Thursday, Nov 20th
Last update09:56:42 AM GMT
The Palestinian "Arab Spring" is arriving and Israel has no political strategy to deal with it. Instead, Israel used the only weapon in its current arsenal - brute force.
They are extraordinary scenes. Film shot on mobile phones captured the moment on Sunday when at least 1,000 Palestinian refugees marched across no-man's land to one of the most heavily protected borders in the world, the one separating Syria from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
Emergency vents that U.S. officials have said would prevent devastating hydrogen explosions at U.S. nuclear plants were put to the test in Japan — and failed, according to experts and officials with the company that operates the crippled Fukushima Daiichi plant.
The failure of the vents calls into question the safety of similar nuclear-power plants in the United States and Japan. After the venting failed at the Fukushima plant, the hydrogen gas fueled explosions that spewed radioactive materials into the atmosphere, reaching levels about 10 percent of estimated emissions at Chernobyl, according to Japan's nuclear-regulatory agency.
The Department of Environmental Protection today fined Chesapeake Energy $1,088,000 for violations related to natural gas drilling activities.
Under a Consent Order and Agreement, or COA, Chesapeake will pay DEP $900,000 for contaminating private water supplies in Bradford County, of which $200,000 must be dedicated to DEP’s well-plugging fund. Under a second COA, Chesapeake will pay $188,000 for a Feb. 23 tank fire at its drilling site in Avella, Washington County.
When state legislators across the nation introduce similar or identical bills designed to boost corporate power and profits, reduce workers rights, limit corporate accountability for pollution, or restrict voting by minorities, odds are good that the legislation was not written by a state lawmaker but by corporate lobbyists working through the American Legislative Exchange Council.
ALEC is a one-stop shop for corporations looking to identify friendly state legislators and work with them to get special-interest legislation introduced. It’s win-win for corporations, their lobbyists, and right-wing legislators. But the big losers are citizens whose rights and interests are sold off to the highest bidder.
A U.S. Army helicopter brigade is set to pull out of Baghdad in December, as part of an agreement with the Iraqi government to remove U.S. forces. So the armed helicopters flying over the Iraqi capital next year will have pilots and machine gunners from DynCorp International, a company based in Virginia.
On the ground, it's the same story. American soldiers and Marines will leave. Those replacing them, right down to carrying assault weapons, will come from places with names like Aegis Defence Services and Global Strategies Group — eight companies in all.
In case you needed one, here’s another possible reason to have that cup of coffee in the morning: Men who regularly drink coffee appear to be less likely to be diagnosed with prostate cancer, especially the most lethal kind, according to new research.
Lorelei Mucci of the Harvard School of Public Health and colleagues analyzed data collected from 47,911 U.S. men who participated in the Health Professionals Follow-up Study, a large, ongoing examination of a variety of health issues for men. As part of the study, the men reported their coffee consumption every four years between 1986 and 2008. During that period, 5,035 cases of prostate cancer were reported, including 642 fatal cases.
Doctors say a 45-year-old man in California may be the first person ever cured of AIDS as a result of the discovery of an apparent HIV immunity gene.
Timothy Ray Brown tested positive for the human immunodeficiency virus in 1995, but has entered scientific journals as the first person to have that HIV virus completely eliminated from his body in what doctors have termed a "functional cure," KCBS-TV, San Francisco, reported Monday.
One of Rwanda's highest ranking officials involved in the country's 1994 genocide has been sentenced to 30 years in prison for his role in the killing.
Augustin Bizimungu, who was the former head of the army, was convicted by the Tanzania-based International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda alongside Augustin Ndindiliyimana, the ex-paramilitary police chief. Two other senior generals were also sentenced.
Some 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus died during the genocide.
For a people to be free, they must first be honest with themselves, their government, and the world at large. History is filled with stories of free nations that fell under the spell cast by their governments who exploited the threat of terror.
It will never be announced on the evening news, and it is not likely to continue under an authoritarian leader in the mold of a Stalin, Hitler, or Mao. Likewise, it is not to say that Barack Obama is the first dictator of The United States, but rather is part of a continued expansion of executive power that is now so great that by all measures America can no longer be called a Land of the Free ruled by We the People. We stand no chance of reversing this forced march by false democracy until we understand where we are headed, who is leading us there, and for what purpose.
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