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4294992075 stories between 12/17/2010 at 14:39:19 and 05/20/2012 12:51:17

The biggest bear of all, Dr. Doom (Marc Faber), discusses the future of the euro and whether a global catastrophe is on the way
12:51 PM Sign Of The Times

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This week we bring back Alasdair Macleod, publisher of Finance and economics.org, because, as he puts it "every horror that we discussed last time we spoke is coming about". Especially scary since our previous conversation with him was less than three weeks ago... Today's interview continues building on his excellent synopsis from last month that detailed the origins of the Eurozone crisis. The fundamental shortcomings warned of at the Euro's creation in 1997, combined with the excessive sovereign debts run up since then, have finally expressed themselves at a scale too large to be contained any longer. Today, Alasdair details in-depth the huge and serious challenges facing Greece and the major Eurozone countries, and the likely impacts of the fast-dwindling options left remaining. He sees no happy ending to this story, no outcome in which serious pain and permanent behavior change can be avoided. And for those looking for shelter from the unfolding economic storm, he sees few options besides the precious metals (which he believes are severely under priced at the moment):
12:51 PM Sign Of The Times

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A private door opens from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office in central Jerusalem directly into a long, modestly furnished, half-paneled room decorated with modern paintings by Israeli artists and a copy of Israel's 1948 declaration of independence. It contains little more than a long wooden table, brown leather chairs and a single old-fashioned white projector screen. This inner sanctum at the end of a corridor between Netanyahu's private room and the office of his top military adviser, is where one of the decade's most momentous military decisions could soon be taken: to launch an Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear program. Time for that decision is fast running out and the mood in Jerusalem is hardening. Iran continues to enrich uranium in defiance of international pressure, saying it needs the fuel for its civilian nuclear program. The West is convinced that Tehran's real objective is to build an atomic bomb - something which the Jewish state will never accept because its leaders consider a nuclear armed-Iran a threat to its very existence. Comment: Rather, the West is convinced it should do as Israel says, and Israel will never accept that any of its neighbours challenge its regional hegemony, which rests in part on an arsenal of 200-400 nuclear warheads. Funny how no one mentions that it is the rest of Middle Eastern countries and not Israel who are under existential threat. Adding to the international pressure, U.S. ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro said this week American military plans to strike Iran were "ready" and the option was "fully available".
12:51 PM Sign Of The Times

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Mexico City - Thousands of college-age demonstrators marched down Mexico City's main boulevard Saturday to protest a possible return of the old ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, known as the PRI, which held Mexico's presidency without interruption from 1929 to 2000. PRI presidential candidate Enrique Pena Nieto leads in polls ahead of the July 1 election, but he was heckled by young protesters during a recent appearance at a university. Students blamed him for a violent crackdown on protesters outside Mexico City in 2006. Later, some PRI members suggested the hecklers weren't really students, further enflaming passions. Comment: Anyone familiar with Mexico's shameful history of fraudulent elections knows that the polls are routinely tampered with in favor of the candidate who has been appointed to win; usually the candidate of PRI. Recently, Mexican newspaper Milenio published a poll on its website that gave a wide lead to Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the candidate of the leftist Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) - only to replace it a few hours later by figures that gave Pena Nieto the lead. In a move unusual for Mexico, the demonstrators did not carry banners for any of the other three candidates in the presidential race, instead shouting slogans against what they don't want, a return of the PRI, whose 71-year-rule was marked by repression, corruption and periodic economic crises.
09:31 AM Sign Of The Times

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08:41 AM Sign Of The Times

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Several bomb blasts have struck a professional institute in the southern Italian city of Brindisi, killing one student and injuring seven. The three blasts hit as students arrived for morning lessons at the institute. Local authorities report that the incendiary devices were planted in a trash bin opposition the professional institute Morvillo Falcone. One of the injured has died in hospital while another has been transferred to nearby Perrino for emergency surgery. "I was opening the window when I felt the force of the blast. I saw children thrown to the floor, blackened by the explosion, their books on fire. A truly terrifying scene. Who could've have done such a thing?" said a witness of the blast to Italian newspaper La Repubblica. The explosions went off at around 8am local time (06:00 GMT), causing widespread panic among the students arriving at the school.
07:51 AM Sign Of The Times

