Of the world's biggest glaciers, in Antarctica and Greenland, Pine Island is the largest contributor. [Read more...] Military psychological counseling programs faulted (20 February 2014) The 291-page report was especially critical of the Pentagon's biggest and costliest prevention program, known as Comprehensive Soldier and Family Fitness, which is used throughout the Army. Based on the principles of positive psychology, it includes training in assertiveness, negotiation and coping strategies such as maintaining an optimistic outlook on life. About 900,000 soldiers receive the training each year at a cost of $50 million. The program was recently expanded to include families of service members. The Army has portrayed it as a success based on internal reviews that found that soldiers saw small improvements on some measures of psychological health. But the medical committee concluded that the gains were not clinically meaningful. The program did not reduce rates post-traumatic stress disorder or depression. "The effects were so small," Warner said. "The amount of money being spent was so large. It did not look like a meaningful investment." [Read more...] World's biggest offshore wind farm won't expand because of birds (20 February 2014) Phase 1 of the London Array is already complete -- and generating as much as 630 megawatts of electricity. Phase 2, which would have boosted electricity production at the sprawling site by more than a half, will not move forward as originally planned. The news is just the latest setback to Britain's efforts to scale up its already-impressive wind energy portfolio. Other wind-power plans have also been put on ice. Bloomberg explains: "The project is at least the sixth U.K. offshore wind plan in three months to be canceled or reduced. All six of the country's six biggest utilities have now scaled back their ambitions, delivering a blow to an industry that Prime Minister David Cameron's government is promoting to reduce emissions and replace aging power plants." Smart siting of wind turbines is one of the best ways of protecting wildlife from their powerful blades. The good news here is that the companies behind the London Array aren't abandoning their ambitions to produce more wind energy -- they say they're going to look at other sites. [Read more...] Toxic Legacy: Uranium Mining in New Mexico (20 February 2014) Most people are unaware that the third-largest nuclear disaster in world history occurred in New Mexico. Less than four months after the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor meltdown in 1979, three times as much radiation was released when a spill at a uranium mill at Church Rock, New Mexico, dumped 94 million gallons of mill effluent and more than 1,000 tons of acidic, radioactive sludge into an arroyo that emptied into the Puerco River. The only two nuclear disasters that have released more radiation were those at Fukushima and Chernobyl. The Navajo Nation, where the spill occurred, is riddled with 521 abandoned uranium mines across the three states included within the reservation, according to the EPA; 450 of those mines and eight former uranium mill sites are in New Mexico, and three of these are designated superfund sites. These sites are the source of contamination for tens of millions of gallons of groundwater and countless acres, the brunt of which is on Navajo land. Like other indigenous peoples whose reservations happened to have uranium deposits the federal government, and later private companies, desired, the Navajo were not warned of the dangers of radiation. [Read more...] BP to meet with feds on parameters of oil spill penalty trials (20 February 2014) HOUSTON -- A federal judge on Wednesday ordered BP and U.S. attorneys to meet next month to discuss how the "penalty phase" in BP's oil spill trial will proceed. That meeting may decide some parameters of the third and final phase in the civil trial, such as how many trial days or expert witnesses would be required. The proposed penalty phase itself would determine how much BP owes in environmental fines for the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Last week, U.S. attorneys said in court documents that a three-week trial with a limited number of witnesses would be sufficient for the key chapter in BP's civil trial. BP responded in court documents that U.S. attorneys were attempting to truncate the penalty phase, and recommended time for "substantial discovery and rigorous trial presentations for" eight statutory factors used to determine Clean Water Act fines. The British oil giant contended it is premature to set limits on facts, expert witnesses and time allotted for trial presentation. [Read more...] EPA declares BT toxin safe for humans in soy foods, comments open until April 14th (20 February 2014) (NaturalNews) In another victory for the chemical industry, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has declared that residue of Bt toxin from genetically modified (GM) Bt crops is permissible at all levels in soy foods for humans and soy feed for animals. The EPA has essentially relieved the biotechnology industry of all responsibility for this genetic poison in a final rule published on February 12, 2014, which exempts from residue tolerance requirements all soybeans currently grown for and processed into food. The rule, which is open for public comment in the Federal Register until April 14, specifically exempts soybeans from having to contain less than a certain amount of Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) Cry1F protein residue in order to be considered safe. Under its new EPA designation, Bt toxin will now be considered a "plant-incorporated protectant" (PIP), which directly counters science by implying that GM-induced Bt toxin is somehow safe at all exposure levels. "Dow AgroSciences LLC submitted a petition to EPA under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FFDCA), requesting an exemption from the requirement of a tolerance," explains the EPA in its rule summary. "This regulation eliminates the need to establish a maximum permissible level for residues of Bacillus thuringiensis Cry1F protein in soybean under the FFDCA." EPA exemption will allow Bt toxin in drinking water What this means is that you and your family will now potentially be exposed to drastically higher levels of a poisonous bacterium protein that, while it does occur naturally in soil, was never meant to be inserted directly into the DNA of food crops. As a result, Bt toxin, which literally explodes the stomachs of insects that eat it, will not only be found inside GM corn kernels, GM soybeans and other GM products, but also on the outsides of soybeans, both GM and non-GM. [Read more...] 20 journalists face trial on terror charges in Egypt (20 February 2014) CAIRO -- Egypt is set to put 20 journalists, including four foreigners, on trial Thursday on terror-related charges in a case with ominous implications for freedom of expression under the military-backed interim government. Many rights groups describe the case as the latest episode of oppression against journalists criticizing the military and the interim Cabinet in general and those allegedly sympathizing with the Muslim Brotherhood in particular. Eight of the 20 reporters are currently detained. The Egyptian defendants are accused of joining the terrorist-designated Muslim Brotherhood, while all of the reporters are charged with falsifying news and broadcasting illegally in order to tarnish Egyptian authorities' image after the ouster of President Mohamed Morsi in July. [Read more...] Radioactive water leak at Fukushima (20 February 2014) The operator of Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant said on Thursday that 100 metric tons of highly contaminated water had leaked out of a tank, the worst incident since last August, when a series of radioactive water leaks sparked international alarm. Tokyo Electric Power Company told reporters the latest leak was unlikely to have reached the ocean. But news of the leak at the site, devastated by a 2011 earthquake and tsunami, further undercut public trust in a utility rocked by a string of mishaps and disclosure issues. "We are taking various measures, but we apologize for worrying the public with such a leak," said Masayuki Ono, a spokesman for the utility, also known as TEPCO. "Water is unlikely to have reached the ocean as there is no drainage in that tank area." TEPCO said water overflowed from a large storage tank at the site late on Wednesday after a valve had remained open by mistake and sent too much contaminated water into a separate holding area. [Read more...] Microscrewed: Why California's drought could muck up local beers (20 February 2014) By now we've all heard that this year's dry spell has left California officially screwed. With 63 percent of the state considered to be in an "extreme" drought, towns are running low on water, farmers and ranchers are scrambling to figure out how to stay afloat, and elected officials are anxiously coming up with plans to stave off budgetary ruin. And, most importantly, it could mean that your next Lagunitas IPA may leave you with an unfortunate "planky" taste. Yes, your beer is under threat. Not only will we have to develop drought-hardy barley and contend with price spikes in the face of climate change, shriveling rivers could translate into a shift in water sources that would lend a certain harsh taste to your favorite brews. As Jeremy Marshall, Lagunitas' head brewer, tells NPR, the Petaluma-based outfit prides itself on using "that unique, signature, clean Russian River water," to achieve the deliciousness of their beers. But as Lake Mendocino, the Russian River's major source, dries up, it could mean they'll have to resort to a less tasty option: groundwater. "It would be like brewing with Alka-Seltzer," Marshall says. [Read more...] Markets flooded with cash, should Fed prep to stamp out risk? (20 February 2014) (Reuters) - A debate is growing louder within the Federal Reserve over whether it should stand ready to raise interest rates to prick any risky asset bubbles that its regulatory tools might fail to address. The 2007-2009 financial crisis left many wondering whether the U.S. central bank should have more boldly tightened policy in the preceding years to head off the explosion of risky mortgage debt on Wall Street. Now, after holding interest rates near zero for more than five years and pumping trillions of dollars into the economy through bond purchases, the question of how best to deal with bubble-like signs could become a defining one for the Fed and its new chief, Janet Yellen. If the economy continues to grow but inflation stays stubbornly low, concerns over financial instability could prompt Yellen to more quickly wind down the policy stimulus than she otherwise might. [Read more...] Five Epic Fails in the FCC's New Net Neutrality Plan (20 February 2014) Fail #1: Let's fix this by proposing new rules (that we can't enforce) The whole reason the FCC ended up in court (twice) is that it based its Net Neutrality rules on a shaky legal foundation. When the Bush-era FCC decided to classify cable and telco broadband as an "information service" instead of a "telecommunications service," it surrendered the FCC's power to protect the open Internet. These bad decisions finally caught up with the agency in January. The reason the court threw out the FCC's rules is simple: Telling ISPs they cannot block or discriminate is an obligation the FCC can impose only on telecommunications service providers. Information services are exempt from these obligations. Since these FCC decisions treat broadband the same way they'd treat any website or application, the agency can't prohibit a broadband provider from discriminating any more than it can bar a website owner from rejecting an ad or an R-rated comment. Though the courts have twice rejected the FCC's efforts here (previously rejecting an attempt to sanction Comcast for Internet blocking), the agency is trying to take a third bite at this wormy apple. With this announcement, Wheeler is proposing to write rules that the court just told him he couldn't write unless the FCC reclassifies. [Read more...] The most beautiful animal you've never seen (20 February 2014) When I first saw a sea sapphire I thought I was hallucinating. The day had been anything but normal, but this part will always stand out. I'd spent the afternoon on a small dingy off the coast of Durban, South Africa. It was muggy, and I'd been working for hours---throwing a small net out, and pulling in tiny hauls of plankton that I'd then collect in jars. As I looked through one jar, the boat rocking up and down, I saw for an instant a bright blue flash. Gone. Then again in a different place. An incredible shade of blue. Maybe I'd been in the sun too long? Maybe I was seeing things? It wasn't until I got back to the lab that I discovered the true beauty and mystery of these radiant flashes. I'd like you to meet one of the most beautiful animals I've ever seen... The small creature I'd found was a Sapphirina copepod, or as I like to call it, a sea sapphire. Copepods are the rice of the sea, tiny shrimp-like animals at the base of the ocean food chain. And like rice, they are generally not known for their charisma. Sea sapphires are an exception. Though they are often small, a few millimeters, they are stunningly beautiful. Like their namesake gem, different species of sea sapphire shine in different hues, from bright gold to deep blue. Africa isn't the only place they can be found. I've since seen them off the coasts of Rhode Island and California. When they're abundant near the water's surface the sea shimmers like diamonds falling from the sky. Japanese fisherman of old had a name for this kind of water, "tama-mizu", jeweled water. The reason for their shimmering beauty is both complex and mysterious, relating to their unique social behavior and strange crystalline skin. [Read more...] John Boehner just bought a condo in Florida. Hello, retirement? (20 February 2014) John Boehner's purchase of an $835,000 condo in an exclusive community in Marco Island, Fla. -- a story broken by Jonathan Strong at Breitbart News -- has increased chatter that the House speaker is planning his exit strategy from Washington when the 113th Congress draws to a close later this year. According to USA Today, Boehner and his wife bought the condo on Feb. 11, and the speaker told his GOP colleagues about it during a gathering in Sarasota over the weekend. His office quickly sought to downplay the purchase as a sign of anything. "This area of Florida has been the Boehners' family vacation spot for many years, and rather than continue to put money into vacation rentals year after year, they decided to buy a condo," explained spokesman Michael Steel. "Their home is in West Chester, Ohio, and will continue to be." Message sent. Buying a condo in Florida means nothing about Boehner's future. But, we couldn't help but dig a little bit deeper given how much we have already written about Boehner's future in Congress -- and what it means for the fate of things like immigration reform in this Congress. Let's start with this: Boehner has plenty of money to make this purchase even if he wasn't planning to head to the green pastures of the lobbying world in January 2015. According to his most recent financial disclosures, his net worth is between $1.9 and $5.9 million -- making him the 90th most wealthy member of Congress as of 2012. While a nearly million-dollar condo -- assuming he plans, as Steel insists, to keep his home in Ohio -- is a significant investment, it's not even close to a bank-breaker for someone like Boehner. [Read more...] Egypt: Al Jazeera Journalists to Appear in Egypt Court (20 February 2014) Twenty journalists, including those from the Al-Jazeera news agency, will go on trial in Egypt Thursday in a case that many say highlights the military-backed interim government's crackdown on dissent and free speech. The journalists, including four foreigners, face charges including spreading "false information" about Egypt and supporting or belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood, which the government sees as a terrorist group. Juris Greste, the father of one of the accused journalists, the Australian Peter Greste, told reporters he hopes his son will soon be released. "Of course, as far as we are concerned, he's entirely and completely innocent and he should be either back home here or at his usual job in Nairobi," said the elder Greste. [Read more...] US drops plan to collect vehicle data (20 February 2014) The Homeland Security Department has abruptly reversed course and dropped plans to ask a private company to give the government access to a nationwide database of license plate tracking information. Secretary Jeh Johnson canceled a contract proposal on Wednesday that had been issued last week. The proposal said Immigration and Customs Enforcement was planning to use the license plate data in pursuit of criminal immigrants and others sought by authorities. The contract notice came amid growing concerns about government surveillance of U.S. citizens but didn't address potential privacy consequences. Gillian Christensen, an ICE spokeswoman, said the contract solicitation was posted "without the awareness of ICE leadership." "While we continue to support a range of technologies to help meet our law enforcement mission, this solicitation will be reviewed to ensure the path forward appropriately meets our operational needs," Christensen said. [Read more...] PAM COMMENTARY: This is probably another case of backing off due to initial public outrage, with the intent of trying again after people have forgotten about it. Coal ash still contaminating NC river, but state response lags (19 February 2014) A new leak again raised concerns about water contaminated with coal ash flowing into the Dan River on the border of North Carolina and Virginia. The second leak of arsenic-tainted water comes from the same pond where earlier this month at least 82,000 tons of ash mixed with 27 million gallons of contaminated water -- which had been stored in an unlined pond at a decommissioned Duke Energy plant in Eden, N.C. -- escaped through a damaged storm drain into the river. The spill caused concerns about the water quality for residents who rely on the Dan River for drinking water, and prompted fierce reactions from environmental watchdog groups that said the spill was indicative of too-lax regulations for coal ash. The newly discovered leakage of arsenic-tainted water, made public by Duke Energy and the North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) on Tuesday, comes from a second stormwater pipe that also travels below the 27-acre coal pond responsible for the first spill. DENR had issued warnings about the structural integrity of the pipe last week, but Duke downplayed those concerns, saying video footage from inside the pipe showed it was structurally sound. [Read more...] Lawsuit brings to light secrecy statements required by KBR (19 February 2014) One of the nation's largest government contractors requires employees seeking to report fraud to sign internal confidentiality statements barring them from speaking to anyone about their allegations, including government investigators and prosecutors, according to a complaint filed Wednesday and corporate documents obtained by The Washington Post. Attorneys for a whistleblower suing Halliburton Co. and its former subsidiary, Kellogg Brown & Root, said the statements violate the federal False Claims Act and other laws designed to shield whistleblowers. They filed a complaint with the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission, requesting an investigation and demanding that the confidentiality statements be turned over to federal authorities so allegations of fraud can be identified. "The apparent purpose and intent of the confidentiality agreements was to vacuum up any potential adverse factual information, conceal it in locked file cabinets and gag those with first-hand knowledge from going outside the company," Stephen M. Kohn, an attorney for the whistleblower, wrote in the complaint. [Read more...] Number of depressed, medicated kids soaring, study shows (Canada) (19 February 2014) The number of children being medicated with Prozac-like drugs and other antidepressants increased nearly three-fold over a 24-year period, new Canadian research shows. For females, the spike was even more dramatic: Girls aged 15 to 19 were the heaviest users of antidepressants, with their prescription rate soaring 14.5 fold over the study period. The findings, from researchers who tracked antidepressant prescribing to children and youth in Saskatchewan between 1983 and 2007, are raising fresh alarms over the number of children being diagnosed with mental problems and put on mood-altering drugs that have never been approved for use in Canada for anyone under 18. The dramatic increase in prescribing is mainly the result of growing use of a class of drugs known as SSRIs, or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors -- antidepressants that have been linked with an increased risk of aggression, violence and suicidal thinking. "The safety and efficacy of SSRIs in children are still controversial," said lead author Xiangfei Meng, a research fellow in the department of psychiatry at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon. [Read more...] PAM COMMENTARY: WARNING: This article has a video, with sound, that starts playing without the reader taking any action. U-Md. computer security attack exposes 300,000 records (19 February 2014) More than 300,000 personal records for faculty, staff and students who have received identification cards at the University of Maryland were compromised in a computer security breach this week, school officials said. The breach occurred about 4 a.m. Tuesday, when an outside source gained access to a secure records database that holds information dating to 1998. Brian Voss, vice president and chief information officer at U-Md., said officials think that whoever got into the database duplicated the information, which includes names, Social Security numbers, dates of birth and university identification numbers for 309,079 people affiliated with the school on its College Park and Shady Grove campuses. The hackers did not change anything within the university's computer system, but Voss said the attackers essentially "made a Xerox of it and took off." Voss said that what most concerns him is