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Rome - One of the strongest earthquakes to shake northern Italy rattled the region around Bologna early Sunday, a magnitude-6.0 temblor that killed at least three people, toppled some buildings and sent residents running into the streets, emergency services and news reports said. The quake struck at 4:04 a.m. Sunday between Modena and Mantova, about 35 kilometers (22 miles) north-northwest of Bologna at a relatively shallow depth of 5 kilometers (3.2 miles), the U.S. Geological Survey said. It was one of the strongest quakes to shake the region, seismologists said, and initial television footage indicated that older buildings had suffered damage: roofs collapsed, church towers showed cracks and the bricks of some stone walls tumbled into the street. As dawn broke over the region, residents milled about the streets inspecting the damage.
05:21 AM Sign Of The Times

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A stone discovered by chance on the Isle of Canna is Scotland's first known example of a bullaun "cursing stone", experts have revealed. Dating from about 800 AD, the stones are associated with early Christian crosses - of which there is one on the isle. It was found in an old graveyard by a National Trust for Scotland (NTS) farm manager. The stone is about 25cm in diameter and engraved with an early Christian cross. It was later found to fit exactly into a large rectangular stone with a worn hole which was located at the base of the Canna cross. NTS manager of Canna, Stewart Connor, said the importance of the stone became clear after he was notified of the discovery. He said: "We knew of the importance of bullaun stones and that it could be a really significant find. "Our head of archaeology confirmed a possible link to the stone at the cross and I was so excited that I went back out at 9pm that night to check whether it fitted the stone with the hole and it did."
01:11 AM Sign Of The Times

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Date-Time: Sunday, May 20, 2012 at 02:03:52 UTC Sunday, May 20, 2012 at 04:03:52 AM at epicenter Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones Location: 44.800°N, 11.192°E Depth: 5.1 km (3.2 miles) Region: NORTHERN ITALY Distances: 36 km (22 miles) NNW of Bologna, Italy 69 km (42 miles) E of Parma, Italy 72 km (44 miles) SSE of Verona, Italy 339 km (210 miles) NNW of ROME, Italy
12:21 AM Sign Of The Times

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An as yet undiscovered planet might be orbiting at the dark fringes of the solar system, according to new research. Too far out to be easily spotted by telescopes, the potential unseen planet appears to be making its presence felt by disturbing the orbits of so-called Kuiper belt objects, said Rodney Gomes, an astronomer at the National Observatory of Brazil in Rio de Janeiro. Kuiper belt objects are small icy bodies - including some dwarf planets - that lie beyond the orbit of Neptune. Once considered the ninth planet in our system, the dwarf planet Pluto, for example, is one of the largest Kuiper belt objects, at about 1,400 miles (2,300 kilometers) wide. Dozens of the other objects are hundreds of miles across, and more are being discovered every year. What's intriguing, Gomes said, is that, according to his new calculations, about a half dozen Kuiper belt objects - including the remote body known as Sedna - are in strange orbits compared to where they should be, based on existing solar system models. The objects' unexpected orbits have a few possible explanations, said Gomes, who presented his findings Tuesday at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Timberline Lodge, Oregon. "But I think the easiest one is a planetary-mass solar companion" - a planet that orbits very far out from the sun but that's massive enough to be having gravitational effects on Kuiper belt objects.
12:21 AM Sign Of The Times

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Ministers decide there is not enough gas under UK to justify controversial 'earthquake' drilling The Government has rejected shale gas technology as a solution to Britain's energy crisis, conceding it will do little to cut bills or keep the lights on. Supporters of the fracking technology - which blasts water, sand and chemicals at extreme pressures to release gas trapped deep in rock - argue it could be the single greatest factor in transforming Britain's energy market, reducing our reliance on foreign imports and dramatically reducing costs. But The Independent on Sunday has learned that industry experts made clear at a meeting attended by senior ministers, including David Cameron and Ed Davey, the Lib Dem energy secretary, that the UK's reserves were smaller than first thought and could be uneconomical to extract. Now senior coalition figures have agreed that shale gas has the potential to be deeply controversial without securing major benefits in lowering carbon emissions or reducing energy costs.
11:31 PM on 05/19/2012 Sign Of The Times

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They may have different friends and different interests but nothing brings high school students together like alphabetical order. For the eight students at a California high school with the same last name-Nguyen- it was obvious their wallet-size snapshots would be sharing the same yearbook page. So instead of exerting their individuality with the standard Grateful Dead quote and a prom-worthy up-do, they decided to join forces for the ultimate prank. Alexandra, Angela, Angelica, Elizabeth, Emily, Isabella, Madeline and Vi Nguyen all wore the same black off-shoulder dresses and the same hairstyles. Then they went for the win.
10:41 PM on 05/19/2012 Sign Of The Times

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Sugar sweetened beverages such as sodas have received a wide-scale bad reputation for their negative impact on health. All the while, diet sodas are falsely promoted as a healthier alternative. But artificial sweeteners used in diet soda, such as aspartame, have also been tied to numerous health complications, with one study linking artificial sweeteners to premature delivery. Although some attest to the safety of artificial sweeteners like aspartame, these sweeteners have actually been shown to cause considerable harm to health. The study looking at the relationship between soft drink consumption and pregnancy outcome found that preterm delivery risk is upped 38 percent for pregnant women having 1 or more servings of artificially sweetened drinks a day. What's more, consuming 4 or more servings daily was associated with an increased risk of 78 percent. "There was an association between intake of artificially sweetened carbonated and noncarbonated soft drinks and an increased risk of preterm delivery...A stronger increase in risk was observed for early preterm and moderately preterm delivery than with late-preterm delivery. No association was observed for sugar-sweetened carbonated soft drinks (P for trend: 0.29) or for sugar-sweetened noncarbonated soft drinks (P for trend: 0.93)," the study states.
07:21 PM on 05/19/2012 Sign Of The Times

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Ever since the World Health Organization admitted in 2011 that cell phone radiation is "possibly carcinogenic," and may be contributing to the global uptick in brain cancer cases, its far harder to label someone a hypochondriac for being concerned about the health consequences of exposure.[i] In fact, one study cited in their report showed a 40% increased risk for gliomas in the highest category of heavy users (reported average: 30 minutes per day over a 10-year period) - not exactly a small effect. A recent study published in the journal Cellular and Molecular Neurobiology confirms that the microwave radiation given off by mobile phones is capable of transforming normal cells into cancerous ones. Titled "Cellular Neoplastic Transformation Induced by 916 MHz Microwave Radiation," researchers exposed fibroblast cells, a connective tissue-producing type of cell, to 916 MHz electromagnetic frequencies (which have already been shown to alter brain biomolecules), and found that after 5-8 weeks exposure they changed their form and rate of proliferation to a cancerous phenotype. These cells were also found to be tumor-forming when transplanted into mice.
07:21 PM on 05/19/2012 Sign Of The Times

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Readers of this blog know that I've started to develop a bit of a fascination with psychopathy. It all got started after attending the Moral Brain conference at NYU last April. The more I look into this subject, the more I understand why so many neuroscientists are making such a big fuss about it. The one statistic that has stuck with me is the observation that 1-2% of the general population is psychopathic. As previously noted, psychopathic traits don't always lead to crime or violence. In fact, studies have shown that 3-5% of business-minded persons are psychopathic; the realization that ruthlessness and indifference can lead to an interest and/or proclivity in business shouldn't come as too much of a surprise. What I would like to know, however, is whether or not there is a correlation between psychopathy and business success. Any bets that there isn't? On a similar note, I'd like to know what degree of psychopathy exists amongst politicians and those who seek influence. I'm sure that, historically speaking, psychopathic traits have worked well for those hell bent on attaining and maintaining power. The 1-2% figure also got me thinking about genetics. This ratio is exceedingly high, an indication that this trait is more than just the result of random mutation. Humans, it would seem, are predisposed for psychopathy. It's a personality condition that may have some adaptive qualities to it. The question we need to ask now, therefore, is: are we evolving out of it, or into it? A strong case can be made for both. But whatever the answer, we will increasingly be able to do something about it through the use of neurological interventions and genetic engineering.
06:31 PM on 05/19/2012 Sign Of The Times

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Guatemala's Fuego volcano belched burning lava and black ash into the sky early Saturday, leading the government to issue an airplane advisory and close sections of highway. The volcano, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) southwest of the capital, erupted about 2:45 a.m. (0745 GMT), spewing a column of ash up to 16,400 feet (5,000 meters) above the crater and launching burning red lava nearly 1,300 feet (400 meters) high. The national emergency commission issued an advisory, warning planes not to fly within a 25-mile (40 kilometer) radius of the volcano. The La Aurora international airport in Guatemala City remained open. The commission also closed two stretches of highway threatened by lava flows that reached the base of the mountain. Guatemala's four active volcanoes have a history of causing shut downs. In 2010, an explosion at the Pacaya volcano about 25 miles (40 kilometers) south of Guatemala City coated the city in a thick layer of black ash and rock, forcing hundreds of families to evacuate and closing the international airport.
05:41 PM on 05/19/2012 Sign Of The Times