the sophistication of the attack: The hacker or hackers must have had a "very significant understanding" of how the school's data are designed and protected. Voss said the security breach appears to be in contrast with typical attacks, in which "someone left the door open," creating an easy opportunity for any hacker. [Read more...] PAM COMMENTARY: That's pretty old data to retain in an area exposed to the web. Nebraska judge strikes down legislature's move allowing Keystone XL route (19 February 2014) A Nebraska judge Wednesday struck down a state law that allowed Gov. Dave Heineman to approve the route of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, a decision that could significantly delay the $5.3 billion project. Lancaster County District Judge Stephanie F. Stacy said the 2012 law violated the state constitution. She permanently blocked Heineman (R) and other defendants "from taking any action on the governor's January 22, 2013 approval of the Keystone XL Pipeline route," such as allowing land to be acquired by eminent domain for the project. Stacy concluded that the state legislature could not take the routing power away from its Public Service Commission and allow Heineman to make the decision. More than 200 miles of the proposed pipeline, which would carry as many as 830,000 barrels of heavy crude oil daily from Canada to refineries in the Gulf of Mexico, would run through Nebraska. The judge's decision to overturn LB 1161, enacted in the final hours of the state's 2012 session, means "there is no approved route across Nebraska now," said David A. Domina, the lawyer who represented the three landowners who filed the lawsuit. "This statute is the only statute we have out here that creates a procedure for getting a permit" for a pipeline, said Domina, who is running for U.S. Senate as a Democrat this fall. [Read more...] Keystone XL pipeline thrown into limbo by Nebraska court ruling (19 February 2014) WASHINGTON -- The hurdles standing before the Keystone XL pipeline project grew ever taller Wednesday as a Nebraska court dealt the long-delayed project another significant setback. A district judge ripped up a state law that might have been used to force landowners to allow the pipeline on their property. As a result, the project could find itself in limbo indefinitely, even if the Obama administration allows the pipeline to cross the U.S. border -- a key step that is itself by no means certain. Lancaster County Judge Stephanie Stacy declared unconstitutional a law that had given Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman the power to push the project through private land. Now, unless the law is reinstated by a higher court, Calgary-based pipeline builder TransCanada Corp. might be forced to seek permission from every last landowner on the route. [Read more...] Jahi McMath "much better," mom says (19 February 2014) More than a month since she was moved from Children's Hospital in Oakland, Jahi McMath -- who was declared dead in December -- is "much better physically" and "not suffering," according to her family. In her first post since the 13-year-old Oakland girl was taken to an undisclosed facility and given feeding and tracheostomy tubes, Nailah Winkfield, Jahi McMath's mother, wrote on Facebook Wednesday that she sees in her daughter "changes that give me hope." "I know people are concerned and I want to make sure you know that Jahi is not suffering, she is surrounded by love," she said. "I will never let her suffer." Three different doctors declared Jahi dead due to brain death following complications from a surgery to remove her tonsils, adenoids and other tissue as a treatment for sleep apnea. [Read more...] PAM COMMENTARY: I thought it was odd when the hospital wanted to disconnect her so soon, and against the family's wishes. It seemed they were too concerned about liability when they should have taken responsibility for their own mistakes. What's Causing the Huge Spike in Earthquakes in Oklahoma? (19 February 2014) A dramatic uptick in earthquakes has been shaking central Oklahoma this year, continuing a recent trend of unusually high earthquake activity in the state and leading scientists to speculate about a possible link to oil and gas production there. The US Geological Survey found that from 1975 to 2008, central Oklahoma experienced one to three 3.0-magnitude earthquakes a year, compared with an average of forty per year from 2009 to 2013. And it looks like that number is going to get bigger. It's only February, and the state has already logged more than twenty-five quakes of 3.0-magnitude or larger this year, and more than 150 total quakes in the past week alone. This startling graphic, from The Rachel Maddow Show Tuesday, shows a massive spike of 2.5-magnitude or larger earthquakes, starting last year (the yellow portion of the last bar represents earthquakes that took place between Maddow's shows on Monday and Tuesday)... No one is disputing that such a dramatic spike is unusual. The question is why it's happening now, and science suggests that the fracking boom may be, at least in part, to blame. [Read more...] Can farmed fish go vegetarian? (19 February 2014) The worldwide aquaculture industry is growing faster than a genetically engineered salmon. By 2030, the World Bank forecasts that 62 percent of the fish eaten the world over will have come from a fish farm -- up from about half today. Aquaculture is an alternative to commercial fishing. But all those farmed fish need to eat, and most of them eat smaller fish harvested from oceans. Which kind of defeats the whole point of aquaculture. Forage fish like anchovies and sardines are being hauled out of the seas, mixed with soy and other ingredients, turned into pellets, and used as fish feed. To get away from this practice, which harms oceanic food webs, scientists are trying to figure out how to rear fish on vegetarian diets. QUEST/KQED reports: "To avoid using wild fish in farmed fish diets, the United States Department of Agriculture has spent the past ten years researching alternative diets that include plants, animal processing products and single-cell organisms like yeast, bacteria, and algae." [Read more...] PAM COMMENTARY: The original article is here. USDA shuts down insanitary California slaughterhouse (19 February 2014) (http://www.latimes.com) - According the Los Angeles Times, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has decided to close a beef slaughterhouse on Monday after it failed to meet sanitation standards. The slaughterhouse, Central Valley Meat Co. in Hanford, California, will not be allowed to resume operations until coming up with a plan to correct its violations. This is the same company that was shut down for a week in 2012 after Compassion Over Killing, an animal rights group, sent videos to the USDA of employees at the facility torturing cows with electric prods and by spraying them with hot water. Also, due to possible contamination with small pieces of plastic, the company had to recall 58,000 pounds of beef that would have been eaten by school children last September. "[The USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service] withdrew our inspectors and suspended operations due to insanitary conditions at the establishment. The plant's suspension will be lifted once we receive adequate assurances of corrective action," the agency said in a statement Tuesday. [Read more...] Obama to trucking industry: "No more rampant gas consumption for you!" (19 February 2014) Obama announced on Tuesday that he has ordered new, stricter fuel-efficiency rules to curb greenhouse gas emissions from large trucks. This will build on an earlier set of standards that were developed in 2011 and took effect this year. The new standards, to be drawn up by the EPA and Department of Transportation, are supposed to be finalized by 2016, before Obama leaves office, and then go into effect starting in 2018. "Improving gas mileage for these trucks is going to drive down our oil imports even further," Obama said. "That reduces carbon pollution even more, cuts down on businesses' fuel costs, which should pay off in lower prices for consumers. So it's not just a win-win; it's a win-win-win. We got three wins." Heavy-duty trucks make up just 4 percent of vehicles on the roads, but they emit 20 percent of CO2 emissions from the transportation sector, the second most polluting sector of the U.S. economy. And big trucks used over 28 billion gallons of gasoline in 2011. Taking these figures into consideration, it's easy to see how the new rules could have a climate impact. Michelle Robinson of the Union for Concerned Scientists told The New York Times that the new standards could bring down oil consumption by one million barrels per day by 2035. Obama is also urging Congress to repeal $4 billion worth of federal subsidies currently enjoyed by oil and gas companies each year, while proposing a $200 million tax credit for companies that work to develop vehicles and infrastructure that run on alternative sources of energy. [Read more...] Little oil town has nation's highest rents (19 February 2014) As far as big cities go, Houston isn't so bad when it comes to renting a small apartment, according to a survey from Apartment Guide. That's especially true when you compare prices against one surprising little town. The group lists the average monthly cost for a one-bedroom apartment in Houston at $817. Compare that to Los Angeles, where you'll pay an average of $1,411 for the same dwelling. In the New York area, you can expect that to cost around $1,500. But those aren't the highest rent costs in the country. That honor goes to Williston, N.D., where the average cost for a month's rent in a 700-square-foot, one-bedroom pad can run $2,400. [Read more...] A snowy-owl bonanza, thanks to a little, stubby-legged Arctic rodent: The lemming (16 February 2014) For the lowly Arctic lemming, life is cruel. On the wide-open tundra, they are nature's carryout meal, the Lay's potato chip of an unforgiving habitat -- no predator can eat just one. In a flash before death, often the last things a lemming sees are the deadly talons of a majestic snowy owl. A mass sacrifice of this rodent with stubby legs probably gave rise to what scientists are calling the largest snowy-owl irruption in at least a half-century. The gleaming white birds poured out of Canada this winter to points throughout the eastern United States, captivating bird watchers, scientists and people who had never seen them up close. Their flights, covering thousands of miles, were fueled by a steady diet of lemmings. The lemming population spikes about every four years in the Arctic, and last summer it rose off the charts on Canada's Bylot Island in the Nunavut territory. [Read more...] Ecuador pursued China oil deal while pledging to protect Yasuni, papers show (19 February 2014) The Ecuadorian government was negotiating a secret $1bn deal with a Chinese bank to drill for oil under the Yasuni national park in the Amazon while pursuing a high-profile scheme to keep the oil under the ground in return for international donations, according to a government document seen by the Guardian. The proposed behind-the-scenes deal, which traded drilling access in exchange for Chinese lending for Ecuadorian