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A sixfold increase in Maryland children potentially at risk The number of young children deemed at risk of lead poisoning in Maryland and nationwide expanded drastically Wednesday as a federal health agency declared it would effectively cut in half its threshold for diagnosing the environmental illness. Acknowledging mounting evidence that children can suffer lasting harm from ingesting even minute amounts of lead, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it would reduce the level at which it recommends that doctors, families and health authorities act to lower a child's exposure to the toxic metal. Officials estimate the CDC's adoption of a new "reference level" for assessing low-level exposure to lead could add 200,000 children nationwide to 250,000 considered poisoned under the old threshold. In Maryland, the percentage increase is probably even greater. Under the new standard, 3,500 more children statewide would have been added to the 531 who tested positive for lead poisoning in 2010, the most recent year for which figures are available.
04:51 PM on 05/19/2012 Sign Of The Times

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Just as the Lyrid Meteor Shower was peaking on April 21, 2012, astronaut Don Pettit captured this incredible timelapse sequence from the International Space Station. Of course you can see the familiar view of cities sweeping beneath the station as it orbits the Earth, but if you watch carefully, you can see the bright flashes of meteors burning up in the Earth's atmosphere. The timelapse was made up of 310 individual frames captured during that evening, which were then stitched together into a single video.
04:51 PM on 05/19/2012 Sign Of The Times

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"LABEL jars, not people" and "stop medicalising the normal symptoms of life" read placards, as hundreds of protesters - including former patients, academics and doctors - gathered to lobby the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) annual meeting. The demonstration aimed to highlight the harm the protesters believe psychiatry is perpetrating in the name of healing. One concern is that while psychiatric medications are more widely prescribed than almost any drugs in history, they often don't work well and have debilitating side effects. Psychiatry also professes to respect human rights, while regularly treating people against their will. Finally, psychiatry keeps expanding its list of disorders without solid scientific justification. At the heart of the issue is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) - psychiatry's diagnostic "bible" (see main story). Allen Frances, who headed the last major rewrite of the manual - DSM-IV - fears that the revised version will undermine the profession's credibility. "What concerns me most," he says, "is that its publication will dramatically expand the realm of psychiatry and narrow the realm of normality."
04:51 PM on 05/19/2012 Sign Of The Times

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Imagine reading an entire book, but then realizing that your glasses did not allow you to distinguish "g" from "q." What details did you miss? Geneticists faced a similar problem with the recent discovery of a "sixth nucleotide" in the DNA alphabet. Two modifications of cytosine, one of the four bases that make up DNA, look almost the same but mean different things. But scientists lacked a way of reading DNA, letter by letter, and detecting precisely where these modifications are found in particular tissues or cell types. Now, a team of scientists from the University of Chicago, the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, the University of California, San Diego and Emory University has developed and tested a technique to accomplish this task. The results are published May 17 in the online edition of the journal Cell. The team used the technique to map 5-methylcytosine (5-mC) and 5-hydroxymethylcytosine (5-hmC) in DNA from human and mouse embryonic stem cells, revealing new information about their patterns of distribution. These studies have revealed that these DNA modifications play major roles in fundamental life processes such as cell differentiation, cancer and brain function.
04:01 PM on 05/19/2012 Sign Of The Times

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Last week I was aboard a cruise liner in the Caribbean. I had a lot of fun but was primarily there to participate in a kinda conference organised by low-carb advocate Jimmy Moore. I was privileged to share the stage with some very lovely and inspiration speakers, among them the US cardiologist Dr William (Bill) Davis. I was looking forward to meeting Bill because I'd had a skype conversation with him some months ago, and was impressed by his warmth, humour and humanity. In person, Bill did not disappoint, and he also gave what I thought was a fascinating presentation about the perils of one of the modern-day diet's most ubiquitous components - wheat. Bill is the author of the highly acclaimed and readable book Wheat Belly, which systemically makes a strong case for the elimination of this grain from our diets. His lecture on the low-carb cruise' focused on this aspect of his work, and focused on what I took to be three key areas: 1. Wheat's content of the readily-digested starch amylopectin A, which is highly disruptive to blood sugar levels. 2. The lectin (toxin) in wheat known as 'wheat germ agglutinin' which can cause inflammation in the gut and elsewhere. 3. Gliadin - a component of gluten in wheat which has, among other things, drug-like effects. It's this last issue I'm going to focus on in this blog post.
04:01 PM on 05/19/2012 Sign Of The Times

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Volcanic eruptions can spark squalls of lightning that are as intense as the biggest superstorms over the central United States, according to researchers who have captured the most detailed measurements of electrical discharges during a volcanic blast. The data, they say, could help to illuminate what causes volcanic lightning and point the way towards a system that can quickly detect ash plumes from remote eruptions, which can disrupt air travel. Observers as far back as Pliny the Elder in 79 AD have noted that eruptions often trigger lightning storms, but researchers have only recently started to set up monitoring stations to capture that electrical activity and study its causes. In early 2009, seismic rumblings beneath Alaska's Mount Redoubt provided an opportunity for a team from the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in Socorro and the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. They raced to the mountain and set up four small monitoring stations with very high frequency (VHF) antennas to record the radiation from any lightning discharges. Two months later, Mount Redoubt erupted and the team was deluged with data. "We had 16 large volcanic lighting storms, so that was a lot of data to compare between the different eruptions," says Sonja Behnke, a graduate student at the New Mexico institute and first author on a paper about the eruption in the geophysics publication EOS this week1.
04:01 PM on 05/19/2012 Sign Of The Times

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Besides having a super-cool name, Rankin Paynter may just be the coolest man in Kentucky. When Paynter heard that the Kmart in his hometown was closing its doors, he got to work. He entered the store, went for his wallet and bought everything in sight. And when we say everything, we mean the entire $200,000 worth of inventory the store had left. And then -- here's the best part -- he gave it all away to Clark County Community Services, a nonprofit that helps families in Winchester, Kentucky. Paynter's reasoning was rather simple: "It's time to give back." Wow. According to news reports, the gift of goods was the largest donation the nonprofit group ever received. And, thanks to one man, the local children in need with have enough coats and hats during the next winter. According to MSNBC: Paynter, who runs a jewelry-exchange business known as Rankin Paynter Buying Center, also rented out a building to store all the items.
03:11 PM on 05/19/2012 Sign Of The Times

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National Lawyers Guild spokesman Kris Hermes says Chicago police officers unjustly raided a Bridgeport apartment complex on Wednesday evening and detained several people without cause.
03:11 PM on 05/19/2012 Sign Of The Times

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On Wednesday 16 May, at about 4pm, the republic of the United States of America was drawn back - at least for now - from a precipice that would have plunged our country into moral darkness. One brave and principled newly-appointed judge ruled against a law that would have brought the legal powers of the authorities of Guantánamo home to our own courthouses, streets and backyards. US district judge Katherine Forrest, in New York City's eastern district, found that section 1021 - the key section of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) - which had been rushed into law amid secrecy and in haste on New Year's Eve 2011, bestowing on any president the power to detain US citizens indefinitely, without charge or trial, "facially unconstitutional". Forrest concluded that the law does indeed have, as the journalists and peaceful activists who brought the lawsuit against the president and Leon Panetta have argued, a "chilling impact on first amendment rights". Her ruling enjoins that section of the NDAA from becoming law.
03:11 PM on 05/19/2012 Sign Of The Times

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Pediatric psychopharmacology is a billion-dollar business that sustains Pharma and Pharma investors on Wall Street. In his book Psychiatryland, psychiatrist Phillip Sinaikin recounts reading a scientific article in which it was debated whether a three-year-old girl who ran out into traffic had oppositional-defiant disorder or bipolar disorder, the latter marked by "grandiose delusions" that she was special and cars could not harm her.1 How did the once modest medical specialty of child psychiatry become the aggressive "pediatric psychopharmacology" that finds ADHD, pediatric conduct disorder, depression, bipolar disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, mood disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorders, mixed manias, social phobia, anxiety, sleep disorders, borderline disorders, assorted "spectrum" disorders, irritability, aggression, pervasive development disorders, personality disorders, and even schizophrenia under every rock? And how did this branch of psychiatry come to find the answer to the "psychopathologies" in the name of the discipline itself: pediatric psychopharmacology? Just good marketing. Pharma is wooing the pediatric patient because that's where the money is. Just like country and western songs about finding love where you can when there is no love to be found at home. Pharma has stopped finding "love" in the form of the new blockbuster drugs that catapulted it through the 1990s and 2000s. According to the Wall Street Journal, new drugs made Pharma only $4.3 billion in 2010 compared with $11.8 billion in 2005 - a two-thirds drop.2
03:11 PM on 05/19/2012 Sign Of The Times