government projects, will dismay green and human rights groups who had praised Ecuador for its pioneering Yasuni-ITT Initiative to protect the forest. Yasuni is one of the most biodiverse places in the world and home to indigenous peoples -- some of whom are living in what Ecuador's constitution calls "voluntary isolation". The initiative -- which was abandoned by Ecuador's government last year -- is seen as a way to protect the Amazon, biodiversity and indigenous peoples' territories, as well as combat climate change, break Ecuador's dependency on oil and avoid causing the kind of social and environmental problems already caused by oil operations in the Ecuadorian rainforest. "This raises serious doubts about whether the government was truly committed to keeping ITT oil in the ground," said Atossa Soltani, from NGO Amazon Watch and a former ambassador for the initiative. "While we were promoting the Yasuni initiative to donors, the government was offering ITT's crude to China." [Read more...] Remember: WhatsApp feeds Facebook hundreds of millions of billing accounts (19 February 2014) Facebook snatched up messaging app WhatsApp for the mind-blowing amount of $19 billion in stock and options today and there will be lots of theories what the company plans to do with the young company. For its part, Wall Street wasn't psyched: Facebook stock dropped 5 percent in after-hours trading. There's a tendency to dissect the acquisition by user numbers or compare WhatsApp to other messaging apps or Instagram but, to me, the value for Facebook is in WhatsApp's hundreds of millions of billing accounts. WhatsApp charges $0.99 per year after a yearlong free trial. That is basically a zero barrier to give WhatsApp your payment info. And getting those payment details has been one of Facebook's white whales. Today, most of the company's revenue comes from advertising, but it is always looking for ways to get users buying goods right on the platform. Historically, while the amount people spend on the platform has been extremely high, the percentage of users actually spending the cash has remained low. If it can (finally) turn News Feed, or some part of the Facebook ecosystem, into a marketplace with preloaded payment details, it can take a cut of each transaction and further diversify revenue away from just advertising. The tricky part has just been giving users a compelling enough value proposition to get out the credit card. Virtual flowers don't always cut it. [Read more...] China February flash PMI hits seven-month low, spooks markets (19 February 2014) (Reuters) - Activity in China's factories shrank again in February, a preliminary private survey found on Thursday, reinforcing concerns of a minor slowdown in the economy and spooking markets across the region. The flash Markit/HSBC Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) fell to a seven-month low of 48.3 in February from January's final reading of 49.5, where a reading below 50 indicates a contraction while one above shows expansion. The Lunar New Year festival, which began on January 31 and covered early February, likely affected factory output as manufacturers shut shop for China's biggest annual holiday. The Shanghai Composite Index .SSEC gave up its early gains on the news, while Asian markets tumbled. [Read more...] Edible cactus imported from Mexico contaminated with neurotoxic pesticide, warns public health department (18 February 2014) (http://www.cdph.ca.gov) - The California Department of Public Health (CDPH) is warning consumers that an edible cactus imported from Mexico is contaminated with a dangerous pesticide and should not be eaten. The pesticide, monocrotophos, is organophosphate-based and has been barred from use in the United States since 1989. It has been found on cactus samples at levels as high as 5.8 parts per million. The cactus products were sold in cases that were likely labeled with a sticker stating, "Comercializadora De Chiles, Selectos Nieto S. De R.L. De C.V." Individual cactus products did not have branding or labeling. CDPH says that consumers should not try to wash the pesticide off of cactus products and instead should return them to the seller or dispose of them. [Read more...] Octopus to divers: Give me your camera (19 February 2014) "Generally, they are not too interested in people..." [Read more...] PAM COMMENTARY: WARNING: This article has a video, with sound, that starts playing without the reader taking any action. Canola oil: The #1 hidden health 'danger' at the prepared food bar (17 February 2014) (NaturalNews) Step right up to your favorite food bar, whether at Whole Foods, Harris Teeter or Farm Fresh, and "get you some" potato salad, coleslaw, egg salad, pasta salad, chicken salad, tuna salad, baked goods, or just make your own salad with lots of salad "dressing" and you are most likely getting a few heaping tablespoons of rapeseed oil with each serving, better known these days as canola oil. Now, whether or not there really is any such thing as organic canola oil, well, the jury is still out on that one. Regardless, canola oil is not good for you, and it ALL goes through a "deodorizing" processing stage that removes the "stink" of rapeseed, in case you didn't know. Canola oil can have detrimental effects on your health, especially the genetically modified (GM) canola that Monsanto so conveniently manufacturers for the masses to consume. It's all mixed into those fancy, condiment-loaded, creamy salads at the friendly grocer, and it's FRESH! Step right up to the fresh bar! Add in some tasty conventional spices and keep it hot or cold in those little bins for those "whole" food enthusiasts. Lots of people pack a few of the canola "mixtures" into plastic (BPA) containers and take them home. What exactly are you taking home, though? [Read more...] Second coal ash dump leak sends toxins into North Carolina river (19 February 2014) (Reuters) - North Carolina on Tuesday ordered Duke Energy Corp to plug a leak of contaminated wastewater from a decommissioned power plant, which authorities in the state said might be leaking into a river that supplies drinking water. The arsenic-laced discharge from a 36-inch stormwater pipe was the second this month from beneath a coal ash dump at the Eden plant. In early February, thousands of tons of sludge spilled into the Dan River after a 48-inch pipe broke under the 27-acre ash pond, Duke said. The company - which is mired in a long-running legal battle with the state over the storage of coal ash waste - said on Tuesday it would use a temporary system to cap the second discharge until it developed a permanent scheme. Pipe water samples indicated elevated levels of arsenic, though the duration and volume of the discharge was not known, the Charlotte, N.C.-based firm said. "Downstream public water supplies remain safe and the river meets all water quality standards," it said, adding it was continuously sampling and monitoring water in the Dan River. [Read more...] Billings judge who belittled rape victim submits himself for punishment (19 February 2014) BILLINGS -- A Montana judge who said a 14-year-old rape victim appeared older than her chronological age waived formal disciplinary proceedings Tuesday and asked the state Supreme Court to decide his punishment. District Judge G. Todd Baugh said in response to a complaint from a judicial oversight panel that his comments and actions in the case appeared improper and had failed to promote public confidence in the courts. The Judicial Standards Commission has been investigating Baugh's actions since last summer when his comments about a rape victim who had committed suicide sparked public outrage and drew calls for him to be removed from the bench. In a complaint filed against the 72-year-old Billings judge this month, the commission faulted the one-month prison sentence that Baugh gave to convicted rapist Stacey Rambold as overly lenient. [Read more...] Nick Hanauer explodes the myth of the capitalist 'job creator' (19 February 2014) A lot of his money came from being an early investor in Amazon. But Hanauer does not think this makes him a job creator. "Amazon didn't create any jobs," Hanauer said in a recent Seattle Times interview. "Amazon probably destroyed a million jobs in our economy." The way Hanauer sees it, leaders in our capitalist democracy need to account for the employment-killing side of the modern market where new technologies and efficiencies have eliminated old jobs and not created nearly enough new ones to replace them. In a controversial TED talk in 2012, Hanauer castigated policymakers who subscribe to the false faith that rich people and businesses will provide all the jobs we need, if only they do not have to pay much in taxes. "I have started or helped start, dozens of businesses and initially hired lots of people," Hanauer said in his presentation. "But if no one could have afforded to buy what we had to sell, my businesses would all have failed and all those jobs would have evaporated. "That's why I can say with confidence that rich people don't create jobs, nor do businesses, large or small. What does lead to more employment is a circle-of-life-like feedback loop between customers and businesses. And only consumers can set in motion this virtuous cycle of increasing demand and hiring. In this sense, an ordinary middle-class consumer is far more of a job creator than a capitalist like me." [Read more...] High court rules against David Miranda over Heathrow detention -- live coverage (UK) (19 February 2014) Here's a summary of what has happened this morning. • David Miranda has lost his high court appeal in which he had sought to establish that his nine-hour detention at Heathrow airport in August last year was unlawful and breached his right to freedom of expression. • The three judges admitted that the stop constituted an interference with press freedom -- but said this was trumped by national security concerns. • Miranda, the partner of former Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, one of the key reporters behind the first Edward Snowden leaks, has announced he will appeal. But the high court refused him permission to do so, meaning he must petition the court of appeal directly to hear the case. It may decide not to. [Read more...] U.S. warship deployed near Sochi runs aground (19 February 2014) The U.S. Navy says one of two U.S. warships dispatched to the Black Sea before the Sochi Winter Olympics is being inspected for damage after it ran aground at a Turkish port last week. The frigate Taylor ran aground Feb. 12 as it was preparing to moor at Samsun, Turkey, about 230 miles southwest of Sochi. The Navy says the Taylor was able to dock without further incident and no one was injured. The Taylor and the Mount Whitney were sent to the Black Sea in early February. The deployment was announced after an uptick in reports of security threats against the Olympics, although the Pentagon said the U.S. warships were deployed as part of normal military planning and could perform any required missions, including communications or evacuations. [Read more...] Doctors to cut down on "unnecessary" tests (19 February 2014) "Physicians are not saying, 'Never order these tests.' They are saying these are things physicians and patients should question but not automatically order them," she said. Asked about the harm patients may be exposed to, Levinson said an unnecessary test could yield a false positive result, which could necessitate further testing, for example, a biopsy. Not only is a biopsy invasive, but the patient involved would be exposed to unnecessary anxiety, she said. An unnecessary treatment might be a prescription for a drug, Levinson noted. Drugs come with side effects and not all patients have insurance to cover the cost. Then there is unnecessary exposure to radiation. A 2012 article in the online health policy magazine HealthyDebate.ca noted that doctors are becoming more concerned about the long-term effects of radiation from CT scans. The Choosing Wisely campaign is modelled after a U.S. initiative of the same name launched two years ago. Sixty medical specialty groups south of the border are participating, many of which have released lists of five tests, treatments and procedures that must be used more judiciously. [Read more...] Homeland Security is seeking a national license plate tracking system (18 February 2014) The Department of Homeland Security wants a private company to provide a national license-plate tracking system that would give the agency access to vast amounts of information from commercial and law enforcement tag readers, according to a government proposal that does not specify what privacy safeguards would be put in place. The national license-plate recognition database, which would draw data from readers that scan the tags of every vehicle crossing their paths, would help catch fugitive illegal immigrants, according to a DHS solicitation. But the database could easily contain more than 1 billion records and could be shared with other law enforcement agencies, raising concerns that the movements of ordinary citizens who are under no criminal suspicion could be scrutinized. A spokeswoman for DHS's Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) stressed that the database "could only be accessed in conjunction with ongoing criminal investigations or to locate wanted individuals." The database would enhance agents' and officers' ability to locate suspects who could pose a threat to public safety and would reduce the time required to conduct surveillance, ICE spokeswoman Gillian Christensen said. [Read more...] Attorney for Edward Snowden Interrogated at U.K. Airport, Placed on "Inhibited Persons List" (18 February 2014) [DemocracyNow.org] Jesselyn, welcome back to Democracy Now! Describe what happened at Heathrow on Sunday. JESSELYN RADACK: I was trying to enter through customs, which at Heathrow is called the Border Force, and I was directed to a very specific station rather than the regular line. And after the first question, which is, "Why are you here?" which is a normal question, things just got more bizarre as we went along. I said that I was here to see friends. They wanted me to be more specific. I said, "In the Sam Adams Association," the group that awarded Edward Snowden the award last year--I didn't add that part. And then they asked for the names of the people in the group. And so I gave names of people who are publicly known to be members. And then they asked where we were meeting, and I said at the Ecuadorean embassy. And they asked, "With Julian Assange?" And I said, "Yes." But then, at that point, I was asked why I had been to Russia twice in the past three months. And I said, "Because I have a client there." And they asked, "Who?" And I said, "Edward Snowden." And then, this was the most bizarre thing: They said, "Who is Edward Snowden?" And I just said matter-of-factly, "He is a whistleblower and an asylee." They next asked, "Who is Bradley Manning?" And I said, "A whistleblower. And then they asked, "Where is Bradley Manning?" And I said, "In jail." And he said, "So, he's a criminal." And I said that he's a political prisoner. And then they said, "But you represent Snowden." And I said, "Yes, I'm a human rights attorney, and I'm one of his legal advisers." But I found that entire line of questioning very jarring and very unnerving. I didn't know what kind of answer I was supposed to give. I mean, obviously, it's like asking, "Who is President Obama?" They're asking about some of the most famous people on the planet. Obviously, I have an attorney-client relationship to protect. I'm not going to get into meetings that I've had with clients. And only some of my clients are public, Edward Snowden being one of them, so that's why I could answer that question. But I walked away from the interview just shaking. During the interview, I was fine. I maintained my composure. But I walked away just shaking and just upset. I just cried. It was very intimidating and very, very, again, unnerving to be asked that line of questions as an attorney. And I don't think journalists or attorneys should be harassed or intimidated at the border, and it's very disturbing to me that this has occurred in the U.S. and the U.K., and I've heard that this happened to someone recently in Germany, though I don't know the details of that. But certainly, as an attorney, having gone to 14 different countries in the past year, I have never endured a line of questioning like that. You get the usual, "Hi. Why are you here? Who are you seeing? Where are you staying?" But not, "Who do you--who is Edward Snowden? Where is Edward Snowden? Where is Bradley Manning? Do you represent Bradley Manning?" which I wouldn't even be allowed to answer, obviously, because that would be attorney-client privileged information. I, in fact, do not represent him, but it would have put me in a really difficult situation of actually making a false statement if I did represent him and had to answer a question like that. NERMEEN SHAIKH: Jesselyn, could you talk about the significance of the inhibited persons list? How did you first learn about it, and are you in fact on it? [Read more...] Spying on Lawyers: Snowden Documents Show NSA Ally Targeted U.S. Law Firm (18 February 2014) [DemocracyNow.org] NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Michael Ratner, why would they conduct this kind of surveillance now of lawyer-client correspondence? Only because they can? MICHAEL RATNER: Well, I think they want to know everything about what--for example, in the case of Julian Assange or other whistleblowers out there, other publishers, what they're planning to do, what legal moves they might make. Like, for example, on these recent stories that have come out today, the Glenn Greenwald stories, are we planning to bring a lawsuit? What are we planning to do? If they can get--what's going to be our--what's going to be our legal take on it? If they can get advance notice of that, they can begin to counter it in their own publicity and how they deal with it legally, etc. You know, there's a reason why you have the attorney-client privilege, and that's so your client can share with you confidentially both what their situation is, as well as what your legal tactics are. Essentially, the government now, it's wide open what the legal tactics are. AMY GOODMAN: The Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said in an interview published on Monday that the intelligence community should have told the American public about secret phone data collection when that program first began years ago. He told The Daily Beast, quote, "I probably shouldn't say this, but I will. Had we been transparent about this from the outset right after 9/11--which is the genesis of the 215 program--and said both to the American people and to their elected representatives, we need to cover this gap, we need to make sure this never happens to us again, so here is what we are going to set up, here is how it's going to work, and why we have to do it, and here are the safeguards... We wouldn't have had the problem we had." Let me get your response to that, Michael Ratner, and then I'd like to hear from Jesselyn Radack and ask you, Jesselyn, as an attorney representing Edward Snowden, if you have any confidential way to communicate with him. MICHAEL RATNER: I don't see how he could say there wouldn't have been a dramatic negative response to broad-scale government spying on all our phone calls. I mean, what happened is, it came out, it came out without the government saying it, and there was a huge response. I mean, it changed the perceptions in this country about the one that the NSA is doing. I don't think it would have made any difference had they put that forward in a different way. In fact, the one case where they finally admitted it, with the warrantless wiretapping, there was a huge outcry about that. So I think this is--this is fictitious. They shouldn't be doing it. They shouldn't be surveilling Americans' phone calls. They should get probable cause. And that's the only way, in my view, that you can actually do surveillance. [Read more...] Radical nun sentenced for anti-nuclear activism (18 February 2014) Sister Megan Rice, an 84-year-old radical nun who broke into a nuclear weapons facility to protest the nation's nuclear arsenal, was sentenced Tuesday to 35 months in federal prison. Her two co-defendants, Michael Walli, 65, and Gregory Boertje-Obed, 58, were sentenced to 62 months on charges of interfering with national security and damaging property at the Y-12 National Security Complex in July 2012 -- the facility that once provided the enriched uranium for the Hiroshima bomb. Rice surprised many by asking the judge for more time behind bars. "Please have no leniency with me," Rice told the judge and an audience of supporters who had traveled from across the U.S. "To remain in prison for the rest of my life would be the greatest gift you could give me." A longer sentence would allow her "to serve the other women in prison," Paul Magno, Rice's friend and an anti-nuclear activist, told Al Jazeera. In prison, Rice said she learned to see her fellow inmates not as perpetrators but as "victims" of a system that gave them few options. [Read more...] Scott Walker, eyeing 2016, faces fallout from probes as ex-aide's e-mails are released (18 February 2014) MILWAUKEE -- Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who has been eyeing a 2016 presidential run since his battles with labor unions made him a Republican star, is in the midst of dealing with the fallout of two criminal investigations at home that could complicate his move to the national stage. One is ongoing, and while the other is now closed with no allegations of wrongdoing by Walker, it has the lingering potential to embarrass him. That could begin as early as Wednesday with the release of more than 25,000 pages of e-mails from an ex-staffer that were gathered as part of the now-concluded investigation. The probe focused on Walker's time as Milwaukee County executive before his 2010 election as governor and led to convictions of six former aides and allies. Even if Walker escapes the e-mail release unscathed, he faces an additional inquiry from state prosecutors, who are believed to be looking into whether his successful 2012 recall campaign illegally coordinated with independent conservative groups. That investigation could provedamaging if it hobbles key Walker campaign aides as he gears up for an expected vigorous reelection challenge in