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I have always been interested in holistic medicine. Even as a teenager, I read and studied many different healing modalities. Given my love of medicine and my participation in competitive sports, it was no surprise to anyone that I became a Certified Athletic Trainer and physical therapist. Over the past 20 years in my healthcare career, I have worked in many different settings. The constants in my career have been interacting with people in pain and using all of my knowledge/skills to assist them in restoring maximum function. I have a special interest in working with people who experience chronic pain. As happens with many people, it took my own experience to propel me to study and learn more about how to best help this patient population. In 2007, I became very ill with what was later diagnosed as Hashimoto's Thyroiditis. This is an autoimmune illness (AI) caused by the body mounting an attack on the thyroid gland in an attempt to destroy it. For those who have not heard of this illness, the thyroid is a major part of the endocrine system. It is a gland that makes and stores hormones that help regulate the heart rate, blood pressure, body temperature, and the rate at which food is converted into energy. Thyroid hormones are essential for the function of every cell in the body. They help regulate growth and the rate of chemical reactions (metabolism) in the body. It took me 5 years of researching, asking questions, and trial and error to begin to regain my health. At the urging of a colleague, I went gluten free in the fall of 2010. After 2 weeks, I felt so much better that I decided to continue avoiding gluten. As I continued to research, I found information about what was referred to as the "Paleo" lifestyle. I decided to try it in the Spring of 2011. After several months, the majority of my inflammation was reduced, my blood work showed changes in a positive direction, I began going days at a time without taking anti-inflammatory medication, and I was able to slowly begin bodyweight exercises and walking.
02:21 PM on 05/19/2012 Sign Of The Times

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A suicide bomber on a motorcycle detonated explosives in an Afghan district close to the border with Pakistan, killing at least 10 people including children, officials said on Saturday. The attack comes one day ahead of a NATO summit in Chicago, where the coalition intends to spell out its role in Afghanistan after foreign combat troops leave by the end of 2014. "The bomber blew himself up in a crowded market and it was powerful," said Sardar Mohammad Zazai, police chief of eastern Khost province. He said the assailant was heading for a police checkpoint in the Ali Sher district along the border with Pakistan's "lawless tribal areas". No one claimed responsibility for the attack, which killed six children, one civilian adult and three policemen. Eleven years into the NATO-led war against the Taliban, the Islamist group holds large sway in Afghanistan's restive south and east, where they enjoy enormous popular support. Afghan security officials have said they expect this year's summer fighting season to be bloody as the third phase of a security handover from NATO to Afghan forces gets underway.
01:31 PM on 05/19/2012 Sign Of The Times

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Several bomb blasts have struck a professional institute in the southern Italian city of Brindisi, killing one student and injuring seven. The three blasts hit as students arrived for morning lessons at the institute. Local authorities report that the incendiary devices were planted in a trash bin opposition the professional institute Morvillo Falcone. One of the injured has died in hospital while another has been transferred to nearby Perrino for emergency surgery. "I was opening the window when I felt the force of the blast. I saw children thrown to the floor, blackened by the explosion, their books on fire. A truly terrifying scene. Who could've have done such a thing?" said a witness of the blast to Italian newspaper La Repubblica. The explosions went off at around 8am local time (06:00 GMT), causing widespread panic among the students arriving at the school.
06:51 AM on 05/19/2012 Sign Of The Times

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Tracking users after they log out and violating US wiretapping laws - these are the allegations behind a 15-billion-dollar nationwide class-action lawsuit filed against Facebook in California. ­The suit, combining 21 cases of alleged privacy violations by the social networking giant, was filed on Friday in the Federal Court in San Jose, Emil Protalinski writes on ZDNet.com. In their consolidated complaint, the plaintiffs claim that Facebook used cookies to track them across the Internet. And yet, where does the staggering sum of the lawsuit come from? Violation of the Federal Wiretap Act provides suggests compensation of US $100 per day per user for every case of violation, up to a maximum of US $10,000 per user. The accusations also fall under the Computer Fraud and Abuse act, the Stored Communications Act, as well as various California Statutes and California common law. "This is not just a damages action, but a groundbreaking digital-privacy rights case that could have wide and significant legal and business implications," said David Straite, a partner at Stewarts Law. The firm is one of the plaintiffs leading the claim.
06:51 AM on 05/19/2012 Sign Of The Times