November. Combined with the possibility of additional future disclosures from the first investigation, the new probe threatens to hurt the governor as he attempts to gain momentum as a White House contender amid the scandal that has dimmed the 2016 prospects of a fellow star GOP governor, New Jersey's Chris Christie. [Read more...] PAM COMMENTARY: Walker is a good campaigner -- I saw him stay late and shake every hand of every person who stayed after a Memorial Day service to see him, as reported here. Wingnuts like the Kochs wouldn't throw so much money at him if he weren't capable of winning a campaign and then putting in the many hours to do their bidding. However, I believe that Walker is simply too radical to win a national election. Alienating teachers' unions means alienating everyone in a union and everyone who sympathizes with unions, along with every teacher in the United States and every parent who believes that teachers should receive fair compensation. I can't imagine anyone surviving a national election with that many people against him. U.S. tries to have it both ways with solar trade policy (18 February 2014) Remember how the U.S. trade representative announced last week that he would haul India before the World Trade Organization to try to force the country to accept more solar-panel imports? It's a reaction to India's efforts to protect its own solar industry as it massively boosts its renewable energy capacity. Darnedest thing: The U.S. government on Friday moved closer to imposing trade restrictions that would limit imports of Taiwanese-made solar components into the U.S. Reuters reports: "The U.S. International Trade Commission ruled on Friday that Chinese solar panels made with cells manufactured in Taiwan may harm the American solar industry, bringing it closer to adding to the duties it slapped on products from China in 2012. "The U.S. arm of German solar manufacturer SolarWorld AG had complained that Chinese manufacturers are sidestepping the duties by shifting production of the cells used to make their panels to Taiwan and continuing to flood the U.S. market with cheap products. ..." [Read more...] This little green laser could save bicyclists' lives (18 February 2014) It's a little counterintuitive, but turning isn't as dangerous for cyclists as going straight. In nearly 80 percent of car-bike accidents, the cyclist was simply traveling straight ahead when a driver turned into the cyclist's path or crossed the bike lane when pulling out of a side street. British student Emily Brooke didn't merely stop at the "Oh shit" part of learning this factoid -- she actually created a bike light to fix things. (That's more than we can say.) The Blaze Laserlight is a front LED headlight that also shines a neon green bike symbol onto the ground 16 feet in front of the bicyclist. That way, drivers know someone's in their blind spot and hopefully won't turn into a cyclist's path. The Blaze Laserlight raised more than double its goal on Kickstarter in December 2012, and the light just started shipping worldwide. At $200 a pop, they aren't cheap, but they're well made, rechargeable, and hand-assembled in the U.K. And they could save your life. [Read more...] Republican-Funded, Anti-Labor Campaign Succeeds in Tennessee as Volkswagen Workers Reject UAW Union (18 February 2014) AMY GOODMAN: To find out more about the implications of the vote, we go to Houston to speak with Steven Greenhouse, labor and workplace reporter for The New York Times, who's been following the events leading up to the vote at the Volkswagen plant. His most recent piece in The New York Times is headlined "Labor Regroups in South After VW Vote." He's also the author of The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker. Steven, welcome back to Democracy Now! Talk about what happened. I mean, a majority of the workers had to sign on to have this vote. The vote took place. Both sides thought they'd win, but the UAW lost. STEVEN GREENHOUSE: Yeah, the UAW was totally stunned that it lost. It really thought it would win. Last September, it collected cards from a majority of workers showing that, you know, they generally supported a union. There was a campaign where the union thought it was going pretty well. Then, in the last week, Republican politicians in Tennessee really weighed in very heavily against the union. Governor Bill Haslam said that, you know, if the union wins, auto suppliers are not going to come to Chattanooga; they're going to be scared to locate near a unionized Volkswagen. Some Republican lawmakers in the state Legislature said that if the union comes in, they're not going to approve incentives to help bring, to help woo Volkswagen to bring a second production line to make SUVs at the plant. And then Bob Corker, Republican senator from Tennessee, former mayor of Chattanooga, said that he had heard from people at Volkswagen that if the union loses, then Volkswagen will bring in this second auto line. And workers I spoke to at Volkswagen said that these threats, pressures from Republicans really persuaded some, perhaps many, workers to vote against the union. Remember, you know, the South is an anti-union part of the country. Unions have had a very hard time getting traction there. But I think some of these statements and pressures from Republican lawmakers might have really helped tip the balance. The union lost by 86 votes. All it would have taken would have been 44 workers to change their mind. You know, one worker I spoke to yesterday said, you know, "When you hear the former mayor of Chattanooga, when you hear various state lawmakers representing Chattanooga say, 'Look folks, for the good of our--for the good of our city, for the good of our region, you know, for future jobs, for expansion, for jobs for your neighbors, perhaps for your sons and daughters, you should vote against the union,' I think a lot of workers took that, those hints, and ended up voting against the union." [Read more...] 'Joe the Plumber' takes a union job at Chrysler (18 February 2014) The wingnut welfare must have run out for the man who became famous as "Joe the Plumber." Samuel Wurzelbacher, his real name, has had to get a job that involves something other than performing the role of the regular blue-collar white guy on the Republican speaking and media circuits--and it's a union job at Chrysler. Wurzelbacher took to Facebook sounding a wee bit defensive: "In order to work for Chrysler, you are required to join the Union, in this case UAW. There's no choice -- it's a union shop -- the employees voted to have it that way and in America that's the way it is," he wrote. (Not actually true. You're required to pay a fee covering the union's cost of representing you, but you don't have to join the union.) "Private unions, such as the UAW, is a choice between employees and employers. If that is what they want then who am I to say you can't have it?" he said. [Read more...] PAM COMMENTARY: A lot of people who want to start small businesses do it with the money they make from a job. G8 New Alliance condemned as new wave of colonialism in Africa (18 February 2014) A landmark G8 initiative to boost agriculture and relieve poverty has been damned as a new form of colonialism after African governments agreed to change seed, land and tax laws to favour private investors over small farmers. Ten countries made more than 200 policy commitments, including changes to laws and regulations after giant agribusinesses were granted unprecedented access to decision-makers over the past two years. The pledges will make it easier for companies to do business in Africa through the easing of export controls and tax laws, and through governments ringfencing huge chunks of land for investment. The Ethiopian government has said it will "refine" its land law to encourage long-term land leases and strengthen the enforcement of commercial farm contracts. In Malawi, the government has promised to set aside 200,000 hectares of prime land for commercial investors by 2015, and in Ghana, 10,000 hectares will be made available for investment by the end of next year. In Nigeria, promises include the privatisation of power companies. [Read more...] 'Bizarre' Cluster of Severe Birth Defects Haunts Health Experts (17 February 2014) A mysterious cluster of severe birth defects in rural Washington state is confounding health experts, who say they can find no cause, even as reports of new cases continue to climb. Federal and state officials won't say how many women in a three-county area near Yakima, Wash., have had babies with anencephaly, a heart-breaking condition in which they're born missing parts of the brain or skull. And they admit they haven't interviewed any of the women in question, or told the mothers there's a potentially widespread problem. But as of January 2013, officials with the Washington state health department and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had counted nearly two dozen cases in three years, a rate four times the national average. Since then, one local genetic counselor, Susie Ball of the Central Washington Genetics Program at Yakima Valley Memorial Hospital, says she has reported "eight or nine" additional cases of anencephaly and spina bifida, another birth defect in which the neural tube, which forms the brain and spine, fails to close properly. [Read more...] PAM COMMENTARY: A cluster this small could even be from a food item in a local market, or some other consumer product. Things the women had in common should be checked, e.g. vaccines, drugs, doctors, health providers, employers, food products, prenatal vitamins and supplements, even churches. Suspected Radiation Leak in Military's Nuclear Dumping Ground (17 February 2014) A New Mexico deep-earth repository for the U.S. military's nuclear waste has likely sprung an underground radiation leak, sparking concern among Native American communities and other residents who "carry the burden" of this state's nuclear legacy. "Since the detonation and creation of first atomic bomb in New Mexico, we the people who live in close proximity of storage and creation of these weapons have been in a state of fear," said Kathy Wanpovi Sanchez, Environmental Health and Justice Program Manager for Tewa Women United, an indigenous organization based in Northen Mexico. Over the weekend, abnormally high levels of radioactive particles were found underground at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad in southeastern New Mexico, where radioactive waste, including from nuclear weapons production, is dumped deep beneath the earth's surface and stored in salt formations. "I believe it's safe to say we've never seen a level like we are seeing. We just don't know if it's a real event, but it looks like one," said Department of Energy spokesman Roger Nelson. [Read more...] Untold History: More Than a Quarter of U.S. Presidents Were Involved in Slavery, Human Trafficking (17 February 2014) [DemocracyNow.org] CLARENCE LUSANE: Well, I'm glad that you pointed out that President Obama, when he went to Jefferson's home, pointed out the slave history there. But it's also important to note that the most iconic building in the U.S., the one that represents the country to the world, the White House, also was a place where slavery existed. Not