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Thousands of protesters took to Chicago's streets ahead of the NATO summit due to kick off there on Sunday. National Nurses United teamed up with trade unions and the Occupy movement to form a mass rally in the Windy City. ­The NNU members demanded a Robin Hood tax to be introduced on banks' financial transactions. That demand was rather a supplement to the protest against proposals to cut back nurses pensions. "We've worked 30 years for them and don't want to get rid of them," said Deb Holmes, a nurse at a hospital in Worcester. Former Rage Against the Machine guitarist and Occupy activist Tom Morello performed live at the event. Despite the largely peaceful nature of the event, one man was arrested for aggravated battery of a police officer.
06:51 AM on 05/19/2012 Sign Of The Times

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Frankfurt police have detained 400 anti-capitalist protesters ahead of a key conference on monetary policy scheduled for the weekend. With thousands more heading into the city in the coming hours, new clashes are expected. ­Authorities say anti-capitalists were erecting barricades, vandalizing road signs and blocking traffic at various locations across the city. Frankfurt - Germany's financial capital - is home to the European Central Bank (ECB). As the eurozone faces a deepening of the economic crisis following fears that Greece can no longer remain part of the currency bloc, policymakers from EU member states have arrived in the city for two days of intense talks. Meanwhile, up to 30,000 protesters are expected to make their way into the Frankfurt over the weekend. Their chief demand is an end to austerity - cuts in government spending, often made by sovereign governments in exchange for offers of loans from the EU - which activists say is leading to "Europe-wide impoverishment." In homage to the Occupy Wall Street protests last year, the movement labels itself "Blockupy."
06:51 AM on 05/19/2012 Sign Of The Times

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Hundreds of people rallied in Houston on Thursday to protest the acquittal of a former police officer in the videotaped beating of an African-American teenager. On Wednesday, the officer, Andrew Bloomberg, was found not guilty by an all-white jury in the beating and stomping of 15-year-old burglary suspect Chad Holley. Video taken of the March 2010 incident shows Holley being stopped by a police vehicle. After Holley falls to the ground, he is clearly seen surrendering and putting his hands behind his head. But instead of placing him in handcuffs, Bloomberg and six fellow officers proceed to attack Holley with stomps and kicks. "It seems we have become jaded, willing to accept in too many instances, young black people being grossly mistreated," says NAACP President Ben Jealous.
06:51 AM on 05/19/2012 Sign Of The Times

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On May 1, after a day of May Day activities on the streets and avenues of Manhattan, my wife and I and a troop of other OWS celebrants marched into Zuccotti Park to jubilant exhortations of "welcome home" from a throng of fellow occupiers. The next day, my wife and I boarded a southbound Amtrak train to join family gathered at my dying father's bedside to bid him farewell. May in Georgia...In this age of climate chaos, the local flora comes to bloom a full month earlier than in decades past. This season, magnolias and hydrangeas blossomed in early May. Their petals opened to the world as my father's life is fading. The magnolia petals have grown heavy; his body is shrinking. Soon he will drift from this world...carried by the scent of late spring blossoms. In our once laboring class neighborhood, McMansions blot out the late spring sun. In the arrogant shadow of these shoddily constructed, bloated emblems of late capitalism, the neighborhood's remaining 1950's single level, brick homes seem to recede...fading like memory before the hurtling indifference of passing eras. In late spring, veils of pollen merge with shrouds of Atlanta traffic exhaust. Timeless nature has awakened as the noxious capitalist certainties underpinning the aberration known as the New South are dying.
06:51 AM on 05/19/2012 Sign Of The Times

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Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev warned on Thursday that military action against sovereign states could lead to a regional nuclear war, starkly voicing Moscow's opposition to Western intervention ahead of a G8 summit at which Syria and Iran will be discussed. "Hasty military operations in foreign states usually bring radicals to power," Medvedev, president for four years until Vladimir Putin's inauguration on May 7, told a conference in St. Petersburg in remarks posted on the government's website. "At some point such actions which undermine state sovereignty may lead to a full-scale regional war, even, although I do not want to frighten anyone, with the use of nuclear weapons," Medvedev said. "Everyone should bear this in mind." Medvedev gave no further explanation. Nuclear-armed Russia has said publicly that it is under no obligation to protect Syria if it is attacked, and analysts and diplomats say Russia would not get involved in military action if Iran were attacked.
06:01 AM on 05/19/2012 Sign Of The Times