only that, it was built by slaves. And none of that has been publicly acknowledged. There is over a million people who visit the White House every year, who go on tours, who come for meetings, and you can go through that building and never have a sense of that important history. And that's critical because I think Presidents' Day should be a period of critical reflection, not some kind of blind celebration, but it should be one where we really try to get a better sense of the country's history. And part of that history, part of what I think resonates even to this day, is that, significantly, before the Civil War, nearly every U.S. president was a slave owner, which meant that they were compromised on the issue of slavery, and that had repercussions that, you know, redounded through history. So it's really critical, I think, that we have that acknowledgment, because we grow up, we go to school, we have history classes, and none of that history is told to us. AMY GOODMAN: So, give us a black history of U.S. presidents, as you call it. CLARENCE LUSANE: Well, in looking at the White House--and I use that as the prism to try to look at this longer history that basically led up to President Obama--one of the things that we find that's missing in that history is the voices of people, particularly African Americans, who were enslaved during that long, long, long history. And that was critical because when you think about George Washington, Madison, Monroe, all of the early presidents, who wrote the Declaration of Independence, they wrote the Constitution, they wrote the Articles of Confederation, all of these documents, these founding documents that extol the principles of democracy, liberty, equality, they were living a contradiction. And that contradiction is that every single day of their life, every moment in their life, they were surrounded by people who were enslaved. [Read more...] Why pot should be decriminalized but never smoked: question your beliefs starting now (17 February 2014) (NaturalNews) Supporting the decriminalization of pot does not mean supporting its recreational consumption. Let's be honest about pot's effects on people who smoke it regularly: first it makes them dull, then apathetic, and finally stupid. With enough repeated use, recreational pot use turns intelligent, productive people into unmotivated stoners. That doesn't mean it should be illegal, however. And that's the point of this article: I am wholehearted in support of marijuana decriminalization, yet at the same time I strongly encourage people to avoid smoking it. That's the difference between me and a police state government, by the way: I believe in your right to choose what you wish to do with your body, while the police state government would far prefer to shove a gun in your face, slap a pair of handcuffs on your wrists and throw you into the prison system which is little more than a modern-day slave labor camp that benefits corporate interests under the guise of fighting the "war on drugs." What should a free society really look like? There's no question that pot possession should be completely decriminalized in a free society where individual choices are respected. At the same time, anyone who agrees with that philosophy must simultaneously agree that the selling of safely-produced raw milk from farms to consumers must also be embraced as perfectly legal. While we're on the subject of milk, the sales of human-produced liquid substances must also be considered legal, too, including the sale of human breast milk and even human sperm. Yet all of these have been repeatedly and aggressively attacked by federal regulators. We have now entered a strange era of twisted federal law where it's easy to buy a joint in Colorado but selling raw milk can get you raided at gunpoint (like happened with Rawesome Foods in California). [Read more...] PAM COMMENTARY: I agree that marijuana has several bad side effects, and should be a treatment of last resort. There are many other herbs and foods that are better matched to specific health problems. FBI, police in 5 states reportedly investigating Pennsylvannia 'Craigslist killer' after jailhouse claims (17 February 2014) Police in five states and the FBI are reportedly investigating a 19-year-old's claims of murdering at least 22 people during a satanic six-year killing spree across the U.S. The investigations reported by ABC follow Miranda Barbour's disturbing claims made in a jailhouse interview Friday that painted a bloody trail from Alaska to California, Texas, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. The FBI's Philadelphia division said it has since been in contact with Sunbury police, where 42-year-old Troy LaFerrera was stabbed and strangled in November after responding to a Craigslist ad listed by Barbour. The newlywed is accused of murdering LaFerrera with the help of her husband, whom she was celebrating a three-week wedding anniversary with at the time. [Read more...] Former FCC Commissioner Warns About Comcast-Time Warner Merger, "Mindless" Media Consolidation (17 February 2014) [DemocracyNow.org] MICHAEL COPPS: Good morning, Amy. It's great to be with you again. This is just such a far-reaching deal, it should be dead on arrival when it gets to the Department of Justice and the Federal Communications Commission for approval. This is the whole shooting match. It's broadband. It's broadcast. It's content. It's distribution. It's the medium and the message. It's telecom, and it's media, too. And it just would confer a degree of control over our news and information infrastructure that no company should be allowed to have. And all of this is happening in a market where consumer prices are going up and up and up, and competition is going down, down, down. AMY GOODMAN: Now, Comcast just bought NBCUniversal. Explain how this works. MICHAEL COPPS: Well, it works because of a combination of private-sector consolidation that we've seen for 15 or 20 years now with this long cycle of approvals by the Federal Communications Commission and the Department of Justice blessing all of--all of these deals. So, you're right. Comcast just got through absorbing NBCUniversal last year, and now it's got enough money to go out and buy the second-largest cable company in the United States of America. You know, they might think it's good, and it is good for business, but what this amounts to really is the cable-ization of the Internet. And if we who are reposing so much confidence in the Internet to create opportunity in this country, to open the doors of opportunity to everybody, are going to allow the Internet to be cable-ized and to be controlled by a few gatekeepers, who not only do the distribution, but control the content and can block websites, we are just doing irreparable damage to the opportunity-creating potential of broadband and the Internet. [Read more...] Time to Restore the Power of the National Labor Relations Act (17 February 2014) One in seven Americans - that is 46.5 million of us - live in poverty. And in the wake of the Great Recession, there is more to poverty today than just a bad economy. We have an increasingly unequal society in which the top 1% holds 40% of the wealth. According to a Global Post study, the United States leads the trend toward greater inequality which is rising faster - and already greater - here than in nearly all other developed countries. Until the Reagan Administration, the minimum wage was set at a level that allowed one wage earner to support a family. The minimum wage has never been required to keep up with inflation nor been benchmarked to ensure that a full-time worker's wages can keep a family above the poverty line. As a result, many workers' families have now become destitute. Why has this happened? The causes of poverty are complex, but one important factor is the decline in union membership, starting in the 1980s, which has led to a decline in union bargaining power. For decades after the end of World War II, good wages meant that families could be supported by one wage earner, and, in addition, workers could expect company-paid benefits such as paid vacations, defined-benefit pensions, health insurance and sick leave. In addition, union workers had rights to due process and equal protection through their collective bargaining agreement's grievance procedure and could turn to a job steward for help resolving workplace problems. A two-parent family that was supported by one worker meant that people had time to devote to community involvement. [Read more...] Why There's an Even Larger Racial Disparity in Private Prisons Than in Public Ones (17 February 2014) It's well known that people of color are vastly overrepresented in US prisons. African Americans and Latinos constitute 30 percent of the US population and 60 percent of its prisoners. But a new study by University of California-Berkeley researcher Christopher Petrella addresses a fact of equal concern. Once sentenced, people of color are more likely than their white counterparts to serve time in private prisons, which have higher levels of violence and recidivism (PDF) and provide less sufficient health care and educational programming than equivalent public facilities. The study compares the percentage of inmates identifying as black or Hispanic in public prisons and private prisons in nine states. It finds that there are higher rates of people of color in private facilities than public facilities in all nine states studied, ranging from 3 percent in Arizona and Georgia to 13 percent in California and Oklahoma. According to Petrella, this disparity casts doubt on cost-efficiency claims made by the private prison industry and demonstrates how ostensibly "colorblind" policies can have a very real effect on people of color. The study points out an important link between inmate age and race. Not only do private prisons house high rates of people of color, they also house low rates of individuals over the age of 50--a subset that is more likely to be white than the general prison population. According to the study, "the states in which the private versus public racial disparities are the most pronounced also happen to be the states in which the private versus public age disparities are most salient." (California, Mississippi, and Tennessee did not report data on inmate age.) Private prisons have consistently lower rates of older inmates because they often contractually exempt themselves from housing medically expensive--which often means older--individuals (see excerpts from such exemptions in California, Oklahoma, and Vermont), which helps them keep costs low and profits high. This is just another example of the growing private prison industry's prioritization of profit over rehabilitation, which activists say leads to inferior prison conditions and quotas requiring high levels of incarceration even as crime levels drop. The number of state and federal prisoners housed in private prisons grew by 37 percent from 2002 to 2009, reaching 8 percent of all inmates in 2010. [Read more...] Brazil land disputes spread as Indians take on wildcat miners (17 February 2014) (Reuters) - As Brazil struggles to solve land disputes between Indians and farmers on the expanding frontier of its agricultural heartland, more tensions over