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Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) is urging Members to reject H.R. 4310, the National Defense Authorization Act, FY 2013 because it prepares the way for a disastrous war with Iran. Even if the House accepts a proposed amendment by John Conyers (D-MI) to state that the authorization is not a specific declaration of war, the bill still calls for aggressive redeployment of our armed services to begin "credible, visible preparations for a military option."
06:01 AM on 05/19/2012 Sign Of The Times

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At least it's on the record: Most House Republicans support the indefinite detention without trial of American citizens. During Thursday's floor debate over the latest national defense authorization act, the House GOP brought out their long knives for Reps. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) and Justin Amash (R-Mich.), who, in their view, had collaborated on a nefarious plot to undermine national security. Rep. Tom Rooney (R-Fla.) accused the lawmakers of wanting to "coddle terrorists," while Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Tex.) warned that under an amendment they'd introduced, "as soon as a member of Al Qaeda sets foot on US soil, they hear you have the right to remain silent." National Review's Andrew C. McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor who has never heard of a same-sex marriage supporting, pro-financial regulation liberal who wasn't secretly a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, wrote that their proposal was the result of "libertarian extremists" teaming up with liberals with an "obsession" with giving "more rights" to "mass murderers."
06:01 AM on 05/19/2012 Sign Of The Times

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A new video of torture in Libya has surfaced on the Internet. The victim is allegedly a former supporter of ex-Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. According to our Libyan Observer, this kind of vengeful brutality often goes unpunished. The video was published on YouTube on May 16 by a user going by the name of Libya Albadeel. It was then re-posted by dozens of other users. It is impossible to establish with certainty the date at which it was shot; however, according to our Observer, such retributions remain frequent today. The video's title claims that the torture perpetrators are "militiamen" in Misrata, a coastal town located 200 kilometres east of the capital Tripoli. WARNING: These images may shock viewers
06:01 AM on 05/19/2012 Sign Of The Times

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If family values are in the news, you can be sure an American election is just around the corner. According to Republicans, gay marriage is a glory hole puncturing the sanctity of the nuke-clear family, so for backing such a ghastly proposal, with ring, no less, Obama is the "gayest president," according to Rand Paul, or "The First Gay President," per Newsweek. Anything to sell that particular brand of rectum tissues, I suppose, although I'd rather use corn cobs. Countering, Democrats will huff that the travails of their dead battery, soft spot, touching turmoil or whatever it is that's inside their boxer's shorts or panties is no one's business, least of all the government, though of course the Democrat-appointed Janet Napolitano and her TSA hordes have set up an enduring base next to their exposed, uh, discount toys. Irradiated and propped up by Cialis, they don't look half bad. Oh yes, they do. According to Democrats, Obama is a good liberal because he will also send gay men and women worldwide to massacre whoever gets in the way of the oil liberals need to drive their SUVs to anti-war rallies. According to Republicans, Mitt is a good conservative since he can't stand Ellen DeGeneres, Johnny Weir or Barney the Dinosaur, although he will condemn a husband or wife halfway across the globe to commit unspeakable acts for years, while the remaining spouse languishes at home in anxiety and loneliness, to be comforted by some groggy chick at the bar, talk radio, a young cable guy, Jesus, reruns of American Idol or, in the best case scenario, nothing at all.
06:01 AM on 05/19/2012 Sign Of The Times

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They were the stone-age equivalent of Glastonbury festival. People gathered in their hundreds to drink, eat and party every summer at revelries lasting several days and nights. Young men met women from nearby communities and married them. Herds of cattle were slaughtered to provide food. These neolithic carousals even had special sites. They were held on causewayed enclosures, large hilltop earthworks built by our forebears after they brought farming to Britain from the continent 6,000 years ago. This picture of ancient British bacchanalia has been created by researchers led by Professor Alasdair Whittle of Cardiff University and Dr Alex Bayliss of English Heritage. Using a revolutionary technique for dating ancient remains, they have built up a detailed chronology of the first farmers' arrival in Britain and have shown that agriculture spread with dramatic rapidity. In its wake, profound social changes gripped the country, culminating in the construction of causewayed enclosures where chieftains or priests held revelries to help establish their power bases.
10:51 PM on 05/18/2012 Sign Of The Times

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