forest and mineral resources are brewing in the remote Amazon. The government of President Dilma Rousseff gave eviction notices to hundreds of non-Indian families in the Awá-Guajá reserve in Maranhão state in January and plans to relocate them by April, with the help of the army if necessary, Indian affairs agency Funai says. The court order to clear the Awá territory follows the forced removal of some 7,000 soy farmers and cattle ranchers from the Marãiwatsédé Xavante reservation last year, a process profiled by Reuters that resulted in violent clashes. Anthropologists say evictions from Awá territory could be even more complicated. It is thought to be a base for criminal logging operations and is also home to some indigenous families who have never had contact with outsiders, a combination that worries human rights groups lobbying for the evictions. [Read more...] Scientists Warn Against Mass Industrialization of Deep Sea (17 February 2014) Deep sea ecosystems are under threat of mass industrialization, warned a panel of scientists on Sunday. Speaking at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Chicago, the scientists warned that without international cooperation with a focus on "deep-ocean stewardship," deep sea mining will follow the destructive examples set by commercial fishing and offshore fossil fuel operations. Vast tracts of deep seabed are already being leased by commercial mining operations, said panelist Professor Lisa Levin, who heads the Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Levin told the conference that the surge in demand for consumer devices, such as portable electronics and batteries for hybrid vehicles, is pushing mining companies to expand their operations to the ocean floor to seek out hard-to-find rare earth elements such as nickel, cobalt, manganese and copper. [Read more...] Journalists who broke NSA story in Guardian receive George Polk Awards (16 February 2014) The three journalists who broke the National Security Agency revelations from Edward Snowden in the Guardian are among the recipients of the prestigious 2013 George Polk Awards in Journalism. Glenn Greenwald, Ewen MacAskill and Laura Poitras will receive the award for national security reporting, along with Barton Gellman of the Washington Post. Janine Gibson, Guardian US editor-in-chief, said: "We're honoured by the recognition from the Polk awards and delighted for Ewen, Glenn, Laura, Barton and their colleagues that their work has been recognised. "It has been an extraordinary and occasionally menacing eight months of reporting for the Guardian and the support of our peers through this distinguished award is very much appreciated." In late May 2013 MacAskill, a senior Guardian US correspondent, Greenwald, then a Guardian columnist, and Poitras, an independent filmmaker, travelled to Hong Kong to meet Snowden, a former NSA contractor. [Read more...] Generic drug makers fight rule on health risk warnings (16 February 2014) WASHINGTON -- Companies that make generic drugs, the medications most Americans buy, are fighting to kill a proposed federal regulation that would require them for the first time to warn patients of all the known health risks of each drug they sell. The proposed rule change by the Food and Drug Administration "would be nothing short of catastrophic," said Ralph G. Neas, president of the Generic Pharmaceutical Assn., an industry trade group. It could raise healthcare costs and "create dangerous confusion" for doctors and patients, he said. At issue is a legal loophole created by Supreme Court rulings that drew a sharp distinction between brand-name drugs and lower-cost generics, which are the same products but usually are marketed under their chemical names. In 2009, the high court confirmed drug makers could be sued if they failed to warn patients that a brand-name drug carried a serious potential health risk. The decision upheld a $7-million jury verdict for Diana Levine, a Vermont violinist whose lower arm was amputated after she was injected with an anti-nausea drug made by Wyeth. The drug sometimes caused gangrene if injected into an artery. [Read more...] Pollen from GM soybeans threatens Mexico's honey sales (16 February 2014) (NaturalNews) A large part of Mexico's agricultural export is honey. They are ranked fifth worldwide for exporting the bees' food, but recently Germany rejected a batch of honey from Mexico. Pollen from genetically modified (GM) soybean plants was found in the honey being imported. Bee keepers in the region and agricultural authorities of the Mexican state of Campeche, one of the states in the Yucatan Peninsula at the southeastern tip of Mexico, were mystified. So a research team familiar with bees and Mexico came in to determine what was going on with GMOs affecting bee colonies in Campeche. Apparently, some locals thought that GMO contamination from crops considered safe for human consumption was okay in other nations. There is plenty of GM soy declared fit for human consumption in Mexico. Others didn't realize that the bees from local apiaries would be collecting pollen from nearby GM soybean plants. No matter, German buyers weren't buying. David Roubik, senior staff scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, and his colleagues found that six honey samples from nine hives in the Campeche region contained soy pollen in addition to pollen from many wild plant species. The pollen came from crops near the bee colonies in several small apiaries. According to a quote by Roubik from a source article, "Bee colonies act as extremely sensitive environmental indicators. Bees from a single colony may gather nectar and pollen resources from flowers in a 200-square-kilometer area." [1] [Read more...] PAM COMMENTARY: See the article's comments, correcting the writer's arithmetic. Blogger who disclosed data breaches is targeted (16 February 2014) In the last year, Eastern European cybercriminals have stolen Brian Krebs' identity a half-dozen times, brought down his website, included his name and some unpleasant epithets in their malware code, sent fecal matter and heroin to his doorstep, and called a SWAT team to his home just as his mother was arriving for dinner. "I can't imagine what my neighbors think of me," he said dryly. Krebs, 41, tries to write pieces that cannot be found elsewhere. His widely read cybersecurity blog, Krebs on Security, covers a particularly dark corner of the Internet: profit-seeking cybercriminals, many based in Eastern Europe, who make billions off pharmaceutical sales, malware, spam, frauds and heists like the recent ones that Krebs was first to uncover at Adobe, Target and Neiman Marcus. He covers this niche with much the same tenacity of his subjects, earning him their respect and occasional ire. Krebs -- a former reporter at The Washington Post who taught himself to read Russian while jogging on his treadmill and who blogs with a 12-gauge shotgun by his side -- is so entrenched in the digital underground that he is on a first-name basis with some of Russia's major cybercriminals. Many call him regularly, leak him documents about their rivals, and try to bribe and threaten him to keep their names and dealings off his blog. [Read more...] Accused Craigslist killer, 19, confesses to 22 slayings, report says (16 February 2014) A Pennsylvania teenager accused of killing a man she met on Craigslist has confessed to the slaying -- and to killing more than 20 other people after joining a satanic cult at age 13, according to an interview she gave to a local newspaper. The information in the interview could not be corroborated on Sunday. Miranda Barbour, 19, reportedly had been married only three weeks when she and her husband, Elytte Barbour, 22, stabbed and strangled Troy LaFerrara, 42, after meeting up with him on Nov. 11, according to police in Sunbury, Pa. Both Miranda and Elytte Barbour, who wed in North Carolina, were arrested a month later in Pennsylvania. They are in custody and facing charges that include criminal homicide, assault and robbery, according to court records. In a jailhouse interview published Saturday, the Daily Item in Sunbury, Pa., reported that Miranda Barbour admitted to killing LaFerrara and to being part of a satanic cult since she was 13 years old. Barbour said she began killing people shortly after she joined the cult while living in Alaska and "stopped counting" when "I hit 22" slayings, according to the newspaper. (Barbour's attorney and Sunbury police could not immediately be reached for comment by the Los Angeles Times on Sunday.) [Read more...] New tobacco agreement excludes African-American media (16 February 2014) When anti-smoking advocate La Tanisha Wright looked at the details of an agreement reached last month between the three largest American tobacco companies, the Justice Department and a coalition of anti-tobacco groups, she said her "heart dropped." Part of the settlement includes a set of "corrective statements," public-service advertisements about the health effects of tobacco use and admissions that tobacco companies knowingly lied about the health consequences of tobacco. These are supposed to run in more than 600 newspapers around the country and on three TV networks. But to Wright's amazement, African-American media, which saw extensive targeted advertising by the tobacco industry for decades, were excluded from the deal. The revelation stunned Wright. But it also offered anti-tobacco-industry activists and civil rights organizations a way to fight back. Now a court battle is under way, led by African-American media and civil rights groups, to try to remedy the omission and ensure that corrective statements appear in front of African-Americans. [Read more...] In Ecuador, oil boom creates tension (16 February 2014) In YAWEPARE, Ecuador -- An oil pipeline runs through this village to a Chinese rig at the end of the road. At night, when the rig is pumping, the pipeline is too hot to touch, but villagers say that in the morning, it's a good place to dry laundry. That is its only apparent benefit to the families here, members of the Waorani tribe, lured out of the jungle by missionaries more than a generation ago. Its members live in plank-board shacks with no running water, amid the noise and dust of the fuel trucks, road crews and oil workers. "All of this used to be our territory," said Venancio Nihua, the son of a Waorani hunter, trying to support his seven children by raising chickens. "We don't want the oil companies to come any farther." An unprecedented drilling push by Ecuador's government has brought new tensions to Yawepare and the country's Amazon lowlands. As the chain saws and bulldozers cut deeper into the forest, critics say the government is triggering brutal warfare between the Waorani and a smaller, breakaway tribe living in "voluntary isolation" beyond the oil frontier. [Read more...] Back to Pam's NEWS ARCHIVES Back to Pam's vegan vegetarian FUN page Pam's vegan vegetarian cookbook, with vegan vegetarian recipes Sources (if found on major news boards): [AJ] - InfoWars.com, PrisonPlanet.com, or other Alex Jones-affiliated sites [BF] - BuzzFlash.com [DN] - DemocracyNow.org [R] - Rense.com [WRH] - WhatReallyHappened.com ---------------------------
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